Mosca Syndrome

Blues does her best to give Mr. Michaelson a reassuring smile.  

On the way out, she thanks the guard and looks at Mariposa as he also hands her a card.  Blues has no idea why the guard has given her or Mariposa one of these cards, but for some reason it bugs her that Mariposa got one, too.  The curiousity is killing her, but she decides to play it cool.  It doesn't last.  She has to know.  She reads the card.

She sticks close to Arrow for the time being.  Arrow has so far been the friendliest face here, and winding through the crowd in this place with 10 grand in one's pocket is enough to make a small person feel a lot smaller and more vulnerable.

At the check counter, she'll hand back the chit or whatever it was they gave her.  She will not bother to reload Elvis at that time--she'll just put him back in his holster.

WILL:

You find that Porter has neglected to connect one of the electrical fittings, apparently not having noticed it tucked behind part of the hitch assembly.  It wouldn't have affected the safety of the truck, but all of the running lights would not have been on.  Had an anal-retentive cop noticed, it might've meant a traffic stop.  You quickly set it up right.

Porter looks around at the mention of the cop car, then pulls off the balaclava and stuffs it into his jacket so as not to look TOO obvious to a passerby.  He says in a low voice, "He's hit pretty ugly in the leg, but he's wrapped it up and he's moving around okay.  He's over in the office cleaning up after himself.  He's not gonna last too long if he keeps bringing his fists to a gunfight."

"Any way you look at it, though...I want to get outta here, too."

IVAN:

You're pretty sure you've cleaned up the mess as well as anyone could.  But there is no way this guy's jacket is going to fit on you unless you tear the arms off and rip the armholes a little wider to fit.  Even then, it's going to look like a freakish denim organ-grinder's-monkey vest.  

The safe doesn't open.

You do, however, find a roll of heavy-duty trash bags in the bathroom, but that's it for bags.

Even more striking, the book it's based on ("The Hunter" by Richard Stark, which is a psuedonym of Donald Westlake) was written in the early 1960s!

I can't imagine a break-open weapon that one could reload with one hand, unless your character was an astounding juggler.

Blues studies Weyland's card and adds it to the one Dragon gave her.  She wishes she had thought to make cards, but she doesn't have a phone.  

Assuming she gets the cash and credit, she'll stand, pulling on her jacket.  She'll put the bills into the pockets of her BDU pants for now, making sure the flaps are buttoned and/or velcroed shut.  She makes a mental note to try to get a couple of money belts soon.  Or at least a cloth sack with a dollar sign on it.  She smirks at the thought.

She inhales deeply and breathes out a sigh.

"Well, Mr. Michaelson, I think we're all keyed up to get started.  We look forward to seeing you again in two to three weeks."

She looks around at the others, not really making eye contact with anyone.

"Shall we?"

IVAN:

The corpse has a wallet and ID, as well as pictures of what may well be the wife and kids, a couple of lottery tickets good for 2-eb apiece, and thirty-seven dollars in cash, and a bank card.  He is wearing some nice steel-toed boots, but they're not your size (they never are!).  

You find mounds of random papers and pornographic magazines that spilled out of the desk.  You shove the desk aside and spot a round metal cover with a fingerhole set into the floor.  The cover lifts away to reveal the dust-coated combination dial of a floor safe.

The cardboard cut-out is smiling at you under the brim of the cowboy hat.  

The fridge contains half a leftover pizza with double helpings of meat-like combed protein loaf toppings, 7 cans of Budweiser, and the remains of a Cap'n Snarly's Fish Cube that has been sitting there long enough to potentially be sentient.

Sure enough, there is some bleach and spray disinfectant ("Lysol," or similar) in the bathroom, which is the tiny room in the corner of the office and therefore the very corner of the building.  Unless some of the other objects distract you, I'll assume you're taking a few moments to clean up some of the mess.

WILL:

Porter helps you line the semi-tractor up and adjust the trailer so it snaps into place behind the cab.  He fiddles with a few heavy-duty plastic wiring connectors and eventually seems to get everything hooked up properly.

"Ready to Roll!" He shouts.

You see a yellow-and-black Port Authority patrol SUV cruise by from right to left on the street outside.  It made no outward signs of slowing down.  You suspect they might be coming out to the scene of the car accident up the street.  

At least you really hope so.

WILL:

The time it takes Ivan to take care of his wound is plenty of time to move the pickup and begin to back the semi-tractor in.  It also occurs to you that opening the building's big door has probably done a lot of good toward dissipating the gas as the relative warmth of the building is sucked out into the cold night air.  

While you are out getting the semi-tractor, you look around as you described before.  In the direction in which the mook ran off, you can see a set of approaching headlights some distance away.  In the other direction you can see that it looks like a tow truck is pulling up to where the two cars are sitting.

IVAN:

Porter comes running into the shop as you open the office door.   While you are busying yourself with the wound he turns the office light on and simply murmurs "Ouch!" when he views the scene within.

One of the wounds is flesh only, but the other seems to have struck squarely on the femur and done some damage to the bone.  You are able to stop the bleeding and get the slugs out, and the leg seems to work well enough to stand on, but just barely.  You're thinking you might want to get this looked at by someone with a little more than basic first aid skill.    

The office is a puzzling scene.  There is an overturned desk sitting cock-eyed, with one end up on top of the wastebasket.  The drawers have fallen open, spilling innumerable papers on the concrete floor.  There is a man lying twisted on the floor, and his head looks strangely asymmetrical at this point.  His hands and feet twitch slightly as the muscles extend in spasms.  A small black .380 automatic lies a couple of feet from his right hand.  There is a life-size cardboard cut-out of a shapely woman in a bikini next to the fridge (it's clear now that this is the figure you saw earlier).  Someone has placed a straw taco-shell cowboy hat on the head of the cutout.  

You hear the sound of the semi-tractor's diesel as Will tries to line it up to the trailer.  

Porter asks, "You gonna be okay for a couple minutes?  I think I need to go help him get this trailer hooked up."

Second 3:

IVAN:

The gun fires two more times in the darkness.  The room is illuminated in an almost strobe-like effect as you see him waving his free hand back and forth in an effort to fend you off.  You grab hold of his shirt and execute the intended manuever with little trouble.  The sickening crack that signals the end of his life would probably be a rather anticlimatic sound for anyone to imagine punctuating their final moments, but this introspection is likely lost on anyone in this room.

(we'll slip out of "combat time" here)

The pain comes, like some detective that was waiting around the corner but had to dash up before it could make the arrest.  As far as how it feels, well, try and imagine a three pound mosquito, constructed entirely of molten magma, perched on your lower thigh and sucking merrily away.

WILL:

Two more shots will happen while you are doing whatever it is that you do when you hear the first two shots.  You see that Porter has begun to run toward the open door of building.

Blues bites her lip for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to ask the question.  She decides it would be better to do so and breathes in deeply.

"Mr. Michaelson...It pains me to ask such a callous question at this time, but in the unfortunate event that you...leave us...before the job is completed, will provisions be made to ensure the second part of our compensation is delivered when we've taken care of it?"

She can guess the answer, but feels it might put other minds at ease.

yeah, I ran into that when I worked at a used bookstore for a while.  The same thing struck me about Molly's hair and I remember actually grabbing the book to look into it.  

If I remember right, Gibson described her hair as a "rough shag" (which would likely be a sort of 70s-early 80s generic style that's hard to describe but you've probably seen it a zillion times--think "Ramones" and you're pretty close) rather than the "Jerry Springer Bulldyke Mullet" featured in this comic.  Of course, by 2020 or whenever that may well be the "in" look.

Not that it freaking matters, but I thought it was worth piping up because Dillweed had the same reaction as I to it.

Second 1 is consumed by IVAN flipping the desk (it was facing away from you).  Whomever is under the desk shouts a rather scatological expletive.

Second 2:

IVAN:

You grab wildly in the dark and although for a fraction of a second you get what feels like a handful of denim and illicit a panicked squeal, the attempt is unsuccessful.  As you are grabbing at this person there are two brilliant flashes of light and brutally loud reports perhaps a foot from your face.  In these flashes of light you briefly see your target's face contorted into a desperate, crazed fright mask.  Your left leg jerks twice--it feels like somebody has whacked you with a stick just above the knee.

WILL:

You have moved the Camaro and are walking back to see about moving the pickup when you hear somewhat muffled shots from inside the shop.  

I'll leave this here for input from the two of you.

Blues turns toward Arrow, "Your place sounds fine by me.  Of course, if we all chipped in, say 50eb each, we could probably get a nice big hotel suite with lots more room for a couple of days and not cut into budget too much...but whatever the group wants is fine with me."

When the commotion starts, she rises out of the seat and cautiously takes a couple of steps toward Mr. Michealson.  

"I'm a doctor..." she says, in a manner that half declares it and half asks if it's okay to help.  She's careful not to seem pushy until given the go ahead to do so.  Strictly speaking, she's not a doctor and never will be.  But she's just trying to get the point across in what appears to be an emergency.  

At the very least she wants to watch what the Aide is doing to see if she can determine what's wrong with Michaelson--if this geezer croaks while the team is working it's not going to make it easy to collect the other twenty grand.  On the other hand, it might mean the easiest twenty Gs she ever made.  Or even just ten, since he hasn't handed the cash out yet...

IVAN:

There is a muffled "OOF!" in the darkness as you first start to move the desk, and it feels as if someone is hiding underneath it in the spot where a person's legs normally reside and you bumped them when you tried to move it.  The opening was facing away from the door you came in.  

WILL:

(In an effort to keep the times relatively in-synch, we need to slow down and see what happens with Ivan, as his action happening while Will is still moving the cars and may change your course of action for Will if, say, shooting breaks out or something.  I don't like to have to put you on hold for it, but likewise I don't want to get way ahead of things and have to "rewind" because of what Will might have done if he hears a bunch of noise in the building.)

WILL:

You will find (it will take a minute or two) that the keys Porter handed you will allow you to move the Camaro (the chip player on this car blasts "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd at high volume when you fire it up.  It takes a few moments to shut it up.  This reveals that the engine is equally loud).  They also fit the pickup truck.  None of your keys will fit the dented SUV.  It's a moot point, since you only needed to get two of the vehicles out of the way anyway.  You're not sure what Porter is doing during this time, but you think he's over in the yard doing something with/to the dead/unconscious guy.    

IVAN:

You've reached the desk.  It feels like a somewhat heavy pressed wood/sheetmetal job.  You haven't heard anything from the area where you saw the figure, but then again you haven't heard anything terribly well after running down the barrel of a blazing .44 magnum, then firing the same gun in this echo chamber of a building.

IVAN:

As you close the door and cut off the light that was streaming in through it, it dawns on you that the person you saw on the other side of the room strangely wasn't moving.  You also saw that the room is somewhat L-shaped becuase there apparently is a smaller room that occupies the very southwest corner of the building, and that there is a desk on your left that is facing you.  On the right "leg" of the L was a refrigerator and the door to the small corner room.  Are you edging to the left (toward the desk) or to the right (toward the fridge and where you saw this other person)?

WILL:

You notice Ivan slip quickly into the office, and hear his voice booming from within but cannot make out the words.  Porter walks over and drags the guy and the equipment (which you think is probably some sort of scalable optical device allowing someone to analyze heat buildup in machinery) out of the way of the driveway.  He deposits them in the yard next to a big yellow bulldozer, out of sight of anyone passing by in the street.

WILL:

Porter nods and hands you the truck keys.

"Yeah, it's all opened up out there.  You're gonna need to move at least two of these other cars, though."  He motions to the SUV, the Pickup, and the old Camaro that are now clearly visible as the big door finishes opening.  He gives you another set of keys, this one with a Playboy rabbit-logo keychain.  "Ivan found these on that guy outside.  Maybe they'll fit them."

IVAN:

You open the office door.  It's dark in here.  You see someone, wearing a cowboy hat, standing silhouetted against the unpainted sheetrock wall opposite the door, maybe three meters away.

(Okay, due to a good level of interest from LD and BW and outside parties, I am going to NPC Porter for the time being, and when we reach a good "chapter point"--probably the end of this little mini-mission, I'll either add a couple characters to this game or add one to this game and start a second thread in the same time and setting as this one, with crossover possibilities later on.  It depends on how many of the interested parties follow through)

And now, back to the action:

IVAN:

Like I said, the heater is no longer running.  Somebody else was probably thinking the same thing.  You think that between the gas on the east side of the room and the fact that the heater has been moved over here, whomever is in here is hiding on this, the west, side of the building now.  The figure-8 straps of the leather shoulder rig slap against your thighs as you walk.    

WILL:

As you approach the cylinders, you notice a faint odor, something similar to a mixture of garlic and sulphur.  You suspect that the big cylinder is leaking acetylene gas, which is commonly used in welding.  There is a neat round hole punched in the cylinder at about waist level.  You can read the stencils on the canisters when you get close to the card table and four chairs right next to a big semi trailer  (a mortally wounded TV set is sitting on a nearby cart) and they confirm your suspicions.   The smell, typically caused by impurities as the gas itself is odorless, gets stronger as you approach.  Acetylene is explosive over a wide range of fuel/air mixtures, so you figure it would behoove you not to light up any cigarettes on this side of the building.

BOTH:

Porter calmly enters the warehouse with a Colt/AMT drawn.  He's wearing one of those black balaclava ski-mask thingies that the SWAT guys wear.  He looks around the room for a moment.  

"That must be the trailer!" he exclaims, "Let's get it and get outta here before any reinforcements arrive!"  With this he smacks the button for the shop's main door.  It makes a tremendous racket as it begins to slide open under power from a large electrical winch.

GM ANNOUNCEMENT:

It looks like Eraser has bailed on us in favor of Phipp's new game.  This may prove a minor stumbling block for what has so far proven to be VFTE's fastest-moving game.  Do you guys want to:

1.  Keep going with Porter as NPC until I can work another player in?

2.  Start over with a different campaign?

3.  Drop it altogether?

WILL:

You hear a mechanical groan and a rumbling outside.  You assume this is the outside gate opening.  Then you hit the lightswitch and the whole room is bathed in bright light.  You immediately see the canisters in question.  They are BIG canisters, much larger than the sort you normally see on small welding rigs.  From this distance the labeling is not clear.  

PORTER:

Ivan and Will have disappeared into the building.  A second later the huge outer door starts opening with no small amount of noise.  The area around you is better lit as light from the street spills in.  

((guys, I don't want to get too far ahead of Eraser and leave Porter standing around like he's braindead while the other two are mucking about with things.  Let's give him a chance to catch up))

IVAN:

You charge into the building.  It looks pretty much the same, though the Kerosene heater seems to have been rolled over to the end where the wire cage and sheetrock office are and is no longer running.  The hissing noise from the tanks at the other end continues.  

WILL:

The place is as I described above with the exception of the moved heater.  You cannot see the cylinders well enough from here to tell exactly what they are and there are no telltale smells where you are standing.  You do notice a couple of large buttons on the wall just inside the door next to a couple of big switches.  All of these are labeled with a wide piece of masking tape with writing on it in big letters that are easy to see even in the dim light of the room.  The buttons are labeled "Outer" and "Main Shop," while the switches are labeled "Lights" and "Main Power"..."Main Power" is in the ON position, "Lights" is in the OFF position.

IVAN:

You drag Mullet's (which is apparently his name judging from the patch on his blue poplin jacket and the all-too-appropriate hairstyle) battered form off the cart.  

Underneath the jacket you find a bown leather shoulder holster rig that obviously is custom fit for a huge gun.  the rig has six small loops on one of the straps, each of which contains a fresh round.

On his belt is a tooled leather sheath which contains a large folding wood-handled lockblade pocketknife.  The blade is about six inches long.

In his pockets are a ring of keys (a LOT of keys) with a large Playboy rabbit keychain, a plastic hair comb, and a wallet containing his ID, banking card, and 148eb in cash along with a picture of a young woman in a cowboy hat wearing WAY too much makeup against a glitzy sequined velvet background--probably taken at one of those "glamour shot" places in the mall.  The wallet is attached to his belt with a short length of chain.

As far as First Aid goes, the best you are able to tell is that he smacked the base of his skull on the SUV when you knocked him into it.  His knee is also swelling wildly and is now grossly distorted.  His pulse has become weak...he needs a hospital immediately if he is going to live.

At this point, Will enters the yard through the hole in the fence.

WILL:

You arrive and see Ivan apparently looting a body.  Porter is standing nearby, holding a rather substantial autopistol.

Blues folds her arms on the table and sets her chin upon her crossed wrists.  Her eyes seem to have returned to their usual wandering stare.

"I agree," she replies, "It would be good for everyone to get to know one another better.  Then we could make some plans and, if necessary, present Ms. Knight with a 'shopping list'.  The time it takes to get things together would allow us all time to tie up any loose ends we have before we leave for Colombia."  

As far as the payment goes, Blues wants to separate the money into 10k of credsticks, 5k of large bills (100eb) and 5k of small bills (20eb).  If it's easy to just go to a bank and change credsticks into cash on her own, she'll just ask for the whole thing in credsticks now.  If this is difficult or costly or time-consuming, she'll ask Mr. Michealson for the money in that form upfront.

WILL:

You stop and, aiming, fire off four more shots, none of which find their mark, but one does ricochet off a streetlight post as he runs by, throwing sparks.  He gets out of range.

You turn and begin heading back to Mullet's

IVAN and PORTER:

You hear four more shots from outside.

(ooc:  I won't be able to contribute tomorrow (FRI) and may not be able to for the whole weekend.  I'm helping someone with a cross-country move)

Blues stares into the center of the aide's mind and nods in appreciation of the directions.  

In the bathroom, she enters one of the stalls, closing the door behind her.  She presses her cheek against the cool tiles of the wall and takes a few deep breaths, waiting for the world to soften.  

She fumbles through her jacket and pulls out the tin with the pink flowers.  She picks one and swallows it without water.  This was a bad sign.  She knew that eventually the pills would lose their effectiveness, and upping the dose was going to bring that day even closer.  What then?  She'd tried everything else short of therapies she couldn't possiby afford.  All the more reason to go after this job.  She considers how far she could get on Mr. Michaelson's 20 grand.  Not far enough, she decides, but getting at least half that money in cash isn't a bad idea.  She breathes deeply and sighs.

On her way out, she stops at the mirror and, weaving for a clear space around the she-demons, touches up her gunmetal lipstick.  

She returns to the meeting room, making no eye contact with anyone on the way to her chair.  Hopefully other people are still speaking with Michaelson on the matter of the job so she isn't considered "center stage"...

(ooc:  I won't be available tomorrow, and possibly won't be able to post for the weekend.  Feel free to NPC Blues if you must.)

WILL:

This guy runs like a deer--you're pretty fast but he seems to be pulling out the gap.  You don't even think he knows you're after him.  He's at 35m when you decide he's going to outrun you and take a couple of shots.  You first fumble with the gun (you just weren't able to get a shot off--nothing terrible happened), and at 41m when you manage to fire two shots with no apparent effect.

IVAN and PORTER:

You hear a couple of shots from a medium caliber handgun out in the street.  Porter, you notice that Ivan is bleeding mildly from two places on his chest.  There is a flattened bullet stuck to his left pectoral muscle a little above the nipple.