[The Grid] Chatper 1: Hardwired

[Persell]

Robert Maudeville


The hospital is a bleached white antiseptic building with warm air and a cool atmosphere. It smells of ruthlessly combated sickness. The waiting room isn't full, but there is only a half staff working. You wait for a half hour, fill out more paperwork, and then wait some more. When you think about your foot hard enough the cut throbs, but that may just be hypochondria. Or it could be the North Carolinian Creeping Death. They'd probably tell you if you had the NCCD.


The more severe injury is probably your writer's cramp as you sign your name on the fiftieth piece of paper. By this point the medical jargon is swimming before your eyes, making less sense then it did to begin with. You're fairly sure the you're working on a waiver indemnifying the hospital if as a result of this shot an alien pops out of your stomach and breaks all your dishes when you get home. Then you hear a deep, gravelly voice.


"Hello, Mr Maudeville."

 

[Persell]

Kase


For a moment you laugh in relief before glancing over at Won. Won isn't laughing. Won has a look of horrified terror and disgust, and is crab walking away from you in fear. As he realizes your eyes are on him he drops onto his butt to point at you with a shaking hand. "Dude! Legs! THING!"

 

[Neolarthytep]

Robert Maudeville
The hospital is a bleached white antiseptic building with warm air and a cool atmosphere. It smells of ruthlessly combated sickness. The waiting room isn't full, but there is only a half staff working. You wait for a half hour, fill out more paperwork, and then wait some more. When you think about your foot hard enough the cut throbs, but that may just be hypochondria. Or it could be the North Carolinian Creeping Death. They'd probably tell you if you had the NCCD.


The more severe injury is probably your writer's cramp as you sign your name on the fiftieth piece of paper. By this point the medical jargon is swimming before your eyes, making less sense then it did to begin with. You're fairly sure the you're working on a waiver indemnifying the hospital if as a result of this shot an alien pops out of your stomach and breaks all your dishes when you get home. Then you hear a deep, gravelly voice.


"Hello, Mr Maudeville."

Robert Maudeville


Robert's eyes peer up from behind his glasses to the source of the voice. His foot does ache, and his hands ache too from the mass of paperwork.


"Evening ma'am/sir."


He examines the person before him and their clothing to see if they are part of the hospital staff before asking the typical question of "how long before the doctor would be able to see him". He couldn't wait to get back to his beach house. He hated wasting his vacation time being here, he had already wasted enough time here initially when his friends forced him to go get his foot looked at.

 

[The Bushranger]

Patrick O'Connell


"Yes, the car's worth more - barely - and yes, it's insured, Officer." Patrick sounds remarkably calm, although his eyes are tight from stress. "I would rather have it not totaled if I can avoid it, though. I've had enough wrecks in my time. "


And seen a few good drivers killed in them, too, he thinks, but doesn't add.


And it occurs to me now that he should probably have Influence 1...ah well!

 

[lordofthestorm]

Kase wrote it off as Won being high and replied, "The hell are you talking about..." before looking down at his legs.

 

[Persell]

Erin

Erin smiles shyly as she shakes hands with Tink.
"Thanks. But, you know, until today, I wasn't even sure I counted as one..."

"You've got the gift, Erin. Just keep working, and don't let yourself get confused. The things that are stopping you aren't nearly as important as they seem." Then she smiles and slides into the back seat before telling the driver to go. He nods, and they head off.


The Seabreeze is quiet now, and the lights are going off one by one. Once you get away from the hulking gym, the wind hits you and it's cold. It smells like rain. It's going to be a very cold night.

 

[Persell]

Robert Maudeville


The man is somewhat taller than average, with short cropped brown hair. It's flecked with premature gray at either temple. He doesn't look very old though, for his face is unmarked by either creases or smile lines. The individual is wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie, and black shoes. There's also a peculiar vagueness to his entire appearance. He reminds you of the old TV shows from the fifties where the father comes home from a meaningless office job dressed the exact same way every day. This man might do just that.


"That is your name, Mr Maudeville? I believe you left these at the front counter, and they were shuffled in with mine," he informs you, offering you a sheaf of paperwork. You take it and glance through. Some of the words look familiar, and your signature is on most of them, as well as some generic personal information. The rest is all medical jargon, and it flows through your eyes to brain without bothering to leave any recognition.


A large and forceful woman with a deep voice and green scrubs calls your name from the nurse's station at this point. "Mr Maudeville, please," she calls again, louder, with little patience. The suited gentleman smiles at you, an uncomfortable expression involving unnatural stretching of the face, and then leaves. Under one of his arms is a similar packet of forms to the one you've just defeated. His are blank still, though, and you don't catch his name. Then the nurse spots you, and bustles in your direction like destroyer surging though arctic seas.

 

[Persell]

Patrick, Bennick


The thief manages to get onto Croatan heading south, and tries to gun the engine. Nothing interesting happens as a result, until he grinds the gears in a desperate attempt to upshift. It took him long enough to figure that out.

Spoiler

2 successes. Fail.
He is not successful. Instead the vehicle shudders, gears slam together, and the whole thing lurches to a halt across two lanes of traffic. Fortunately the street is more or less deserted at this point, so there's no immediate risk of an accident.


From inside the car you hear the thief swear, and flail around trying to get the Dodge started again.


3 Success. Barely.





By sheer stupid luck he happens to get it moving in second. The Challenger's massive engine is capable of overcoming both his bad driving and the lack of forward momentum, getting it going forward again. But now when he slams the gas down the thing pushes upwards into the sixties, and it's easier to change gears once the car is moving. He's running hard and fast south, trying to get out of the town and past the tourist parts. Soon you're outside Nags Head and moving past the Kill Devil Hills. It's going to be hard to keep up with him on an open straight-a-way in that monster he's driving.

 

[Persell]

Kase

Kase wrote it off as Won being high and replied' date=' "The hell are you talking about..." before looking down at his legs.[/quote']
Your right leg is fine. Soaking wet, but fine. Your left leg is also soaked, but wrapped around your bare shin below the shorts is a blue ball of snotty tentacles. The thing looks huge, especially for something that's engulfing part of your body, and seethes and roils in fading twilight. It has an oily sheen across it, and bits of black fluid like vitriol are dribbling out around your skin. Now that you're actually paying attention to the thing, burning pain hits you like the slow application of hot irons. Your skin feels both cool and raging hot, wet and dessicated, and your foot begins to spasm uncontrollably.

Spoiler

Make a valor roll to avoid freaking out. If you want to do anything, you're probably going to need to make Stamina + Resistance rolls as well, depending on what you want to do, and is it more complicated then lie around and scream.

 

[Arynne]

Once you get away from the hulking gym, the wind hits you and it’s cold. It smells like rain. It’s going to be a very cold night.

Night is the same, wherever you are. Light’s absence is only that.


That night, Erin finds herself back in New York, like so many times before. Not in dream, not ever in dream. Awake, before she sleeps, or like tonight, when she wakes from her dreams, disturbed and tense, and cannot fall asleep again.


...That first winter. The sky like a roof of lead weighing down the tops of skyscrapers. Black ice shining on asphalt. Wind that made her cringe, and shiver with a frightened exhilaration, it was so fierce and keen, that cold wind out of the North, the talons of the hawk. It went right through her thin coat, but her boots were snug, huge ugly black rubber boots that made her feet as big as an elephant’s, splashing on the sidewalk. People hurried past, not bothering one another, all their hates and obsessions frozen. She liked the cold, the sleet, the city...


Always, just like this, a scene will begin to happen, not in bright sweet fragments but a full recollection of a time and a place, and once the memory begins, she cannot stop it. She has to go through it until it lets go of her. Maybe it’s a sort of punishment, like Tristan and Isolde, or Paolo and Francesca, in the Inferno. The memory of being happy.


They’re lucky, Erin thinks. At least they get to remember it together.

 

[Neolarthytep]

A large and forceful woman with a deep voice and green scrubs calls your name from the nurse's station at this point. "Mr Maudeville, please," she calls again, louder, with little patience. The suited gentleman smiles at you, an uncomfortable expression involving unnatural stretching of the face, and then leaves. Under one of his arms is a similar packet of forms to the one you've just defeated. His are blank still, though, and you don't catch his name. Then the nurse spots you, and bustles in your direction like destroyer surging though arctic seas.

Robert Maudeville


Managing a smile to the man as he stands


Why thank you sir, but if you'll excuse me


Seeing the nurse headed his way Robert walks over to here hobbling slightly with a quick glance back to the peculiar man. Once he reaches the nurse he hands her the pile of paperwork.


I hope this won't take too long ma'am


He gives her a quick smile in hopes that she takes this as a joke, but not a complete one

 

[lordofthestorm]

Rolling Valor...
3d10=1 success.

Kase's eyes widened beyond belief at the sight of what it was that Won really was screaming about. And so did he.


"WHAT IN THE HELL!?"


Kase's mind was racing now. This was starting to get comical now. He'd escaped death twice in a row only to get paired up with this monstrosity. And he wasn't sure if his luck was going to get him out of this one.


But if this was how it was supposed to go, then Kase wasn't about to end it here. He immediately grabbed a couple of fallen bricks that had followed him out of the store, and proceeded to chuck them at whatever was pulling him, one at the tentacles now wrapped firmly about his shin, the other towards where he was being taken.

 

[The Bushranger]

Patrick O'Connell


Patrick swears quietly as the thief manages to get the car rolling again, gritting his teeth as he gets it up near sixty. "Too bad I didn't have it out of gas," he mutters as he looks over at Brennick. "I don't suppose you have a plan for shooting out a tire or anything of the sort?" he calls, before turning his attention back to the receding taillights...

 

[Persell]

They’re lucky, Erin thinks. At least they get to remember it together.

During the wee hours of the night the power flickers. The heater in the basement coughs and stops, letting in drafts of cold air, enough to wake you up and send you scurrying from the comfort of bed for more blankets from the closet. It's a plebian problem that barely requires attention, not requiring you to fully arise from the dream state to solve it. Outside the street lights are going out, one by one, in a orderly progression of darkness. It makes little impression on your sleep shrouded brain. Incidentally you glance at your computer while you pile high the bed with comforters and see that the command prompt is blinking.


Cockadoodle doo. The rooster is crowing in his nightmare.

 

[Persell]

Robert Maudeville


Nurse Ratchet does not smile. Your medical issue does not require a sense of humor, and she does not deem your problem serious to warrant one. You are lead purposefully towards a back room while being quizzed on the information you listed on your documents. Then you are poked and prodded in a most professional (and personal) manner, before being lead to a small room.


"Sit," she commands, pointing at a bench and leaves.


The room is a generic examination cubicle, with a poster showing a man, sans skin, with each major muscle group labeled. On the opposing wall is a sign with unnaturally cheerful people encouraging you to sneeze into a tissue. The third wall has the door and scale, and little else, while the fifth one has a series of cabinets and counters. On top of them are two sets of pamphlets. The first says, 'Keep Track of Your Blood Pressure: Because It Matters' and the second, 'Chose Atheism: Because There Is No God.'


Then Nurse Ratchet returns. You're not entirely sure that's her name, but she fits the description. In her hands is a platter on which are two hypodermic needles. At least, you think they're hypodermic needles. They might simply be assassin's knives with syringes in the handle. Your fairly sure your character in the last Game of Thrones wielded swords which were smaller than that.


"In order to fight the infection in your foot," she explains, producing the first melee implement and holding it up to the light to examine the fluid within. "You are going to receive two injections, one into each major muscle mass proximal to the injury. Please remove your trousers and lean forward against the desk please."

 

[Arynne]

Erin Hagens

Outside the street lights are going out, one by one, in a orderly progression of darkness. It makes little impression on your sleep shrouded brain. Incidentally you glance at your computer while you pile high the bed with comforters and see that the command prompt is blinking.
Cockadoodle doo. The rooster is crowing in his nightmare.

Erin puts the comforters down, very slowly and gently, as if they might break. She paces over to the desk, one foot carefully placed in front of another on the rug. Slowly, she sinks into her chair and stares at the computer for a while.


Staring dreamily at the glowing white letters, she types --


I can guarantee this truth: before a rooster crows tonight, you will say three times that you don’t even know me.


-- and presses Enter.


Then she stumbles back to her bed and falls into it.

 

[cyl]

Brennick smirks:


"Well at this speed I wouldn't want him to loose control of the car and crash it... and loosing a tire can have you do just that. I'm just going to mess with his mind and block his way." he grabs back his com.


"Central I'm going to need a barricade on the kilometer 26 on the north park road. Get me three cars there, no spikes, I repeat: no spikes !" and throws back the com behind the wheel.


"I'm going to push our little friend a bit, and let's hope he knows when to hit the breaks... if not well, you have insurance on that car right ?!"


***


using the car to orient the runaway on the right road to the ambush... manipulation + drive ? :lol:

 

[Persell]

Brennick


The radio crackles. "I have a barricade with three cars and no spikes. Cap has given authorization, and it is a go. You are clear to proceed."


The road stays flat and straight, and the monstrous old muscle car eats up asphalt like pasta. Occasionally the highway makes a sweeping turn, and in those situations you manage to catch up to the fugitive. He doesn't seem to be shifting at all, just gunning through top gear. On the flats he pulls back ahead, and the two cars close and separate with the road. Finally you come to a single hard curve, around the other side of which is a short straight to the barricade. Looking for it you can see lights over the dunes, but the thief doesn't seem to notice. Through the curve you make enough ground to get close, and then you have your chance.

Spoiler

Yeah, manip + ride + driving specialties is perfect.

 

[cyl]

Spoiler

Gonna use 1wp...


4d10 → [3,7,1,1] = 1 + 1 = 2 suxx :|


http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2650055/

 

[Persell]

Brennick, Patrick


You come around the final corner, well inside the Challenger, and draw abreast of him. The driver, a skinny kid with natty hair, glances over at you and for a moment you see his eyes. The kid is running scared, behind more car than he can handle, and completely unprepared for the sudden and fateful arrival of a cop. But then the road straightens, and you two come around, looking straight into the bore of flashing lights. The bail-out is just ahead, on the left beyond your old chevy. Beyond that the local cops have barricaded the road and filled the night with garish lights. Both drivers slam on gas, and you downshift to red-line but there's really no chance. That thing's engine almost a turbine, and your Chevy wheezes going uphill. All you've got going for you is determination and that the whiskey in your veins has distilled to raw pissed-off. It shouldn't be enough.


Yet it is. Your jalopy screams along, and when the kid jerks the wheel to ditch the road he looks to see Patrick face to face with him through the windows. He's only inches ahead, and chickens out rather than crash a cop off the road. Instead he wobbles wildly, fishtails, and tries to shoot past the barricade ahead.


His success is partial. By the time he's straightened out, he isn't heading straight across the road. Instead his grill is aimed directly at a line of low dunes. The Challeneger destroys the remaining twenty feet of road and runs off the edge going about a hundred and twenty. Then it hits loose sand on a ramp-like dune, and two tons of muscle car go airborne as the wheels fling debris from their treads. The thing is silhouetted against the sky forty feet in the air as a pair of heaven turned headlights. Then gravity reminds you all who's really in charge here. The flying car drops behind the level of dunes and out of sight. There are horrible crunching noises, and somewhere between Patrick's ears little dollar signs begin to fly off to a better place.

 

[Neolarthytep]

"In order to fight the infection in your foot," she explains, producing the first melee implement and holding it up to the light to examine the fluid within. "You are going to receive two injections, one into each major muscle mass proximal to the injury. Please remove your trousers and lean forward against the desk please."

Robert Maudeville


"Excuse me"


The words erupt from his mouth without a moment of thought from her last sentence. Once he says it so abruptly and loud he pauses and calms himself. With a slight release of a calming breath he states the obvious question


"I'm sorry, but why on earth would I need to remove my pants for a foot infection. I am also curious which major muscle mass you mean to inject me in."


Horrific thoughts of cartoon characters getting needles stuck into their rears comes to mind as he remembers that the largest muscle mass is ones rear end. What on earth would a shot in the ass do for a foot infection... oh their had better be another way.

 

[The Bushranger]

Patrick O'Connell


Glaring at the car-thieving punk as they pull up alongside, Patrick wishes he still had his gun - and that it was a bigger gun. The better to put a hole in the engine block with.


As it is though, all he can do is watch as the punk tries to swerve past the barricade, and instead loses control long enough to go shooting off the road. The massive Challenger trying to play the role of the General Lee for a long, heart-stopping moment as it hangs in the air...then drops, and Patrick closes his eyes as the sound of Hemi-powered muscle car meeting hard-sand-packed beach at far too high a rate of speed from far too high a height, echos around them even over the sound of their own engine and brakes.


"...and to think, 'till now I'd never had to file an insurance claim on a road car..." he mutters.

 

[cyl]

Franck Brennick hits the brakes while watching the car take its leap straight into the darwin awards of this year - whatever year it is - with a sudden sense of guilt... or maybe is it kidney failure... as the car strays off the road he starts murmuring and his murmur become a scream of disappointment as the car flies away and is called back to the ground by one of the most unappreciated physics laws of this world.


"no no no no NO NOOOO, AW COME ON !!!"


And his eyes close at the sound of metal twisting against metal in an expression of pain.


He grabs his com swiftly "Cancel that central, fricking nutjob just took off from a sand dune... gonna check if he's still alive and in need of medical assistance..."


He turns back to Patrick... "... not really your day huh ?! don't worry I won't mention the lost bullet thng, I'll put it on his tab." he adds waving his thumb out the window pointing at the wheels trail in the sand.


"Stay in the car..."


Stepping out of the car, he lights up another cig, and walks clumsily into the sand to look out for the punk who played too much gangster video games and would have to spend a few years in jail to realize that if you could make pixelized cellmates your bitches, in the real world, it's the other way around.


"Anyone alive down there ?!"

 

[Persell]

Robert Maudeville


Nurse Ratchet looks at you dourly. After putting down the needle, she moves over to the chart of human muscles, and indicates uses it to illustrate her meaning as she replies.


"Mr. Maudeville, you have a condition called septicemia. Commonly referred to as blood poisoning, it means that a significant infection is incubating in your circulatory system, and if untreated it could have serious consequences. Now your blood moves in two directions: distal, which is away from your heart, and proximal, which is towards it. The blood moving away from your heart is fine until it comes to the point of infection, your foot, at which time it returns to your heart bearing pathogens. Along the way it stops by several major muscle masses, your calf, and your gluteus maximus being two of the most significant. Given you don't get nearly enough exercise, blood in those muscle masses has pooled there, which means the infection is concentrated there more than anyplace else.


During this she traces the flow of veins on the chart, and then points firmly at two more spots. They are the injection sites, and she continues, "Therefore, you are going to get two shots. One will be in the calf, and the other will be in the gluteus maximus, or the 'ass' as you called it. The strongest concentration of antibiotics will be delivered directly into the spots where the infection is most likely to develop, and from there will disseminate throughout your blood stream using the same vectors as the infection itself. You wouldn't want that, would you?"


Nurse Ratchet still does not look amused. As she continues her calm, polite passive-aggressive tirade, describing the necessity of a course of action by referrencing details that mean nothing to you, her tone grows ever more overbearing and self indulgent. Soon you feel like you're being scolded like an unruly child for even deigning to speak to her. Now she moves back to the tray and lifts the syringe she was holding before.


The importance of all of this is dwarfed by the sudden pseudopod-like bulge that suddenly reaches for you from a mirror on the wall. It spreads and splits like fingers that go straight for your head until the very moment that Nurse Ratchet, still talking at you in a manner that displays her contempt, steps forward to gesticulate with the sterile syringes. The spreading hand touches the back of her head and melts into it. For a moment she is conjoined with the mirror by a shimmering umbilical cord. Then she is sucked backwards off her feet and vanishes into the reflection, which wobbles a few times as she passes. A circle of ripples expands out from the center, reflects of the mirror's frame, and stills. The syringe that was in her hand drops and tumbles to stab into the patient's seat. The room is very still except for that, for it quivers on the long needle.

 

[Persell]

Brennick


The far side of the dunes is very still. Each mound is perhaps twenty feet tall and twice that wide, and you walk past several before finding traces of the car. It must have cleared nearly a hundred feet while airborne, almost the entire width of the sand strand. But this isn't a true beachhead. Instead it's a mostly cosmetic line of dunes that the park keeps in place to attract visitors. In effect it makes the weed-ridden fields more beachy.


On the other side is a wide lawn, and mounded here and there with dark piles of shadows that smell of new mown grass. You walk across the top of the final dune and look down on one such pile. Deep within it are dim red lights, obscured like by cobwebs. The stars aren't too bright, and your night vision is still recovering from the flashing police lights behind you. But you look around a bit and finally notice a seated individual. He's half emerged from the pile of debris and lying down, head towards the beach which is off to your left. His near hand is grasping at nothing, while his far hand is clenched around something. You can't make out what. It could be a gun. It could be a phone. It could be nothing.