Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
- 965 All Categories
- 17 Games
- 1 aw2-mapbp
- 365 Richland
- SDHSR
- 4 two-detroits
- 96 aw2e-dvfp
- 53 ISS Tsiolkovsky
- 82 Fury
- Urban Shadows
- 24 LadyB
- 11 AnR
- 4 Junk World 2.0
- 68 PnR
- 23 DRYH
- Jeffland
- The Few
- 11 Other
- 11 General
- 576 Complete
- 12 burning-empires
- 8 aota-jam
- 17 Uncharted Worlds
- Uncharted
- 23 nullptr-veil
- 9 ajax-motw
- 2 tqy-am
- 52 NOVA
- 11 Serene Apocalypse
- jenn-soti
- 63 SWAW
- 13 Blades
- 2 Fall Of Magic
- 12 Generations
- 25 LA Monsters
- tqy
- 32 nupocalypse
- 120 Snowpocalypse
- 136 Junkworld XIII
- 27 Big Maul
- 6 ESC
- 1 Murderous Ghosts
- 17 ANN_pilot
[Junk XIII] A Hard Drop (K 2-3, S 2-3)
Stitch,
You decide that discretion is the better part of valor or somesuch and head out of Chedd's Part Tent. You're walking across the courtyard, winding around smaller tents towards your caravan's trucks. There are people outside of a few tents, too poor to afford the luxuries of Chedd's, unable to get inside Trench. They're huddles around small fires, talking quietly in the night.
One guy is telling a campfire story you've heard before. Well, not around a campfire, he's retelling a movie's plot, acting it out. Doing pretty decent impressions of the main characters, acting out their movements in uncanny ways from that old picture that you've seen a few times. What's the movie?
It's almost enough to distract you from seeing something along the wall. In a place where the firelight misses, by a tent, you're just close enough, there's just enough moons-light to see a form at the top of the inner wall. Moving down. A small form, maybe four and a half feet tall, coming down a rope. It was the grunt of effort, hissed through clenched teeth that drew your attention.
Then. Then it falls. Maybe a few meters, lands oddly, there's a crunch, a whimper of quiet pain, even now, she is trying to stay quiet. Yes, "she", it's a little girl.
What do you do?
You decide that discretion is the better part of valor or somesuch and head out of Chedd's Part Tent. You're walking across the courtyard, winding around smaller tents towards your caravan's trucks. There are people outside of a few tents, too poor to afford the luxuries of Chedd's, unable to get inside Trench. They're huddles around small fires, talking quietly in the night.
One guy is telling a campfire story you've heard before. Well, not around a campfire, he's retelling a movie's plot, acting it out. Doing pretty decent impressions of the main characters, acting out their movements in uncanny ways from that old picture that you've seen a few times. What's the movie?
It's almost enough to distract you from seeing something along the wall. In a place where the firelight misses, by a tent, you're just close enough, there's just enough moons-light to see a form at the top of the inner wall. Moving down. A small form, maybe four and a half feet tall, coming down a rope. It was the grunt of effort, hissed through clenched teeth that drew your attention.
Then. Then it falls. Maybe a few meters, lands oddly, there's a crunch, a whimper of quiet pain, even now, she is trying to stay quiet. Yes, "she", it's a little girl.
What do you do?
Comments
I look around to see if any guards heard or saw her- then I go over to her, and check her out.
She's delirious with pain, hasn't even registered that you're standing over her. All it seems she's concentrating on is slowly crawling away, moving as quiet as she can manage.
She probably won't make it another five meters.
What do you do?
OOC: Healing touch incoming.
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 1, 5. Total: 8)
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 5, 6. Total: 13)
You lay hands on this tiny girl, and realize that where most girls her age, which is about twelve, would still have some baby fat perhaps. But not this one, her body is rip-cord tight, lean muscle. The arm resets in your hands and for a second, when the strength returns to her and the pain subsides, she curls the fingers of that hand around yours, and there's a moment between you.
You get images from this girl, memories. Memories of her mother and father, one a killer, the other like you, a healer. You see her, as a child, learning how to shoot, how to fight with a knife, learning hand to hand, it's serious. No musical montage drek, this girl was trained hard at a very young age. All under the watchful eye of her protective mother. Fox. Her mother's name was Fox.
This is Sapphire.
And she's starting to come to.
What do you do?
Since you opened your Brain with that Weird roll, I get a question.
So tell me Stitch, have you ever wanted kids?
And then the choice had been made for me.
"Sapphire. I'm Stitch. I'm here to help." I whisper to her, tenderly. "We need to move."
You see her use the wall to stand all the way up, her back to you, "Thanks for your help, Stitch. See you around."
OOC: Read a person incoming.
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 4, 1. Total: 7)
Sapphire intends to get out of this courtyard and kill anyone who gets in her way. That's what she intends. She's also pretty damn sure she's not going to make it, but well, its not like she's got anybody else to count on. You get this free of charge, Stitch. Any "offer of help" that doesn't come with a price tag, she doesn't trust it. Everything has a cost in her world.
I hurry back to the trucks, wiping the blood on my hands onto the dirt.
OOC: Read a sitch incoming.
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 5, 4. Total: 11)
* What should I be on the lookout for?
* What is the best way past the guards?
* Which enemy is the biggest threat?
The best way past the guards? It is hiding in the tents. They will inquire outside to be let in, but Kodak is already on the outs with them, you or Kiddo can talk him into refusing them entry. The exterior gate is pretty well defended, so you're not getting this girl past them. Of course, the BEST way past the guards is to raise an alarm and turn this little girl in. You might even get a reward.
The biggest threat right now? The town guards, most definitely. They will shoot this girl on sight.
You hear the gate opening, some lights are coming on, including a big bright one, like a searchlight. Someone, a woman, is barking orders to a few people by the gate, organizing them.
If you actually do want to help hide this girl, Act Under Fire.
If you decide to let her pay for whatever she's done to the folks in town, then just stand here. They're coming.
What do you do?
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 3, 6. Total: 11)
I lead us back to the tent as stealthily as I can.
Your "room" is at the southeast corner of the pavilion tent. There's a plastic cooler with some food, not much, a worn couch and a mattress. The floor is haphazard layers of wood covered by carpets. You have a small wash basin and a jug of water.
If you don't stop her, Sapphire will head for the couch, and half-sit, half-lay on it. You caught her scanning the room for exits, maybe for weapons.
What do you do?
Once I get her ok, I go out front to talk to Kodak. "Hey, I got a patient. I can toss the jingle your way, but can you keep the guards out of the tent?" I ask him in a hushed voice.
When you head back, Svenja is in the hallway. She's dressed in an a-shirt, her dog tags and a pair of comfy boy shorts. She's peering at you curiously, walking behind you, "What's with the girl, doc?"
"She fell. Broke an arm, among other things." I reply quietly. "Said she'd pay me to fix her up."
OOC: Read Svenja incoming.
(Rolled: 2d6+3. Rolls: 4, 2. Total: 9)
OOC: How can I get your character to keep quiet about the girl?
Outside, you hear some guards coming up to knock at the makeshift door, Kodak is going to answer it, loudly complaining he's on his way like it just woke him. Svenja drops her voice with yours, "What's the real deal, yo? Are they after her?"
Svenja isn't going to rat on you, Stitch. That isn't her way. She's bored and curious. the only threat Svenja causes is if she makes a fuss about you lying to her and it spooks Sapphire. Tell her what's up, bring her in, she'll chill. Or, bark orders like a sergeant, and she'll skulk away.
I stop before we get back into my little room. "She's trained. I don't think she's a threat to us, but she stirred something up and I don't want helping her to come back and bite me in the ass, yeah? Come on in and watch my back." I whisper to Svenja.
You're already in the room, right? Sapphire is there. She's stripped off her shirt and shorts, dropped her belt and holster, since you said you were going to clean her up. She's sitting with her feet on the floor, on the bed like you instructed. She's in her underwear, which is salt encrusted around the edges, worn and sweat-stained. Her knife is on the bed not far away. She looks like she's about to pass out, but she's fighting it hard. Her arm is bloody, her tummy is still seeping blood.
What do you do?
I put my medkit on the bed and start taking things out. "Lie down, let me look at your stomach." I tell her. The arm isn't broken anymore and won't be an issue if she dies of blood loss anyway. I pour some water into the basin and dip a pad of gauze in it, wiping away some of the blood.
She looks in your eyes, Stitch, and for a moment, you see the weakness in her, trying to drag her down, make her rest. And the fear, pushing her to keep going, wanting to run, run away. But she nods, and lays down quietly.
The wound is deep, got some muscle. If she were fat, it might not have done as much damage. I assume you do a thorough examination, right? She seems pliant, finally. She's riddled with scars, been shot four times, old scars on her knuckles from fights the kind of stuff you see on old boxers, really. The cut on her forearm, the defensive wound, that isn't her first one, there are eight other scars there. A number of them on her shins, too. One of her fingers won't close correctly, it never healed right after a break. She's malnourished and sleep deprived.
If she were a stray cat, they would probably put her down.
She closes her eyes as you examine her. After a long silence, she says in a whisper, "My daddy... he was a doctor, too."
"I can do what I did before or I can stitch it up the old fashioned way. The first lets me into your brain, the second won't heal for a good while, and you'll be on bedrest in the meantime. Either can have complications, I'm not perfect. Your choice, girly." I tell her.
Svenja has an "oh shit" look for the idea of you looking in someone's brain, but she just keeps her eyes on the door. Speaking of which, those guards, they're getting an earful from Kodak right now. He is not letting them in.
I lay my hands back on Sapphire's stomach and open my brain...
OOC: Healing Touch incoming.
(Rolled: 2d6+2. Rolls: 2, 2. Total: 6)
In a word - frustrating. And you follow one, but no, that's the scar on knuckle on her left hand that she got when she hit Hump in the tooth. She'd talked him into "sparring with her" when they were eight. Then another, but that's the scar on her left shin she got when she was training with her mom and a broken eyelet on her mother's boot tore into her shin. And you see Fox standing over her, fighting her motherly instincts to help, forcing herself to stay strong, teach her daughter to be strong. You know that, but Sapphire then, ten year old Sapphire, she didn't see it. Even now, the tag-a-long Sapphire doesn't see it, only sees the disappointment, feels the burning pain, swears at her own self to shut the frak up, to stop crying, to be badass.
You follow dozens of dead-ends, and each time you feel a bit more of that pain, sympathy pain, and Sapphire's brain is hitting a loop, like an echo chamber of the pain and she's wailing in your ears at the pain of years, her whole life. Always trying to live up to her mother's expectations, then exceeding that and striving for some unreachable ideal of what her mother really wants, what she has to do for her mother to really love her.
And it's become nearly unbearable when you see a man, in his late thirties, and he's looming over her. This feels raw, fresh, unprocessed, hasn't been stored away, rationalized into "doing the job" or "being badass" and she's scared. This is Paxo, her target, the one Nehi wanted dead. Necktie dead, for being a sick frakking rat, selling out the Council to his new boss Spanx. Poor Paxo, he doesn't know who she is, and he just wants to frak her, because he likes little girls. It makes her sick, sick and terrified. It makes her want to kill him, makes her ignore the guard in the other room. She was so careless, she just drew her knife, the one she had on the bed with her, and cut his throat, and then with nervous fingers, she's reaching, probing in the wound, digging for the tongue, and she's gasping now feeling inside this man's esophagus for his tongue, and just telling herself quietly thread the needle, just thread the needle, gods, please, just thread the needle.
Then the guard comes rushing in right as she pulls the tongue through the gash in Paxo's throat. She's covered in his blood and the Sapphire tag-a-long is shrieking in your ears to run away, go go go! Its all in your brain and suddenly, the real you, the meat Stitch, you're being pulled away from her. Svenja is pulling you away from Sapphire, who is laying there whimpering softly, tears running down both cheeks, the pillow and mattress wet from her tears. You're awake and your body is sore from tensing for too long, drenched in sweat and tired like you pulled a double shift during residency.
Stitch, I've got some questions for you. But go ahead and read through that, I'll ask them in a moment.
Here are your questions!
Tell Sapphire why you didn't leave her out there for the guards. She heard a few things from you, but I want to know as much as she does.
What was the last thing you said to Ethan?
The last few weeks with Ethan were great, actually. I didn't tell him I'd signed up for the iso-cube program, so I pretended like everything was fine to run out the clock. He smiled- gods, I hadn't seen him smile in ages, no wonder I'd fallen in love with him. I'd considered leaving a note or something- explaining my cowardice- but it didn't really matter, did it? I found somewhere to run where he couldn't follow.
Ethan thought I was going to work. "Have a good day." I said, kissing him on the cheek. My heart felt like it would explode out of my chest as I walked out of our apartment, towards my freedom.
I have to stop myself from trying to work on Saphire again. I want to fix it, to sooth her wounds- physical and mental. But she needs rest and I'm too drained to do any more good today.
I go about bandaging the wound. I really should stitch it up first, but I can barely keep my eyes open. She'll be ok for a few hours, especially if she's sleeping. I wipe my hands. I want to snap, to break things. To rage and scream. Instead I sink down on the couch and cry softly. I cry for Sapphire and myself.
Then, she takes a post at the door flap to your "room". All the while, she's watching both of you without, you know, looking right at you.
I fall asleep.
"Why don't you grab some z's, boss. I'm not lettin them go anywhere tonight. Cool?"