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[DVFP] Trip Home (J 4.2, S 4.2)
After a long day of driving, switching drivers, and continuing on into the next morning, you make it to the Funeral Mountains. Reese suggests getting some sleep before taking on the pass through the mountains during The Scorch. It will be incredibly hot then and dangerous if you have any vehicle issues, but it reduces the threat of United Front watching the roads.
Beckett pulls into a hidden spot a few miles away from the road to the pass. there's an outcropping of rock that hangs over and gives you some shade. Bee bee, the girl with bumble bee eyes, has slept almost this whole trip, and now she's up and moving. She gets out of hackmobile and starts snooping around the shaded area, watching the ground, taking up a tool she found in the back of Beckett's car and digging in the sand.
Rothschild is half asleep, she swapped out with Reese, but he had so much trouble with shifting gears and his leg that she had to take back over. She slumps in the seat, and Reese takes up watch over the camp. Missed drove a stint, and she seems eager to move into the truck, but admits she's never driven anything that size.
What do you do?
Comments
When Beckett pulls us over I'm vaguely rested compared to most of us. I've popped 2-3 nosebleeds since we left Cyberville, only failed to hide one of them. The sun is up but I have a bit of a shiver. After a minute of thinkin' quietly in the brightness, I pick my way back to the shade.
"Missed, when we get movin' again, I think Roth should sit with you in the truck. She doesn't have to lead, let her snooze, just get advice if the rig gives you any issues." That girl amazes me. I owe her somethin' special. For right now I'll let her sleep.
Oh it feels good to not be cooped up in a car. I stretch up as much as I can, still feeling woozy and thrown over. I know Beckett and Missed are fine, Reese will be better with some rest..I glance at the trailer. I need to check on the Twins and make sure they're tended to. In a minute.
I watch Bee Bee play in the dirt while I drink a little water and try to decide if I'm gonna eat anythin' or not. Probably not, my stomach feels like a tight coil and I'd rather not fight it here. "You find any gold, B, you let me know." I tease. "You get enough water?"
Bee Bee almost jumps out of the car and I let her go. I don't know what to do with a kid. I lean back, stick my feet up, and stay put in the shade.
I can't get her voice out of my head. I'd almost forgotten.her exact tone and timber, after months of separation, but now it's back. Her presence bright and forceful.
I curl up a bit onto myself and try to get some more sleep
"As far as I know Rothschild is not on anythin', so let her sleep as much as you can. Beckett might be able to give you some advice about shifting, too." What with Beckett bein' such a solid driver. Anythin' to lighten Roth's load a little. "Wish I were good for it."
I rummage in our supplies for the trip..I notice we added some water to it since Cybertown but not food. I step over to B with a sachet of water and set it near her. "I like how you work for yourself, so have this, too." I prop myself on one crutch carefully and have a drink myself, thinkin' about her question.
She knows what I did so I won't quibble. "Because he attacked me and I needed to live. Because he and I were both doctors..and we both lost our way. Doctors are supposed to help people, use their knowledge in the kindest way."
I glance up, catch Sierra curlin' up in her seat. She looks troubled, but I'm'a let her sleep.
I nudge her hand back to herself. "No, I'm the Weaver. Be good, I have some things to do."
I finish my water and head into the trailer to check on the Twins. I'm sure nobody else is qualified (yet) or brave enough (yet) to tend to them much. The crates and shaken piles of things are a chaos in here, and I paw around for the right stuff. Bein' good at thinkin' ahead sometimes makes me feel like a villain sometimes.
Two weakened immune systems, two bodies heavy only from metal and cohabitation..and so many scrounged vials of labeled, professional drugs in here. It'll take me a week to get all this junk sorted. After pullin' out what I'll need to..let's shorten it to maintain them, I pull up to the Twins and pry off my gloves.
"Are you in here?" It's a simple, direct request.
Long moments pass as you look upon the twisted an inhuman things that were once two friends who asked Parcher for a chance to "be together" when the world didn't accept them as they were. After a moment of straining to hear a response, you feel a tickle in The Feed and a pair of voices whisper to you, "Weaver." Their voices buzz at your implants lightly, but you can't see them move in the physical realm, not even the slightest. Their tone is nearly inscrutable, but you get a teasing impression of interest.
I sink my perception deeper into the feed. "Tell me your names. Tell me if you're well, if you need anything."
I suppose if my body were in this state..I'd avoid it.
Sierra,
As you find some fitful moments of sleep, you feel a tickle in your hindbrain, a whisper through the feed. A question posed from curiosity, two voices dancing together to form the words in your head, gentle and curious, "Define Gloriana. Please."
"Hmm. I can account for your sustenance, but I'll need things from you, from time to time. Everyone who is in my operation does their part, KikiLala. According to their ability."
"A voluntary clinic for cyborgs, candidates for cybernetic installations, and seekers of mesh-enhanced psychotherapy."
It is also a front for my gathering information on Feed resources in DVFP and consolidating more of them under my thumb, to later disruptive ends. But that's big-picture, need-to-know information.
I smiled up at her. Loving her, as her finger snaked down around my throat, petting. "Gloriana Regina, the fierce queen. Protector. Lover. Torturer. Owner." I could feel Gloriana's hands tighten on my throat. "My all seeing albatross."
My air was gone and I gasped desperate to breathe, when everything went black and I violently woke.
That is a very good, very relevant question that I am quite possibly too exhausted to answer right now. "Find out what you can about the life of a courier named Juice. Be very cautious. Or. Tell me what you can about why Gloriana backed Parcher."
I turn to look at the truck and there is June talking with the twins... how did they do that. Eyes still wet I get out of the car and approach the back of the van. From this angle June can see me, but the twins cannot. Though honestly, I'm not sure that matters.
However, as I get closer I can see that she is reaching out to them. Farathoom, I don't want to barge in. I bite my lip and cough lightly, trying to get her attention.
It may take a lot of internal deliberation on KikiLala's part to decide which wish of knowledge to grant me.
Behind me, I know that I am hearing a cough. Like I am moving a mannequin, I straighten myself and turn, finishing the turn before adjusting my focus in discreet layers.
First embodiment. Then the landscape, shapes around me. A body. A face. Sierra.
"What can I do for you?" Hmm, she looks.. "..I would offer you my handkerchief but it's soiled at the moment."
I look to June's right, at the canvas and metal of the truck, unable to see them but not knowing they were there. Mistrust evident in my eyes.
I consider Sierra's words, nod. "She had a connection to Parcher. They may have simply been curious."
I frown and move around June to look the twins in the face. "How could they enter my head without some sort of interface?"
"The same way I could do it, through near-field and subordinated network mesh resonance. Our skin is not the final boundary of 'us'."
I prop myself against the truck and prop my crutches against me to touch my fingertips together in front of me and then reach them out as space and my long arms will allow. "June Weaver doesn't start at this point and end at this point. Philosophically speakin', and feedwise."
I take a cane back under a forearm and offer Sierra my other hand.
And then there is the dream and Gloriana's voice. I'm not, calm, like June usually likes. A bit of my emotional state is surely going to bleed over between us, but surely she knows that. I'm not play-acting anymore and my emotions are written all over my face. If she's offering, she most likely knows what she is going to get.
I lick my lips and uncross my arms, stepping forward and reaching my hand out to take hers.
Oh. Well. Er..I expected a little more panic and the usual eager curiosity I get from Sierra, always questions. The wariness of a wounded girl. Not the interests of an experienced woman. Well, I asked for it.
"Gloriana is the sub-warden. So DVFP is a fertile playground for her to make illicit profits, in ironic secrecy. You see, now you and I are playing a new game. Oh..not like that, although you have a fascinatin' new fascination."
Goodness, I shouldn't toy with her right now. It's just my way of bein' defensive.
It's important to remember that for June, this isn't special or unique. It's like remembering that the way the men stared at me in the diamond wasn't really real. It's all just the bits that come with the package - for me it's my inability to walk unnoticed, for June, it's this...
It's important to remember. Still, her teasing leaves me hot and tuned in. I feel my hand twitch in hers, desperate for more skin contact, but I still it. I can't let myself slip due to skin starvation, not with June. Not when so much is on the line.
"What new game are we playing?"
I think this qualifies as time and solitude with each other.
"Just like I'm not bounded entirely by my body, DVFP is not bounded entirely by its walls. Things and people move in and out. Data moves in and out. Images, sounds. We're making our first moves on the larger board. I'll call this game Contraband and Leverage."
Hmm, I should turn my mind back to practical matters. But it's very hard, distracted by contact with Sierra, daydreamin' on what it would be like to take in all of her pristine body and make her shiver. But what would I be openin' myself to, then? Which curiosity will see me damned first?
I look her over, trying to imagine her life before now and assemblin' the rumors from her house in my mind.
I have no idea how Gloriana would react to something so, brazenly, against the rules.
I bite my lip and instead concentrate on her words. "Games have goals and conditions for winning..." Gloriana knows that I have played enough games, even rigged ones, to know that. "What is our goal? How do we win?"
OOC: Rolling hypnotic
(Rolled: 2d6+3. Rolls: 1, 2. Total: 6)
"We win by controllin' valuable contraband and leveragin' it to corrode the positions of those with power over us. Our goal is to be free of that power." It's a very long, very difficult, very costly game.
"We should be gettin' ready to move. Have you had enough sleep? Or anythin' to eat or drink since we left? Now is your chance." I loosen my hand from hers and hold it to her cheek, feelin' the softness of her. "Ah. I should have asked."
"I haven't had anything to drink or eat." Her hand is cool against my cheek and I think the shocked gasp from the soft touch is louder in the shared place between us than it is in the physical world. I lean into the touch, my blue eyes meeting her otherworldly ones. I can't help but wonder, what she thinks she should have asked - after my personal well being or whether she could touch me like this?
I jolt up, away from Sierra and our little moment. Lord, how do I still have adrenaline left in my body to spend? "Sheetfire!"
What about Missed's bike? Fuggit, we'll get it on the rig one way or t'other, I point Missed towards Beckett. "Missed, we'll take care of the bike, you look after Beckett!"
I get to movin', head poundin' with each step, to get to the cab and wake Rothschild.
Rolling AoF: (Rolled: 2d6+1. Rolls: 4, 1. Total: 6)
I grab a hold of June's hand, the one that is still hanging in the air between us. Mostly to get her to focus and listen."I've got Roth, you need to take cover, come on." I pull her into the rig, but before I do, I call out to Reese, "Bee bee, come here. Reese, get the bike."
Then I run hard, making my way to Rothchild.
----
Let's see how this goes..
(Rolled: 2d6+1. Rolls: 6, 1. Total: 8)
Except one. Seems they maybe have seen this trick before, and a lone biker can be heard heading this way. If he comes close enough, he'll see you. Then he'll probably take off rather than engage, and who knows what that will bring.
What do you do?
"He'll peel when he sees you at a distance. Not a good time to test your range. If the rig's got a road flare, I can take care of him." I help Bee Bee up into the truck - so light even I can do that.
"Have Roth toss me my relayer. Check the glove compartment." I lean on the rig so's to have my hands free.
"Hey, June is asking for the relayer and a road flare. She said to check the glove compartment." I'm not sure what a glove compartment is, but if June asked I am sure Roth has an idea.
Sierra helping seems legit here.
Another AoF: (Rolled: 2d6+1. Rolls: 4, 5. Total: 10)
I engage the relayer's wireless controls and its 'arms' open up and wrap around the flare in a tight hug. Then I pop off the cap-end of the flare and strike it, give it a hot second and lob it over to the west in an end-over-end arc. The movement and the light should make the biker look right at it.
When they do, my will crosses the relayer's connection and jams into their mind. "Lay your bike down and walk away."
Direct-Brain Whisper Projection:(Rolled: 2d6+3. Rolls: 4, 1. Total: 8)
June, you focus down hard while everyone holds their breath, waiting, waiting for that biker to come close up on the flare.
All, when the biker does see the flare, he sees the relay, he sees a piece of June's will, her mental array, her network, and her true power. June reaches through that connection and into his feeble mind. The chubby fugger in bright white gauzy clothes nearly falls backwards off his bike. It zips out from under him, and he turns to run back towards the pass or wherever he came from.
I couldn't eat, because Gloriana wasn't eating. She was ill, though the doctors had pumped her up full of drugs. I on the other hand was going on 18 hours without food, rest, or medicinal aid when he started leaving me little mouthfuls by my elbow. I was unbelievably grateful. If I had fainted, I surely would have been punished, and Gloriana would have taken the opportunity to use the Phoenix clans... resources.
I smile at Roth when I see the biker run for it. But when Reese says we need to make a go for the pass I jog back over to June, I can't help but let an impressed smile onto my face. "That was utterly Zaridann, you're incredible." My smile fades, " But we got to move, should we grab the bike on the way past for the extra fuel?"
Carelessly, I wipe my nose on my sleeve, probably still leavin' a pink streak. That did go pretty well. "Hah, well. I have my moments."
"Reese, you're right, let's go through the pass. We should grab the bike either ways, it's barter an' I'm not leavin' my relayer in the dirt out here. It would take me half a year to make a new one." I hurry my way towards the cab, helpless but to smile when I see Rothschild there, tired but whole. I sidle close and whisper "You have been my hero today, you know that?"
I'm trying not to be terrified of Gloriana's latest move. Instead, I think about June and the idea of not ending at our flesh. My flesh has always been the thing that defined me, before the music, and even after, the flesh is what people saw first. I don't want to end at my fingertips. I want to be more than what people see.
I don't know why, but her statement makes me blush. "Yeah? I guess I'm not." I smile, mostly to myself. Who would have thought Gloriana's pet would end up doing okay for herself out here? At least so far. A month ago, I wouldn't have. "You're not too bad yourself." I smile fully at her.
Bee Bee manages to drive that smile right off my face. The kid is haunted and I honestly have no idea what we are going to do with her. "We are going to a place called the Depot." I answer her matter of factly. I want to say, there are many roads to hell... but I don't. She's only a kid, and she may have seen some things, but there is no reason to add to her nightmares. No matter how true the statement may be.
I lean back, listening to the rhythm and pace of the car for a bit, before I speak up, "Does anyone want to hear a story?"
What do you do?
Gratefully, I tuck my relayer away inside my jacket. When Roth basked in my praise, some strange yet familiar ache pressed into me. I'm not sure what it is.
Now, with her hand on my leg, there again. It occurs to me that Roth and I haven't named what we are to each other. Not really. We really need to talk, once we've rested. A gloved hand wanders to the back of Rothschild's head.
Bee Bee's behavior..it's so stiff, makes me wonder what 'story time' was to her. I nod quietly to Sierra, it seems like we'll learn something.
When I suggest a story and Bee Bee goes still, my heart clenches. It's an unnatural stillness. I call her name, once, twice but she doesn't so much as blink.
I've been trained in submission, and even regardless, it's always been in my nature, but I've never seen anything like this... then again, would I remember if I had?
Shaking I reach towards the front if the cab, facing Bee Bee and my back to June, so I find the edge of her collar easy enough and slip my fingers down the cold expanse of her neck.
"Code words for obedience, trigger words to cause submission or action. Frack, June, what if she built some into me?"
I wrack my brain trying to come up with the other phrase, the phrase that would trip her out of it. Finally, I settle on two possibilities.
" And they all lived happily ever after," I breathe, "The End."
Would that I could kill a man twice. My urge for a smoke is strong right now, but there's a child in the cab and I'm not seated near enough to the window. Aloud, I'll comment. "We'll do what we can do when we get back. In these sorts of cases, first we change what the programming does and then we slowly dismantle the mechanisms."
I check the radio in the cab. If it's not working now, I can fix it later, I'm sure. I know Sierra needs some distraction from her terror and Roth needs chatter to stay alert. "Hmm..."
I desperately try to swallow down my own panic.
Since this is an effort of picking a path through enemy territory, let's see one of you take the lead here and roll+Sharp. On a hit, choose options. On a 7-9, choose two. On a 10+, choose only one.
- It only costs a barter of supplies each
- You aren't separated from anyone on the trip
- You don't take 2-Harm AP during a narrow escape
- You hide in a safe place, for now, but don't get home
On a miss, you run into a United Front patrol. Fun!
(Rolled: 2d6+3 . Rolls: 6, 1. Total: 10)
You come riding into Depot from the north, and there's a line of smoke coming up from the southwestern corner of the place as you come close. You don't have elevation to see exactly where, but it looks like fire that burned for a while. When you get past the guards, where do you stow the rig? Out in the open by the market? In the Garage? Or do you stick it outside the walls and save jingle but put it at risk?
That..was an intense few days, to say the least. I would have offered to drive but, well, operating the clutch looks like it takes some strength. I drove a nice little car on the outside, emphasis on nice and little..with some assistive technology installed..doesn't quite apply here.
I spend a lot of our time closing in on Depot with my eyes narrowed on that line of smoke. I'll have to ask around on that, later.
The rig is goin' into the Garage, because I didn't destroy Parcher and steal his operation just to see market scavs or outsiders steal it back out from under me. I'll see if I can't work out a cheaper option when I'm not fuggin' exhausted and hurt.
Reese and I have been drumming up more and more customers and we are really hoping tonight will be a big night. I want to prove that we're worth something to The Bar.
When we pull into the garage I wake Bee Bee up and lean back to speak to June. "Any idea what to do with the kid?"
I want her to be safe, but the idea of talking on a kid... that's just not a good idea.
"Well, I have been thinkin' about expandin' my garden, but if I'm in the clinic all the time that's not so easy to do. Bee Bee, would you like to help me keep a garden goin' in exchange for food and a spot to sleep?"
I would bend down to be a little more gentle-lookin' and approachable but for starters Bee Bee has seen some scorch and clearly isn't that frightened of me, and for finishers I believe my head would riot if I did that and then stood back upright too fast.
She's completely serious.
I bend down and look into her unblinking eyes.
"June doesn't plant people, she plants vegetables, plants, food. We aren't ever going to ask you to do anything like what Parcher did, ever again. Okay?"
Just one slow, steadyin' breath. I nod along with Sierra's explanation of my garden "You'll find workin' for me very different. I don't treat bodies the way Parcher did. And I won't give you more than you can do. That's impractical. Come on." I'll start leading the way to High Rent.
"You can take a little time to think it over - I'll show you what's expected of you and then you can say yes or no." I look down at the tot to see what she thinks of the deal.
End Scene