[The Grid] Chatper 1: Hardwired

Hank


At first the sight of the rednecks makes Hank's teeth grit, thinking when it rains it pours, but his opinion changes fairly quickly.


"Well, you boys are a bunch of modern day Good Samaritans. Please have at, you probably couldn't make it much worse. Bertha here has had a good life,"


He blinks for a second questioning, then just accepting Chris' wink,


"and if it expired bringing me here, then she shall have a good end as well."
 
Malcom, Patrick


The big guy sweeps his weapon at your head and you help it along, not nearly so impolite as to get in the way. He winds up blasting just over your shoulder, and then recalibrates for a second and third attempt. The shattering noise of the hand cannon is actually shocking, startlingly loud while still being sharp and shrill. You understand why the sound guys are always complaining about movie gunshots. At close range it leaves you a little bemused.


Then the deep note of the hemi comes in just below the range of the pistol, in that area where gun retort hasn't completely robbed you of your hearing. You duck and run. The suit draws a bead on your back, and then the Challenger smokes the Maurader in side of the trunk. It sends the Mercury spining, wiping out the gunman as the hood takes him out around the hip region. In fact Patrick hits the thing so well that the trunk gets sheared off completely and goes flying down the street. As an unfortunate side effect smoking the shooter, the car comes crashing across the road after Malcom, much like a certain Indiana Jones moment.


That being said, he's just made a habit of dodging bullets. Cars are nothing. By the time Patrick's compensated for the torquing caused by the impact, Malcom is landing from hurdling the wreckage. And you both have one serious feeling of deja vu.


In the background, Patrick hears his phone ring once and go silent.

Blackadder, have you picked a motivation for Malcom?
 
Hank


These guys are actually a pretty likable bunch. You're fairly sure three of the four are drunk, but they're studious that the one sober one does all the driving. After pulling over to the side of the road and hitting the flashes, they all start either smoking or dipping, which the exception of the driver who does both. You've seen guys smoke with a dip in at the logging camp. It symbolizes a dedication to a nicotine addiction hard to find.


That being said, they also waste no time getting to work. The one who maintains he can fix your car is roundly considered a loony by the others, but this doesn't stop them from ringing the hood. They start talking quickly in a language that you think is technically English, but there the similarities end. After a moment, you step back and let the southern boys go to work.


Well, if Chris has brought you to Nags Head, you might as well look around the place. There's sand, grass, strip malls, a thirteen foot tall statue of a rat, and other such beacons of impending religious epiphany. Maybe sand passes like the hours of time, and our lives cling to the fragile surface like grass while we...go to strip malls and eat at a greasy Chuck E Cheese's? Nah, I got nothing. There isn't much to see, and your samaritans are doing something under there. You almost miss the sound of gunshots and metal smashing.

Just so you know, there's a house rule in play treating Craft like linguistics. So for Craft oo you can have both Wood and Water, and save a point.
 
Hank


Well, if this is a wild goose chase, and Hank has just lost his rocker, it'll be another story for the memoire. Might as well make the most of it.


"Boys, I'll let you... talk. I'm gonna pop outside for some air, see what the commotion is. I won't be long, want me to pick up anything while I'm about?"
 
Hank


Two of the rednecks say yes, the other two say no, but three of them ask for 'beer.' This implies a certain amount of unusual math best not over considered.


The road just traveled is wide and easy to traverse. There is a little litter, but not much. The evening is getting chilly with the night breezes just starting to blow in from the water. There is a little traffic, and a couple cars go by. You feel suddenly odd and shiver as a station wagon rolls by. Someone in the back tosses a soda can from the rear window, and it tumbles across the asphalt to bounce against you foot. Then it rolls up your pant leg and begins to bob gently at the hem of your flannel shirt, like a buoy at sea.
 
Patrick


Cranking the wheel over, Patrick hits the brakes and lets the Challenger skid to a halt sideways in the middle of the street, reaching over and shoving the passenger's side door open even as he assesses the damage to his own vehicle, wondering if it'll keep running for long enough to actually be able to provide a distraction.


Of course, it's not like he's not already providing one doozy of a distraction, as the LeMans parked down the street, clipped by a piece of flying Marauder, starts shrilly announcing its presence with its car alarm, even as said piece of fender continues on to put a nice dent in the side of a mailbox.


"Hey, Mr. Improbable! Get over here!" he shouts, waving frantically at Malcolm as - incongruiously - a pigeon, flying overhead at that moment, chooses to drop its 'payload' across his windshield.


And - ignoring the bird-bombing - Patrick really can't resist.


"Come with me if you want to live!"
 
Malcolm took the hint, and started a dash over to the old Challenger. Once he got there, he swung over into the front passenger's seat and buckled up. "Thanks, I don't know if I've depleted my karma allotment for the day. Are you Mr. Knows-What's-Going-On?"
 
Kase, Erin, Patrick, Malcom


Kase, Erin, and Lace finally exit the woods and tear across the lawn to the road. You can see things of import have been happening here, as there's a crumpled wreck of a car on the sidewalk and more pieces of it scattered about the road. Some dude is jumping into Patrick's car, which is damaged but running. Lace comes up hard and slides almost to a stop next to him. She waves him after her and then floors it, heading for Croatan Highway.


As she's heading for the corner, the two agents come loping out of the woods. They take the situation in a glance, and then head for the nearest vehicle.

Bushranger, make a driving roll if you're intending to follow her, difficulty two.


Arynne, Stormy, roll Wits + [Awareness or Integrity], diff 3. If successful, you recognize the random dude climbing into Patrick's car as Malcom, the guy from early. He got chucked through a wall and currently doesn't seem to be hurt.
 
Hank


When you bat the can it tumbles off and hits a couple rocks. As if someone is punishing you for taking their name in vain, the rocks all start tumbling as well, rolling across the road's shoulder and bouncing over gravel. Each piece of detritus on the roadside seems to infect anything it touches with movement. As they come they start a tiny avalanche of loose dirt, that rumbles over the flat ground. Soon there is a lilliputian earthslide going on on the side of I 154 that converges on your feet like a pack of circling sharks. It bounces up your boots, cascades over your pants, and finally come to be relatively static around your belt.


The bits of dirt are forming rings. You've got a soda can moon orbiting you. Jesus has a sense of humor, and he is taking his revenge in kind: you are the recipient of a divine fat joke.
 
Kase noticed Malcom. "Wait a tick...I think that's the guy from the library..."


Suddenly, something got his attention...it was the suits from before, chasing after them, from the mirror on his side.


"I got two bogeys, six o'clock and coming in hot!" Kase said. "We need to move!"
 
Hank


As the cascade descends upon him, Hank has no idea what is going on or what to do about it. Even his relatively loose grasp on reality can't handle the sight before him. His mind races, maybe those townies slipped me something, like that time outside of Utah. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, says a wordless prayer, aaaaaaaand everything is still there. Hank looks at his new orbiting body, and starts talking to himself as anyone would do in this situation,


"Okay. This is because you haven't slept. You should have pulled over instead of trucking it and taking that caffeine pill. This is your subconscious talking, and it is saying.... that I need to lose weight. Fine I was gonna walk to the c-store, but I'll jog."


And he did.
 
Erin


"We're already moving, Captain Obvious," the brown-haired woman says irritably. "We need to move faster." She stares out at the highway, lips pulling back from her teeth in a disturbingly feral grin. "And look for 18-wheelers."
 
Erin, Kase


"Faster?" Lace asks dangerously. The words are distinctly ominous, made more so when she down shifts and slams on the gas. Sudden acceleration shoves you two around, and Erin, by dint of not really being in a seat to begin with, rolls over the back onto the read windshield ledge. There isn't a seat back there, nor space for one, and the ledge is unpleasantly hot to the touch.


"A semi? No, hon, while I like where your head is at, that won't stop agents. Nothing stops them. We run until Pat shows up, and then we switch you two into his car.


"Oh, I'm Lace. Hi! I'm here to rescue you. Well, technically he and Pat are here to rescue you and I'm here to rescue them, but that's just details."
 
Erin


"A semi worked just fine on the ones who were shooting at me this morning. It worked beautifully," growls Erin as she hastily struggles off the windshield ledge and into a seat.


"Who are you, anyway? Did The Castle send you?"
 
Erin, Kase


"They shot at you? Using firearms, not bows or crossbows? Miss, those weren't agents. Agents go barehanded or use swords. I'm not sure what attacked you this morning, but it wasn't these guys.


"And no, I'm not with the Castle. We're-" she pauses, searching for a word. Along the way she slips under a reefer trailer and comes out on the shoulder, flashing along past traffic. Over the dual engine roars, you can distinctly hear the Doppler effect from cars wailing on their horns as you flash by. "-different. Kase got the speech earlier. He can probably put it in layman's terms better than I. Ah!"


Her sudden yelp truncates the explanation, as she swings around a slight corner to find a lumberjack looking fellow trotting up the shoulder. She wails on the horn and yanks hard on the wheel.

The car is a two seater. Kase is in one, Lace is in the other. There is also a little space on the dash. Where does Erin want to sit?
 
Hank


In the nature of this world, things get worse. Also in the nature of things, it's deceptive though. The first bit of the run is actually quite nice. You jog along to discover you really aren't in that bad shape at all. Hauling logs up at the camp has put you in better condition then you expected, and the yards flow by under foot. Your boots aren't terribly comfortable to run in, but not bad. You've already got enough callouses that blisters aren't an issue, and the cool wind from the sea is only refreshing not unpleasant.


It's that as you trot along, the dirt your footsteps kick up doesn't fall. Instead it tumbles upwards to accrete onto your rings, which are segregating into distinct strata. You've got the dust ring, which hovers just off your belt, the pebble ring outside that (the soda can shepherd moon is keeping the pebbles in line), and beyond that is another, more uneven pebble ring. It forces you to run with your arms up and somewhat out to the sides, like chicken wings. And the whole system is growing.


The other problem is that the pure weirdness of the whole thing is making it difficult to concentrate. You run looking down, and as such are painfully oblivious to things like oncoming traffic. Specifically, you're oblivious to the extremely odd looking vehicle that's roaring up the shoulder like the hounds of hell are after it. You will shortly learn that this is not far from the truth. When you do notice it, it is to the sudden roar of a horn. It is almost atop you.

Lore 3, so you've got a good idea how Saturnine rings work.


Also, you may want to buff your awareness. Unless I'm blind, which is always possible, I think that's a zero.
 
"But who else would know?" asked Kase. "Wait, why am I asking you, that's something the others would know...say, these guys, what were they shooting with? And what were they driving?"
 
Erin


"So let me get this straight -- I've got those characters with bazookas, a pair of MiBs who are actually demons, that lunatic on the phone who threatened my family and kept saying I was only a book and should do what I was told, and you people all chasing after me?" she glowers. "Well, and the Castle but that's different. What kind of book are we talking about here, the Necronomicon?"


She scowls again, this time at Kase. "Don't get any ideas," she warns, before seating herself in his lap and holding on to him tightly.


"Oh, and the big guys with the big guns were in a van of some kind. Said something about 'Better safe than sorry'."
 
Patrick


"Knows what's going on? Hardly. All I can say is that the world is older than you know, and I forget the rest of what Rupert said after that but they were closer than you might think to reality it seems."


Giving a wave back to Lace, he eyes the somewhat...different-appearing Stingray with an expression that can best be described as 'bored surprise'. As in, he's surprised, but he's not surprised he's surprised. And as she peels out, he slams down on the throttle as well, cranking the wheel over hard as, once more, the rear tires go into mosquito-fogging mode...


...and with a sudden clang, the rear fender slams into one of the trash cans lining the street. "Keep Our Banks Clean" had put them up to catch the trash, and right now Patrick finds himself thanking them, and also saying a quick prayer that the can might be full of the worst kind of rubbish, as he aims to cause the impact to make the can rebound and spill its contents across the road in front of the Agents as the Challenger lunges down the road in pursuit of the other vehicle, the mighty Hemi roaring as it makes short work of the road catching up...


Dex+Ride+Acc2 → [1, 8, 10, 8, 8, 9, 2, 5] = (5)


2 stunt dice → [5, 8] = (1)
 
Kase winced. "Well...I only asked because guys with big guns ambushed me in my hospital room and got away in a van. I think they were pissed they missed me and took it out on you."
 
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