Mosca Syndrome

Seems to me that the only real benefit over any other metal stick is concealability, or more accurately a lack of bulk when carrying it (say on your duty belt), and the switchblade-like intimidation factor of a club suddenly appearing out of nowhere.  Snick!

If you're clear to draw it, I don't see why you'd get an initiative bonus for using it over anything else that you could draw (tonfa, billy club, etc.).  As an analogy, a switchblade is undeniably fast, but it's no faster than pulling a fixed blade knife out of a properly designed sheath.  And it certainly shouldn't give a +1 advantage over someone with the same initiative roll as you who's attempting an empty-hand strike and doesn't have to draw anything.

Well, essentially a gaming system takes the entire human experience and reduces the "bit depth" for the sake of fair, fun play.  With the reduction in bit depth you lose flexibility to include some of the more far flung varieties of humans.  

You could increase the depth and make a list of sub-stats under each stat--for instance, social empathy as opposed to sympathy under EMP, but then you are complicating the system.  But it will start to make your Hannibals and Hitlers more plausible within it.

I have never been a huge fan of the way the CP2020 stats are broken down, but that's just me.  There are plenty of people who are dextrous but not agile.  Plenty who are genius but unaware.  Plenty who are attractive to some and not others, sociable but not sympathetic, or willfull and resolved but not respected.  But it does work pretty well for the most part.

Me--I don't know what my own empathy would be.  I do my best to be kind to everyone but I'm not sure it's my nature.  I do my best to foresee and avoid situations where it's tested.

I know what you mean.  It was a neat game.  I like re-reading it, too, and was scared that C-junk had deleted it altogether when he created the dead games section.  

I don't know what happened to LordDemon (not that I have any room to gripe, but there's always the option of reviving that instead.  But I am kind of jazzed about a new setting.

Based on my experience with you, all three of you are "in" if you want a part.  That's my preferred number, though there would be room for one more.  I've got a bunch of ideas for the setting I can flesh out over the next few days and post here.  

Eraser, it's a great idea from a storytelling point-of-view and would be an excellent Christ-figure if I were writing a book, but the problem is that it dictates that I come up with a worldwide setting for your character to know all about.  The quarantine setting itself would be a bit of a project, and although I have several basic ideas for the outside world circa 2060-ish, I would want to see how the game goes before committing to one, so I really want the starting PCs to be "QTs" (residents).  It is conceivable that a character could be an "ancient"--old enough (50+) to have had a life before "Q-day", and a "man from the sky" could be a Charlton Heston "Planet of the Apes" type who for some reason was in cryo-sleep all this time (deep spacer?) and somehow his recovery pod happened to land in the Quarantine zone without getting shot, beamed, or SAMed to pieces on the descent.  Of course, he wouldn't know jack about what's going on, so it's not really the same, but it could be interesting.

I guess the next step is to get a forum for the game, or ask C-junk to resurrect my old "Streetlight Serenade" brand name.

Toying with the idea of starting another game.

This one would take place in approx. 2065 in a large section of a city that has been quarantined off.  It's been walled off for 30 years and has had no communications with the outside world for 25.

Essentially, in 2035 a "Mad Doctor" type introduced a sort of DNA-Recombining nanite and caused a worldwide panic.  Acting under martial law, a large section of the city was sealed off and equipped with automatic defense systems to prevent escape.  Five years later all contact with the outside world was unexpectedly shut down.  Eventually, the recombinant DNA problem subsided (more or less), but the quarantine was never opened.  The "Systems" still guard the walls, and still keep dispensing bland kibble bars and potable water and taking care of the sewage, but it looks as though the QTs have been cut off and ignored.  

A new microcosm-like society has sort of incubated in this space for all these years, but it simply doesn't have the resources of the "old times"...It's a curious mix of high-tech remnants and old-school subsistence life and dirty, nasty 'ol Darwinism.  PCs would be some part of this society and all its underhanded dealings.  The feel would be rather post-apocalyptic and dirty, with different clans struggling for power or control over a limited area, and all under the watchful eye of whatever the outside world has become in those 30 years since the giant, seamless walls were "nanoed up"...

Before I get on a setting kick with this, would anybody be interested in playing in an environment like this?  I think three, maybe four players who can post often would be ideal.

Post here with questions and I'll do my best to come up with answers, as I already have a lot of them in mind.  I realize it's kind of an implausible storyline, and I'm not really issueing this as a challenge for people to demand explanations.  I'm just curious to see if anyone is interested in a game.

Thanks.

-MS

I dearly love the Legendary Pink Dots.  I've bought some 35-40 CDs and LPs including various side projects.  I see 'em every time they swing through my neck of the woods and was lucky enough to be at the Houston show where they recorded the bonus track on the LP version of Hallway of the Gods.  

Their shows do tend to be more sedate (esp. the recent ones without a percussionist) and, well, dignified--but I guess they're getting older now.  They've been at it since what, 1979?  I do remember a rendition of "Andromeda" that pretty much brought the house down at that same show I mentioned above.  

Sadly, my "Sing While You May" T-shirt is falling apart and they didn't have that design the last time through.  I got one of the other ones but it's just not the same.

As far as I'm concerned, the prime stuff is everything between "Crushed Velvet Apocalypse" and "Hallway"...

this might come off a bit rambly, but:

The medium is already achingly slow.  If the action within the game moves too slowly, you'll lose people left and right as they forget or just don't bother with checking back.  I think "Low Road" needed to move forward and it didn't. I think people were waiting for that plane to get to Colombia and it never did.  Everybody was waiting for someone else to do something.      

I thought my own was going along great until I dropped off the face of the earth for a while.  I was in a little bit of a rough spot as I tried to transition the game from one job to the next with a new character or two, but it would have been fine had real life not interfered.  One key point was that I asked the players to post at least once per weekday.  They couldn't always do it, but "once a week" is simply not frequent enough to maintain interest.

It's already a lot of effort for the GM--all that descriptive writing and typing of things that you could easily describe verbally--so keep the game small--three players tops.  Five or six people is too many potential holes due to "Real Life" interruptions IMO.  If you've got six interested players, why not instead run two small games?  That way if one dies, the other can take over, or you can mesh the two together if some people drop out and others stay in.  Alternately, one player can be in both at once, either as two different characters, the same character in different times, or even the same character moving from one game to the next.

Avoid huge and intricate plots.  Short, to-the-point jobs allow things to move quickly and lots of stopping points for people to enter or exit the game.  Get object X.  Kill Bad Guy Y.  Deliver package Z.  These can all be part of a bigger plot if you want, but make them self-contained on their own.  Don't get bogged down in layouts--if you can't describe the situation quickly with words, then it's too complex.  Don't get bogged down in shopping trips or errands.  If it's simple and ancilliary, gloss over it unless it's a deliberate misdirection to allow some other plot element to come to pass.

If a player seems to be lagging, it may be because they are waiting for prompting.  Just like a face-to-face game, some people will take more initiative than others.  Some treat it like watching a show and never respond unless you are talking to them.  

Characters who are stuck waiting for another character to do something need to be acknowledged and entertained.  Maybe they get a phone call, or see something interesting, or meet someone new.  While Ivan was attacking the diesel repair yard in Streetlight Serenade, I had to come up with something for Porter and Will to look at to relieve the tedium.  I used the purple girl to try to give them something to wonder about, and she would have been part of a possible job later on had the game continued.  Make possibilities for things to do if they are stuck waiting on someone and have to kill time.  A cool thing to steal, or some strange phenomenon to investigate.  Of course, it helps if they are in an urban environment where "anything can happen"...    

Those are just some disjointed thoughts for now.  If anyone wants to expand or reply to them, by all means go ahead...

I'm not into raves or "scenes" in general--I'm more your standard creepy loner type, but I've been riding on the street for eons (and you can ride year-round in where I live!).  

I currently have an Triumph Speed Four.  So watchoo ridin?

Dog Soldier--in High School my boss used to let me borrow his 78 KZ1000 when my Suzuki 550 was in the shop (which, considering the electrical issues that plagued it, was often).  Some of my best memories from that time involved bombing around on that bike.  There was something undeniably cool about looking down at the gas tank and seeing that wide engine sticking out on either side.  Of course, corners weren't it's forte...

It's getting close to month since the last post, and things seem to be slow all around.

Is this game dead in the water?

I don't have any room to complain, as my own game fell apart when I disappeared early this year, but I'd like to direct my energies elsewhere if this one is faded out.

-MS

Be careful, H-bomb.  

Just got a new Triumph Speed Four myself.  Jet Black, bug-eyed freaky bike.  Very menacing and cyberpunk-ish.  Still breaking it in at this point, but it's sweet.  Hope it gets cold enough to break out the black leathers soon....

http://www.triumph.co.uk/site/bikes/page.cfm?BikeID=70

-MS

Blues awakens on the deck of a largish wooden boat pitching to and fro in the chop of the Atlantic off cape Hatteras.  The sky is funeral grey and the wind whistles and it blows past the shattered windows and bullet-pocked clapboards of the wheelhouse.  

Nearby, a man in sunglasses sits in a folding chair cradling a cello.  He drones a deep, throbbing pedal note endlessly,  his smile a grid of yellow teeth below the oversized shades.  The fierce ocean winds fail to unseat the sparse, stringy hair pasted to his head.  He seems oblivious to his surroundings.

There's good reason for it.  

He's blind.  Blues knows this because she spotted the white cane as it rolled back and forth between the legs of the chair as the boat swayed.  It was almost as if she only saw it after she realized he was sightless.

He's deaf.  Blues knows this because she's yelled herself hoarse trying to get his attention.  But it's only after she realizes this that she feels the dull burn in her throat.

He's mute.  Blues doesn't know this, but figures it rounds out the package nicely.

The uselessness of the cellist is driven home all too well by:

A>  He's the only other living person on this tub, and

B>  Blues is currently pinned to the deck beneath the corpse of an unnaturally tall, overweight circus clown.  

She remembers seeing the bullet strike the clown's forehead between the two pointed tufts of orange hair.  He stared at her, and his smile-painted mouth began moving but no sound came out.  He staggered toward her, and she just stood there transfixed as he fell upon her.

It was an exhaustive struggle just to get into a position where she could breathe.  The fat harlequin's rolls of flab and polkadotted taffeta seemed to spill everywhere.  He must have weighed four hundred pounds in life, and now twice that in death.  

Blues has never really liked being around the dead, and has never cared for being physically restrained, although the circumstances of her life have dictated that she get used to either one from time to time.  Clowns, on the other hand, are a different story.  When she was a child, the mere sight of one in the flesh was enough to give her a week of night-terrors.  She quickly exhausted herself straining and thrashing uselessly against the avalanche of clownflesh, and the closest thing to a Saint Bernard was a senseless cellist, who at this point seemed to be taking some kind of erotic pleasure in the vibrations of that one droning note against his thighs and neck.  

"What's the matter, Mittens?  Clown gotcha down?"

Blues knows that voice.  She twists her neck to see the cherub sitting on one of the pilothouse window sills.

"You..." she rasps.  At this point her voice sounds like Alice after a lifetime of sharing a smoke with the caterpillar.

"Yep.  How's the boat ride going?"

"Why am I here?"

The cherub rolls his eyes and smirks, "Deja vu, mon ami."

"Help me!"

"I've heard that before, too.  That's one big mountain of a dead clown.  I'm more of a molehill guy, myself.  I abhor physical labor."

Blues sighs.

"Mittens, wherever did you get the idea that it's a cherub's job to pull your sorry little schizoid behind out of every jam you get into?  It's not really a very appealling trait in a prophet."

This catches her off guard.  "You mean I am a prophet?"

"To quote Tolstoy, 'duh!'"

"What am I supposed to do?"

The cherub massages his temples as if beset by a sudden headache, "You'll know when the time comes.  You can believe me--after all, I'm the only person in the world who would tell you to go with your instincts.  Trust me, dearie, the doomtimes are at your doorstep.  This crew you're running with is going to take you right where you need to be.  Carve a hole out of that big core of worry and spackle a little faith in it."

"I'm running out of time.  Already they all think I'm crazy!"

"You are crazy, snookums.  Does the word 'Mockingbird' ring a bell?"

"The pills aren't working--"

"The shrinks all lied.  The pills are a pyramid scam.  Every time you took one for a few hour's relief, you cost yourself a few weeks or months later on."   He shakes his head, grinning,  "You're going down sweetie, and hard.  But you are going to make a difference before it all goes up in smoke."

At that moment, the boat creaks ominously, and the sound of cracking planks tears at the air.  The cellist is frantically patting the deck around the chair, searching for his cane.  

"Gotta go," the cherub says impatiently.  "Caio!"

The boat begins to roll violently, and Blues, the dead clown and the cellist are soon pitched into the growing swells.  Free of the the burdensome buffoon, she attempts to swim and finds her limbs too numb to paddle, stroke, or even tread.  The colorful corpse bobs nearby.  The cellist has already disappeared, but the growing winds moan the same dire note he fell in love with.  She can't see the boat.  She slips beneath the waves.  The light from the sky dims and fades away as she sinks into oblivion....

She awakens in the bunk, very relaxed.  Her eyelids heavy, she smiles in the stupor of morning.

"Faith...."

"...do you have any idea what you've done?  It's out...it's out...there's no putting it back..."

Those people talking to Blues will find her asleep.  She murmurs fitfully in her slumber:

"Put the garden gnome back, Hammy.  Someone's gonna see us...."

The throb of the engines and the pitched, banking ascent make it difficult to concentrate on the supernatural dangers of this primitive flying machine and the transcendental quandary of whether or not Blues is alive or simply in the midst of a technicolor brain spasm in some chilly morgue.

Difficult.  But not impossible.  Whatever the case, it's not like she can do much about it.  This bit of fatalistic revelation is relaxing if nothing else.  As the plane levels out, her eyes get weightier and weightier and she slips again into dreamland.

If it isn't already there, Blues will put her simple old revolver in the case.  Then she'll allow herself to be helped into something warm and to be helped into the berth again.  She buckles the bump straps and tries to get as cozy as possible.  When it becomes clear that the roar of the airplane engines are not conducive to shuteye, she'll get out one of her sets of foam earplugs and pop them in.  If the plane proves to be just impossible to sleep in, she'll lie awake for a little while, trying to at least rest her body, surreptitiously watching the other passengers.  

She's considering dosing herself with something in hopes of getting some sleep, but doesn't want to die snoring if this haunted crate gets shot down by the Banana Republican Guard.  

Haunted.  Blues casts worried glances around the plane.  Why does that notion keep occurring to me?  I did die earlier today...am I a ghost now?  Did we all die?  Is that the mysterious transformation I felt?  Is this whole misadventure just the the writhing and spasms of my dying mind???

She pulls the blankets up to just below her eyes, which by now are roughly the size of tea saucers.

She trades raised eyebrows for a moment with Arch.  He seems pretty businesslike, for certain, but so did Dragon and it was Dragon's fan club that blew her up.  But then again, Arch survived that fight without a scratch.  It's probably better this way.  

"Nothing at all."  She smiles.  "I'm glad you could join--"  She is momentarily distracted by Weyland shrugging into a flight suit and a heavy coat.  Arrow mentions something about getting Blues into something warm, which reinforces the need to ask:

"Ummm...just how cold is it gonna get in this haunt--uh, this airplane?"

She knows enough about altitudes to know it can get pretty cold, but didn't know Weyland actually planned on flying at such heights and surely didn't buy anything that was that kind of warm.  Bluescicle!

Blues listens to this suave-looking shiv slider, her trademark dead-eyed stare fixed on some point a thousand meters beyond his head.  He's clearly some kind of Euro himself, though she hasn't fixed the accent yet.  Not having dealt with any other than the standard American variety of scumbag, she cedes:

"Well, you probably know better than I do.  But I remember Michaelson stating that these people are after the same thing we are...so whether or not the plan involves them, that team is going to be our nemesis and we're likely to bump into them at some point.  When that happens, we'd better be better."

She lowers her head slightly and rubs her chin with one hand.  Her eyes focus like a laser beam directly on Archangel's chest.  She looks as though she is considering whether or not Arch's still-beating heart would taste good in a nice chianti sauce.  

"In fact, it might be wiser to take them out of the picture in Colombia so they don't complicate Japan.  I wonder if Mariposa has the connections there to help us find them and nip that crisis in the bud.  We have pictures and names, and they can't know who we are yet."

She shudders, as if somebody else had said that and she found the notion revolting.  Demoness!  She briefly looks distressed, then snaps her head back to look at Archangel's face.  The eyes return to their normal state of miscalibration, the pupils threatening to douse the irises completely in the dim interior of the plane.

"That reminds me--Arch, do you have any enemies so crazed with rage that they might launch an insane attack on you and those around you, even in a place where to do such a thing means they'll be summarily put to death?  Recent events have convinced me that this is an important thing to ask of my co-workers.  I currently have no such enemies."

She folds her arms and raises an eyebrow, while some other part of her mind tries to determine whether an aeroplane this old is likely to be haunted.

To Arrow:

"Whichever works best, I guess--you've seen more of the data on the jail.  It all just reminded me of this creepy guy I used to work on from time to time.  He babbled a lot under a painkiller drip.  Some people babble when they are doped up.  Anyway, he was a robber, but he only stole from other crooks.  A toe-sucker, or something like that was what he called it.  He said that other crooks had already done the hard part...stealing the money...and they never call in the authorities.  I ended up changing phones and everything because if he realized how much he'd told me I'm sure he would have--"

At this point Angel steps in and Blues stops babbling.  She looks at him as if he is some strange Lovecraftian knickknack she has never noticed before in a house she's lived in all her life.

(OOC:  Blues can be a judgemental donkey, and I've been all over this game and can't find any physical descriptions of Angel, Wayne, or Rally (clothes, ethnicity, size, obvious cyber, general carriage, facial expression, etc).  Would y'all be so kind as to give me a rundown or point me to where they are so she can get a feel?  Thanks)

Blues looks away as the Aussie approaches, pretending to be studying something further along the length of the plane so she can get her mind together.  When she can manage a normal face, she'll turn and speak:

"I don't want to go up against them either, but we should plan for it.  If they beat us to Mika, or if we beat them but not by enough, we may have to deal with them.  Hopefully the new guys are better than Boone and Dragon were at that sort of thing."

"Actually, I have to wonder if it would be easier to get Mika from the Euro-whatevers than from that jail.  You know, let them do the dirty work.  Do we have decent information on them?"

Blues' eyes dart from side to side.  She takes in a quick breath, looks Arrow in the eye and opens her mouth as if about to intone something of great and sweeping importance.  

But nothing seems to come out.  It's the conversational equivalent of throwing open the curtains to find that someone's bricked up the window.   She stands there for a moment, mouth hanging open.  She tilts her head slightly to one side.

"Arrow, I'm crazy."

This is a bad start...she stammers and goes into rapid fire mode:

"N...not crazy crazy.  I mean, yes, crazy crazy, like mentally ill.  But not crazy crazy right now.  I mean, I was crazy crazy before, and I'm on this medication, but the medication is a sort of last resort and it's losing it's effectiveness and I don't know how much time I have left a month if I'm lucky but when it comes it's gonna be bad it's gonna be worse even than being dead.  I'll be fine for the mission I know I will but now since I got blown up I've been charged with some important task that I don't even know what is yet and I thought I should tell someone what's going on and thought you might be the most, uh...understanding?"

She instinctively raises her right hand to smack herself on the forehead, but her lefts shoots up to catch it.  She kneads her hands together, grimaces, grits her teeth, and tilts her head back slightly in expectation.  It's unsettling, to say the least.

Crazy Donkey!

Blues rubs her forehead.  The bump was more startling than damaging.

"Yeah, yeah...I should sit in.  I don't think I'm going to get much rest right now.  This has been a strange day.  I could use something to focus on right now..."

She'll climb down out of the berth.  She pauses and speaks to Arrow in a low voice:

"Hey, look...I'm not normally this...'out of it'...but something happened back in that hospital and I can't put my finger on it.  I'll be fine for the mission.  I have faith in that.   I don't want anyone to worry that I'm gonna fall apart--or be a liability, you know?"

Her aspect seems to be that of someone trying to decide if it's okay to tell a secret.

Blues is standing in a flat, featureless plain under a cloudless grey sky.  She turns a quick 360 on her heel and discovers that it extends to the horizon in all directions.  She turns another 360 and notices a large television two meters front of her.

strange...it wasn't there a moment ago...

The television is certainly old-school, a 2-dimensional type with a bulging cathode ray tube hogging most of the overly woodworked walnut cabinet.  She drops to her knees in front of it.  A tug of a silver knob brings the box to life with a distinct snap.  The sound comes ahead of the picture, but both are nothing but empty noise.  She twists a larger knob and it clunks through channel after channel of dead airwaves until it hits Channel 13.

Channel 13's program seems to be about childbirth, and is shot from the point of view of a woman in the delivery room, facing down the length of her body toward the masked face of the obstitrician and her feet dangling in the stirrups.  Blues leans forward and, turning her head, rests her cheek on the glass of the picture tube.

In an unsegued but oddly seamless transition, Blues notices that she somehow has become the woman giving birth, right as the baby is being pulled clear of the womb.  It hurts, but it doesn't hurt like people have told her it does.  A wave of comfort and joy crashes upon her.  The cord is cut, and she struggles for the energy to sit up and see her child.  

There seems to be some commotion.  Something is wrong.  The doctors charge out of the room with the child before she can catch a glimpse.  She shrieks and leans forward to pull her feet from the stirrups.  As she pulls one free, a nurse moves toward her, his palms held out in a calming gesture.  Blues knocks the nurse's hands away with her forearm when they get too close.  Quick as a cat, the nurse pulls an airhypo from...somewhere and approaches again, this time shoving Blues backward onto the raised bed with his left arm, his right feinting with the hypo.  The wrestling match that ensues is one-sided and she is soon too heavy with sleepiness to struggle.  She passes out, her nose full of the nurse's aftershave.  Same brand her father used to use.

She awakens in a deep pit of bones, on her back atop a legion of the dead.  Still in her hospital gown, she rests upon uncountable femurs, radii, ulane, tibia, crania.  Blue midday sky is visible from this hole, and even stars, a peculiarity of deep wells she remembers reading about as a very young child.  

A shadowy figure leans over the rim of the pit and drops something small, which briefly hangs against the blue sky before its shadow is consumed by that of the sides of the ossuary pit.  The thing crashes into the bones next to her with thud and a cloud of dust.  She knows before she looks that it's her baby.  What she doesn't know, until she looks, is that it has Boone's face.

She bursts into tears.  

"Hey, lady...what's the matter?" comes the high-pitched voice from above.  Startled, she looks up and sees a baby-faced cherub, replete with white wings, sitting on a ledge that wasn't there before.  The only thing that's out of place is the cigar.  Blues stops sobbing for a moment and stares, slackjawed.

"Okay, if that's too difficult to answer, what's your name?"

Blues' jaw remains slack.  The cherub rolls its eyes.

"habla Ingles, senorita?"

This starts Blues back to coherence.  "Uh, Blues...I mean, Ballard.  Mittens Ballard," she replies.

The cherub snickers and emits a lazy cloud of cigar smoke.  

"'Mittens'?  Your name is 'Mittens'?  Yeesh."  It (the cherub isn't seated in such a way as to reveal what, if any, gender it may have) flips through the pages on a clipboard.  "Oh, here you are.  Wow.  They did a number on you, didn't they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, sorry.  Never mind, that info's marked 'for office use only'...pretend I never said that."

"Why am I here?" Blues asks.

"I often ask myself the same question, sister."

"No, I mean why am I here in this pit of bones?  And why is my baby Boone?  And why did I have a baby?  They sterilized me at Mockingbird, didn't they?"

"In a minute, okay?  There's a lot of paperwork involved in this.  Just sit tight."

"Are you going to take me out of this place?"

The cherub chuckles again.  More smoke.  "No."

"Why not?"

"Lady, you're way too heavy."

At this point, the cherub starts laughing, loud enough to echo off the sides of the well into a ferocious din, which seems to fade into the sound of voices conversing.  Her surroundings seem to switch rapidly back and forth between here and another place, an effect so jarring that it causes her to wake up with a gasp and a start, wide-eyed.

Wide-eyed, that is, until she tries to sit up and bangs her forehead against the top of the China Girl's sleeping berth, which rings out with a sound like a tin lunchbox being hit by a flying grapefruit.  Now her eyes are squeezed shut as the pain of bumping her head pounces upon her.

"OW!"

She buries her face back in her pillow.  

I hate my dreams....

Blues is momentarily caught off-guard by Arrow's question.  Did she really say that?  Is Arrow suspicious?  It might have disastrous effects on the outcome of future events if these pour souls were to know about the prophesy!

Blues decides to pretend she never mentioned the prophesy.  If she never mentioned the prophesy, Arrow must never have asked about it.  Instead of asking about the prophesy, Arrow must have simply asked how Blues was feeling.  That Arrow is a really good egg.  Blues is confident that Arrow's virtue will result in her being spared, if not exalted, in the coming doomtimes.  Blues resolves to get to know Arrow better, so that either may tell the other's story should one of them be martyred.  The thought saddens her.  

"Oh, I'm doing fine!" she lies as she clambers into the bunk.  Her smile clashes with her eyes in dire way.  

that was a close one...this is not going to be easy.

Blues hesitates for a moment before securing the safety straps that keep people from flying out of the bunk if the plane hits a turbulent section of airspace.  Didn't she just leave this party?  Oh, well.  She makes them as snug as she feels comfortable with.  

As Archangel passes by, she wearily mumbles a greeting.  Through the haze of medications and overall fatigue and other hassles that come with being blown up by a hand grenade, she's having a hard time with faces and names.

She pulls the pillow over her head to deaden the noises of the party clanking around in the echoing fuselage of this aging mongrel of an airplane.

I'm not a dirt-bike guy, but I think motocross gear is designed to protect you from impacts, mainly you hitting the ground or you being hit by other bikes on your way there, and various stones and other projectiles kicked up by other bikes' tires.  I have no idea what good it would do in a prolonged slide down the tarmac.  If it stays strapped on, it would probably do quite a bit of good.

For hot weather (here in Texas it can get to 100+ Farenheit for weeks at a time) street riding, those ballistic mesh jackets are a blessing.  They are some kind of synthetic abrasion-resistant material in a loose weave, with thick foam armor over the main impact points (shoulder, elbow, spine).  Air flows right through them.  From what I have seen firsthand, they aren't as good as Leather or Kevlar in an accident, but are miles better than a T-shirt.  They are very cyber-punkish, really--made of some weird polymer, cool-looking, and disposable (they really only save your hide once and they're ruined)

The one I have is made by Fieldsheer and is called the "Titanium Air"...their website implies that Titanium is somehow incorporated into the fabric, but I think that's more of a marketing thing.  A company called Joe Rocket makes a couple of very popular models, too.  

Unfortunately, at those temperatures even the mesh jackets are uncomfortable at low speeds or in bad traffic (it's illegal to filter to the front of the pack here at intersections!).  It is often so hot in the summer that it's cooler to leave your helmet (full face, naturally) faceshield lowered than to raise it and get a blast of hot air on your face!

One of the worst things you could wear on a bike is 70s-style polyester.  If you slide on the pavement, this stuff heats up and melts right onto your skin!  Talk about a bad day getting worse!

Another weird development is at www.eggparka.com  This is a vest with built in airbags that deploy via a deadman switch if the rider falls off!  Seems like an okay idea, but what happens if you get off your bike and forget about the deadman switch?  POOOF!  Instant Michelin man!  Or worse, if someone you're facing off against recognizes the vest and yanks the little ripcord!

"Not really," Blues says to Mariposa.  "I've already been killed once just today.  I'm okay now, though.  I came back, as ordained by prophesy."  

Although her tone is cheerful, her blank stare belies no awareness whatsoever of how weird that must sound to anyone who heard it.  She continues up the gangplank into the plane.

"Thanks, Weyland!" she says when she sees the stuff he picked up sitting on her bunk.  That crocodile wrangler guy is a good egg.  It's comforting that he seems to love this crazy airplane of his so much.  It means he's likely to make extra effort to keep whatever happens in Cartehegna from getting too crazy and endangering it.

Enlisting the help of whomever is willing to do so, Blues secures her stuff for the coming flight.  She turns to Arrow:

"I should probably get some more rest.  Thanks for helping me get my stuff.  I don't like being alone in this place."

Assuming nothing happens to stop her, she'll gingerly climb into the bunk and curl up under the blanket.  If that proves uncomfortable she'll stretch back out.  

(OOC:  I am leaving this weekend for a wedding some 900 miles away and will be gone all of next week)