The Strange

[Thepotatogod]

Myron stares with curiosity, waiting for affirmation of the order at hand...

 

[Deviltigerr]

"Most likely she would send you to deliver the prize to some scientist somewhere, who knows. The delivery team for the Morrison Prize have a few objectives to keep in mind and Liza Banks will tell you all about it. We all work for the estate and know each other. This ruse only works because you are fresh on the campus so to speak. Now get going."

 

[Epiphany]

Emma tucks her blonde pony-tail back behind a baseball cap with the Morrison Prize logo on it, made to patch the coveralls. Then she grins at her two teammates. "Who's up for making great scientists rich!" The tone is dead-perfect for an artificially peppy cheerleader trying to pump up an audience. There's something in her eyes to suggest a bit of wry humor at the whole situation, though, a self-awareness of how ridiculous she's being.


She sets off for Ms. Bank's office, glancing at Myron and Martha. "One of you want to take point on talking up good o'l Lizzy or would you rather I do it?"

 

[xarvh]

The short woman's face betrays nothing of her internal ruminations.


"Ok, if I have to work with these two, I have better to drop the paranoia.


Woman up Martha, your new life is going to be different."


A hearty laughter answers to Emma's question.


"Fair enough! I'll be happy to try my best. I'm not really a doctor, you know... And please, call me Martha. Sorry for the confusion."


There was something deeply cathartic in telling a friendly stranger her real name.

 

[Thepotatogod]

Myron puts on his 'disguise'. A cap with the Morrison prize logo and some polos. Approached by a question from emma, myron wanted to...test out his skills at lying, to see if it works.


"Mind if i do it?" Myron said, patting Emma on the back. An eerie smile was written on his face.

 

[xarvh]

"I'm really fine if you want to try!"

 

[Thepotatogod]

"Here's a better idea...." Myron smirked, "How about BOTH of us go?" He looked at martha eerily, with one of his eyes winked.

 

[xarvh]

"Deal! Let's go."

 

[Deviltigerr]

As the group heads out of the room, they simply had to go two doors down, as indicated by ms. Manners to find the office of Liza Banks. When they open the door with her front of it, they came face to face with her. She has brown hair, with red highlight, an aquiline nose, blue eyes, and a tight smile, wearing a business suit.


"Hello welcome to the Public Relation office, can I help you?"

 

[xarvh]

Looking straight at Banks, Martha smiles.


"Elizabeth Banks? I am Milla Swabi, Morrison Fellowship Prize Adjunct. These are my peers, Philip Payton and Angela Ehlers."


Letting her own natural clumsiness take over a bit more than usual, Martha grabs Bank's hand hand shakes it enthusiastically.


"Oh fu#$% that was terrible. Argh! I should have asked them first! What if they are not comfortable with lying about their names!?"

 

[Deviltigerr]

"Yes this is me. I see, so the new delivery team. Alright follow me, we will talk on the way." As she pulled out her smarphone and was touching and typing a few a things.


"As part of the Morrison Fellowship we deliver prizes, well grants to talented and creative individuals. While partially true, we mostly use it to keep tabs on technology advances which might be due to the strange. Essentially we want to make sure someone didn't stumble upon a cypher or an artifact from the Strange and is now using it."





As they got near a van in the parking lot.


"So we are headed to Faribault Minnesota. We are going to see one of the younger prodigies. Gwendolyn Wertz, she won the science fair with her incredible entry, how to use the human heat body to power smartphones and other stuffs like, toasters, microwaves, electric toothbrush, you get the gist of it. My main advice is to be on the lookout for anything unusual. Any questions?"

 

[Thepotatogod]

"No problem, let's see Lady Gwen now, shall we?" Myron said with a smile. He's impressed on what this woman did with her little science experiment. He wasn't interested in science well, until now. Getting onto the van, he sat beside Emma. or in this case, 'Angela Ehlers'


"Psst" he whispered, " Oi, Angie. Say something, will ya? You're kinda just...Silent."


Hopefully, she gets what Myron meant.

 

[Epiphany]

'Angie' just grins at her coworkers before looking intently at Liz Banks. "I suppose you'll be doing most of the talking then, Ms. Banks. That's fine. We can have a discreet look around. If there are any particular ways you'd like us to go about doing that, let us know. Otherwise, we'll work as a team to keep a member of the prize team in Gwen's line of sight so she doesn't notice the others are up to anything. You can count on us, Ms. Banks!"


To her coworkers, Emma just exchanges looks. They've only just met and it's hard to talk confidentially with someone outside of their team around. But experience with each other will come in time, with practice. With experience. With experience like they were about to get!

 

[Deviltigerr]

"You'll actually do most of the talking. I'm just there as the head of public relation. Just be on the lookout for anything suspicious" As Liza banks brought you to the van. The trip to the airport wasn't too long, as you finally reached the airport and took your tickets. The flight was in business class, as you could tell, the Estate wasn't sparing any expenses with its personnel .


After stopping by the Hotel, the Regency Inn, the group was on the way to the residence of Gwen.


When you arrived at her residence, it was already late in the evening, in the suburbs. Before your group could even past the front yard, a little girl with dark hair and a yellow dress opened the door.


"Mom they are here! Told you they would be here any minute!"


"Now, now Please forgive Gwen, she is a little too excited. I'm Joyce! Please come in!" A mature woman came to the door, wearing a yellow dress as well with short dark hair. As she invited you into her house, a clean house to say the least the tv, a living room with a wooden table and wooden chairs, all lights inside of the house are on. As Gwen ran to the back of house and brought back what looked like a flashlight.


"See! look at it!" Gwen touched the flashlight and it lit up as soon as it was in contact with her skin.


"I'm Liza Banks and these are my colleagues."





ooc: You can decide that you organized who is going to talk with her or someone can even look around the house. There is a door leading to the basement, stairs heading up.

 

[Epiphany]

"Hello, Gwen," Emma says, bending over and smiling warmly at the little girl and her obvious excitement. "You must be very proud, Mrs. Wertz," she says, brightening her smile as she looks up towards the Mom. "We're delighted to be here, of course."


"My colleague here Milla would like to interview you both. Just some questions we like to collect answers for, some for publicity purposes that Gwen's certainly earned and some to satisfy the audit oversight of our program. This sharp gentleman here is Philip. He's tasked with assessing the environment that led to this wonderful budding inventor springing up." Emma beams proudly at Gwen before glancing back to Joyce. "Part of our research is finding those conditions that inspire innovation and creativity, just like your wonderful little girl has. So he'll be looking for a few things we have checklists for, and recording details that have come up in previous home environment assessments. I promise, everything we learn will be recorded anonymously and cannot be used to identify you in any way, it's purely for research."


"And I'm Angie. Angie Ehlers." She steps forward and offers to shake Joyce's hand. "And while my friend Milla finds out all about your daughter's amazing success, I'm responsible for inspecting her lab space, wherever it was that she made this discovery and tested it out. There's a few safety protocols I need to verify and certain onsite inspections I need to carry out. Any data I collect is purely to satisfy certain auditory and regulatory requirements for the Morrison Fellowship. As I'm sure you can look up for yourself, we don't have any business interests in innovation, we just award it so anything we see remains the intellectual property of your daughter."


One last bright smile. "Now, shall we get started?"

 

[Thepotatogod]

Though surprised by the task of looking around, Myron felt joy for he had this joy for snooping around houses. though he never did, not even once.


"Ms.Joyce, could you kindly escort me to the entrance of your basement?" He asked, tipping his hat. "Don't worry, it's all part of my job."

 

[xarvh]

Emma was clever. Damn clever. Martha found herself very happy of working with her.


She pulled out of her jacket a small notebook and a pen and smiled at the young genius. "So, Gwen, would you like to tell me how you got the inspiration for this incredible idea of yours? What are the steps that brought you there?"

 

[Deviltigerr]

Joyce, the mother stared at Myron, as her smile began to fade. "Wouldn't you prefer some refreshments first?" Gwen meanwhile sat down, looking back at her mother then back at Emma and Martha. "Hi Angie! Hey Miss! I mostly wanted to turn on one of my old toy, the battery wouldn't work. You can try it!"

 

[xarvh]

"I'd love to! Would you show me?" asks Martha in her enthusiastic, chirping voice.

 

[Deviltigerr]

Gwen handed Martha the torchlight. "You just need to have it touch your skin and it lights up!"

 

[Thepotatogod]

"huh. I almost forgot." Myron joked with a smile, "you can prepare some for these two. I'll maybe pass by you're fridge. If you permit me to~."


Myron looked at his two cohorts, both of them are doing something that could benefit their task and as well as the world. He was just grateful he could part of this team.

 

[Deviltigerr]

Joyce stared at Myron for a moment and turned back at Martha and Emma. "I'll make some refreshments." As she headed toward the Kitchen and opened the fridge.

 

[Epiphany]

Emma beams at Gwen's mother and gives her an affectionate pat on the shoulder, just a light touch of affirmation and appreciation. "Thank you, Joyce, that's very sweet of you."


And as soon as the other woman's gone into the kitchen, she heads right upstairs after briefly signaling to Myron to start taking a look around. Implicit in her explanation to Joyce and Gwen was how the work could be carved out; Martha to keep them distracted while Emma inspects the daughter's bedroom for Cyphers and Myron made sure there weren't any ugly surprises tucked away. It was early days for this team and virtually all of their time together had been in the presence of someone who wasn't in the know, limiting their ability to network in advance. But Myron and Martha seemed smart, flexible people, able to rise to the challenge.


As was Emma herself, who'd done plenty of sneaky stuff while helping out her father's PI business but had never tried to identify a secret Cypher before.

 

[Deviltigerr]

As she looked upstairs, there was no indication of anything unusual. Meanwhile Joyce came back with the refreshment looking around at Myron and Martha present. Emma would notice oddly that all the lights inside of the house are up, even with nobody inside.


"Here's are the drinks." As Joyce looked around, noticing that Emma wasn't there. "Please don't make Mommy angry!" As Gwen appeared to be worried. "Too late." As the mother responded with a robotic voice and her eyes light up.


ooc: Alright combat! In the strange, there isn't initiative, players always act first. Joyce is level 5, meaning difficulty 15 to hit her. Currently she is within short distance (less than 50 ft from Martha and Myron.) so you roll 1d20 and you have to beat a 15 to hit her. In the strange even the defense rolls, you are the only ones making rolls. You can use moves or whatever you want to use for your attack roll. Emma is too far away for this round but can come after 2 rounds.

 

[xarvh]

Martha turned around, swearing in Punjabi.


Presently, she looked straight at the machine and yelled


"Execute ){ :| :& };: Parameters: NOW!"


And hoped that killer robots or whatever this thing was understood UNIX.

Spoiler

Using Hack the Impossible to disable the automaton.


" ){ :| :& };:" is a fork bomb, it is a very short and obscure mini-program that creates a function that does nothing else but spawning two copies of itself, eventually flooding the system.


I am Trained in Computer Software and will use Effort, for a total Intellect cost of 3 + 3 - 1 = 5.


Rolling against diff 3 unless I get an Asset.


XPs 0


Might 9


Speed 11


Intellect 11


Health: Hale

[dice]16725[/dice]