LogThe City Never Sleeps-Jason-6

Game log for the 2024/01/22 session of AW:The City Never Sleeps, as taken by Jason

MacWillard is out in the settlement, on his way to deal with a report of someone being injured, when he suddenly gets grabbed. Grandma gets word from Semmel that Watervale has snagged his doctor. To be precise, Billings says he saw people from Watervale do it. Well, he's 85% sure they were from Watervale. The report of someone being injured suddenly looks like a setup. Grandma tells them both to get a crew together to go get Mac back before the trail grows cold. Semmel's not sure how many people he should take. Billings says he only saw five or six, but of course, if they make it back to Watervale, her troops will be fighting the entire town. Billings worries that it might be a trap, so she tells them to send a scouting party and check on that.

A few hours later, they report back that a scout posing as a merchant infiltrated Watervale, and recognized one of the kidnappers. MacWillard is definitely back there now. They leave an agent behind to keep an eye on things, and report back to Grandma that this is going to take a large force if the rescue is to succeed. Grandma decides she's up for that and rallies her troops. They hop into vehicles and head out. They're spotted coming in, so the defenders will be ready.

Watervale uses an up-armored city bus as a gate, in the classic road warrior fashion. She tells the guard (who's operating from a sandbagged balcony) that she and her forces are to get MacWillard back, because she knows he's there. The guard tells her she doesn't know shit. She tells them she's just there for MacWillard, and if they hand him over, she'll leave. The guard tells her to piss off.

MacWillard wakes up to find himself chained to a bed, with someone out of sight saying, "Keep an eye on that one." With no good options available, he opens his brain, and has a memory (not his own) of fighting with a sibling over a stuffed elephant, which gets torn. He takes the point. He can sort of see through the bag over his head, and tell that there's a window in this room. MacWillard explains that he's committed to non-violence and suggests that, since he's a doctor, they should put him in a position to do someone some good. The guard is not interested, so Mac asks them to bring their boss around. Nothing happens directly.

Grandma decides to try to force her way in. Bullets fly! Carnage ensues! Her troops pull an airport jetway truck out from around the corner, and immediately have troops up and over the bus/gate. The defenders abandon the bus. Grandma looks for a prisoner, or someone they could take prisoner, who could tell them where her pet doctor is, but it's still too crazed a situation. She just screams, "Where's MacWillard?" Her troops move in and take cover for a prolonged fight, and use fire superiority to let one another advance, while pinning the defenders. She demands MacWillard again, but the Watervalers just keep shooting. She orders a prisoner taken. Her gang does so, and they're steadily moving forward and punishing the defenders, but some of the attackers are running low on ammo. Timber and Billings bring a prisoner to her. She asks the prisoner where MacWillard. He doesn't know. She asks where his boss is. "Shelley's in the bank." The bank is across the square, and she orders her troops to take it. They fight their way across the market square into the bank, with the Watervale defenders giving ground rather than taking casualties. Grandma yells for Shelley, and over the loudspeaker, someone says, "If you drop your weapons and walk out now, we'll just keep your doctor and call it even." Grandma assures the speaker that her troops are not leaving without their doctor. The voice replies that they aren't leaving at all, then. Semmel comes to her and says they have a problem - there are no keys to the bus. Grandma orders her troops to find ammo here, searching every room they can. The good news is that they find it; the bad news is that the armory is the vault, and the vault is locked. She orders her gang to keep going.

MacWillard hears someone new come in and tell his guard, "They're working their way deeper in. We're getting ready to blow it." MacWillard talks her (this turns out to be Shelley) into turning his cell into the casualty collection point. She warns him that if they have to evacuate, he's coming with them, or else they're going to do bad things to him. He indicates a strong desire not to have bad things done to him.

Grandma's gang finds a passage to an adjoining building, which seems to be strongly defended. Nobody really wants to attack that spot. She judges that there's nothing to it but to do it and orders the troops forward. This time the battle is bloody, because the defenders are not willing to give up this position, but her troops once again win through.

MacWillard hears explosives, and the wounded start coming in fast. One of the casualties brought to him is expectant, and Mac tries his healing touch out. Suddenly he and his patient are thrown into the maelstrom. MacWillard "remembers" being in a car with friends, celebrating some major success, when someone screams, "look out," and then there's a violent impact, and then everything goes black.

Grandma's troops find resistance fading, and keep pushing forward, with Grandma shouting for MacWillard.

Shelley tells MacWillard that they're bugging out together, and gives him the directions on how to go with, or else he'll be shot. The gunfire is frighteningly close. He and Shelley run for it.

Grandma's troops are on the fourth floor, resistance stiffening, and frantic aggression being replaced by some tactical nous. Suddenly a bunch of the defenders run across the hall, accompanied by a lot of suppression fire. She calls out that they're here to get him. He tells her that they've already got him.

Mac finds out that the chute he jumped into was a construction waste chute, which lead to a dumpster full of foam rubber. Shelley tells him they're going far away from here now.

Grandma realizes the important bad guys have all left. Semmel wants to get the fuck out of there. They hear explosions in the basement, followed by the building shaking, and the floor cracking. Her people also go for the chute. Some of the gang get hurt by the wire booby trap strung across the bottom of the chute. More are killed when the building collapses. It's her, Semmmel, Timber, Billings, and a handful of other gang members, with no sign of MacWillard or Shelley, standing in an alley next to a shell of a building. All the floors have pancacked down onto one another, leaving only the shell of the over-engineered walls.

MacWillard, caught up in the flight of the Watervale refugees, decides his best way out is to keep his yap shut and hope he's earned some good will.

Grandma's team regroups and spots a blood trail. Knowing they no longer have a numerical advantage, she plans to use stealth to follow them. When the blood trail leads downward into the sort of hatch used for street elevators, Semmel refuses to go down there, and she has to admit that he has a point. They decide to make their way back to their vehicles and thence back to town.

The Stooges see the remnants of the gang come home, and Grandma doesn't stop to talk. She goes back to the Bakery, puts the word out that if Frost, or Jones, or Twiggy want to go find MacWillard, she'd like to discuss it with them.

Accordingly, a really banged-up looking Semmel comes into the Crab Shack looking for Jones or Frost, and finds both. He also finds Twiggy and passes the same message along. He then goes to pass the word to Augustus. It's actually Kenworth he talks to, and when Kenworth talks to Augustus, the maestro'd's main worry is security. He decides to try to get Twiggy and the Stooges onto the payroll as extra security. Word that Grandma wants her doc brought home also reaches Skint, who is after all a bounty hunter. Tinian tells Augustus that Twiggy went to the Bakery. He decides he should go too.

Jones feels something unfamiliar in the air as he, Twiggy, and Frost meet with Grandma, and realizes that the mood in the Bakery is as grim as its ever been. Grandma's gang has never taken casualties like this before, and they're all feeling pretty defeated. Grandma lays out the situation for them. None of them feel interested in going to rescue MacWillard when Grandma can't afford to pay them for it. Frost leaves first. Jones and Twiggy talk briefly, then Jones leaves, bumping into Gus on the way out. They exchange updates real quick.

Twiggy tells Grandma that he knows how it is to be a leader, and to be responsible for people. Unfortunately he has commitments and can't just hare off after Willard. Perhaps, in a couple days, after he's made some scratch, he can lead the Stooges to get Mac, and maybe then, Grandma will show him a little more goodwill. She tells him she needs someone to take care of things now, while the trail is hot, and can't believe nobody is interested.

On the way down, Twiggy meets Augustus, heading up. Augustus tells him that if Grandma can't keep her hold, it's people like them who will need to protect this place. Then Gus goes into Grandma's office, where he finds her very bitter that people aren't more interested in making sure the hold has a doctor.

Gus puts the word out that he wants to know what's up with MacWillard, and that he'd be interested in dealing for him. He knows that Shelley is not a sadist and wouldn't hurt the doc if she didn't have to. She probably grabbed him just as a way to lure Grandma out.

Frost goes to Watervale. The place is a shell of its former self, with ladders on both sides of the bus. People are digging out the rubble. There seems to be one guy coordinating the recovery work, and since he has an SMG slung on his back and has an arm in a sling, she figures maybe he was one of Shelley's troops. Some merchants are packing up to leave, and some are even demanding that some move the bus out of the way so they can go. Frost can see the old HQ building, and can look through the windows to spot the lack of any interior floors. She calculates that if she volunteered to help look for survivors, she might be able to just walk out the other side of the building and pick up Mac's trail. She approaches the boss and asks what's up. "Interdepartmental squabble." She observes that they squabble hard, but asks if they're hiring people to help with this mess. Turns out he's heard of her, and that she isn't loyal to Grandma, so he'll hire her... if she surrenders her gun. She will not give up "her only weapon," so she politely says goodbye and walks off. She immediately tries to find her own way past, and succeeds! She makes her way into the bank, spots the hole in the wall that leads to the rubble pile, and figures that's an easy way in. Sure enough, she just mingles with the workers, does some work, and then makes her way into the back alley.

From there, she opens her brain to see if MacWillard came that way. She can tell that he's in the dark, which is bad, that he's moving, and that there's a smell of fresh dirt. She opens the hatch whence the blood trail ended, climbs down, and finds herself in a tunnel, with a blood trail. She follows it. It's dark as hell down there, and she feels like the turns of the tunnel are turning her in directions she can't follow. She had that same sense in the dream the maelstrom sent, so this is oddly comforting. Somehow she thinks that if she tried to turn around and go back the way she came, she couldn't.

MacWillard is with Shelley and maybe eight other people, which may be all that's left of her gang. They're sticking close together but moving fast through a utility tunnel. Because it's all over-engineered, they're constantly having to work around, under, or over some sort of fixture. When it opens out into a boiler room, they rest a minute, with guards posted up. She asks MacWillard if he's OK, and he says that he's a self-propelled hostage, so... what now? They talk about why Mac rolls with Grandma, and how the demands on a hardholder sometimes force Grandma and Shelley both to do things that maybe wouldn't choose to do. The doctor starts doctoring, and maybe also trying to create a vibe with Shelley.

Frost hears voices ahead, and starts carefully moving closer to them. She hears them wondering whether Grandma is dead. One of them thinks that nobody survives that much TNT. They start trading stories about the day's fighting. She makes her way onto the pipe run, inching her way forward very carefully toward the voices. She eventually works her way onto a catwalk looking over the room. In the glow of three space heaters, she can make out five people and MacWillard. She decides to wait for them to sleep, but after a while, she detects no sign of any preparations for that, no sleeping pads or blankets or nothing. A couple guards have conked out, but the rest are still talking, stuff all packed up, pausing rather than stopping. There is a strong smell of dirt. MacWillard is commisserating with Shelley about how there are sometimes no good answers in life, and also tells her that if she didn't have such strong hip muscles, that graze she took could have some some skeletal damage.

Frost makes her way over to stand over a guy who's sitting on a folding chair, picking shrapnel out of one foot, and jumps down behind him. She grabs him, makes a human shield out of him, and points a pistol at Shelley's head. When she looks down, she realizes her quarry was picking shrapnel out of his with a knife. She gives Mac a look, and he says, "It would appear events have taken a turn" as Frost's target goes to stab her. She points the gun at his head as soon as he moves, and he drops the knife. Shelley says, "oh shit," and guns come out. Frost tells them her name, and they all know she's a stone killer. She smells just a hint of urine and she says, "No one's died yet." Shelley asks if Frost is a friend of Mac's, and he says that they're business partners. Shelley asks who sent Frost. She doesn't answer, but says that if she and Mac leave within ten minutes, that's the end of it. If she doesn't leave in ten minutes, everyone else is coming in. Shelley asks, and Frost confirms that they did not get Grandma. In the end, Frost and MacWillard leave on their own, Frost claiming one of the guards' flashlights as spoils of war. MacWillard tosses Shelley a tube of antiseptic and some more bandages and tells her to show him her scsr someday.

Frost and MacWillard beat feat, Frost relying on the maelstrom for inspiration. Eventually, after getting turned around through about 2364857 degrees, they come to a door. They go through it, and find themselves in a confined space, like a closet. The door they came through was metal. There's a wooden door on the other side. Frost opens in and tells Mac to stay behind her. She steps out into Augustus's office. Spartacus points a shotgun at her and yells, "Don't fucking move!" Frost calls out to MacWillard, who assures them that this is the tail end of a rescue, not an assassination. Sparty still makes Frost put her gun down. Augustus realizes that his warren of escape tunnels must somehow go all the way to Watervale. Spartacus returns Frost's pistol.

Twiggy's just bopping around town when he sees Frost and MacWillard. He exchanges pleasantries with the doc and offers Frost a "WTF" look, to which Frost just gives him a smug grin. When she brings Mac to the bakery, Timber cannot believe his eyes. Grandma's very surprised that Frost rescued the doc after walking out. Frost reminds Grandma that she owes her a favor, which makes Mac very worried. Frost wanders off to enjoy knowing that she is amazing in the company of some lesser mortals, while MacWillard starts treating Grandma's wounds. Since she's pretty banged up and he's tired, he tries laying hands on her... and the maelstrom lands on them both.

MacWillard dreams of moving through a hot, dark, steamy tunnel, with weird noises all around. Grandma is with him, though neither of them knows why. Something is following them, and they hear the noises. The only thing MacWillard can think to do is run, and he tells Grandma so. They run! They run so far away, with the something behind them, breathing heavily, growling, and getting closer. Something loops its way around their ankles, and they fall down. They're being dragged backwards... not actually over the ground somehow, but the end of the tunnel is receding. Then they wake up. Mac gives her a hug and then treats her the old-fashioned way.