>>6469746
>Trust Burnt Cynic - Mac. Skeptic or Scoop Playbook. A hard boiled reporter from Chicago, his travel eastward with a gritty and urgent narrative style to his articles; once heavily involved in the Political beat in Chicago and developed an interest in Civil Rights as a frequent witness to restaurant and rec center sit-ins organized by the Congress for Racial Equity in Chi-town. Left Chicago for New York after stepping on the toes of a local boss one too many times and was given a choice. Work is work even if it’s campfire schlock like these stories of ghouls and ghosts, since politicians now keep him at arms length.

>Exhausted Haunted Runaway - Ann. Spooky Playbook. A teen who ran away from home and Ann is just a name you’re wearing right now, and if you need to abandon it you have others prepared. There’s something about the city that feels useful, that feels like you should be here, and this kind of paid internship may help you figure out what’s happened…been happening to you, and maybe you’ll be able to exorcise the invasive things that haunt you, waking or asleep.

>Unyielding True Believer - Lee. Flake Playbook. When you were younger, you ate everything up you could between the pulp magazines, conspiracy rags, and books on folklore. Devouring the strange reports and books in the library about the unknown. By the end of your teens, most of your friends stopped believing, and to not be lonely you did your best to tone down being a freak chasing little green men or ranting about the Humboldt footprints…but maybe here you’ve found your people and there’s work to be done.

>Faithful Shining Optimist - Goodman. Action Scientist Playbook. The dreams of the jet age stretch before us and allow new light to be cast into the shadows of the unknown. Dr. Goodman seeks to join the Society through this field research and publication arm and uncover new truths about the world and advance the cause of science for the benefit of all. So venture forth on this quest in a race to truly discover the unknown country and learn something wondrous along the way while you two fist your research notes in a way you never could in a lab.

>Ambitious Brash Sleuth - Mercedes - Meddling Kid or Gumshoe Playbook. Harlem born and raised, and mystery has long been your history. You’ve got your eyes on the prize and once you finish up school and investigating strange phenomena will be a fine way to pad your resume and bide your time before you make the minimum age cut for the police academy in a few years. You’re expecting a few hoaxes, but you’ve lived in this city long enough to know that some times…it’s the real deal.

Part two of list coming, vote not yet open

>>6469747
>What They Seen - Leah. Panromantic or Searcher Playbook. After living and leaving an unorthodox life out west, before and behind illicit cameras, she found herself working the night shift at a rural gas station to make ends meet and witnessed the unexplainable. Flapping in from the endless dark to her shining oasis on the road investigating her and a case of soda pop spilled. She learned something about herself that night and fell, but missed the chance to snap a picture after getting lost in those glowing red eyes. Finding renewal between old passions and new guidance she’ll put her own eye to shutter once more.

>Where Sacred Walks - LaRock. Curse Eater or Expert Playbook. Of the Sts’ailes in what is now British Columbia...his family claimed they were keepers of secrets on behalf of the Sasq’ets before they left them. Because of this, he knows much of the things unseen by most. Just as well for the assumptions made about him out in the world, the Society has offered for his expertise in first nations myth and his skills at hunting things more mundanely…as far as they know at least.

>Navy Behind Thee - Jonah. Veteran or Mundane Playbook. It’s been almost a decade since ‘rea ended and you’ve decided to retire from service since you’ve more than done your share on ship and base. Just who are you away from the uniform then? When you saw all this about poking around spooky shit you thought it was interesting, more so than many of the other options you could have had lined up.

>Blood Cursed Dame - Tara. Monstrous Playbook. Turned roughly forty years ago, she still appears as a woman in her prime. She has come from England to America seeking to learn more about the night she belongs to, chasing legends of a means to check her thirst, and find the babe she thought lost the night she was turned. She writes with a careful academic diction and has long made connections into the Society for Psychical Research through Oxford audited courses. Though paler than her birth, her complexion closes some doors and opens others in New York’s stratified society.

Voting now open for a long ass while. Talk it over, take your time.

>>6469747
>>Ambitious Brash Sleuth - Mercedes - Meddling Kid or Gumshoe Playbook. Harlem born and raised, and mystery has long been your history. You’ve got your eyes on the prize and once you finish up school and investigating strange phenomena will be a fine way to pad your resume and bide your time before you make the minimum age cut for the police academy in a few years. You’re expecting a few hoaxes, but you’ve lived in this city long enough to know that some times…it’s the real deal.

>>6469749
>>What They Seen - Leah. Panromantic or Searcher Playbook. After living and leaving an unorthodox life out west, before and behind illicit cameras, she found herself working the night shift at a rural gas station to make ends meet and witnessed the unexplainable. Flapping in from the endless dark to her shining oasis on the road investigating her and a case of soda pop spilled. She learned something about herself that night and fell, but missed the chance to snap a picture after getting lost in those glowing red eyes. Finding renewal between old passions and new guidance she’ll put her own eye to shutter once more.

>>6469747
>Exhausted Haunted Runaway - Ann. Spooky Playbook.

>>6469747
>Unyielding True Believer - Lee.
>Faithful Shining Optimist - Goodman.

Between these two, but if there's a tie them my vote goes to Lee

>>6469747
>Unyielding True Believer - Lee. Flake Playbook. When you were younger, you ate everything up you could between the pulp magazines, conspiracy rags, and books on folklore. Devouring the strange reports and books in the library about the unknown. By the end of your teens, most of your friends stopped believing, and to not be lonely you did your best to tone down being a freak chasing little green men or ranting about the Humboldt footprints…but maybe here you’ve found your people and there’s work to be done.

While we wait for voting to close (when the clock strikes midnight NY time Monday into Tuesday) does anyone have any conjecture or expectations of what I'm setting up, based on first post and the MC candidates?

>>6469846
SCP + Goosebumps-like stories?

>>6469856
Little bit, there will definitely be a few creature features involved, from below and a thing from on high. The tone will depend on the character selected, whether its one of the more normative people, the ones who go bump in the night, the ones who bump back, or the one who wants to get bumped by the night.

>>6469846
Maybe X-Files with some Men In Black mixed in there? Possibly sprinkled with a dash of Midsomer Murders type of investigations on top.

>>6469861
Both good draws for inspiration. And not just the Men In Black films, the original men in black funny books published are part of a legacy of inspiration for this.

>>6469749
>>Navy Behind Thee
yarrg, I miss the sea

>Exhausted Haunted Runaway - Ann. Spooky Playbook. A teen who ran away from home and Ann is just a name you’re wearing right now, and if you need to abandon it you have others prepared. There’s something about the city that feels useful, that feels like you should be here, and this kind of paid internship may help you figure out what’s happened…been happening to you, and maybe you’ll be able to exorcise the invasive things that haunt you, waking or asleep.
>Ambitious Brash Sleuth - Mercedes - Meddling Kid or Gumshoe Playbook. Harlem born and raised, and mystery has long been your history. You’ve got your eyes on the prize and once you finish up school and investigating strange phenomena will be a fine way to pad your resume and bide your time before you make the minimum age cut for the police academy in a few years. You’re expecting a few hoaxes, but you’ve lived in this city long enough to know that some times…it’s the real deal.

Good to see you running a new one, Art!

Alright. Going to bed w/ about an hour left for voting, and tallying votes in the morning. I will be cross and frustrated if we’ve a tie.

>>6469749
>Exhausted Haunted Runaway - Ann. Spooky Playbook. A teen who ran away from home and Ann is just a name you’re wearing right now, and if you need to abandon it you have others prepared. There’s something about the city that feels useful, that feels like you should be here, and this kind of paid internship may help you figure out what’s happened…been happening to you, and maybe you’ll be able to exorcise the invasive things that haunt you, waking or asleep.

>Blood Cursed Dame - Tara. Monstrous Playbook. Turned roughly forty years ago, she still appears as a woman in her prime. She has come from England to America seeking to learn more about the night she belongs to, chasing legends of a means to check her thirst, and find the babe she thought lost the night she was turned. She writes with a careful academic diction and has long made connections into the Society for Psychical Research through Oxford audited courses. Though paler than her birth, her complexion closes some doors and opens others in New York’s stratified society.

>>6469749
>What They Seen - Leah. Panromantic or Searcher Playbook. After living and leaving an unorthodox life out west, before and behind illicit cameras, she found herself working the night shift at a rural gas station to make ends meet and witnessed the unexplainable. Flapping in from the endless dark to her shining oasis on the road investigating her and a case of soda pop spilled. She learned something about herself that night and fell, but missed the chance to snap a picture after getting lost in those glowing red eyes. Finding renewal between old passions and new guidance she’ll put her own eye to shutter once more

Our story will begin with Ann later today.

Papers are shuffled and a document is settled upon and read for a small moment before a short heavyset bespectacled man with graying hair glances up from the document over the rim of his glasses at you and nods in affirmation.

“Ah there you are, yes, Ann,” he affirms chuff and huff bookending his noticeable British accent across the desk from you, though you aren’t so versed as to be able to assign any origin point more diverse than that as you’ve read about before, “Welcome aboard to the New York Psychical Journal, Quarterly, officially your title will be student researcher, but as Mrs. Cross mentioned in the interview you will be fulfilling other roles as needed or as you make for your own initiative within our organization,”

“Yes, Director Bonnet,” you say simply, happy that in this moment you aren’t hallucinating the thing miming your words back into your ears.

Right now, since getting to the city, you’ve felt more at ease and in control. The presence of the city, of so many people, seems to quiet that which you’ve struggled with in the recent past…at least during the daytime.

You ran away from home to protect the people you love from it, and yet on this journey it has been helpful. Whispering things in your ear you couldn’t possibly know. Moving things to your benefit, your woe, or its own mischief.

Here, here you may be able to figure out what it is. It can’t go worse than when you sought the aid of a priest when you first got to the city.

“Everything is also set for your student housing stipend, and we can revisit it if you need to move closer to wherever you’re enrolling come the fall,” he nods, looking things over as a gray hand slips onto the desk unseen besides him and falls flatly onto another manilla file close to the edge.

School would eventually be hard. With everything you were able to get faked, not being enrolled after moving to the city so close to the end of term wasn’t the red flag you were worried it might be here or the other places you applied for part time and student jobs. You’re happy you got the one that interested you…though the internship at Hanover Modelling would have been the better bankroll for certain it probably wouldn’t afford you the resources or expertise you would eventually need to exploit.

You are “Ann Claremont,” it is a false name with fake documentation you obtained after getting to the city and having access to the kind of people who do that kind of thing with no questions asked.

>>6470123
Weapon Inventory
Smith & Wesson Model 39, a 9mm Pistol you took out of someone’s luggage on the bus into the city when everyone was still asleep a few weeks ago, you had a hunch it wouldn’t be missed until that person was a few states away. It's a fairly new piece though you are mostly ignorant for now as to its maintenance. 2 Harm, Close & Loud.

Attributes
Charm +1, Cool 0, Sharp +1, Tough -1, Weird +2

You are a teen girl with pained eyes and neat clothes.

Your Darkness…
>Hallucination
>Guilt
>Secrets

You are haunted by something that only you can see whether it is real or a Hallucination, born of Guilt of a Secret locked away that made you take flight from home to protect your loved ones. It wears the face of a friend who died when you were younger whom for a long time you had forgotten because of the trauma you think...and you are uncertain if it’s her ghost because it looks like you would have imagined her had you actually grown up together. For now you’re borrowing her name and she taunts you about it at times. Others whispering things you or she couldn’t know and moving things when it suits her. She is petty though, and vindictive. Sometimes she would be helpful if the mood struck her and she would move things for you, whisper into someone else’s ear...

Your Spooky Moves beyond Basic Moves, expressed through this phantom that brings your
>[Restricted/Not Accessible]
>Hunches: When something bad is happening, or is about to, where you are or aren’t…you may be aware....
>The Big Whammy: you can use your Weird instead of Tough to Kick Some Ass, convincing that which haunts you to hurt something you want it to hurt.

The gray hand moves fast, scattering the folder and its papers to the floor beside him in a flourish before it too is gone. You hope that mischief has sated her, and that she’ll not do something like that again so soon since you aren’t going to react and give her the satisfaction.

“Oh dear,” he sputters and goes to scoot back to lean down and collect the papers and photos.

One such combination, paperclipped together, moves slightly out from under the desk into your field of view by a rapidly vanishing finger. A photograph of a man torn apart, it isn’t a crime scene photo though, it’s clearly from too far away. The paper is scrawled not neatly legible, hurried notes you can’t parse before his hand slaps down meatily and drags it back.

“Anywho, ow!” he explains from under the table as it shudders, seems he bumped his head underneath his desk before he sheepishly pops back into his chair, “Tomorrow we’ll be introducing all the initial staff and getting to work on assignments,”

It is quick enough to be a pop, and you aren’t sure how he did it sheepishly beyond the radiant embarrassment pouring off of him.

>>6470124
“Our benefactor, J. R. will be making some kind of mission statement about our goals and purpose in publication,” he explains while rubbing the back of his head where you’re sure he smacked himself against the heavy wooden frame of his desk, “and going over some of the resources we hope to have up and running by midsummer. I heard you and Ms. Knight will be roommates for the summer?”

He’s referring to Mercedes. You’d met a number of people while interviewing for work here and other places, you had figured Mercedes as your competition, but instead the two of you would be working together. While chatting after your interviews with Mrs. Cross you had an inkling she was looking for a roommate and you broached the subject. She’s a few years older than you and already has a mind toward her collegiate plans.

Inkling…must you use euphemisms with yourself? Yes. Yes you do. It’s how you’re staying sane through all of this.

As for your benefactor, J.R. is apparently a nickname. He owns the newspaper that consumes most of the Guardian Building, but his name isn’t plastered around because a company he owns holds it. You haven’t met him yet, and during your interview Mrs. Cross had to take a phone call from him. All you really know for sure is that he seemed to bristle when she called him “Junior.”

“My word, Ms. Claremont are you alright,” Director Bonnet questions, “You’ve gone a bit pale?”

“I’m…I'm fine, Director. Just caught a glimpse of that picture is all,” you admit hoping to garner some sympathy.

“Oh,” he is sullen, “I had tried to snatch that back before you…my sincerest apologies. This is work from our staff photographer who has been a few steps behind a cases of interest,”

>”I should be going,” you need to get back to the apartment after that.
>Extend your hand, “May I?” she wanted you to see it for a reason and this is your job now.
>”If you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word with Mrs. Cross before I go,”

Voting is Open unto the next morn with no hard cut off until I call it. I've got D&D tonight so don't expect more than one update today. Though if you have some questions about Ms. Claremont or the initial staff along with your votes I'll be happy to proffer some information as it might be known to her or her passenger.

>>6470125
>”If you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word with Mrs. Cross before I go,”

>”If you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word with Mrs. Cross before I go,”

I am wondering if this is connected to media I should be familiar with?

>>6470125
>Extend your hand, “May I?” she wanted you to see it for a reason and this is your job now.

>>6470164
Probably.

>>6470125
>>Extend your hand, “May I?” she wanted you to see it for a reason and this is your job now.

>>6470125
>>Extend your hand, “May I?” she wanted you to see it for a reason and this is your job now.

Awake, somehow managed to hurt my ankle in my sleep, and writing.

Rolled 2, 3 + 2 = 7 (2d6 + 2)

Rolling Weird.

>Ann doesn't do "Use Magic" as a Spooky and has circumstantial access to alternative Weird basic moves.

File: Vintage 1960's office.jpg (48 KB, 500x650)

48 KB JPG

>>6470491

“May I?” you request and extend your hand toward the Director.

She nudged it into your field of vision purposefully, you might as well find out what she wanted you to know. Perhaps on equal footing to your passenger’s intentions is that this IS your job now, even if you area bit squeamish.

“I shouldn’t think to trouble you with such graphic gro-”

“Pleaes, Director Bonnet,” you muster up your serious face as best you can despite the mild nausea at the glimpse you caught, “I can’t shy away from this kind of thing if it’s the work we’re investigating or reporting on,”

You glance aside to your own thoughts.

“Besides, given Mercedes’s goals she wouldn’t let a thing like this slow her down,” you muse at your roommate, colleague, and possibly rival’s designs on becoming a police detective one day…but also feel the weight in your purse of your stolen 9mm and recall the scent of blood only you notice when it’s held, “So I can’t either,”

The Director’s expression shifts to one of concern to softer if serious understanding.

“Of course, Ms. Claremont. Quite an admirable ethic,” he takes a breath and straightens the folder he reassembled and passes it across the desk, though his understanding is underlined by a sudden weight of scrutiny.

No doubt gauging your reaction and seeing what you offer in comment on the documentation.

Folder in hand, you open it. The photo is not on top but a disheveling of the handwritten notes are. Taking a moment to sort them by the more legible at this distance script you are reading a report by staff photographer Leah Latarnik whom you have not yet met.

It’s an account of research and sources she’s building about a series of murders she and staff investigator Jonah Steele have been pursuing. Perhaps literally, as they’d been sitting on a police scanner and raced to this scene in time to poke around before the NYPD entirely shut things down. Ms. Latarnik used a fire escape an alley over to get as high a vantage point as she could and apparently waited to take her shot in time with the flashes of other arrived professional shutterbugs on the ground to avoid detection while Steele asked around. A few of the beat cops were willing to chat it up with a fellow Veteran. She notes Jonah joked with her there was a reason they have to tell sailors that “loss lips sink ships,”

This is the fifth murder like this. Specifically the fifth where someone’s rib cage was ripped open and a heart stolen. Four cuts across the man’s face and his hat crushed. The photo is between the pages now and you see it and touch it with a start as HER rotting hand suddenly clutches the wrist that holds it.

And a flash.

>Sensitive Basic Alternative Weird Move: 7. On a 7-9 you gain a Hazy impression about something important.

>>6470489
You’re seeing for a moment a distorted and muted scene through eyes that weren’t your own, for a moment feeling broader shoulders than your’s hauling a greater center of gravity than you’re accustomed to up a fire escape ladder with noticeable practiced force. Skipping ahead to the roof’s edge as eyes sharper than your own lock onto the grisly wet scene below being crowded by trench coated detectives as officers keep the rising distant echoing murmur of the crowd back and catch sight of your lanky but lean partner off to the edge of the gathering mob before your…not your’s, her long eyelashes brush against the viewfinder. That moment and perspective and in the sting of her flashbulb the alley is darker and quieter as you’re on the ground.

Earlier. The man who would later lay dead in the alleyway is breaking away from calling after the attention of a group of women unsuccessfully and lighting up a cigarette waiting for the next cutie to pass by. A voice like gravel asks from in the shadows if he can get a light. Unconcerned and maybe a bit drunk, the man says sure and heads to something in the dark approaching him. Scrapes and clacks on concrete closes in on the man going into darkness in this spinning distorted time. The clearest thing you see is the coat covered arm swiping at his face, the rough texture of dark gray blue hand with one finger too few coming to his face before the world all snaps back to the soft yellow and brown of Director Bonnet’s office.

You clear your throat and shake what you’ve seen from your eyes and return to reading.

“The first four victims were more isolated and much later at night,” you review the document after sliding the photograph to the other side of the folder, “A prostitute walking home from the Staten Island Ferry docks. A gambler in Chinatown. A beat cop in the meat packing district. A cab driver in central park. A north moving pattern before this man was killed in the early evening on the Upper West Side,”

Your Director is locked onto, his expression suddenly unreadable but…she whispers to you that he’s curious and concerned before slipping behind your back and vanishing again.

“An Anti-Jack the Ripper,” you muse and perhaps shudder, “indiscriminate, opportunistic, and messy. I doubt the police have a clear idea of the murder weapon, and to do that as quickly as everyone supposes means they’re crazy strong,”

It's there that you catch it in your periphery. In the photo a bent garbage can lid on the alley floor, an indentation in the metal that looks like a cloven hoof.

“Are they feeding the hearts to a pig?” you wonder aloud in the amused beginnings of a giggle before catching yourself in a moment of embarrassment.

“What makes you say that, Ms. Claremont?” Director Bonnet’s words are level as he leans over steepled fingers.

>>6470491
“Oh, no…nothing. Just the way this can lid is bent. In this light it looks like a hoof,” you turn the photo back to him and he adjusts his glasses honing in on where you point.

“I see, well it’s good to find something amusing amongst the macabre,” he reasons and his scrutiny and the tension of the room slackens, “Given these doings, would you prefer I call you a cab back to your apartment?”

“No, we aren’t so far north as to be on this pattern,” you concede handing the folder back to the director, “I look forward to meeting everyone tomorrow,”

“Yes, and I’m sure everyone will be keen to officially welcome yourself, Ms. Knight, Mr. Goodman, and Mr. Lee to the fold on the morrow. I didn’t think our outfit would expand quite so quickly,”

“I’m quite looking forward to working with everyone,” you smile and get up to leave.

She is standing behind him as you rise. Watching you from behind a curtain of mudstained dried hair of an imagined grave. Leaving the room, you do not see Director Bonnet pulling up the folder of your documents and paperwork before making a notation on your application. When she decides to, she may tell you what she watches him write, as she places one hand on the desk and the other on the back of his chair to lean down and look at the question he poses in your file. When he is done, in displeasure she will tilt back and spin his office chair knocking him to the floor in a confused shout.

What did he write about you to offend your passenger to the point of this vindictive act?

A question he poses underneath notation by Mrs. Cross that you were resourceful, desperate, lying about being seventeen, and definitely the kind of person the society needed in their good graces as discussed previously.

“Possibly Psychometric?”

It’s getting late into the afternoon.

>You want to go back to the apartment and decompress after letting a walk through the city soothe your irritable passenger
>You want to go to a teen lounge in midtown and embrace human presence on your wavelength that you missed by your truancy
>You want to go straight back to the apartment and see if your roommate knows a good lounge or club to just be around people
>You want to go to the scene of the last murder and poke around, see if you can get ahead on things and really prove your worth
>You want to go to an abandoned industrial space on the other side of the river to practice with your stolen 9mm.

Voting open.

What are you guys thinking about the quest so far. Ann's passenger? The colleagues you've glimpsed so far? Director Bonnet?

>>6470493
>>You want to go back to the apartment and decompress after letting a walk through the city soothe your irritable passenger

>>6470493
>You want to go to an abandoned industrial space on the other side of the river to practice with your stolen 9mm.
In Rome do as the Romans, Miss Ann. Plus I'm tired of always playing good girl from the get go.
>>6470495
I like the ghost, seems to be a good buddy. Bonnet is fishy. The culprit might be a hoofed heart eater demon.
I don't know about Ann, I'd like a visual description

>>6470528
For her new job in her current identity as Ann Claremont, she is wearing neat clothes. A blue pleated skirt below the knee, dark short sleeved blouse, blue scarf, black beret pinned to her currently dyed black hair using more easily applied and cheaper men's brush on dye. Her pained eyes are green, and by necessity she is far from a good girl and the ghost is, unbeknownst to Ann, truly the thing she fears most.

Bonnet is indeed a fishy sort, isn't he. He longs for a good basket of Fish and Chips. Soon though he will discover at least one British style pub on this isle at the center of the world and continue to find old oxford connections within driving distance.

>>6470493
>You want to go to a teen lounge in midtown and embrace human presence on your wavelength that you missed by your truancy

Standing by, next vote that doesn't continue the tie closes voting.

>>6470493
>You want to go to a teen lounge in midtown and embrace human presence on your wavelength that you missed by your truancy
TEEN!
LOUNGE!

Rolled 5, 6 + 1 = 12 (2d6 + 1)

Into the Club scene. A Dancehall in Manhattan where the kids and celebrities do the Twist...Peppermint Lounge awaits.

>Rolling Charm.

File: Joey D and the Starliters.jpg (187 KB, 640x640)

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>>6470725

As you exit the Guardian Building into the bustling streets of Manhattan, you let go of a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding as the spring around you gives way to summer. You’ve bought yourself time, time to figure everything you’ve been dealing with out. You have a place to live, money for the short term, and a reliable income through the summer. It’s the least tense you’ve felt in the weeks since you fled home.

You were so worried, but since getting to the city, answering its call…as overwhelming as it is to the senses compared to how pastoral things were in Dutchess County, your passenger is so much less aggressive. Less dangerous. At least, less random with her violence. Since getting into more crowded places she’s only seriously hurt that mugger before you could even draw your gun. Not like how she destroyed your room. Not like how she held your parents against the wall when they told you everything would be okay…sad and scared but trying to be there for you as a storm whipped and raged in the kitchen.

When you were alone in the woods and had a nightmare only to wake up to her kicking down the last tree tree. The more alone you let yourself be, the more dangerous she was. Is it because of how violent her death was when you could finally remember it past making yourself forget the trauma? Whatever the reason, in the throng of the city where you can scarcely hear yourself think sometimes is when she’s at the most peace.

And now that she’s peaceful, maybe you can be. You feel like living on a razor’s edge and on the run has made you so jumpy. Everyone notices your volatile and exhausted moods but now you think they’ll be less of a problem.

Tonight, tonight you want to dance. And as darkness claims the city, you head north. Not as far as central park, but to West 45th street for a legendary dance hall you dreamed about when it started showing up in all the magazines. Where the youth of Manhattan and celebrities from coast to coast sometimes played, drank, or danced the night away.

You want to experience being swallowed up by the moment, the collected peace and vigor of the crowd. That feeling at a pep rally or the big game. That feeling like your first time at a school dance once everyone stopped being so awkward.

The line to get in is already forming, but you’re confident in your stride. Having adjusted your skirt, made your blouse less demure, stowed your hat and gloves, and planted a confident and wicked smile on your face. With a roll of your neck you wish you’d kept your long hair…but this shorter bob will have to do. Long hair like you had, and keeping it dyed black, would have been a gross liability.

>>6470724
Signage around the bar turned dancehall promises a mystery guest later tonight, and you’re keen to be surprised.

It isn’t long before you’re in front of the bouncer. An albino giant. He’s letting people in or kicking them from the line for what seemed as arbitrary reasons until you’ve watched him for a bit. Dress code, style, teen boys close to your age unless they have money to flash. Couple of girls definitely younger than you get booted. He even barred a couple of older boys, until you realize as they leave the line adjusting their jackets that they had holsters.

“Woah there, little Miss,” his smile is like a shark as maybe six and a half feet looks down at your five three, “You sure this is your scene?”

“Yeah, I have an ID,” you slip the fake out of your purse, hoping he doesn’t see the gun, but he raises a hand to stop you and then half turns it as if he isn’t sure he should be beckoning for something else..

“I don’t need to see your paper,” the cement wall of a young man chuckles assuredly as the Harlem Jive underscoring his words, “I need to know if this is your scene, you dig?”

Pink eyes bore into your green for a moment. Debating for a second about trying to bribe him but that wasn’t the only way to get past him. A tired kicked puppy dog might as well be a crisp twenty for some. You debate trying to get your passenger to whisper…but this is your celebration and the more she sleeps just out of your line of sight the better.

>Charm 12. You’ve made a temporary ally for the duration of your opening hunt. Candy.

“Oh, come on. I’ve come such a long way,” you explain and twist at the waist while wringing your hands low, “My friends are already inside and I didn’t bring a sweater, it's already getting chilly tonight,”

“Oh sure, friends inside and not like it’s already summer,” he laughs deeply, but hasn’t sent you away just yet, “You got something better than that, green eyes/”

“Please, it’s my first week in the city and it would be so special,” opening your purse when you’re short and he’s tall would be dangerous, while fishing out your billfold he might see your gun.

“Hmmm,” he’s mulling it over but also you get the impression that he’s going to be unconvinced.

There’s a whisper in your ear.

That he’s so bored, it’s static creeping at the edge of the TV, that he wants to inject a little chaos into the night, but there’s rougher customers he can let in for that without risking his job. You don’t look like the type to cause trouble…and he wants to be seen clearing up trouble.

>>6470725
The whisper from your passenger doesn’t matter much though, as one of the many onlookers is a young woman with naturally dark hair who stepped back out of the Peppermint Lounge to seemingly have a breather behind the line the bouncer holds. You figure she’s one or two years older than you, and dressed as expensively as one might risk being at a place like the peppermint lounge.

“And where have you been, Gabriel and I have been waiting for you!” she interjects and gently pushes the living Mount Everest aside.

“Well I’ll be, I guess you do have friends waiting,” he relents, he lets you slide on by before leaving the help your act managed to convince to your aid a parting shot, “Miss Candy, you gotta let me know if you’re waiting on people,”

“Oh, Alonzo, it completely slipped my mind. I’ll be sure to remember next time,” she pats his arm and he nods like this is a normal occurrence, taking a toothpick out of his pocket to chew before turning to the rest of the line.

She pulls you by the wrist and laughs once far enough past the threshold, and amidst the dancing and the live bandstand, it’s infectious so you join her.

“Thank you!” you beam, “though why the assist,”

“You seemed alright to me, and it keeps things interesting, messing up who’s the right or wrong people let in. Besides, your first time in the city, right?” she turns to face you and releases your wrist to clasp her own hands together.

Her accent reminds you of your father’s students from the affluent part of Long Island. The bouncer’s deference and her clothes make you think you’ve made a rather well to do friend.

“Yeah, I just moved in and am starting a new job tomorrow. Seemed worth trying to celebrate,”

“Well you’ve impeccable taste choosing the Peppermint. I’m Candace,” she explains, “Candy is just a little nickname,”

“Ann,” you reply and then nod your head back toward the door as the noise of the place soothes you, “You said you and Gabriel were waiting for me?”

“My boyfriend,” she explains, “Also a nickname, though far more pretentious than mine. Not much for dancing but he enjoys seeing me have fun and listening to the music; and I enjoy him turning down all the boys and girls whose eyes he catches,”

She points out to a table toward a far wall opposite the bar, maybe half the hall’s distance from the stage where the house band, Joey Dee and the Starliters, played. He’s wearing an expensive suit, though a little ill fit on his shoulders and back that seem bulkier than his arms and face would suggest, and has a grossly handsome face beneath the sharpest blonde hair you think you’ve ever seen.

“Well then I won’t make a pass despite my impeccable taste,” you joke with her moving toward the bar as she incites immediate service in the lax space and hands you a beer bottle.

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>>6470728

>>6470726

So scandalous, you’re drinking at a club in Manhattan. Oh you could squeal, but you’re a sophisticated bitch who has garnered a new friend in kind.

“See, I knew I had a good feeling about you,” she clinks her bottle to your own before calling over the din and crowd, “I think I’ll actually introduce you then. Gabriel, I've made a friend!”

The two of you approach the table, pushing through the dance floor, where he nurses a tumbler of something amber with a cigarette balanced between his fingers on the glass’s rim. The look he gives Candace is...not nervous but…distant. Like he’s not being entirely trusting of a stranger being brought over.

“Charmed to meet you, friend. Apologies for Candy, she’s a habit of attaching herself to strays. I should know,” he raises the glass and nods to you having decided to at least be friendly, “I couldn’t get rid of her for love nor money,”

His voice is naturally melodic, and in overtures carrying a mix of upstate old money and posher British than your new boss.

“Flattery will get you nowhere Gabriel,” Candace practically coos sitting next to him and setting her drink on the table, you follow suit, “She was just having trouble with the bouncer and it felt right to help her out,”

“Far be it from me to judge your whims,” he moves to take a sip while speaking and pauses, “I’m sorry, I haven’t let you get a word in between us Miss…”

“I’m Ann,” you say like you haven’t been saying it into Hotel or Bus Station mirrors for the last few weeks, and then repeat a little louder over the sudden din of the band that drowned you out, “I’m just Ann!”


“As Candy has said, I’m Gabriel, I’m sure the two of you will have a rollicking girls night of it,” he smiles more genuinely, “Don’t let me keep you at the table,”

“Yes, I must live vicariously through your triumphant celebrations!” Candy exclaims, having tipped back her bottle during the most recent back and forth she was not an immediate part of.

“Ladies and Gentleman,” the titular Joey Dee of Joey Dee and the Starliters exclaims, “We’re taking five, but before we go we’re introducing tonight’s surprise act. I give you the one, the only, the Chubby Checker!”

The club is full of screams and joy. And for certain you twist again into the night. Your joy and dissociation into the music is shared by your passenger. And you hope it will help you hold control for a time longer.

You can’t recall much else of the night from there. You may have gone a little harder than you should have, but you remember your dreams. Crying on the curb holding her body for dear life, unable to let go...and then stars. Endless black and stars. Granite rising against the blackened firmament and the blue earth beneath.

It is broken by a smell.

>>6470727
Sizzling fat wakes you. Your roommate is in the kitchen in front of you on the ceiling. No…she is on the floor. You are upside down on her couch. Candace is next to you, right side up, leaning against Gabriel.

“Somebody had fun,” she comments and moves something around the pan and jokes, “Maybe a little too much of it. At least you didn’t throw up on the couch,”

Your passenger is beside Mercedes, trying to hide from you behind her afro. She keeps moving the spices on the counter away from her…but your roommate doesn’t notice and still picks them right up as she needs them.

“G’morning…what time is it?” you murmur and struggle to right yourself.

“Still two hours before we have to be at the office for day one,” she says and scrambles the eggs in the pan, “Your friend told me you were celebrating when I found y’all here last night. I was too, though I think I paced myself a bit better than you did,”

Sitting up successfully, you stare at Mercedes and muster what you can. First you notice a handful of feathers on the coffee table and then decide it’s unimportant.

“I saw Chubby Checker last night,” you say flatly as everything is too bright, too loud, but maybe it's the calmest you’ve been in months, “I did the twist to Chubby Checker,”

“Congratulations. Did you lose a fight with a pigeon afterwards?” she gestures to the table, “Candy was picking them out of your hair when I walked in,”

“I honestly don’t know,” this may be one of the most honest conversations you’ve had with Mercedes so far in the short time you’ve known her.

She plates herself up toast, bacon, and noticeably spiced eggs and plops next to you on the couch. Your nose crinkles…garlic and pepper. Mercedes tucks in, plate in hand, and you look at it and her. She catches you and nods.

“I’m not your mother. Not gonna scold you for being out late like I was, but that also means I’m not making you breakfast. Kitchen is free and you pitched in for those groceries so have at it,” she gestures with her fork.

Which…is fair. It is fair, but you are annoyed. Maybe not, because you don’t think you could handle those eggs right now…or normally. Is this a hangover?

“There is, however, a fresh pot of coffee for you and your friends,” the bacon crunches, “Get yourself together, feed your guests, and we can head over together, greenie,”

She may live, for now.

>>6470728
You aren’t sure if that was you or your passenger. You require the coffee and then you’ll figure out breakfast. You fix yourself something, rouse your new friends so they can see to themselves; Gabriel asking to use your phone to summon a ride after ascertaining just where in the city you all are.

Whence that is sorted…what to wear today to your first day of work. Since getting to the city, getting lodging, and getting liquid you have all new clothes besides what you ran away from home in.

The coffee is, quite frankly, godly and necessary.

>Yesterday’s neat pleated look in a different color
>Something that says more office worker; a straighter skirt, a heavier shirt and a light jacket.
>Something a bit more mod; a patterned dress, belt, and the tall boots you splurged on for yourself

You have acquired an unexpected ally in your opening Monster Hunt. How she will be useful for this Hunt is entirely up to you, or if you even use her as an ally going forward for this hunt or save this connection that you must maintain for another.

Candace or Candy. She is also, now firmly your friend.

Huh, I'm doing some long updates but I'm not mad about it.

As you can see, your choice of where to go and what to do last night would have had wildly different potential outcomes.

>>6470729
>Yesterday’s neat pleated look in a different color

And, any thoughts on your new friends?

>>6470729
>Something a bit more mod; a patterned dress, belt, and the tall boots you splurged on for yourself
>>6470767
Chad and Stacy, you can't go wrong with Chad and Stacy. Mercedes seems to be ok.

>>6470729
>Something a bit more mod; a patterned dress, belt, and the tall boots you splurged on for yourself

Writing.

In inexplicable pain this morning and hope everyone is doing better even if marginally.

File: Green Mod Fabric Pattern.png (1.07 MB, 800x533)

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>>6470901

After getting a quick breakfast together for yourself and your slowly awakening friends, Candace calming Gabriel when he momentarily panics at awakening somewhere unfamiliar, you set about getting yourself showered and dressed. You decide on a simple mod shift patterned dress that in some places matches your eyes and goes just to the knee, gradient circle patterns. It wasn’t new, but it's yours and it's a little flashy and you like it. Pairing it with a white waist belt and tall boots to match you think as many teenagers do that you’re asserting yourself and your identity in a singularly original way and only the march of time can disabuse or reinforce this notion.

No gloom. Not somber. Bright color. Alive. You’re alive, and that’s the only notion you think you want to enforce.

Candy and Gabriel are shortly on their way with the knock on the door and arrival of an apparently summoned chauffeur.

“Good morning James, thank you for the prompt arrival,” Gabriel thanks the man, who is otherwise quiet with the boy offering only a nod.

“We will have to do this again, or grab coffee,” Candy promises as she finishes collecting herself and thanking you for breakfast, leaving her own phone number in your care, “May your first day be wonderful. Claim your stake in this city,”

As they leave, Mercedes whistles whilst looking out the window.

“That white boy called a damned Rolls Royce,” she comments more to herself appreciatively then shifts cadence, “I have got to admit I’m a little jealous of how you must have partied last night. Just who are they?”

She’s put together, clad in a white collared blouse and a dark dress, scarf, vest, skirt and mary janes. There is an air of professionalism about her, and she’s shaped but not tamped down her hair.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you, other than…nice,” you muse, “Gabriel is a nickname anyway. Candace just kind of swept me up and got me in the Peppermint Lounge last night,”

“Nickname? Gabriel is a whole ass goddamn name. And the Peppermint? Makes sense you got to see Checker. Hmmm, she got you past the bouncer then. You know that place is a mob front, the Genovese own the place,”

She sips from her cup as she scrutinizes looking down at the street from her vantage point at the window. Ever the detective she’s working things out. You’ve a tinge of worry that one day she’ll turn that eye on you…to find you out. Your passenger looms in the kitchen, hand rising toward the knife block before you shoot her a look and the hand recedes and she discorporates to your vision like so much smoke. Mercedes turns to face you.

>>6470900
“Those bouncers are basically auditioning to become enforcers. Was there anything specific about the guy she got you past?” she questions.

“Like, a few. Tall. He definitely wasn’t Italian. Black…but albino,” you parse out.

“Alonzo,” she curses into her mug, “Nope, not my mystery. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready. I even have a heads up on one of the investigations,” you offer for a moment grabbing your bag and making for the door while your roommate puts her mug in the sink.

“Well don’t keep me in suspense,” she meets you by the door before looking back at the coffee table, “Oh, I’m gonna clean your pigeon fight trophies up befo- oh. Guess one of them beat me to it,”

“See, they’re nice. Well, Ms. Latarnick and Mr Steele are investigating a series of weird murders,” the two of you begin out for the day.

You clue Mercedes into what you know without divulging what your passenger showed you of events. She seems unphased and serious about the matter, and praises you for being to look at the hard candy even if it made you uncomfortable.

It isn’t long before the two of you enter The Guardian Building, the majority of it is dedicated to its titular newspaper, with the recent repurposing of the penultimate storage floor and remodeled top floor for the purposes of the Society for Psychical Research’s Manhattan office and publishing effort. The foyer of a Newspaper office is a busy and chaotic place, more so that its abuzz with rumor that an owner would be visiting as you already well knew.

A short elevator ride later the two of you cross the threshold into the office where the Director waits to usher you into the conference room where a well suited man with a neat moustache and fading blonde hair awaits at the head, reading the morning edition of what you assume is his own Newspaper. The mysterious J.R.

Mrs. Cross is already there as well, in rather understated black clothes and a broad hat. Unusual, but J.R. and Director Bonnet pay no mind. Also at the table is someone unfamiliar to you, a Korean man sitting uncomfortably in a grey tweed suit with bowtie who offers a distracted but friendly nod to you as newcomers to the table. You hope its not too forward to assume this is Mr. Lee.

>>6470901
You recognize Mr. Steele on arrival; he is much more imposing in person than when being looked at from on high. Though not nearly as broadly built, he is taller than the bouncer from last night and clad in a simple overcoat and plain suit and tie, and your passenger warns salt and the memory of violence trails in his wake. Accompanying him, you assume from your memory behind her eyes, is Ms. Latarnik; a woman not much taller than you with her hair in an updo helped by a paisley bandana wearing a light jacket over a collared blouse and denim overalls holding in a prodigious and dense figure. She is beaming in smiles and short hellos whilst Mr. Steele has a singular smile that shifts in familiarity when he sees the Korean man.

“Young-ho, haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” the giant extends a hand.

“Not since Seoul, Jonah. I didn’t realize I’d be seeing a familiar face,” Mr. Lee seems far more comfortable, “I thought you were a lifer with your Navy,”

“Got a little past pension and decided I wanted a change of scenery with fewer waves,” Jonah Steele chuckles, “It’s funny, I actually took this job because it reminded me of your stories,”

Whilst the old friends agree to talk about old times later, a barrel chested man with a cropped beard, crew cut, yellow shirt, creme pants, suspenders, and a white labcoat folded over one arm with a box in the other strides into the room. Strides. He carries a presence and optimism that makes your passenger hiss at him from beneath the table.

“Goodmoring,” he booms with his inside voice, carrying a wave of cheer, “I brought doughnuts,”

This must be, you think from the labcoat, Dr. Goodman. Director Bonnet sidles in after him and closes the double doors to the room, J.R.

“Right, this is everyone assembled. So let us begin this inaugural meeting of the first complete staff day of the New York Psychical Journal, Quarterly,” Director Bonnet claps his hands and stands beside J.R. “I’ll let our esteemed backer say a few words,”

With the newspaper down there is something familiar about the man you cannot entirely place. He regards the lot of you with a serious if detached demeanor, as though he is addressing a board he answers to instead of his own employees. Immediate, serious, and frank.

>>6470902
“This project is assumed to operate at a total fiscal loss,” and that gets your attention and almost everyone else’s almost immediately, “This journal is neither expected nor intended to generate a profit. It is done to satisfy my curiosity and the curiosity of the Psychical Research Society of a world largely unseen. We will document our findings and publish them as factually as we can manage. Private Grants have been arranged that would keep this space and a team thrice this size funded through the next decade. This is not a desperate search for the sensational headline, and I expect at multiple turns we will have investigations that pan out more mundane than what it is we seek. I want to make this clear, and that I am not expecting the impossible from any of you out of the gate. We each have our own reasons for being here and in pursuit of the things we pursue, and I would ask you share as much of them as is comfortable for you to do so whilst you formally introduce yourselves in this board room. To start, I am J.R. and I value the relative anonymity I can maintain from my wealth, my concern and motivations in this matter is for the security of my family and my legacy,”

Succinct. Concerning. Serious. Threatening? Supplicant? Your passenger starts to crawl out from under the table and approaches him, perhaps intent on sliding his wallet out to the floor for later…but she stops. You stop for a moment, your breath catches as Mrs. Cross meets your eyes directly from across the table before she rapidly glances to Mercedes and Mr. Lee.

She, the passenger, steps back a bit and regards you through her messy curtain of hair, and sinks into the outer wall. Director Bonnet is about to begin his introduction.

When your turn comes…what will you say? What will you risk to say besides the name you’re wearing? What motivation or concern will you share?

>Lie that you’re just happy to be here and it was the most interesting job offer
>You’d rather not say much about yourself and why you’re here.
>You’ve experienced a nonspecific phenomenon you can’t explain and hoped this would help you find answers
>You’ve experienced a ghost and haunting and hoped this could help you understand the experience
>You’re actively haunted by a vindictive spirit and hoped this job could help you figure out what to do next
>The vindictive petty spirit of your dead childhood friend haunts you, drove you to come to NYC, and possibly pushed you toward this job and you don’t actually know what you’re doing.
>You ran away from home to protect your family from the destructive petty vindictive spirit of your dead childhood friend that haunts you and calmed down as you got closer to the city and you want to exploit the resources offered to get answers or peace in no particular order.

>>6470904
>You’ve experienced a ghost and haunting and hoped this could help you understand the experience

>>6470904
>You’re actively haunted by a vindictive spirit and hoped this job could help you figure out what to do next

I just want to say, you guys did choose the character that would make this hardest to write without giving away the game. Granted, two of the others who've made it in the story are in the same boat but not on the same level.

Continue on, you beautiful spooky bastards. Continue this vote.

>>6470904
>You’re actively haunted by a vindictive spirit and hoped this job could help you figure out what to do next
Just the right amount of info. A girl like her wouldn't spill the beans like that.
>>6470984
You can do it, OP. I'm already getting fond of Ann.

Rolled 6, 4 + 2 = 12 (2d6 + 2)

Alright rolling weird.

Writing in progress paused, playing FF14 with my oldest bros and eating chinese food.

This should be a lengthy update when it is ready this evening. Thoughts so far on the assembled cast before their full introductions?

>>6471061
They surely pick my interest. I wonder if Ann can get close to Immortal Sexwan. She might be a "good" influence for her, she could learn a lot from her since they both seem afflicted by curses they don't understand.

>>6471065
Immortal Sexwan? You mean Mrs. Cross?

>>6471072
Tara from the monstrous book.
She's there right? Otherwise I'm stupid.

>>6471073
Oh, wait, she isn't. Shit.

>>6471074
Tara is Mrs. Cross actually. You're good.

“I am your Director, Franklin Bonnet , Esq. I studied at Oxford and for most of my adult life I have been a member in good standing with The Society. My interest in the paranormal, supernatural, and psychic stems from a violent encounter and rescue I experienced as a fresh Bachelor with what I most ardently believe were Vampires,” Director Bonnet explains before taking his seat next to J.R. while a strange quiet takes the room before your benefactor speaks up.

“Now, Director Bonnet’s lived and anecdotal experience will not be mocked in these halls. Nor will any of your’s, if you have doubts about your own stability in the stories you relate I have a psychologist and psychiatrist on retainer among the medical services that will be provided to any of you during your tenure with us which we will be going over later,” he explains while your passenger whispers to you that he is indeed treating it like a board meeting as you earlier thought.

There is an air about the room of tension that slowly diminishes. Mercedes is eyeing everyone up for certain. Ms. Latarnick seems positively pleased as punch and rather self assured. Mrs. Cross stands next. You didn’t quite know what she did, she wasn’t a receptionist and she seemed so young…but there is a placidness about her that unsettles you.

“My name is Tara Cross. I am your Administrating Editor and Field Coordinator underneath Director Bonnet. Circumstantially I will serve emergency roles in the field,” there is a deadly calm to her voice here as her eyes take a predatory glean whilst looking over the assembly taking their measure, “These emergencies are not limited to covering absences, but also emergencies of life and death. I was the rescue component of Director Bonnet’s encounter and I am here as a favor to old friends and to seek something taken from me when I was claimed by the night,”

Wait, hold on. Director Bonnet is at least in his fifties. She looks to be in her twenties. Is she implying she believes she’s-

>Weird Move Empath: 12! Max possible success.

You don’t shy away from her eyes and direct your passenger to try and get one of her reads on Mrs. Cross. She responds more immediately to your direction than normal.

Director Bonnet is nodding along with a smirk taking in the room. Your benefactor remains otherwise stone faced as Mrs. Cross retakes her seat as your passenger strides forward out of the wall and walks as a phantom through the table directly toward the proclaimed vampire, breaking your line of sight to her and trying to look directly into her eyes.

And stays there, confused.

“Well if that’s the case I’d love to review a blood sample, Doctor Elliot Goodman!” the man’s presence makes you flinch, not the sound.

>>6471124
When he starts speaking…being…he floods the room. You flinch, but your passenger doesn’t as she stands mid table in front of Mrs. Cross whose attention is now firmly on Dr Goodman.

“I’ve dabbled in many of the sciences but my main areas of practice are biology and mechanical engineering. My interests in branching into parapsychology happened after I electrocuted myself building an ethical power harvesting enclosure for Electric Eels I intended to patent and the wife decided I needed a safer area of study and income so I thought to ply my talents here for field work and research,” he opens the box of doughnuts he brought and offers them about.

You take one of the cakey morsels. Other hands too reach for the box, some passing through your frozen passenger. Mrs. Cross does not.

“Well, I’m Leah,” says Ms. Latarnick who has taken her own doughnut and an additional one after the self proclaimed vampire waves off the offer, “Leah Latarnick. I’m a photographer and have had the joy of being an early hire working with Mr. Steele these last couple of weeks,”

She pauses with the vanishing of her first doughnut and thumbs a few crumbs across her glossed red lips before shooting a glance down toward J.R. Before smiling deeply and continuing. You finally notice her makeup is in decided contrast to her manner of dress as mechanic chic.

“I was out in California for a few years doing photography studies in physique, men’s interests, my interests, and whatever caught my fancy before I lost my steam and passion…but after moving back home in West Virginia I saw something that woke me back up, a creature in the night. Seeing it shook me to my core…and I couldn’t get a picture of it,”

She sniffles and pulls a handkerchief to dab her eyes and the crumbs of her second doughnut.

“So now I’m looking to catch a hunky monster on the business end of my camera,” she finishes and curtsies.

Strange woman, to say the least. As she plops back into her chair, her aforementioned partner rises.

“Former Petty Officer First Class Jonah Steele, US Navy,” he says simply, hat in his hand, “Recently decided to get out after over a decade of service. I got interested in this stuff from knowing Mr. Lee when we were friends back during the Korean War and thought it would be interesting,”

“Lee Young-Ho,” the man in tweed explains, “To reiterate the pronunciation is Yi. I am a photographer and a longtime hobbyist in rumor, urban myth, folklore, and sightings of unknown phenomena. I served as a Sailor in the Republic of Korea’s Navy during the war in my home country and during that time became friends with Mr. Steele. I’m very excited to be working here and with all of you,”

>>6471127
“My name is Mercedes Knight,” she straightens her skirt as she stands and takes the room in with confidence and settles one hand on her hip, “I’m an amateur detective who has helped put multiple threats to my community behind bars and am just one of your research and field interns. I know this city well, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows everything north of 86th better than me. Don’t count me out because I’m young, because I’ve seen things in this city that defy explanation,”

She nods firmly and sits down. Glancing at you with a smile as if to say that now it’s your time to shine. So you rise. Nodding to the collected table including your passenger who is now standing back and to the side of Mrs. Cross, staring at her in abject confusion. Okay…you’re going to try a little honesty today. Not total honesty...but enough.

“I’m Ann Claremont and I’m actively haunted by a VINDICTIVE,” you stress the word to your passenger, “spirit and I sought this job out to help figure out what to do next about it…as one of your research and field interns. I just know I’m gonna be great at research, I love reading,”

Looking over to Mercedes she’s giving you a bit of a confused look, before shrugging. The rest of the table took your statement well and you still have their attention. Last in the room and you still have their attention. You sit down.

Your passenger walks to you. No shuddering or flitting or disappearing and reappearing she walks right up to you and whispers to you that she cannot read Mrs. Cross at all. No secrets under the surface, no thoughts astray, no nothing. She actually seems distressed, and you’re feeling it.

“With that, I’ve an appointment downstairs. I’ll be returning for a luncheon with all of you. For now you all have a short break before Director Bonnet goes over active and potential cases ongoing. Now then, If you’ll excuse me,” J.R. rises and walks purposefully from the board room.

Conversations are starting to break out and others are temporarily leaving the room…you…

>Need to have an actual conversation with your passenger, to the bathroom
>Want to ask Mrs. Cross about her claims.
>Mercedes is debating asking you something, might as well engage her first
>Want to ask Ms. Latarnik about her corpse photography you saw
>Wait to see if anyone asks you about your ghost

>Mercedes is debating asking you something, might as well engage her first
>Wait to see if anyone asks you about your ghost

I am very interested in how this story and world develops. I'm surprised one or two of the characters haven't been recognized yet.

>>6471128
>Want to ask Mrs. Cross about her claims.
I say I was interested in the vampire so I'll go for it. Still, Mercedes seems better than I thought at first. I wonder what she saw during her investigations.

>>6471128
>>Mercedes is debating asking you something, might as well engage her first

Voting still open, my day is out of whack because urgent care sent me to the ER.

> my day is out of whack because urgent care sent me to the ER

Oof. Feel better.

Voting closed. I am Home. Got crutches. Injected with some hours of anti inflammatory. Picked up nuggies for my sweetie. Writing.

>>6471285
Sounds painful. Glad to hear that you're better. I was worried that the curse got more aggressive or something.

Dr. Goodman swings into conversation with Mrs. Cross as Mr. Steele and Mr. Lee get caught up while Ms. Latarnick seems to gossip about something with Director Bonnet. Your passenger, after looking worriedly over at Mrs. Cross again, tells you that Mercedes is pointedly not looking at you right now but wants to ask you about your claim.

There is a decided annoyance by your passenger at you. Vindictive ghost? Vindictive! She WILL show you vindictive.

Somewhere else.

Away from the lady who she can’t reach. Who she can’t read.

That leaves you to consider your roommate sitting next to you and her question she isn’t turning to you about.

“Go ahead,” you sigh and sink back into your chair a bit.

“Go ahead what?” she says confidently while maintaining her upright posture looking about the room and is contemplating grabbing one of the last doughnuts, really anything not to think about what she’s thinking about.

Your passenger relays in whispers as her head lolls between the two of you and you feel the pressure of her hand on the back of your chair and see her other hand is on the back of Mercedes. More hands appear on some of the chairs, now and previously empty, and start in slow and subtle fashion to gently turn them. Though not your own, and not Mercedes’s. There is just the benign pressure to tip it back that isn’t strong enough to do so right now.

“Ask,” as you speak this time you let your passenger push your chair to the side to face Mercedes, “I know you have a question,”

No one is paying attention to the two of you right now, and Mercedes has noticed the other chairs near you spinning and then stopping to face the two of you along this side of the table.

She’s gently pushing Mercedes’s chair too now, though her feet are firmly on the floor.

“Do you really have a ghost problem?” she says while looking straight ahead, actively ignoring the things you know she is seeing and feeling.

“I said so, I wasn’t lying,”

“So. You brought a ghost into my apartment?”

“I mean, I’d have brought a ghost anywhere. She won’t leave me alone,” you explain.

“It's doing this thing, right now?” she sets her jaw, chewing the thought, “You making it do this?”

“Afraid it is doing this thing, right now,” you sigh, “And I’m just along for the ride, it doesn’t listen to me often,”

“She, good to know that spooks a bitch,” her chair shudders with force and and she holds composure and her breath grows sharp, “She the one who kept moving my spices this morning?”

“Didn’t realize you saw that,” you question, confused, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Course I saw,” she huffs and her cadence shifts, “Think I’m gonna acknowledge that shit? Only encourages it,”

“...so you’ve seen stuff like this before?” you ask hopefully.

>>6471305
“Maybe I have. Maybe my grannies or auntie told me stories growing up. Maybe I’ve seen worse,” she digs her feet in, “She gonna be trouble at home?”

The shudder of her chair stops.

“I don’t know,” you offer, perhaps afraid that you’ve lost the shelter you’ve only just found with Mercedes since you left home, “More people makes it calmer,”

“She the trouble had you running to the big city?”

“I don’t know what you’re impl-” she turns to face you with a start.

You don’t need a whisper to read her expression. It's written as clear as day.

Really?

“Thirteen year old little white girl pretending she grown, lyin’bout her age, tryin’ to get a job, and asks about being roomies with cash up front from her duffle?”

…

“I’m fourteen,” you look away, cross your arms, and mutter to the side.

“Well, isn’t that the important distinction,” she nods sarcastically and takes a calming breath before turning to reach out onto the table, sliding the doughnut box over and taking the last one, her voice taking a more professional cadence once again.

Ms. Latarnick pauses in her wild anecdotal expressions to Director Bonnet at that movement and looks crestfallen before launching back into whatever bawdy frivolity she was in the midst of recounting.

She breaks that last doughnut in half and turns her chair back to face you, offering half to you. Not pressing the issue of her insinuation. Letting her question about your running die in the unspoken space, for now.

It's a tense moment where she wonders if she was too harsh and trying to think of something more than just the quiet of her peace offering.

“So what are some of the things you’ve seen?” you question and take a bite of your half doughnut and continue through it a mess, “doing your investigations?”

She smiles.

“Seen a Vampire get dusted,” she explains with a certain cockiness to gauge if you think that’s cool.

“Dusted?” you question.

>>6471306
“Huge stake through the heart, that’s mahogany not porterhouse, burst into burning dust,” she chuckles, “And last year, a real ass goddamn Nazi tried to blow up a rec center with some creepy ass twilight zone kids making things spontaneously combust,”

The alleged Vampire in the room is looking at Mercedes with interest. Had she heard?

“That’s crazy what about -”

“Alright Ladies and Gentlemen. I believe we should begin going over two story leads and an ongoing investigation,” Director Bonnet claps and takes the seat where J.R. had been sitting before he left the conference room.

Taking three stacks of folders from a previously unseen briefcase

“To start with, this is an investigation Mr. Steele and Ms. Latarnick have been covering,”

You know something about this one already…during the briefing you.

>Pay attention to this information again and gauge how the others react to things
>Actively engage and participate with questions and follow ups.
>Not pay attention and spiral a bit about all the ways living with Mercedes could go bad
>Not pay attention and think about how maybe things living with Mercedes will go well
>Not pay attention and worry about mom and dad…

>>6471307
>Pay attention to this information again and gauge how the others react to things
Getting an idea of how our coworkers react to this kind of stuff might be important.

>>6471307
>>Actively engage and participate with questions and follow ups.

>>6471307
>Pay attention to this information again and gauge how the others react to things
>Actively engage and participate with questions and follow ups.

This has gotta stay open overnight. While I'm recovering from this I can't sit at my desk for long periods of time comfortably. Gotta dig out something old and setup elsewhere. Tomorrow.

>>6471307
>Actively engage and participate with questions and follow ups.
Time to get serious to not fuck this job up by acting like a kid.

>>6471307
>Pay attention to this information again and gauge how the others react to things

Rolled 5, 2 = 7 (2d6)

Looks like we’re trying to lock in and lock in hard to do both of these things.

Rolling COOL for Act Under Pressure.

>>6471614
The QM now offers you a worse outcome, a hard choice, or a price to pay…hmmm. I can’t think of a hard choice…so I offer a binary.

>Worse Outcome - Spreading yourself too thin you have made yourself seem immature.
>Price to Pay - Your Passenger is willing to help you manage your split attentions…for a price.

>>6471619
>Worse Outcome - Spreading yourself too thin you have made yourself seem immature.
…we’re a teenage girl. How is seeming immature a problem, exactly?

>>6471619
>>Worse Outcome - Spreading yourself too thin you have made yourself seem immature.

>>6471619
>Worse Outcome - Spreading yourself too thin you have made yourself seem immature.
They leave you no choice.Throw a tantrum until they recognize your full fledged mental development and ample life experience.

Okay. Waiting for the craptop I wrote EMQ to recharge or for my foot to feel well enough to sit at my desk. Struggling to write things up on my phone.

Direct communication note, I already know one of you already figured out what’s going on and who you picked. Has anyone else? Place your answer in spoiler text or spoiler picture?

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>>6471732

It’s vaguely alive!!!

>>6471716
It is not yet alive. Let this be a lesson, turn old tech you aren’t regularly using over periodically. Or at the very least disable the wifi connection when you know it’s gonna be off a while as not to get stuck in endless updates. Its 100% 4 times now.

>>6471706
My heart wants to say it’s Cloak and Dagger, and we’re specifically Tandy. My mind is too busy begging to ask why you decided to smash Ann Nocenti and Chris Claremont’s names together for a pseudonym when neither of them had a hand in their creation. My mouth is laughing at the accent you gave Misty.

>>6471733
My mind is stupid and forgot Jean existed. Could be her, too.

>>6471732
Windows is simply crap. Not your fault, QM

>>6471734
>>6471733
...I did not come up with the name Iron Man Armored Adventures Season 2 Episode 17

>>6471750
>it’s from the Teen Tony show
This somehow makes things more confusing…

>>6471766
A character you have named appears, using the name Annie Claremont as an alias only to have it confirmed at episode's end whomst've'd they really are. It was either going to be that or the Karen Grant name from Ultimate X

Wait until you figure out who our roommate is.

Update is written. I just gotta tend to some errands this morning first then its getting posted up when I get home.

You sit up a little straighter for the Director’s presentation. Even though you’ve gotten to a tentative understanding with your roommate, you still absolutely bristle that she thought you were thirteen.

Thirteen?! No. You have understanding. Mercedes has cemented herself as someone willing to look out of you…even if she is going to ask questions. She’s a detective, of course she’ll ask questions. You were worried about it this morning, and she isn’t put off by your ghost.

Well, you need to really do your best here this morning.

You need to focus. On the work. On your teammates. You need to be engaged. Ask questions. See what they’re thinking of you.

“Over the course of the last month and a half a series of murders has been climbing the city. We don’t have access to all of their names but we know when, where, and have a baseline understanding of whom they were,” he begins, “The only consistent pattern observed is the point to point northbound climb and the grotesque removal of victims hearts,”

You nod along as the folders are passed out. Opening to read and gauging the reactions of newcomers Mr. Lee and Dr. Goodman.

Dr. Goodman is unphased, even by the photograph, and takes the documents in stride. Mr. Lee is certainly shocked though seems to dive straight into the details written pushing the photo aside. You aren’t so concerned with Mrs. Latarnick and Mr. Steele given this is the work they compiled.

“A prostitute walking home after taking the Staten Island Ferry. A known gambler in Chinatown, his winnings for the evening untouched. A beat cop in the meat packing district, we’ve newly learned his firearm was crushed. The cab driver was found in central park, his cab turning up yesterday hidden by shrubbery off of west and adding to a noticed point of interest previously brought up by Ms. Claremont. Lastly, the man photographed before you,”

“And what did our mod little intern notice?” Ms. Latarnick leans forward.

“It must have been that hoof print!" you offer quickly and with some excitement turning toward director Bonnet, “they are feeding hearts to pigs!”

Mr. Steele & Goodman regard you with some amusement. Mrs. Latarnick turns toward Director Bonnet.

“I don’t recall any hoof prints in the blood,” Ms. Latarnick comments for the photo she took.

“It isn’t,” offers Mr. Lee, who has returned to scrutiny of the photo, “In the lid of the trash can,”

“Some Pig,” Mercedes comments, regarding you and remembering your conversation about your review from earlier and revealing that like you she has also read Charlotte’s Web.

“Did you notice anything besides a pig print?” questions Dr. Goodman, looking at the photo with care and scrutiny.

>>6472057
“That is the thing which she brought to my attention that now connects back to a prior victim. A reporter from downstairs aware of our activities passed it along,” Director Bonnet explains whilst cleaning his glasses, “A cloven hoof print significantly denting the passenger side door of our late musher’s medallioned car,”

He pauses and regards a confusion in the room from everyone except for Mrs. Cross.

“Musher is London slang for cabbie,” he explains himself quickly.

“Strong enough to dent a cab and with a cloven hoof,” Mrs. Cross offers, otherwise unreadable, “It is likely no pig, it matches some descriptions of the Jersey Devil,”

“I’m unfamiliar with that,” questions Mr. Lee as Mrs. Cross turns to him and he is about to say something further before you-

“Its a really cool legend from across the river,” you offer with a start and slap your hands on the table as you stand, “A monstrous demon sighted across the pine barrens and as far north as Passaic County!”

“So that is local folklore then, that means it could still be an alien or cryptozoological,” Mr. Lee finishes.

“Indeed, though it was never known to eat hearts,” reasons Dr. Goodman.

You are definitely contributing, but it feels like you’re being glossed over.

“There’s a short list of guys who could dent a car I can think of, could be special shoes or gloves to send a message with a hoof? Don’t know what the driver or the latest guy did…but I can think of any number of reasons a pro, a cop, and a gambler would be gotten by one of the mobs,” Mercedes offers, flipping through the papers, “Could be a new enforcer establishing a brand,”

“And would you consider this short list of people to be normal?” questions Mrs. Cross.

“No ma’am,” she replies, “and Ann met one of them yesterday,”

“I did?” you break from your near pout.

“The bouncer from the Peppermint,” Mercedes explains, “He’s freak strong, and tough. Know people who’ve broken hands against him like a wall,”

You sit back down. And think. Whatever killed that man was…it sounded like stone on stone. But you saw things…you can’t quite remember if it was from the murdered or murderer’s perspective but it had rough gray skin, not shock white. And that Albino had five fingers on each hand.

Director Bonnet seems interested in this line across the table. Ms. Latarnick is glancing between you and Mercedes in curiosity, taking your comparative measure and judging the two of you.

>>6472059
“Regardless, after our luncheon with J.R. I would like Ms. Latarnick and Mr. Steele to continue their line of investigation. Ms. Knight will be joining a daytime retread of the prior incident sites; and perhaps tonight you can stand by again into the small hours north of the park should another incident happen,” Director Bonnet explains, “Ms. Knight, though it is the physical area of your familiarity I do not expect you to join this stake out into the morning,”

“Understood. Maybe a few folks will have found their courage,” Mr. Steele comments while holding his chin in review of the photo he himself managed to stand in, “And share a bit more,”

“I’ll make sure the high frequency is warmed up and ready for tonight,” Ms. Latarnick sighs, “And see if I can find anymore of these hoof imprints at the old sites as well,”

“Additionally we have two other leads on cases we’re considering; there have been a rash of storefront robberies in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens where multiple victims and bystanders have significant gaps in their memory. As though they blinked, and both time had passed by and a noticeable amount of their inventory was missing. Secondly, strange phenomenon has been reported to our outfit directly by the Hanover Modeling Agency, and they suspect their offices are haunted,” the director explains, Hanover…you interviewed with them as a potential internship before you got the interview here, “I’d like Mr. Lee & Dr. Goodman to get themselves settled into their spaces this afternoon and to go over the initial case files I’ve assembled for both, and assist later with some preparations in our physical research and materials library,”

“And what would you like me to do, Director?” you question.

“I would like you to assist Mrs. Cross in the initial unpacking, preparation, and assembly of our physical research and materials library,”

You glance across as Mrs. Cross…this would be your first opportunity to speak with her privately since your interview, but you’re also interested in what’s going on out there in the field.

“After work, you want to go to the Peppermint again? I’ve got a few questions for Alonzo Lincoln and I’d like some backup,” Mercedes offers.

Apparently that your opinions on not going to the field are plain on your face.

>You’ll help Mrs. Cross out and get the skinny on her
>Note that you still have phone numbers from interviewing at Hanover for their internship, and still know some of the staff.
>Contest your assignment, you think you’d be a help revisiting the murder sites.

& Mercedes inquiry of talking up Alonzo Lincoln tonight?

>Yes
>No

>>6472060
>You’ll help Mrs. Cross out and get the skinny on her
If she gets her good side, she can understand the ghost and know what kind of place she got into.

Go with Mercedes to talk to the big guy.

>>6472060
>You’ll help Mrs. Cross out and get the skinny on her
>Yes

Rolled 5, 2 + 2 = 9 (2d6 + 2)

Writing

And more weird.

Finally caught up. At least the vote went how I would have voted here.

You nod at Director Bonnet’s assignment for you. While you want to go into the field or get ahead on the other mystery of the Hanover case, because you are curious why that modeling agency suddenly thinks it’s haunted, you knew going into this job that you were going to be an intern and going to be doing office and grunt work. Prepping for this “Physical Materials & Research Library” space will also probably be full of helpful information for the future.

As for Mercedes’s inquiry, you offer her a sharp nod. You would like to go back to the Peppermint…even if only to have a chat with that bouncer, Alonzo. You need to rule him out from the vision your passenger gave you.

“I’m so excited to help with the Library later this afternoon,” Dr. Goodman is practically bouncing in his seat, “I know it's supposed to be a surprise and J.R. wanted to explain it, but it is going to be so amazing,”

“No offense but I’m a little wary about something that excites an egg head that much,” Mr. Steele offers.

“No, no offense. I’m just very easily excitable and this, I’m just very keen on this. I read about the early development a few years ago and I should really shut my trap now,” Dr. Goodman laughs a bit nervously, “At least before I get myself in trouble,”

“I can see why your wife wanted you to stop playing with eels,” Ms. Latarnick chuckles.

“It was just an unsafe project. With my self funded tinkerings I have a tendency to let things get away from me and I cut what should have been priority 1…proper sealant and insulation,” he sighs, “I do so much better working where I’m accountable to others,”

“Ah, so you aren’t a mad scientist, just absent minded,” Mr. Lee observes, “I think I will like working with you,”

There knock at the door, slid open to reveal what appears to be building services.

“We have some catering to put out for your luncheon, if you could clear your conference room for a few minutes,”

“Certainly, thank you,” your Director rises and bids everyone back unto the main office floor.

“So, the wall thing with Alonzo?” you question Mercedes in the hall, “Is he just that tough or would you say he’s made of rock or something like that?”

The elevators open to two push carts and attendants wheeling past into the conference room with the woman who bid you vacate whilst all of you mill about in the open area of the office floor.

“Something like that,” Mercedes explains after a moment of thought, “Why are you asking?”

“A very specific hunch given to me by my friend,” you explain, “Though it was gray, and he’s white as snow,”

“Won’t hurt to ask him either way, he tries to stay up to date on players and up and comers like himself. If it is him, he won’t want to lash out in public at the Peppermint, he’ll try to play clever,” Mercedes considers, “So if it’s not in a straight fight with him, I can work with him trying to play clever,”

>>6472524
The Elevator opens again and J.R. returns, followed by two men. One is an older man with, at a glance, the same hair dye you’re using on his combed hair, thick mustache, and prominent but not bushy eyebrows carrying a brief case. The other you recognize from this morning, the chauffeur Gabriel summoned for himself and Candace, he carries two large suitcases with some effort.

“That way James,” J.R. gestures down one of the side halls to the man, “Leave them by the door labeled research. I expect I’ll need you on standby to leave in about two hours. You’re free to join us for luncheon or make your own arrangements with you standing per diem,”

“Yes sir,” offers James before going to leave materials you will doubtless be tending too after lunch, you wonder of J.R. 's possible connection to Gabriel when you finally see it in his face.

“You have the Starsmore Manuscript,” Mrs. Cross asks of J.R. as she pulls him away from the rest of your assembly, “I am keen to read it,”

Luckily for yourself, your passenger is willing to eavesdrop on your behalf…somehow. You aren’t sure of the particulars.

“It and about half of the other accounts and rare books on appearances of Tepes you requested and one artifact from that incident,” J.R. sighs and lights himself a cigarette, “They came at some expense from multiple collectors, though for the time being I’m keeping Jack Starsmore’s journal, you understand,”

You look between him and Mrs. Cross from nearby. While she is seemingly immune to your passenger’s whispers and ability to find insight…he isn’t. She tells you that he is awash with worry of strange portents of the apocalypse, as it relates to his son…which is strange but seems in line with his cryptic words about why he’s funding this kind of enterprise. If a bit concerning.

It may be worth asking Gabriel about that later, and if this J.R. is his father or Uncle. You don’t just want to assume his crazy rich father believes he’s involved in some kind of end times prophecy.

Rich people are weird and latch onto some strange things…then again you are the girl with the ghost, your passenger reminds you. Touche.

“Perfectly fine. Between what has already been delivered and these we’ll have a solid start to arranging the library today,” Mrs. Cross explains, “Both for general research and both of our personal projects,”

“The intersection of which continues to concern me,” J.R. takes a drag, it seems Director Bonnet was keeping his distance from the man for this exchange, as your passenger notes that scenes of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula are bubbling up in the man’s fears.

The intersection of Vampires and what? I mean that makes sense he’s thinking about Dracula, but you aren’t sure what the name Tepes has to do with it…

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>>6472531

>>6472525
“The luncheon is ready,” explains the woman from before as the attendants wheel carts out of the room, “Just call my desk and I’ll send someone up to clear things when you’re ready Mr. J.R.,”

Everyone files back into the conference room where an absolutely luscious amount of premium cold cuts, fancy cheeses, fruits, vegetables, spreads, and a few bottles of wine on ice are on offer.

James is the last to file in, having completed his errand, and removes his driving gloves and hat by the coathook at the conference room door.

“As we enjoy this lunch, I wish to announce something I have acquired for some of the research I expect we’ll be doing for this journal,” J.R. begins, “The final prototype model of the currently under construction Ferrante Atlas, project code name Clymene,”

“That is…interesting,” offers Mr. Lee with some reverence, as you look over to Dr. Goodman who is practically vibrating.

“Discrete Germanium transistors,” the man of two fisted science beams like one of your cousins unwrapping a Howdy Doody play set, “One-level-store active memory. Magnetic Tape storage. Oh this is going to be so fun,”

“Now, could y’all break that down a little bit or are y’all literally speaking Greek?” questions Ms. Latarnick, “Literally, Atlas is a Greek thing, right?”

“Clymene is a Super Computer, which I believe will be useful in our cause,” explains J.R.

“Are we doing code cracking or calculating?” questions Mr. Steele, “I’m not too sure what good a Super Computer can do for us?”

“I’ve been writing a few yards of program to do things like photographic enhancement, pattern recognition, and a sort, tag, and search function to make microfilm research faster,” Dr. Goodman is like a kid in a candy store.

You’ve read a little bit about computers. Huge things with vacuum tubes that helped do big gun angles during World War II. You’ve seen them doing ridiculous things in Science Fiction movies, but were under the impression that in reality all they’re really good for right now is math. Big math, but math all the same. Some of your dad’s colleagues in other departments at the university were excited by things like that but you weren’t too interested.

“Before working with or handling the Clymene, along with a number of the rarer books and unusual equipment being brought into the Materials Research Library, there are some releases I require everyone to sign alongside the paperwork you’ve already filled out,” the other man who came in with J.R. opens up the briefcase and begins passing out forms to everyone’s seats as they’re assembling, “This is my lawyer, Mr. Emerson Bale, who will explain it better than I,”

>>6472530
“There is a liability release for a few artifacts and books we intend to eventually house in the Materials research library,” Mr. Bale explains, “a non-disclosure agreement about the Clymene’s architecture, assembly, and the proprietary programmable systems we intend to implement. And lastly another non-disclosure regarding some Medical Data for comparative research that will eventually be made available pending progress of the journal’s progress,”

“Not the first NDA I’ve signed,” Ms. Latarnick looks toward J.R. seriously holding up her copies, “And I get that old things may be made of poison or radium…but just what’s so dangerous about books?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” Mr. Lee considers conspiratorially, “Have you ever read Lovecraft?”

“Can’t say I have,” replies Ms. Latarnick.

“Pulp horror stories, sometimes his work is a creature feature, might be up your alley,” Mr. Steele offers, “Often has instances of esoteric knowledge driving people mad,”

She stares at him. You haven’t read Lovecraft and you don’t think Mercedes has either after a glance in her direction. You understand, in theory, the concept of something being so scary as to drive someone mad. If madness can be a repressed memory…

You are not dealing well with remembering what you’ve been remembering. When you remembered she showed back up…and before she did things other people saw you thought you were going crazy. Not a far flung concept for you to grasp.

“I’ll give it a read,” Leah considers while signing her paperwork.

You’re doing the same, well you’re signing Ann Claremont with a practiced hand.

The luncheon, though cold, is very refreshing.

And while he is enjoying his meal, James the Chauffeur definitely recognizes you and Mercedes from across the table, mid bite of a strawberry. And Mercedes, like you, recognizes him. He glances over toward J.R. who is conversing about something with Bonnet, Cross, and Bale then back to the two of you. You and Mercedes both glance over to J.R. and then back to him. You can’t help yourself and offer a little wave.

His expression suggests that he is worried about you revealing...literally anything about his retrieval of Candace and Gabriel this morning. You certainly don’t want to rock the boat with your boss’s boss just yet and drag your fingers across your open mouth, closing it in the pantomime of a zipper.

The luncheon eventually comes to a close.

“Good luck with Mrs. Cross,” Mercedes offers before she heads out with Ms. Latarnick and Mr. Steele.

“Thanks, good luck out in the field,” you nod to your roommate, “I’m a little worried about what gonna be in that library now, honestly,”

“Nah, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Dangerous Library, dangerous books, lead cups or whatever?” Mercedes jokes.

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>>6472539 >>6472672 >>6472696

>>6472531
“Mr. Steele, Ms. Latarnick,” Director Bonnet approaches before making to J.R. and Mr. Bale head into his office, “I request if you find the hoof printed trashcan lid from your photograph or a similar transportable article containing such a mark that you bring it back with you,”

“We can try to swing that,” Mr. Steele offers as you walk away from them toward the room labeled as the ‘Materials Research Library.’

Mrs. Cross is already there picking up one of the suitcases.

“Ms. Claremont, take the other one and follow me,” she offers and opens the door onto a catwalk in a room that extends to the floor below.

From up here you can see the divided sections of a book library, a museum style arrangement of artifact slide drawers, an actual laboratory, and a partitioned room with a few large reel towers already installed and pre-marked floor plan for other blocks and a desk. Amid the Library and Artifact room are a number of boxes and crates, some already open.

Parts of this room, as you drag the heavy suitcase with care down the stairs, have two story tall windows that are currently covered in thick blackout curtains…and the air in this room is crips with the hum of some kind of environmental control system like you’ve heard at Bard college visiting your father at work.

She begins offering you a series of instructions as you’ll begin with the Library proper. You acknowledge them and get to work unboxing the more normative research books on folklore, history, and medical phenomenon. After a few minutes of sorting, placing, and double checking things alongside her you consider what you want to ask her first.

>So, are you really a vampire?
>Why can’t my ghost get thoughts and impressions out of you?
>Who is Jack Starsmore?
>Who is Tepes?
>Can you see my ghost?
>Ask nothing for now, get some more work done first.

>>6472533
>Why can’t my ghost get thoughts and impressions out of you?
>So, are you really a vampire?

Some more hints as to who we actually are I see.

>>6472533
>So, are you really a vampire?
J.R = J Johnah Jameson? You borrow from comic books?

>>6472672
J.R. Is an alias. He is not Jameson. He is Blonde and his money is old. And he may be worth II much.

>>6472672
Also…borrow? Anon this is most assuredly and absolutely a marvel fanfic quest where there are a few OCs but you are playing an existing character and there are existing characters already in the story so far.

>>6472533
>Why can’t my ghost get thoughts and impressions out of you?
This might be useful to detect vampires.

>>6472695
If Ghost Rider appears, can you make him look like Nicholas Cage? His Con Air look if you want him younger.
The Afterbloom QM did that thing about using celebrities for his characters and it was the shit

>>6472672
Anon, this quest is literally named after an old comic book. It uses the logo in the OP image. There’s a joke at the CCA’s expense and everything. Are you slow?

>>6472694
I’m guessing he’s tied to Angel somehow. I’m also raising an eyebrow at all the Champion-adjacent stuff so far, but don’t know enough about the team to comment further.

>>6472696
>Ghost Rider
lol, which one? I’m pretty sure 1961 predates Blaze, Ketch, and Reyes, (given that it predates all but four or five existing heroes,) but lord knows how the timeline works thanks to Marvel’s weird insistence on making it “slide.”

>>6472748
If 60's Spider was Peter, Nick Cage can be Ghost Rider. Someone has to fix Cage's Rider. I know QM can pull it off.

You continue to unbox and sort books into the library based on the rubric Mrs. Cross has set out, while she logs the contents of the piles and begins assigning shelving positions as necessary. Once the bankers boxes are emptied, over the course of the work you observe the distance she keeps from the windows and how while you’re sorting she is making a separate sort of the books from the suit cases. She specifically places the contents of that suitcases in specific locked glass cases amongst the Library.

When she gets to a package inside one of the suitcases, she heads toward the archival shelves room across the way. It looks as though a large soft green polished stone. She pauses as if to consider something about it and you decide this is as good a time as any as you set down a series of academic books on the civilizations and religions of the Indus Valley.

“Mrs. Cross, would you mind answering a few questions for me?” you offer whilst standing and stretching from the last stack carried, “I know we haven’t spoken too much since the interview but I wanted to know something that might have been strange to ask before,”

“Please, Ms. Claremont, I’m nothing if not approachable,” she offers and sits on one of the several well appointed comfortable chairs in the library, “and you should feel comfortable enough to call me Tara,”

You nod and take a seat near her, your passenger gives the two of you some distance and is browsing about and looking at some of the books in the individual glass cases or grouped nooks.

“Tara, why can’t my ghost get thoughts and impressions out of you?” you question, to her visible confusion, “Most people give off constant impressions, and she shares them if the mood strikes her,”

Visible confusion gives way to interest.

“Well, I and those like me are more resistant to that and in most cases outright immune to psychic intrusion or reading. Ms. Claremont,” she pauses, “May I call you Ann?”

“Yes, yes you may,” you nod, returning the nicety she offered you.

“You believe your ghost gleams thoughts and does other things?” she questions and watches something behind you, “This is what leads you to believe you are haunted?”

“Yes,” you offer as you do not see your passenger remove a book from a shelf to correct an erroneous placement across the same hallway.

“That is fascinating,” she considers.

“And by your kind you mean Vampires,” you assert, “You are really a Vampire?”

She rises from the chair, placing the shell like stone on the small end table between the chairs and walks over toward the blackout curtain. Pulling her hat low, placing a thick glove on her hand, and unbuttoning a long sleeve to roll it up to just before her elbow she girds herself. Readying for some cost of trauma.

>>6472882
“Watch closely, this demonstration will not be repeated anytime soon,” she carefully and intentionally moves several layers of curtain unseen, unfastening a layer in the middle, and finally finds the glass beyond.

She stays well in the shadows as a corridor of daylight enters the room, and her skin burns like tissue paper held to a match in the light. The flesh beneath blackens and crumbles as ash while the blood that starts to erupt from the wound bubbles to steam. Hissing, she withdraws her arm and releases the curtain that falls back into place, the layer closes to the window suddenly fastening as magnets sewn into the cloth find their places against metal of the window’s frame.

She has retreated and from her coat pulls a foil bag, ripping it open to reveal thick, flexible, and mostly opaque pvc with something dark within.

“Be a lamb and restore the curtains,” she offers before tearing open the bag with visibly sharp fangs and tipping something red and viscous in the pervasive buzz of the room’s electric lighting.

After a beat of shock you hurry over and flatten the various layers, restoring the catches and clasps of the middle layer noticing each fabric is something different. A cotton wool blend. Something not quite like nylon, and something stretchy.

With a gasp, she finishes her drink as you finish your task and as you turn to her you see the burn is mostly healed and still rapidly restoring itself. Though the dust that slaked off her in the light remains on the carpeting.

“Oh,” you observe remembering Mercedes’s words, “Dusted…that makes sense now,”

“Yes,” she comments, “I overheard you and Mercedes talking, that she was witness to the death of a Vampire. Make no mistake, that is what I am, but I am not a bottom feeder on the street who attacks people at random,”

“So noted…wait, there were windows upstairs?” you wonder.

“Yes, the main office has a few windows made of a polarizing electric glass invented by a man named Bentley Wittman,” Mrs. Cross explains, “And my clothes tend to be thick enough to preserve me in all but extended exposure to direct light. There are many rumored ways, though to truly Daywalk among my kind remains the stuff of popular myth or urban legend,”

You watch her wound entirely close and stumble back into a chair.

>>6472883

“That…um…okay,” you feel a bit less unusual but also concerned about if there was anyone you noticed your passenger was unable to read before and draw a blank…consciously.

She knows she has met someone she couldn’t read before…but a barred gate and not an absence like Mrs. Cross. Why don’t you know? Why can’t she remember beyond that?

“Don’t feel so overwhelmed, and be aware that there are many ways beyond being dead to avoid such power as you…and your ghost possess,” Tara Cross explains as she re-affixes her sleeve and returns to where you sit.

She fixes you with a particular stare, and holds it a moment. Reaching down she picks up the polished stone shell and extends her hands to you.

“As for my question of you,” she says with a serious tone, “take hold of this artifact and tell me what you or your haunting see, if anything,”

>Weird 9, You gain a hazy impression of something important.

Nodding absently you take hold of the artifact…and are flushed with rapidly changing visions. Which singular vision comes into focus for you?

>The red mark of the scarab (the past)
>Another half of the green stone (the present)
>Sight of the day spring (the future)
>The Searcher sees you (the distant)

>>6472884
>The red mark of the scarab (the past)
>Another half of the green stone (the present)
>The Searcher sees you (the distant)

Honestly, don't care much for the future. So, the Scarlet Scarab, what ever this stone is, or someone seeing us as we see them most get my interest here.

>>6472884
>The red mark of the scarab (the past)

>>6472897
Singular vision.

>>6472884
>Another half of the green stone
The Kung Fu Panda turtle says the present is a gift

writing.

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>>6473145

There is a weight to this object, as though it is, in a way you do not fully understand, alive. You and your passenger perceive as one, her familiarity with the pathways of the mind are acts of simulacrum within the microscopic structure of the object, alongside other systems and pathways foreign to your knowledge. Things flash through your mind quickly. Too quickly to see as a strobe of anguish where you’re certain you must have cried out by the overwhelming presence. This stone connects to so much, and over such great lengths of time.

You see grassy dunes of a desert in bloom, reflected in the curve of a kopesh.

You don’t know what a kopesh is, you saw the curved sword and knew that much. The vision flashes as it cuts through the dune, figuratively, and men and blades and horses and chariots and more and more and more charge upon.

So many people, fleeing a village this army falls upon. A house banner of a red scarab burns in the hands of a man, a pharoh, wearing a green headdress. The people are cut down, their home conquered.

Conquered?

Conquered!?

CONQUERED!?

Skin almost as pale as Alonzo’s from the ash of their home rising from the desert for vengeance. And the Scarab becomes their chest. Their brow. Their adornment. The scarab is them, and it twists and changes over time as the one in ashes sits back as the mark marches forward…and the stone protects his sleep. As he sleeps, guarded by the half a spider in your hands, you make your slow rise back to awareness of your surroundings from the vision in a coughing start…everything is an unfocused haze of motion until you see the shape it took. There, across the room in one of the manuscripts behind glass.

You have convulsed and twisted unnaturally to face it before returning to yourself. You aren’t sure if it is you or your passenger who reaches out for the bundled document with the symbol splayed across its cover page…but it lifts from its stand and slaps against the glass all the same as you feel the trickle of blood start to run down your nose.

>You have accumulated 2 harms.

The Starsmore Manuscript.

The mark in red upon it. In blood. Their blood. You don’t know its name but you saw it in your vision as your hand slips and the shell tumbles unbroken to the library’s carpeted floor…but never lands. It is swept up in a force you are unaware of until now.

Someone is calling your name, you think, that scares you. No, they’re calling for Ann. You didn’t hear your name, you just heard her name that you’re wearing. You feel like throwing up as you think of her, as you remembered her, as she possessed you while still dying in your arms after the car struck.

It hurts. It hurts and you’re dying. Ann is dying. Annie is dying and you feel her slip away but you can’t let go.

“Ann Claremont,” the predatory shape of soft yellow eyes captivate your own and you snap back to yourself fully.

>>6473144
The storm you previously could not perceive about the room goes suddenly still. Books, boxes, crates, chairs, the roomside layers of curtains, and the vampire Tara Cross are all suspended in the air.

“Listen carefully to the sound of my voice,” Tara says as her voice takes a certain reverb and the eyes that should make you fear instead lull you to calm, “Can you help me, Ann? To put everything back,”

You’ve had someone tell you this before, in a moment like this with you at the center of your haunted storm. You remember gentler eyes than this…but a hypnotic thrall to cooperate all the same. A different face that you cannot name once did this very thing, you put your room and yourself back together, and together you locked a door…until you were ready.

You are not ready. The door stays locked. Your door. The key isn’t here. You fear what is beyond the door. Who put it there? You can’t remember…just that they promised to give you the key when you were ready, but even that memory is beyond the door.

Your passenger, so many of her, are all across the room. Some in flight, some in piles crawling atop one another. All holding the chaos you were creating, now holding still.

You continue to sit and Mrs. Cross maintains her position as well for several beats. She is upside down and had grasped in opportunity onto your arm outstretched toward the case containing the Starsmore Manuscript. The glass has a singular crack but has not broken.

“I can help you Mrs. Cross,” you offer a bit weakly, entranced.

She nods as the several spectres that hold her spin her rightside up and set her down while the rest of the room remains eerie still, save for a distant click and whirr muted to the ongoing droning of the HVAC system.

“You had a fit while taking a reading of the object you were handed. I am doing something I can do as a Vampire to help you…and your ghost…stay calm. Is that alright?” The living dead woman is careful and measured with her words, “Do you feel safe and like you can set everything down if I were to release this right now or would you like me to continue keeping you calm?”

If you were to not be calm, you think you’ll feel Annie die all over again. You don’t want that. You taste your own blood as it runs over your lips and into your mouth. Mrs. Cross takes out a handkerchief and wipes your face before guiding your hand slowly to hold it to your nose.

“This is fine,” click whirr and click whirr again, “Is this like Dracula’s hypnosis?”

“It is like Dracula’s hypnosis, very good, but I’m not using it to make you do anything you don’t want to,” another familiarity in sentiment with the one who locked the door with you.

That rattles the knob but it does not turn.

>>6473145
“I don’t think I would be calm yet if you stopped,” you explain as you take a more normative seat in the chair, ending the pain and weird arching you had taken up and relaxing your body against the backing.

“Then I will continue to hold it,” she says, “Can you ask your friend to help put everything back now?”

You nod, your passenger remembers where everything goes. It isn’t done in precision, but it isn’t haphazard either. There is another few clicks as you remain distracted by the task and Mrs. Cross’s eyes, until even the chair you are in sets back down on the ground which you hadn't even realized you were doing.

“I’m going to break eye contact now, this is very difficult to maintain,” she says and shuts them tightly before tipping back into a chair restored to near where it had been.

Things definitely need straightening out. And the stacks that had been on the floor and tables definitely will need to be sorted again. Your heartrate quickens, but you aren’t in a state of panic, you press the handkerchief tightly to your nose as a headache overtakes you and most of the reflections of your passenger fade from view with only the one throwing herself into your lap in anguish and mental exhaustion.

“Fuck my bloody afterlife,” Mrs. Cross groans and your passenger shares her initial sentiment, “New rule for the library, no ancient object readings in the library,”

“We should probably sequester a space with no loose objects to a range of about…I’d say between thirty and thirty feet if I were to eyeball it,” suggests Dr. Goodman from the catwalk, wearing his lab coat and a previously unseen flight goggle, and that makes you sit up straight with a start to realize Mr. Lee is down in the Library looking down into a Richomatic camera pointed at you and Mrs. Cross.

“Thirty Three feet,” Mr. Lee suggests pointing to one of the crates and then to the book cases, “There about’s is the border…and along line of sight, as nothing was disturbed on the far side of those book cases, and I assume we’d have heard panic on the next floor down if anything was amiss there,”

“This isn’t what it looks like!” you say very quickly.

“You didn’t just do a spooky seance thing with an ancient artifact from the collection that went awry and Mrs. Cross didn’t just do Dracula hypnosis to bring you out of a possessed fugue state?” questions the scientist, moving the goggles to his brow, and descending one of the spiral stairs from the catwalk with giddy excitement.

“No?” you say uncertainly.

Mrs. Cross, eyes still closed as she half lays collapsed in the chair laughs, sharply.

>>6473147
“Okay,” says the scientist with some dejection but still some aplomb as Mr. Lee regards him askance, “Well, it looks like you’re very tuckered out by whatever happened and I bet you need sucrose so if you’d like you can have some of the cherry apricot fruit leather my wife packed me for a snack,”

“Fruit leather?”

“Traditional Syrian version of a Joray Fruitroll. Well, not traditional because its apricot and other flavors but my wife swears by swapping-”

“Yes, please,” you nod fervently as what you just did took a large metric of energy from you and your passenger.

He offers the wax paper fold of fruit fragrance and you oblige to a sensation of relief. Mr. Lee approaches from the safe distance he had kept from the previous storm, sliding his camera to the side and under his arm and out of its active position and removing a small first aid kit from the bag strapped to his hip and leg.

“Ms. Claremont, have you ever been abducted by aliens?” the photographer sets the kit down on the end table next to your chair and takes out a very small flashlight and some cotton balls from its interior, “Oh, would you mind if I just gave you a quick bit of first aid and see if the bleeding has stemmed?”

You say nothing to his second request but remove the handkerchief and work on chewing the initial bite of the snack given to you. As you set the handkerchief down you feel the ongoing but slowed trickle of blood creep toward your upper lip.

“No, but who knows what will happen tomorrow,” you explain your lack of alien abductions in your life so far.

“I’ve heard more than a few stories of abilities like what you’ve displayed presenting surrounding abduction cases is all,” he explains, “I’m afraid I’m not entirely convinced of your ghostly explanation,”

Your passenger looks at him, and then at you, hard. Like she knows something you don’t, and then she rolls from your lap and onto the floor. Well, at least as she expresses it she doesn’t know it yet.

>First Aid applied, your accumulated harm is reduced to 1.

“Well, she seems to disagree,” you huff.

“Entirely fair,” he nods.

“Dr. Goodman, could you put that half of the Spider-Stone away into artifact drawer P-4,” Mrs. Cross groans.

“Oh, of course,” he snaps to action and turns in a flourish of his labcoat.

“Mrs. Cross, can you be photographed?” Mr. Lee questions the Administrator and Editor as an astringent cleans the fresh and dried blood from your lip.

“Not to my knowledge,” she says with some exhaustion that you share.

>>6473149
“Hmmm,” he checks your pupils and their dilation with the small flashlight as he places a cotton ball in your nose,” I wonder if that is because of the silver in the celluloid, the mirror, or the development process. You know there are some more expensive or less articulate material practices, equipment, and processes that if combined right don’t have any silver…I wonder if they could capture your image?”

“I swear to God Mr. Lee, if nothing else comes from my tenure with this journal than a chance to see myself without spending a month in front of a painter, it would almost be worth it,” she laughs again.

He withdraws from your personal space and takes off the gloves he had in his first aid kit, you didn’t even see him pull them on before. You are finally beginning to catch up with yourself after the literal and figurative whirlwinds that just happened when Dr. Goodman strides back over.

“You know, Mr. Lee, I know a guy who can get us Palladium,” Dr. Goodman muses, “And I think J.R.’s budget can swing us the Platinum to go with it,”

“How, how are you two so nonchalantly musing about all this after all of…” you pause and gesture to everything around you, “all of that! Mrs. Cross is literally a Vampire so I get why she’s all nonplussed. And why aren’t you freaking out about that either?!”

Dr. Goodman shrugs, chewing on another piece of fruit leather from his labcoat pocket and speaks, rather uncouthly, with a full mouth.

“My emotional responses are blinded and tempered by my excitement for the implied potential science,” he explains with a cheerful expression.

“War,” Mr. Lee comments, simply.

“You see Ann,” Mrs. Cross explains, now able to again sit up, “You are not the weirdest person I hired by leaps and bounds. Now, let’s get back to setting this space up. Mr. Lee if you could help us re-sort this stack and Dr. Goodman if you could tend first to the remaining artifacts and then move on to the computer room preparations,”

“Can do,” the living exuberance snaps his fingers and turns on a heel to one of the nearby crates where kicking up a crowbar, he pops the lid off with effort in three fluid motions.

“Leaps and bounds, you say,” more to yourself than Mrs. Cross.

“Now then,” as the three of you now get to work, “What did that fragment of the Spider Stone show you?”

“A Scarab,” you recall, “A red scarab, I think Egypt, a slaughter, vengeance, ashen skin, and it changed over time to look like that symbol on the book thing you and J.R. were talking about earlier,”

You point to the Starsmore Manuscript.

“Points for eavesdropping,” she nods, “And those are things in line with what I know of it,”

“What is the Starsmore Manuscript?” you question in curiosity, earnestly.

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>>6473157

>>6473152
“A clinical and censored account by an allegedly fire breathing opium addict of a shadow war in London during the late 1800’s between a secretive cult bloodline of occultly empowered humans and the King of Vampires,” she offers simply, “Supposedly containing one of the secrets of daylight,”

“Well that isn’t terrifying,” you mutter to yourself and you aren’t sure which part of that sentence you dislike most, “Do the British just take everything from Egypt?”

“We’ve taken more than enough, frankly,” she sighs.

“Oh, I forgot to hand this off to you earlier. My translation of Jin Moon-Ho’s journal,” Mr. Lee cuts in and hands Mrs. Cross a small leatherbound notebook.

“This will be very helpful, thank you,” she brings it to one of the glass enclosures while you look at Mr. Lee for some level of explanation.

“He was a collaborator with the Japanese Imperial Invasion of Korea in the second World War,” he explains, “I would liken him to the people on Ms. Knight’s short list who could dent a cab. He claims the power came from a demon, but I believe it was alien technology,”

Maybe you should have held out for the Hanover internship.

The library and artifact archive is mostly together by end of day, and you spent a lot of time hearing about the dangers of dust and static discharge from Dr. Goodman while helping set up the racks, frames, and pre-wiring for the many components yet to be delivered for the computer room. He went on an extended ramble at one point about programming languages and it didn’t go entirely over your head but if that’s what’s required to work a computer you wish you’d just be able to think at one to get it to do things.

When Mercedes returns from being out with Mr. Steele and Ms. Latarnick, coming to the library to collect your for your evening expedition, it’s clear they swung by the apartment to change. Flared jeans, much more noticeable earrings, and a blouse with flowy sleeves under a taut vest; though she is carrying a trashcan lid. The dented trashcan lid, from Ms. Latarnick’s alleyway photo.

“Wow, this looks amazing,” she regards the rooms from the catwalk near the entrance, “Curtains are a bit thick though,”

“Yeah, they gotta be. The windows are too big for the special glass upstairs,” you explain whilst running up the spiral steps, “I am so ready to get out of here,”

>>6473155
“Sure, you wanna pass this off to archive storage,” she offers the lid to you.

“NO!” you say with a start and raise your hands up and away but calm yourself, “oh I mean, no, I’ll go get my purse if you can hand that off to Dr. Goodman,”

“Alright,” she says and starts down the stairs, “What has you so freaked out?”

“Me,” you say before leaving the room, “Ghost thing. I don’t want to get into it right now,”

She nods. And soon after you’ve retrieved your purse from the intern desk space of the office's front desk, next to the not yet filled receptionist station, Mercedes again joins you as you take the elevator down.

“So, when we get to Alonzo, I’m not sure how I want to approach him. If I want to go in softly and be social first, be friendly about it, be all straight to business like about it, or go in hard,” Mercedes muses, though she has an edge to her words of the last suggestion, “What’s your gut, or ghost, think?”

>I think we should take a soft approach
>I think we should take a friendly approach
>I think we should approach this business like
>I think we should take a hard approach

>>6473157
I don't want to choose an option yet. I am thinking that Mercedes could try to honeypot him or we could go in all business. I don't think hard or friendly outside of flirting would work.

>>6473157
>I think we should take a soft approach
I mean, I don't know what Mercedes can give him or make him think she can give him, so I'll go with soft and slightly flirty approach. That's what spies do, it's a legit tactic and she can always pivot to business if he doesn't buy it.
If you girlboss him, a man of his particular time would tell you to fuck off. Friendly is meh unless he's gay.
Yes, I know jack shit about people.

As we wait for more and decisive voting, what are people feeling about the Journal's staff so far?

>>6473209
The good doctor reminds me of several other characters you have done that fit that certain kind of personality. Not a criticism or anything, just an observation.

I am curious to learn more about the rest of the staff. Hopefully that is something that will slowly be revealed over time.

>>6473209
Probably too soon to tell.
Goodman is meh, just a quirky cientist, I don't know about Lee. Cross is nice, I feel like she could be a beloved mentor character that dies later on. I don't know about the rest. Mercedes has to back her claims of being hot shit
Ann is still the best character. She seems to be quite similar to Jean Grey. Good because I never liked Jean so it's good to see a fixed version of her.

> She seems to be quite similar to Jean Grey. Good because I never liked Jean so it's good to see a fixed version of her.

Someone else finally makes the connection! What did you think of her BND portrayal? I haven't seen it, but I have been greatly appreciative of the SpiderPhoenix ship that has come about because of it.

>>6473230
I haven't watched anything X men related besides Logan, the Wolverine prequel, the original trilogy and cartoons. An actress I'm not interested in playing a character I'm not interested in is not a good combo.
I don't like X-men being in the same universe as regular Marvel. I mean, if people with superpowers become so common, it dilutes guys like Spider, they are less singular and amazing.

>>6473352
Writing. I know new quests have low turnout and I didn't really drop an effective hook. Gotta up my game for Thread 2's thread image down the line. Should have remembered the old Heart Shaped Butt metric.

Rolled 2, 2 + 2 = 6 (2d6 + 2)

>Rolling some charm to manipulate someone
>Mercedes Knight grants you +1 forward, but exposes herself to some problems.

>>6473418
Try to keep things fresh by using more underused supers like Ghost Rider's characters or other trippy symbiotes. Then you can put them on the OP pic for maximum attention.

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>>6473479

“Let’s start with the soft approach,” you consider, mostly because you don’t want to make waves at the Peppermint Lounge.

“Alright, let’s dance the night away, stay light on drinks, and see if we can’t get Alonzo off his guard a little later in the evening,” Mercedes smiles as the two of you exit into the Guardian Building’s Lobby and onto the street.

>Mercedes Knight, Gumshoe, joins your party as a hunter.

Stopping at an automat for a quick sandwich, as to not go into this plan on an empty stomach, and to let the sun dip lower in the sky, you are soon on approach to the Peppermint Lounge. Even mid week it remains a happening place.

Sure enough, Alonzo is there with a clipboard talking to a few other tough looking guys and getting the door ready. Despite yourselves you are still a bit early, though doors are open.

“Lonnie!? Lonnie Lincoln!” Mercedes calls out a nickname for the man known as Alonzo Lincoln you were previously unfamiliar with as the two of you quicken your pace toward the rope guarding the door of the Peppermint Lounge.

The albino giant turns to regard the familiar call and gets a confused look on his face seeing an unfamiliar combination of someone he knows and someone he only recently met in passing.

“Misty Knight,” he says, using what you can easily assume is Mercedes nickname…not with deference but with awareness and your passenger bristles at his combination of suspicion and curiosity, “And miss green eyes, small world,”

He regards the two of you a moment.

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” you comment with a feigned astonishment many girls your age have practiced, “Small world?”

“Small world indeed,” he regards you both for a long moment, for a moment you think he’s looking down Mercedes’s blouse before you passenger points out he is concerned with a strip of leather poking out the outer sleeve of her vest, “You expecting trouble tonight, Misty?”

Her expression bleeds into a laugh she never gets to make. You clutch up your purse. Alonzo exudes a want for trouble that unsettles you just a bit.

“What kind of sensible girl doesn’t have a heater when it gets cold at night,” you offer and draw Alonzo’s attention for a moment.

“And we’re planning to be out late tonight,” Mercedes backs the notion, “Don’t want us stumbling home in the dark without something to keep us warm?”

“Can’t argue that too much,” Alonzo sighs and chuckles wryly, “Though I would remind you, the Peppermint likes to keep things breezy and cool,”

His hand goes to the rope and unlatches it.

“Oh, Ms. Southern is already here. She again neglected to tell me to expect friends,” he raises the rope and you contextually figure out whom he is referring to.

“Well, you know Candy,” you shrug and start to dart in as Mercedes steps a bit slowly behind you with one last regard for Alonzo “Lonnie” Lincoln as she goes.

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>>6473481

>>6473477
“Hey, if you want to knock a few back with us later, I’m buying. Celebrating tonight,” she winks, “You want to celebrate, Lonnie?”

He regards her, and your passing frame, coolly. Your passenger feels him closing up, his suspicion spiking beforehand at the two of you, together.

“I’ll think about it,” he says and pulls out a toothpick to chew and then calls one last time over the din, “Never caught your name, green eyes!”

Well, if you have anything to say about it you’ll be at the Peppermint with some frequency. Maybe add a flourish to how you present yourself the way “Misty” and “Candy” do.

Your way ahead is clear, so you look back and reply.

“Annie!” you explain, even if it makes your heart skip a beat and your passenger flicker before you regard Mercedes just out of earshot from Alonzo, “You’ve got a gun?”

“You don’t?” Mercedes questions.

“No, I have one,” you reply.

“Alright then, so no problem,” she smiles as the two of you continue in.

Amid the still small crowd, Candy is already there. Nursing a tumblr of something alone at a table closer to the dancefloor than the wall this time, perking up when she notices your and Mercedes’s approach.

“Ann, a delightful surprise. Mercedes, I feel like we only just left your apartment,” she beams.

>Candace “Candy” Southern joins your party as an ally.

“Only just? Full workdays behind us and it feels like days ago,” Mercedes offers and slides into a seat.

“That’s right! How were your first days at the new job,” she questions with genuine aplomb, “And what is the new job?”

“We’re interning at this quarterly journal about paranormal activity,” Mercedes explains, “I spent the day out traipsing through recent murder sites with one of the investigation teams and Ann here was stuck building out the new library,”

“Yeah, it was great,” you stare off a moment and decide to continue doing your best alongside your ghost when it comes to ignoring things about the past, “Just…unpacking and sorting. Nothing as exciting as going to crime scenes happened in the library,”

Both your own past and the weird past of green stones that despite being an object feel alive in your hands…living stone…your momentary vision from the other day you think came from the perspective of the killer sits in your stomach uneasily and you shake it off just the same.

They both look at you askance, your lie was apparently unconvincing.

“Did something happen in the library?” questions Candace before she cuts in, “Actually I’ve heard some things about that project. They’ve set up shop in the Guardian Building if I’m not mistaken,”

“She didn’t want to talk about it,” Mercedes smooths the moment, “And yeah, that’s the one,”

“And I still don’t,” you exhale, “Maybe after a few beers…in a few days. Say, where’s Gabriel?”

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>>6473482

>>6473479
“He didn’t want to keep his feet on the ground tonight,” she laughs to herself to an inside joke only she knows, “He’s launching off on a personal project and didn’t want to be cooped up at my table tonight,”

“Understood, so what brings you two out tonight?” she questions as you catch Alonzo handing off the clipboard and talking to an older suited man for a moment who came out from a door near the front.

Before Alonzo arrives, you decide…
>you decide to tell Candy you noticed Gabriel’s chauffeur was also your boss’s
>you decide not to tell Candy you noticed Gabriel’s chauffeur was also your boss’s

“A little celebration, and a little work, here it comes now,” Mercedes smiles and elbows you in the side, “Alright, I’m gonna get drinks and butter him up if you can get him talking in a bit,”

Your roommate rises and heads to the bar.

“Oh, curious,” Candance gets a sly smile, “Now I’m curious, I’d heard rumors but I didn’t know Mr. Lincoln was considered paranormal,”

“We think he might know some things,” you explain quickly as the bouncer’s conversation with his boss concludes, “about something we’re looking into, we plan to pick his brain later,”

“Well, I’m sold and interested in that, consider me in your and Mercedes’s corner tonight, Ann,” Candace’s smile is genuine and she takes a sip from her tumbler and readies herself for battle.

>Candace provides an additional +1 forward, raising your manipulation of Alonzo “Lonnie” Lincoln to 7.

“Laides, my employer was gracious enough to allow me time to accept Misty’s invitation to celebrate your table,” he speaks with intentional decorum through his sharky smile, “Primarily on the notion that you’re in friendly company with so prolific a customer as Ms. Southern,”

“Please, Alonzo, you don’t need to be so formal,” Candace admonishes, “Just Candy will do,”

He takes a seat at the table.

“Well, let’s get started,” Mercedes offers as the band kicks up, coming up from behind and laying personal bottles and a bottle of something spirited to ‘share’, “Very nice of Mr. Genovese to let you off the hook to drink with us,”

“He’s a generous employer,” Alonzo says and then boasts, “He’s moving me over to another business starting next week, so don’t expect me to be working the door here forever,”

“Lateral move or promotion?” you question and take a small sip from the beer, remembering the night before and not wanting to rush.

You remind yourself that tonight isn’t actually about getting drunk.

“Promotion, though not as famous a spot, I’ll be doubling up on host and bouncing duties at a club back up north,” he says, “I’m sure Misty knows the place, but doubt it’d be either of your scenes,"

>>6473481
“In Harlem, thought you were giving that place a wide berth since you and that Robbie boy had a falling out,” Mercedes thinks aloud, “Sorry to dredge up bad memories…come on let me make it up to you on the floor,”

Alonzo has barely had time to take his first drag of the long neck before he himself is dragged by Mercedes to the floor to Dance. It continues like this for a few hours. Charming conversation, occasional trips to the dance floor in jumbled pairings amongst your number, and more drinks…though your own and Mercedes going slower than Alonzo’s or Candaces.

Not that you can tell either of them are affected significantly. At one point Alonzo shows you a few dances if you ever find yourself at his new club in Harlem. From taking his hand a few times you discovered it was like touching warm marble, lending full credence to Misty’s claims that people have broken their fist on him like a wall.

It’s still an enjoyable evening as you’re moving closer to your intended move to press Alonzo for information. You’d just gotten to the buzz you were putting off when, while Candy and Misty were dancing to the band, when Alonzo surprisingly broaches the subject.

“So, invite me to the table, pay for my drinks. If I didn’t know any better, I would think you and Misty were buttering me up for some of her kid sleuth bullshit,” he fixes you with his piercing pink eyes, still smiling slyly, taking your measure of the moment, “Pending what that’s about, that might put her in a difficult position. People being aware of her past activities and all,”

“What if it were, but it wasn’t about your business…just something we think you might know?” you shuffle yourself to a more upright and negotiable posture and certainly not awkward mean, “How would you feel about that, considering positions?”

He smiles, and your passenger who had been dancing besides Mercedes and Candace realizes the serious turn, and begins flickering her way over through the crowd, still dancing as badly as you’d been.

>>6473482
“Let’s say my sharing what I might know, if it means so much to you to put all this effort into it,” he leans against the table, which creaks under his actual weight, “would be a trade in favors. Tell me your ask, I’ll give you my price, and you can decide if that's something you can square. If not, I’m a generous enough person to keep enjoying the drink and dance,”

This is it. Your show…your chance to act like the adult in the room. You don’t get the impression Alonzo did any of these, that knowledge of the killer’s hands and skin is presently yours alone, but he is definitely a dangerous person. Your passenger is here and you feel a bit more safe about things. Whatever he implied about Mercedes’s reputation…this place is a mob front and Mercedes is a teen detective with designs on being a cop. No wonder she wanted you to ask the questions as a mostly unknown element with the protection your association with Candace has garnered you.

>Ask Alonzo about other people with powers, and the cloven hoof gimmick
>Ask Alonzo about the Ribcage breaker killings and if he’s heard anything
>Take Alonzo’s hand and try forcing a vision
>Say you need to wait to confer with Mercedes
>Abort Mission, Abort MISSION

>>6473483
>Ask Alonzo about other people with powers, and the cloven hoof gimmick

>>6473494
>you decide not to tell Candy you noticed Gabriel’s chauffeur was also your boss’s
Don't go spilling the beans so early.

>Take Alonzo’s hand and try forcing a vision
This is free, right?

>>6473483
>>Take Alonzo’s hand and try forcing a vision

Rolled 6, 6 + 2 = 14 (2d6 + 2)

Sensitivity is weird.

Keeping your eyes locked onto Alonzo’s, you set your bottle down and reach across the table for the clearer glass and darker liquid of the half finished spirit. In what might be a faux pass but otherwise a necessary act to still your sudden nerves, not that in your pride or bravado you would admit to such weakness, you take a few glugs from the bottle that go in time with the music. It burns and reminds you of the fancy crystal bottle you’ve snuck a few drinks out of in your father’s study, though it is decidedly not as smooth and has a sharply different taste.

“You’ve found us out, Lonnie,” setting the bottle down you aren’t so proud as to not admit that part, “But you know what?”

“What?” his smile is cold, he doesn’t know what cards he holds but is certain he holds them.


You lean forward and grab Alonzo’s hand as if to sell the sincerity of the moment.

“I had a good time tonight and we can get by on what we know,” your passenger understands and lays her hands down on top of your own, “so I think it’s better to take you up on your generosity without knowing the price,”

He relaxes in that moment, in smug victory, and the walls come down. It should be okay to do this here, so many people and how calm and relaxed your passenger is…it won’t be like the library when it was just you and Mrs. Cross.

Did Mrs. Cross count, actually? Being dead and all and being largely immune to your passenger’s efforts, but a ghost is also dead so…you shake the trailing thoughts away and return to meeting Alonzo’s eyes with a serious expression.

And in this moment, surrounded by the presence of people in the throws of joy, between beats of the snare drum from the stage, entire worlds open before you.

>Sensitive Alt Weird Move 14, literally the best this could have gone.

You fall into the black pits that were Alonzo’s pupils, rushing past the pink sclera, and a vision plays out before you.

A man is tied to a chair, beaten and bruised, his eyes fearful. His arm is free and in your…no, Alonzo’s hands.

“Now, this is your last reminder to be prompt with Mr. Genovese’s money,” and he breaks the man’s wrist with only a slight pressure between his thumb and index finger.

He screams, and he’s annoyed.

“Come on, don’t be a baby,” he scoffs before the dim light of the room is dispelled by a door opening behind him.

“Lincoln, Mr. Genovese is heading to an emergency summit. Clean yourself up, you’re on personal guard detail,”

He puts himself together, leaving the man in the chair for his associates to tend to or continue pressing, and is soon joining Mr. Genovese in the back seat of a towncar. Opening the door for his boss he joins a foyer full of important and dangerous looking people. There is some mingling and drinks and performative verbose greetings amongst the important people as the guards and enforcers mingle amongst themselves.

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>>6473734

>>6473731
“Lincoln,” a slightly older man speaks to Alonzo, he is very tall, very broad, very fat, and very bald wearing a very nice black suit.

“Fisk,” he nods, and is offered a cigarette from the larger man’s jacket pocket, who also takes one for himself, “Know what this is about?”

“Couple of murders, across territory,” the experienced and higher ranked organized crime enforcer named Fisk uses a fine lighter clutched in ringed fingers, “Weird Murders. They gathered a few of us weird ones and they got a couple of feds here too who’s interested,”

“Fuck,” Alonzo scans the room and zeroes in on two men in less fancy but affordable utilitarian business suits, snapping his thumbnail and index fingers like flint and steel to light his own.

One young if friendly looking blonde man wearing blue, and one flat topped redhead in shiny glasses and a sternly line riddled face with the sourest expression Alonzo’s seen in a long while.

That man in particular is scanning the room, at one point locking eyes with Alonzo. Even behind reflective glass and despite the long day of exhaustive brutality behind him, locking eyes with that spook made Alonzo feel wide awake.

“Fucking Gyrich,” your Albino guide to this vision of a memory introduces him for you as he breaks eye contact first, unsettled.


Alonzo’s perspective settles on his direct boss, among a few others, who are paying deference to a very old man dressed in a fine white suit who you’ve seen in the newspapers before, notorious philanthropist and alleged gangster Silvio Manfredi.

“I’m hearing Silvermane is considering poaching you from Genovese," Fisk comments as an ushering begins as the lot of you are slowly directed toward a room toward a now open and opulent dining room further back into the building, “That he’s collecting and positioning guys like us,”

“Yeah, something like that,” Alonzo considers and chats further with fisk, “Heard you’re moving up in the world, I’m surprised you’re still slumming it with enforcers, thugs, and freaks side of this meetup,”

“Is it slumming to remember your friends,” Fisk smiles in the same way that Alonzo smiles, “I like remembering my friends…even if they wind up working for men I’m at odds with. You’re ambitious like me Lincoln, you should take Silvermane’s pitch. Genovese would never let you all the way up the ladder, but working for Manfredi you’ll be rungs above,”

If your board room and the luncheon spread was nice, this is decadent. Heated trays of high quality Italian and Chinese offerings. Alonzo takes his position standing behind and near Mr. Genovese.

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>>6473736

>>6473732
“We’re getting straight to business. We got four dead. Coast Guard on the take doing an after hours pickup for Slug off the coast of Staten Island. A pro under Maggia protection by the ferries. One of Ma Gnucci’s boys in Snakehead territory after he left a Triad gambling den. Hearts ripped out of ruined chests. This summit could have been talking terms for a gang war if it wasn’t for victim number four,”

Your lot didn’t know about the Coast Guard. Interesting that they’re listed before the prostitute, so the first killing anyone knows of was on the water.

A hooded and masked man in red attire that looks japanese enters from a door behind the slick speaker’s position.

“This is Toshiro of The Hand. For those few of you who haven’t used them in the past they’re very good and expensive mercenary assassins. The Hand’s representation at this table, Mr. Tsurayaba,” he gestures to a very young longhaired Japanese man seated at the table being shadowed by a Japanese woman in a black business suit with purple trim who can’t be much older than you, “Who has consented to this audience and explanation, to avoid war,”

“Toshiro, show your wounds and tell them of your encounter,” the young man commands.

The man in red opens the robelike top of his clothes. Revealing a wide stapled scar that has not fully closed from sternum to gut. Many gasp at the sight of it. The enforcer behind the seated Triad representative stumbles back in shock and his black suit turns white as well as the rest of his colors invert like a photographic negative before calming himself and turning to normal.

There is a whole world of freaks in organized crime apparently, freaks like you. Different. Powerful. Strange. What are they? What are you? The man in red’s voice is hoarse.

“While performing an evaluation on the price of a potential contract,” he begins, “I was assaulted on a rooftop by a figure clad in a trenchcoat and hat. Their embrace and physique was of stone that moved like flesh,”

Several eyes in the room glance over to Alonzo for a moment before the man continues.

“Four fingers, clawed, stone, same as felt through the arm of their jacket or my sword digging but breaking against their chest. It was like fighting a yokai of legend. With relative ease they dug their claws into mine and wrenched me open. Still beating they removed my heart,” how the hell is this guys talking about it though, “Grumbled that it wasn’t sufficient for the rite, that it could not call Gorgolla, dropped it back into me, and leapt away as bat wings pushed through a large cut in the back of his coat and trailing cloven feet before I succumbed to death’s embrace,”

The man closes his top, bows, and leaves the room. Maybe there are other kind of dead people walking around, like Mrs. Cross? It does boggle your mind that organized crime is riddled with people like this.

>>6473734
“None of The Hands' records know anything about a Gorgolla,” offers young Tsurayaba, “Does it mean anything to any of you.

As the table of villains erupts into discussion, it feels distant and you fall away back into the tunnel of your entry. Alonzo was in the middle of saying how that’s a wise move on your part though he’s disappointed he wouldn’t be able to offer up his proposition as you’re in the process of snapping back from the clearest vision you’ve ever gotten through someone else’s eyes as you seize for just a second in return to the ring of the snare drum that becomes a keening in your ear which does not shake so quickly.

“You alright there, little orphan Annie?” Alonzo questions, unaware entirely of your sojourn.

“Yeah, no, drink just rushed to my head a little qui- wait, little orphan Annie,” why is this man comparing you to a comic strip? You gave the name Annie but that’s hardly an…“-excuse me?”

“Name’s Annie, and from up here I can see your roots showing,” he laughs, trying to take some power of seniority in the exchange, “Red. Know, you shouldn’t cover up the parts of you that make you stand out. I gave up on makeup years ago,”

He gestures to his cement white face while leaning a bit back from the table on his chair’s back legs, balancing on the hand your own remains on top of on the table.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you reply, icily, and withdraw that hand.

He looks annoyed at himself. He thought he was doing something cool or saying something profound and is annoyed he misread it or that it wasn’t taken that way, but he shrugs and bounces back.

“Is Misty gonna be as wise about this as you?” he questions as your passenger pushes the chair that little bit further and he tips back, the awkwardness of the exchange lost in your and a few other patrons helping him back up.

Holy shit that was John Wayne. He slaps Alonzo on the back and goes back to dancing.

“No fucking way,” the two of you say in near unison as Alonzo forgets himself and is in that moment as star struck as you.

You push him the bottle of spirits and take another drag of your beer before Misty and Candace return, attracted by the sight of Alonzo’s fall. You meet Mercedes’s eyes and smile, hoping you communicate that you’ve gotten what you needed. She nods. Candace catches whatever is being unspoken between the two of you and nods as well.

“Alonzo, are you alright?” Candace asks in concern, “That was a nasty fall,”

“Yeah, scuse me a moment,” he rises with the bottle in hand and then regards Mercedes, “You know Misty, your friend has a good head on her shoulders,”

He walks into the crowd after the famous movie star after smoothing his hair back.

“You okay?” Mercedes asks at your seeming still present state of slight disorientation.

“I’m fine, I got it though,” you smile giddily.

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>>6473739

>>6473736
“What did he say?” Mercedes leans in conspiratorially and Candy follows suit deciding she is of course included.

“He knew I was gonna ask about something and wanted an exchange…but I walked past him,” you smile and look about the room to realize a few other patrons and staff are familiar enforcers from that vision who went unnamed but for now you seem to know, “The ghost got it for me and it’s crazy…we can absolutely not talk about it here with a guy like Montana around,”

Mercedes follows your line of sight and regards the man with an out of place ten gallon hat chatting with Alonzo and John Wayne at the bar.

“Ghost?” Candace questions, “You’re talking nonsense again Ann, like when you were too far gone last night, and I love it. This is exciting!”

Mercedes understands your meaning after a further sweep of the bar, one hand drifting to where the holster likely sits against the looseness of her vest.

“Alright, then let’s get a move on, find some place to talk about this,” Mercedes explains, “I’ve definitely had a few eyes I know on me tonight so we can’t just go straight back to the apartment,”

“What did he call it? Consequences of your rep for teen sleuth bullshit?” you question with a maybe little buzzed giggle.

“Lonnie would,” she huffs and then for a moment looks serious to ask the one question she feels vague and simple enough not to be a problem here in this moment, “He do it?”

You shake your head. She nods.

“Alright, let’s go,” Mercedes supports your unsteady rise to your feet.

“We should go to my place!” Candace declares, she is not asking.

“Works for me,” you agree and the three of you head outside, waving to Alonzo as you go.

The young man seems confused and momentarily dejected, but is quickly distracted by celebrity matters just as quickly.

So easily smitten by stardom, but also so easily and seamlessly cruel. You remember the way that man’s wrist broke so easily in his clutch. The feel of it. The same easy cruelty in the eyes of his friend, Fisk, that gave you unease. The terrifying discipline in that one enforcer woman’s stance that now gives your stomach butterflies. The casual nature of a man ripped open.now gives you freight that doesn’t quite clear the courage you’ve drunk.


Though that one man, the government man, Gyrich. His face will haunt you for a while. It sticks uncomfortably like a warning you don’t know how to parse. Something about what you felt or the way you interpreted it in the vision of Alonzo’s memory was a warning…you just can’t parse it. Maybe it’ll make sense when you’re less buzzed and more awake.

It does hit you that you took a risk, what if you reacted like you had in the Library? A room full of screaming people spinning around you as the eye of a storm…but that wasn’t likely. Because your passenger is calmed by the presence of more people. The music. It was fine.

>>6473737
Candace hails a cab on the curb almost as soon as you breach into the cool air of the summer night. She gives an address and you’re speeding off to a swanky midtown address. The cabbie is instructed to keep the change, and the doorman welcomes Ms. Southern home before an elevator ride to the top of the address.

A valet is waiting at the door to the building penthouse, informing that despite the midnight hour that her father has company and suggests she keep her guests to the more private confines of her room whilst they bring refreshment; and that a Mr. Hodge had called for her earlier in the evening.

“Is Cameron back in town? Wonderful. I’ll return the call in the morning. We’ll steer clear of Daddy and his guests…is it Mr. Leland again?” she questions and hands the man her coat.

“With Mr. Shaw,” this gives Candace pause.

“Hence the suggestion. Refreshment and coffee to my room is prudent then,” Candace seems an entirely different person as she thinks on that a moment and then leads on along the outer window wall of the penthouse to what you assume is her room…which is bigger than your and Mercedes’s apartment, and it has a balcony with seating.

“Oh, you're this kinda rich,” Mercedes eventually whistles once the door is closed and you cannot help but agree with her.

“Oh, this isn’t so impressive, is it? You should see our primary estate out on…yes yes we are that kind of rich I did not mean to do that,” she catches herself a little embarrassed before awkwardly pushing forward the situation at hand, “So, things we couldn’t talk about in the Peppermint,”

Seated on the balcony, you and Mercedes first catch Candace up on the situation framed around the journal and the series of weird murders followed by Mercedes’s reasoning to make the inquiry of Alonzo Lincoln. By then, her valet has delivered a cart of coffee and refreshment, and with the relatively low effort act of messily having your passenger spoon your sugar you briefly explain your haunting and visions. She takes it well, because she was definitely a few drinks deeper than you and Mercedes. Also, you notice more of those feathers from the coffee table strewn about the balcony, though bigger.

“That’s amazing. You will not regret sharing this secret with me, I’m great at secrets. I never told anyone about Warr- Ah! Ah Ha! Almost got me. See, great with secrets,” she beams.

And then, you regale the two of them quite animatedly with the vision your spectre pulled from Alonzo’s memory while they were away from the table. You skip over some of the minutia of those present for the meeting, but the few you do describe are clearly known to Mercedes by some measure. She is clearly familiar with the known landscape of organized crime in the city, and from what Lonnie said they know her.

>>6473739
The addition of two victims to the pattern. That a gang war almost broke out over the murders. That the killer as described by the witness of a man who should be dead gives her pause. Candace is of course enraptured by all of this. It is half past 1 by the time you finish.

And the name. The name Gorgolla.

The three of you are quiet, save for the sounds of the city. Late night traffic, sirens, and the endless murmuring burbling of a city that never sleeps. The city that never sleeps.

“Sounds like gargoyle,” Mercedes eventually breaks the silence between you and takes a long sip of coffee, “The name sounds like Gargoyle and this thing sounds like it looks like a gargoyle,”

“Normally they don’t move around,” Candace considers, a bit sobered despite the ridiculous aspects of the matter being discussed, “And there are just so many places to just hide without drawing attention to itself in the city,”

“Strong enough to rip open rib cages and strong enough to fly while made of stone,” Mercedes considers, “Unsettling,”

“Fly…it could be flying tonight?” Candace pauses and goes pale before she runs back into her room from the balcony, “Oh no!”

She picks up the phone, the personal phone she keeps in her room and spins the rotary quickly. Mercedes gives you a look.

“We ought to head north, either to see if we can find Latarnick & Steele or start searching ourselves using you as a compass. Like we should strike while the iron is still hot,” Mercedes offers.

“It was already a risk trying what we did at the Peppermint Lounge,” you muse about the danger both realized after the fact and known before you went in as your passenger stands at the edge of the balcony with her arms stretched wide.

Behind you, Candace just worriedly repeats the words “pick up,” while a phone rings on in the background. Her anxious prayer seems answered.

“Oh thank god, you’re home,” she exhales, “What am I on about? What are you on about?! Did you know there’s a flying killer on the loose? I’m glad you’re safe,”

There is a pause and the conversation echoing out to you dies a bit.

>>6473740
“Risk is the job we took on. It’ll be fine, unlike everyone else we’ll know what we’re up against,” Mercedes offers in confidence, “between bullets and the kind of whammy I imagine your ghost could pull off we might be able to stop this, tonight,”

“Mercedes, we aren’t cops,” you reply.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t do something, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t,” she says seriously, “Not while people are getting killed for some spooky ass gargoyle ritual,”

And…and you agree. Despite yourself you agree. People will die, and the two of you can do something about it. You can do something about it, you have the power to do something about it.

“A tenement fire? You risk taking ASS! Well maybe I’m gonna take needless risks too and see how YOU feel about it, Warren!” Cancade slams down the receiver on her very urgent and impassioned concerned call with someone named Warren.

You know how it sounded and you’re concerned if Gabriel knows…or is Warren Gabriel’s real name? Wait. Why would Gabriel be taking risks at a tenement fire? That’s weird.

Mercedes’s ask hangs in the air.

>You’re in, you’ve gotta try to end this thing tonight
>You aren’t up for this, and urge Mercedes to call it a night as well
>Mercedes can do as she likes, you’ll point her right and then go home

>>6473741
>You’re in, you’ve gotta try to end this thing tonight
Fuck it.

While we wait for more votes, I've written two Asides as Optional content.

Choir and Shine Bright like a Diamond.

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>>6473815

Aside, Choir

The man who sometimes went by the alias of Gabriel touched softly onto the veranda of his family’s palatial home atop a luxurious high rise on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Here, so high up, he could bare all to the world and exist otherwise unseen. Not that he’d stayed so high this night. The scent of smoke and ash still chased him despite the headwind he’d crossed to lessen its cling. A shower and preen might be appropriate. Stretching and flexing his usually constrained limbs, he exults in this moment of freedom and looks down at the city below. At the park, and wonders if he is alone in sharing the wonders above and a view that puts even this penthouse to shame.

Mother was likely already asleep. Father was no doubt awake and aware…perhaps disproving of this night time excursion he had, to the young man’s shock, agreed not to try and stop.

Undoing the masked headstocking he wore on these excursions, he began stripping himself of the experimental red and greyblack full body taut jumpsuit which was meant for ski jumping, but shelved by an engineer in a subsidiary of a company his father owned. Returning to the comfort of mild undress, he donned a soft terrycloth shortrobe custom cut to allow his extraneous extremities loose and tightened its belt.

Barefoot, he strode from his bedroom to the kitchen, passing the expansive living room meant for entertaining where his father sat, reading a rather battered looking book.

No, as he came closer he realized it was a journal.

“Didn’t expect to see you up quite this late, old man,” he stretched his arms and rummaged in the refrigerator for the glass bottle of milk.

“I just obtained something I’ve been keen to read, and when I realized you were out I decided to stay up,” Gabriel’s father explains quite simply before sniffing and closing the journal, “You smell like a fireplace,”

“Just a thermal,” he shrugs and lies, a talent one with the charm of a cherub might embrace, “Might have been over a fire by some distance I imagine. What is it? More to do with your little pet project?”

“It's the personal journal of a man extremely similar to yourself, but also wholly dissimilar,” he sets the book down on the coffee table near him and loosens his tie, “Jack Starsmore, from a period of tumult in his life during the 1800’s”

After drinking from the already half finished bottle, the man who calls himself Gabriel makes a satisfied sound.

“So, another freak like me from history? Tell me father, does this one use the term Witchbreed or is it something more demeaning,” the youth sighs.

“Nothing so coarse,”

He would continue with his father, an unsheltered bitterness building in his own voice, and maybe this night they would resolve some of their longstanding tensions…had a ring from the direction of his room not sounded.

>>6473814
“Who the hell calls my personal line after midnight? Sorry father, but I’ll have to take a rain check on that curiosity,” he turns back to his room, still carrying the milk.

Returning to his room and lifting the receiver, the young man sits comfortable on his bed.

“I hope you realize the hour it is,” he intones, not greeting whomever is calling because the list of people who actually have this number is preciously small.

“Oh thank god, you’re home,” his girlfriend and longtime confidant Candace sighs in relief.

“Candy? What are you on about?”

“What am I on about? What are you on about?! Did you know there’s a flying killer on the loose? I’m glad you’re safe,” she says quickly

“Flying killer?!” he questions and her voice becomes less rushed, less loud, and tries to explain herself.

“I was out with the girls, Ann and Mercedes, and they’ve clued me in on a ridiculously dangerous sounding mystery which made me very concerned about your safety tonight,” she explains, “I know you wanted to start going out at night and doing something…and the thought that a bat winged monster couldn’t resist the aesthetic of striking out at you up there just filled me with worry and dread. I’m so glad you’re home,”

“I’ve only just returned actually,” he replies, concerned that there is in fact someone else who shares the perspective of open skies as Candace tells it.

“Did you see anything out there? Up there?” she questions with some urgency.

“Not really, I spent a lot of time trying to shake the smell of a rescue,” he admits.

“Smell of a rescue?”

“I pulled a few people out of a tenement fire in Brooklyn,” he laughs sheepishly, “I was not prepared for how the smoke lingers,”

“A tenement fire? You risk taking ASS! Well maybe I’m gonna take needless risks too and see how YOU feel about it, Warren!” Cancade escalates her urgency into anger, turning into it on her heel before he hears her slam the phone down and the connection between the two goes dead.

Warren, as he is truly known, considers he’ll have to sit down and really listen to her concerns tomorrow. Which is well, their old friend Cameron Hodge was back in town and wanted to meet for lunch tomorrow.

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>>6473815
Aside, Shine Bright like a Diamond

Jack Winters was an addict, but he was not a victim. He was addicted to power and sensation, what gave him both was radiation. He remembered the word the doctor used once, metabolize. He could metabolize radiation. And when he metabolized radiation, it made him feel alive. Feel strong. Stolen fire alarms, uranium glass, anything he could get his hands on gave him a rush and made him feel absolutely truly alive. And over time it crept up on him, from his fingers tips inward, flesh slowly became something hard and sharp else the more he metabolized.

Not a clever man, but he was pigheaded and full of confidence and bravado. He knew he was meant for greater and wanted to lead; which is why a strong asset like him washed out of any mob that would take him on. Problems with authority and following orders because he was better. So much better and soon he’d prove it. It’s why he got passed over and was run out of the city when he made a stink about it, now some punk he doesn’t even know was scouted and scooped up instead.

Had he been clever, the rest of his natural suite of abilities would have served him well. Very mildly he could read and sense nearby minds, maybe even give those minds a push if the mood struck him, and tell if someone was like him. Those things, like the clack of his mineral fingertips, came over time and the unstable meals he was able to help himself too. Clutching the remains of a ruined children’s chemistry set fresh out of the box he thought he might have a new trick, because his whole body felt like bees…

But that wasn’t important right now.

What was important was the boy he had in one of the other rooms of his squatted trap house. He was among his people here, junkies or bums in a house in the middle of nowhere miles and miles from any major city, and among the strung out he was like a god. The right push, intimidation from strength, he ruled here and reaped the benefits from the weak. And then he found the kid, and it made him think up a plan.

Opening the door, he threw an apple at the skinny teen who failed to catch it.

“Just a snack kid, I’m heading out to scrounge up an actual meal,” Jack said sternly, whilst pushing the kid toward gratitude for the attention.

“Th-thank you,” he said meekly, eyes screwed shut and groping for the apple that had hit him in the chest, “I appreciate that, Mr. Winters,”

“Rest up kid. World of work ahead of us in the next few days,” Jack smiled and closed the door as the boy found the food, “New worlds of work,”

Construction was well underway of that plant in Indian Point on the Hudson. An Atomic Age energy center, with fuel rods being stored and cyclotrons being built and tested. Jack could taste it, and if he pointed this kid in the right direction and convinced him to open those eyes, he could walk right in and take an actual meal to sate his addiction.

End Asides.

>>6473741
>You’re in, you’ve gotta try to end this thing tonight

Damn it, Mercedes...


Also, interesting stuff with the asides. Good to see Warren's father is a bit more supportive of his son than what we'd normally expect.

Rolled 2, 5 + 2 = 9 (2d6 + 2)

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>>6473937 >>6473957 >>6473964

You have a million reasons to say no, a million reasons to leave this to others on the morrow, but Mercedes’s is right. If you could do something and do nothing, and someone else suffers and dies for this…you don’t think you could live with yourself when you think about it.

So…fuck it. Damn you Mercedes, damn you for being righteous.

You have got to try to end things tonight.

“Mercedes…I’m in,” you steel yourself and stand up as Candace comes back onto the balcony.

“I’m in too, whatever this is,” she stands behind you and nods firmly.

Mercedes grins and girds herself for whatever comes next as the three of you figure out what to prepare. Two of you are already armed, but Candace offers the power of a driver at this late hour. All that’s left is to…as Mercedes put it…be a compass.

You know how far north the next murder is likely to be, and the three of you pile into a Southern family car after Candace roused a driver on call. There is a somber and serious mean to it, Mercedes and Candace in the backseat and you in the front waiting to feel what your and your passenger’s gut says about where you need to be tonight.

You don’t know where the assassin from The Hand was attacked, but you know where the Cab was found. So you head there first, to investigate the site. Luckily it hadn’t been towed yet, and while the engine of the Southern’s car continues to rumble behind the three of you, Candace steadies a flashlight on the dented door of a taxi cab as you lean over and you and your passenger touch it together.

Mercedes holds the map from the car’s glovebox and your passenger rips it out of her hands and drives a finger through where the East and Harlem rivers join. You’ll start there in these small hours of the morning.

“Randall’s Island…if I had any sense of drama that’s where she would go down,” Mercedes muses to herself, “Under the Hell Gate Bridge, one of the mothballed buildings of either Psychiatric Center, or the Hell’s Gate marsh,”

That far north, and away from Manhattan…the city may as well sleep on that island. You could get some backup by having Candace’s driver use their radio to briefly broadcast a warning on the police bandwidth that Latarnick and Steele would be listening to...

None of you notice you are stalked in the park this night, as a mind that your passenger cannot easily perceive watches you, as it listens to your discourse. As they had been staking out this site for some time in the dark…

Two Choices
>We should try to alert Latarnick & Steele first
>We don’t have time for Latarnick & Steele

&

>We search the Hell Gate Bridge
>We search the Manhattan Psychiatric Center’s closed building
>We search the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center’s closed building
>We search the Hell Gate inlet fill project
>We get in the open and use ourselves as bait

Next thread I might as well make the X over the Comics Code Box larger and incorporate it into the title.

Strange X Tales Quest.

>>6473868
>We should try to alert Latarnick & Steele first
This is crazy dangerous and none of them has any real capabilities to deal with a Gargoyle, the mobsters or random psychos.

>We search the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center’s closed building
Fun ensured

>>6473868
>We should try to alert Latarnick & Steele first
>We search the Hell Gate Bridge
>We search the Hell Gate inlet fill project

Those two seem to speak to me for some reason.

>>6473868
I change to >>6473957
The gargoyle will have an advantage on an open space and Jean will have less opportunities to hide and stuff to attack with, but the location seems more diabolical and I haven't lost hope yet.

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Been writing.

Rolled 3, 5 + 4 = 12 (2d6 + 4)

Read a bad situation, rolling with +1 forward and +2 from Mercedes and Leah.

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>>6474061

“Its gotta be holding up in the bridge or somewhere in the fill project,” you suggest after a tense few moments considering things, “the closed down psychiatric centers are still regularly patrolled and no guards have been reported missing that we know of,”

“We’ll cross the bridge first, and if we don’t find anything there we can move onto the inlet fill,” Candace nods and then pauses, “What do we then, if we find it, exactly,”

In her burst of apparent spite to join tonight’s outing beyond the impression of her balcony, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Mercedes pops the top button of her vest and pulls up the handle of a .38 revolver and you open your purse toward her and show the 9mm sitting loosely inside. She looks between the two of you incredulously for a moment and then in disappointment.

“You have guns?!” she exclaims, “Why don’t I have a gun? Should I have a gun? I can borrow the tire iron from the car. Do we need more guns? It’s too late to get more guns quickly isn’t it?”

“We could get Leah and Jonah to meet us,” Mercedes offers heading back toward Candace’s car & driver.

“If you have a way to raise them I’m all for it,” you concede as you and Candace follow her, this time she takes up shotgun next to the very professional driver paid well enough to not ask questions in the employ of the Southern family.

This is certainly not the most suspect situation he has driven Candace about in.

“Leah stuck her broad range police scanner in Jonah’s car. This town car has a short range Citizen Band for some reason,” Mercedes smiles and looks at the driver as you and Candace pile into the back seat, “I can use this to get on a bandwidth they’ll hear considering where about they’re staking out but likely won’t be on an actively used police frequency,”

The driver gives a nod in understanding and approval prompting Mercedes to start intently fiddling with the dials and clicking chunky buttons before lifting the receiver.

“Why does your car have a CB?” you question Candace.

“Concierge service offered at our building for residents. We can call the front desk and they’ll radio our driver most anywhere in the city,” Candace explains, still working her way toward sobriety, “Gabriel’s building has it too, that’s who he called this morning…yesterday morning?”

Mercedes pauses a moment to think of what to say before bringing the receiver up and activating it.

“Calling for the night maiden greaser of the gas station, a little spooky told me the statuesque stone chiseled heart breaker of your screams is gonna be on Randall’s island. Bring that stainless steel to cross Hell’s Gate,” over the course of a few minutes she repeats this four times while the driver, following that prompt and Candy’s instruction made way to the Hell Gate bridge connecting the rails upper Manhattan across Randall’s island.

>>6474060
You pull over in a free spot to park near where the tracks rise and you follow Mercedes out of the car and wait together for a few minutes. Before long, after a few other cars pass by, an older hard top she recognizes rolls into sight from the segmented dark of lamp lit streets. It pulls up behind you. Ms. Latarnick and Mr. Steele have arrived.

“Up a little late Ms. Knight?” Leah Latarnick begins and then regards your presence with a smile holding up her kitted out Nikon F, “And Ms. Claremont, surprising. Just what have you girls gotten into tonight?”

“Save the story for the walking,” Jonah Steele offers while regarding the bridge and draws out a Colt pistol, “Lead on, ladies,”

Candace comes from around the back of the car holding a large crossed tire iron.

“Hi, I’m Candy. I’m friends with Misty and Ann,” she gives a little wave and then looks at Jonah, “Seriously? Does everyone have a gun but me?”

“I gotta ball peen hammer,” Leah holds up the tool, “But I’m gonna have my hands full with the flash photography,”

“Well, I feel better,” Candace smiles and turns toward first to her driver and then the train tracks and pedestrian paths of the bridge, “Engine off, lights off, and try your best to sink into the seat, there is a killer about you know,”

He nods, and makes considerations of his life choices about this normally cushy gig in service.

Walking together up the shallow incline you and Mercedes take turns catching up Ms. Latarnick and Mr. Steele as to the nature of your investigations, both prior and by way of Alonzo Lincoln whom Mercedes had told them about earlier in the day when they were in the field. Along with, apparently, the secretive rising freak stars amongst the criminal underworld. They are a bit skeptical of the claims of ability of you and your spectral passenger, having not witnessed them before, but can hardly argue the consistency of information provided ahead of the earlier Cabbie reveal.

“You’ve used that thing before, kid?” Jonah questions as you take out your 9mm and hold it awkwardly.

“I absolutely have not,” it is an intimidating weight in your hands but it is there more for comfort, though you do slide the safety into the correct position, “No real time for a bench test,”

“Guess not, hopefully we won’t have to use them. Mercedes, if you’re gonna take Ann to a range I’d be happy to come with,” he checks his sight against the height of the first tower of the Hell Gate bridge.

“I dunno, Ann, you wanna go to a range and learn to shoot?” Mercedes asks, “When we’re not walking into something dangerous?”

“I wouldn’t mind the practice. If I didn’t go to the peppermint yesterday I was gonna try an abandoned yard over in Brooklyn,” you answer honestly.

>>6474061
“Why an abandoned yard?” Leah questions.

“Not exactly my gun,” you shrug.

“Fair,” she shrugs as Steele sighs.

“Figure we sweep with the tower, underbridge, far tower, far side of underbridge, and then move on to the river fill construction. Leah’s got bolt cutters,” he explains.

“Sensible order of operations, I was thinking the same,” Mercedes is holding her revolver in two hands, barrel pointed down, and turning to walk along her profile.

“And besides the bolt cutters I’m wearing the right boots to kick a door in if necessary,” the photographer explains, “It’s all about weight, center of gravity, and follow through,”

Steele has the gun out and held aloft pointed up in one bent arm in a way that reminds you of the cover of some pulp detective novel. Candace walks awkwardly alongside you with the tire iron clutched tightly to her. Leah is shuffling behind, bringing up the rear, on shorter legs than most of you with her camera ready.

As you get closer to the tower, Mercedes shushes as question Candace was about to raise as she and Steele both point to the same side of the tower, look at one another, play a quick round of rock paper scissors that Steele wins, and then he points at himself and to the far side of the first tower across the tracks. Mercedes nods, knocks her head to the closer door ahead at the base of this side of the first tower, points at you and Ms. Latarnick first, then gestures for Candace to follow Mr. Steele to which she nods firmly.

Hopping the railing for the pedestrian path, Steele darts across the tracks. Candace awkwardly follows him. You, Mercedes, and Leah get under the first archway of the tower and inspect the door. It is locked, and as Leah makes good on her promise of bursting it open with the right boots on, you hear a similar sound across the way before it is drowned out by a passing train.

The three of you hurry inside, it’s a wide space for maintenance and storage of equipment, with a spiral stair rising into the dark up to a landing into a large vaulted ceiling room, with further rising stairs to the arc ramparted roof.

Mercedes begins to sweep the room while directing Leah toward the massively tall arrowslit window and you to look at the ceilings…the corners in the dark.

Taking out the flashlight Candace gave you, you look up. The ceiling appears clear of any creature of person, but you see deep gashes in the stone. Digs with two channels and shallow short gouts of four lines.

“Mercedes,” you croak out, “It was here,”

“Figured, pile of cleaned ribs over here,” you hear her say, “Carved patterns into it, circles and geometry,”

She inspects them slowly, does not touch them as you look down to see her looking at a pile of six clean white bones.

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>>6474064

>>6474062
“Patterns trail off, cross lines, unfinished. These are mistakes,” she hums in consternation, “Mistakes trying to do whatever summoning he was after?”

“I’m not touching those bones,” you declare unprompted as the train now below you completes its loud passing, “I don’t want to touch them and I don’t want to try and read them,”

“No, I get that. It's probably not safe to do here and now anyway,” she agrees with you.

“Girls,” Leah calls your attention to the arrowslit window, “Someone is coming up the tracks,”

Joining her at the window, the two of you crowd to see a figure in heavy rags shambling up through the rocks of the rain line with hands shoved into the pockets of its ratty coat and covered head tilted low. Clothing too heavy for the season and ratty like it was taken out of a dumpster.

“The feet,” Leah Latarnick says simply, and you realize pushing through the gravel are very skinny calves and ankles barely covered in torn pant legs.

Your observations are broken by the staccato explosions of gunfire across the way. Realizing that Steele has unloaded on something the three of you rush upwards of the remaining spiral. The last thing you catch of the figure following your path up the rail bridge is them breaking into a run until you achieve the open sky of the roof access.

>Read a Bad Situation 12: Hold 3 plus bonus
<What is the biggest threat: the stone gargoyle clawing its way up out of the other roof access gate, carrying a stone box.
<What’s most vulnerable to me: there are holes in the stone of its wings, Steel has shot it there or it shielded itself with its wings
<Are they any dangers you haven’t noticed: someone has started rising up the spiral stairs from the ground level
<Why is it hard to feel its presence: being this close, the gargoyle feels closer to the living feeling of the stone Mrs. Cross had you read this morning…it’s alive but it is not a flesh mind your ghost can easily perceive

Pushing open the gate of the caged top of the spiral staircase you see the winged monster doing the same and tearing itself free of its trenchcoat. Horned head and eyes full of malice it clutches a large stone box to its chest. The right wing arcing out behind it is perforated in two spots with cracked bullet holes, were those intentional shots by Steele or did the creature shield it’s center mass with those wings?

You can’t tell. Even your ghost is confused as its mind doesn’t weigh anything to the sense you share. It reminds you more of the brief sensation of the Spider-Stone which Mrs. Cross handed you earlier today.

>>6474063

Leah is already snapping a picture of it, her flashbulb confusing everyone’s night eyes for just a moment, and as you look down blinking you realize something is charging up the spiral stair far behind the three of you.

“That guy is behind us!” you call out.

Mercedes is taking aim as the thing leaps from the gate to the bridge crossing facing ramparts.

Jonah Steel, his tie cut and shirt gashed open, is on its heels and Candace screaming with tire iron held above her head is rising spiral behind him.

Jonah and Mercedes take aim with their guns. As the tension crescendos and time feels to move on a pin, you…

>Take aim with your gun and shoot the winged gargoyle
>Unleash your power at the winged gargoyle, use Spooky Move Big Whammy
>Brace the cage door closed and hold it by yourself and with your power
>Shoot at the figure rising up the spiral behind you.
>Unleash your power at the figure rising up the spiral behind you
>Distract the gargoyle so Steele and Mercedes have a better shot

>>6474064
>Unleash your power at the winged gargoyle, use Spooky Move Big Whammy
Jean is the only one able to make the gargoyle eat shit.
We don't know if the figure is an enemy but Steele should be able to shoot or hold the door better or wrestle them. Whatever.

>>6474064
>>Unleash your power at the winged gargoyle, use Spooky Move Big Whammy

>>6474064
>Unleash your power at the winged gargoyle, use Spooky Move Big Whammy

or

>Unleash your power at the figure rising up the spiral behind you

I do agree that we are the only one that can stop it right now, but I do worry about this mysterious figure behind us.

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Rolled 5, 5 + 3 = 13 (2d6 + 3)

Rolling Big Whammy, Weird instead of Toughness for Kick Some Ass. 2 Weird, 1 Forward.

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>>6474226

Bullets cracked only the thinnest part of this thing. A sword found purchase, but could not cut deeply enough, though you see the shallow scar on its chest. His chest? It looks like a man, though you don’t know what it is. Stone brought to life, by magic or possession like the dead assassin? A freak like you or Alonzo? Something closer to Mrs. Cross if bats are related to Vampires like in the movies? Something otherworldly like Mr. Lee might insist?

Maybe this isn’t a time for guns…

And whoever or whatever is rising up the stairs behind your half of this hunting party is a paltry secondary concern.

You do not take aim with your pilfered 9mm. Your ghost comes in lock step with you and the hand holding the awkward weapon becomes inconsequential as you reach out with your free hand.

Mustering everything you have, every hostility you’ve held back and in check. Every soothing moment you’ve embraced to calm the storm within you. The thing that looks like Annie Richards screams in unison with you as she expands as curling roiling shapeless kinetic mist, burning magenta light that you do not know yet is visible and clear to all those around you. There will be questions later, was this visible and forceful psychokinetic phenomenon ectoplasm or something else? Whatever it is, it is the shared will between yourself and your seemingly id driven passenger.

Steele and Mercedes, in this slowed moment, have squeezed triggers and fired shots. The former naval officer peels off three in the time it takes Mercedes to again cock the revolver and fire a second time. Leah’s camera flashes again, and somewhere below on the bridge there is another flashbulb going off unnoticed amid your fray. Candace looks to you in awe and wonder as she shields her eyes.

You run, accelerating a little faster than your legs should carry you and stop short of the creature JUST after the shots fired by your allies that hit find their mark on center mass, too shocked by the sudden exuded presence you bring to the fore to shield himself with his wings. The box smells deeply of rot and blood and it decides your intent. Some of the bullets have done more than just chip, by caliber or repeatedly hitting the same spot, and you dig into those gaps and the furrow made by a dead man’s sword.

The storm in the library that Mrs. Cross calmed. Your vague memories of home when this first happened after Annie’s death and when it returned again. For once, you don’t care about not hurting someone.

“I have found you, Obsergo! Murderous cur, I will not stand idle whi- what?” declares the figure rising up the spiral staircase behind you before shielding their eyes with granite gray hands in the scintillating magenta light.

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>>6474228 >>6474239

>>6474224
The amorphous kinetic force rends him in grievous injury, and in the absolute rage you barely notice as he thrust his free clawed hand toward, nor do you feel it as it loses potency against the force pouring out of you. That in this moment you can do more. He has dropped the great stone box and it tips flat onto the walkable roof as you force him over the ramparts above the tracks as another train approaches from Randall’s Island. Lid opening with the momentum of the turn, red and rotting organs spill free.

His wings, without flapping, exude a levitating force pulling against your hold. This monstrous man has killed so many, you doubt you can successfully or continuously contain him. You will not simply route him this day. Down. DOWN!

Forcing him over the edge and down, against the pull of his impossible flight, right where you want him on the tracks below. A freight train, not a Pennsylvania Rail Road passenger rail moves with no great speed, but heavy inertia.

He has but the chance to scream before the train hits him, knocks him into the side of the tower’s arch Jonah Steele and Candace Southern had driven him out of, looking down you see him prone, one wing shorn off.

The brilliant magenta light retracts to you as an aura when you turn to face the others. As it fades and you see your passenger looking spent, and you feel it as well. Somewhere behind you, from a Camera that isn’t in the possession of Leah Latarnick, there is another refracted flash below.

>You accumulated 3 more harm to a total of 4, between the claw to your shoulder and the nose bleed springing from this exertion.

>The Gargoyle is inert. Is it unconscious or dead?

That…that was too much. You’re expended.

Pitching forward, the shorter rotund woman catches you. Jonah stands there, pistol trained on where the gargoyle was and you were, unsure of how to process what he’s just seen. Mercedes steps into position with you and Leah at her back and levels her revolver at the newcomer who had come up behind your number, and begins shouting demands or commands that are muted to your ears. Candace rushes past Jonah Steele as he holsters his pistol and she helps Leah sit you up against the ramparts. Your passenger crowds you with them, and as you slip away, exhausted, you see through her hair.

You don’t quite remember what you saw, but you know at least for that moment your passenger’s face was not that of your childhood friend, the late Annie Richardson.

>Hunt successful.

Some time later, you awaken in your bed in the still sparsely decorated room in your and Mercedes shared apartment. Your shoulder is bandaged, and you don’t know how long you’ve been out. You ache, your head hurts. There are two kitchen chairs next to your bed, one is occupied by your passenger, with her hands in her lap. There are sounds coming from the main room of the apartment.

Who’s turn was it to watch you when you finally woke up?
>Mercedes
>Jonah
>Leah
>Candy