LogThe City Never Sleeps-Jason-1

Game log for the 2023/11/19 session of AW:The City Never Sleeps, as taken by Jason

Tonight at the Colosseum, it's Amazons vs Valkyries, three on three, and as always, it's a hell of a spectacle. They use a lot of fake blood to sell the image of bloodsport without massive fatalities. In practice, there's a fatality maybe once in fifty fights. Frost is there as Grimes' bodyguard. Tonight there's a tussle that ends in a decapitation. That's not a blood pack! The remaining fighters get real serious. (The Amazon who got beheaded was one of Grandma's gang members.) The crowd is loving the hell out of this.

Augustus sends for MacWillard and then the staff starts the smoke pyro to cover body retrieval. Tonight maybe someone packed the pyro with shrapnel, because two more fighters get knocked off their harnesses and start bleeding on the sand.

Grimes decides its time to leave. Frost sees someone moving to intercept him, and three more guys coming in from the usual exit. To get out without encountering those guys, they'll need to go across the rink to the other entrance. She starts backing up and pushing Grimes backward too.

Jones reads the situation and sees the same guys pushing in that Frost saw. Those guys are armed and they don't look local. This chaos could cover all sorts of violence, if Jones wanted to go in that direction. On the other hand, if there's shooting, there's not going to be much cover in here. He starts maneuvering to sneak up on the guy who's trying to intercept Grimes in the crowd.

Twiggy heads down to the rink and the far exit.

Augustus gets on the loudspeakers and orders the crowd to evacuate. Spartacus the bouncer points to the door where the armed guys are coming in and swears he locked that door. Big Gus decides it's time to use a bolthole to lie low until this all settles out.

Jones manages to sneak up on his quarry. He closes the distance, crush the guy's neck in his arms, and tries to grab for any weapon at his belt. However, this incipiently dead guy is clawing at Jones' arm, and that allows the gunlugger to feel the holdout pistol on the guy's arm. Now Jones has a holdout pistol!

Frost continues to back Grimes down, and they end up against the boards. She tells Grimes to go over the boards, because that's how they're leaving. Grimes struggles a bit with that, so Frost helps, but that means taking her eyes off the bad guys. One of them pulls a gun and starts shooting. She tries to put her body between Grimes and them, and ends up sort of vaulting herself over, and then bringing him over with her, catching him on the far side. Now they're running for what used to be the zamboni gate.

MacWillard gets the word, grabs his bag, and start jogging toward the Collisseum.

Grandma hears the unmellifluous sounds of small arms fire. She sends Abnett to go see what this is about. She also realizes that she hasn't paid her dues this month to the Mayor, and that the neighbors (Watervale) against whom she recently ordered a raid might be looking for some payback. This shooting might all be a distraction.

Twiggy sees Jones stone cold murder a dude, and Frost make her escape. He tells his gang to do what he does, and starts carving himself a path through anyone between him and the exit. They're shouldering people out of the way and making progress toward the exit.

Jones sees the intruders shooting and shoots back, knocking his target down. They begin directing fire his way, because, you see, he's shooting at them. It's a very sophisticated tactical heuristic. The remaining bad guys have a shotgun and an assault rifle, which do outgun a holdout pistol. On the other hand, it's Jones, and he's still carrying a meatshield. He takes a round to the arm from the assault rifle, but squeezes off a couple headshots, and just like that, the incoming fire ceases.

Frost keeps pushing Grimes toward the exit. The shooting seems to ease up. The Stooges appear from out of the bleachers and head for the same tunnel. Neither side seems to want to tussle, so the Stooges take point, followed by Grimes, and then Frost covering the rear. At street level, there's more small arms fire, from outside. Oh.

Grandma hears a loud explosion and gunfire in the Bakery. That calls for a full alert! She ralies her gang, which has the force to repulse the attack, and ensures that they crush the enemy, drive them before the righteous defenders, and hear the lamentations of their women. The bakery is just too defensible. However, due to some recent shortfalls in the settlement, a lot of Grandma's guys seem to be thinking they'll follow them all the way home to Watervale. Since that would mean forfeiting all the advantages of defensible ground, she screams at them and gets them back into line.

MacWillard and Tinian the young errand boy are moving through the streets when this all happens, and take cover. They can tell this is centered on HQ, but it's moving toward them, so it's time to hide. A nearby basement window looks like a good point of entry, but the Angel takes a moment to see what he's getting into, and that takes up enough time that he's seen going in there. They try to make some distance, but they're still in the boiler room when they hear someone yelling about the medic going in there, followed by sounds of people coming in.

Jones goes to the entry point to collect his weapon and check on the guy he wounded. That guy is bleeding and gurgling, but not expectant. Jones gives him some quick bandaging just on the chance he might make a good prisoner, then moves on, collects the guys of his victims, and finds the gun locker closed. It's a solid steel vault, and even Jones can't get that open in any short time. He waits a few minutes, but when MacWillard doesn't show, he heads for HQ.

Frost leads Grimes into one of the lockers off the tunnel, without bothering to mention it to the Stooges. One moment they're at the tail of the gaggle, the next, they aren't. Twiggy does hear Grimes say something about how those assholes can't catch him, because if they knew what he did for Grandma...

Anyway, Twiggy heads out to the alley, which is sort of a service entrance and parking facility. He sees Murdock, who was supposed to be guarding the bikes, heading toward them. Murdock is a young probie, tall and skinny with buck teeth, and notably gullible. He came this way because he head the commotion and thought the gang might need him. The bikes are all still there, but now they're become hoverbikes. They make some distance from the Collisseum, then start figuring out what's going on. They move on, trying to keep out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, a ton of armed guys turn up in their path, some of them milling about a basement window. Glances are exchanged. Oh shit! The bad guys look likely to open fire, so the Stooges have to gun it and try to get the hell out. They take some desultory fire but no fatalities. Some of the Stooges left weapons with their bikes, and they return fire to cover their retreat. The gang manages to extricate itself. Caitlin keeps opening and closing her hoverbike's saddlebag until a grenade shows up in there, then hucks the grenade. That sort of thing makes a retreat easier.

Augustus and Spartacus are in the defensive labyrinth of the Colosseum, and use its maze of twisty passages (all alike) to escape through a trap door and tunnel that lead into the gun room. Marley the gun-check girl is also holed up there. She's pretty scared, but Gus gets her calmed down.

Frost pulls a spike out of somewhere and pounds it into the doorframe, ensuring that the door isn't going to open. She then makes a circuit to ensure that there isn't some other doorway, and, confirming that, she starts trying to get Grimes to settle down and just wait for the cavalry. He really thinks they came for him personally and may have brought overwhelming force. Frost gets in his face a little and asks why he's so sure they came for him. As his bodyguard, she does need to know. Turns out he gave Grandma the information that may have helped stir up this trouble. They sit tight for half an hour.

MacWillard and Tinian find a door out of the boiler room and move through it, headed for an escape, but get spat right into the boiler room. Tinian starts to freak out, but MacWillard forcefully tells him to kindly shut the fuck up as they scurry for the inspection hatch... which is across open ground. He tapes open the valve on a fire extinguisher to create a smoke screen, then he and Tinian jump into the inspection hatch of the boiler. Of course it's pitch black and utterly silent in there. Will there be a place for them to come out?

Back at the Bakery, Grandma can still hear the sounds of small unit combat elsewhere in the settlement. The gang wants to sally forth and deal with this, especially a hothead named Gilroy. Gilroy has a prosthetic leg and the sort of disposition that leads a person to make threats he can't back up. She isn't budging. The gang will defend the Bakery, period.

Jones runs into Abnett, and they exchange situation reports, then decide to go to the Bakery. They find the door blown in but the place otherwise heavily and visibly defended. There are a lot of bodies on the street. Jones recognizes one of them as being from Watervale. They hear Grandma ordering no pursuit, and Abnett immediately argues that the gang needs to clear the town. She tells him to settle down and follow her lead. Jones points out that a lot of people are dying out there and she needs to take care of it, but nobody gives a damn what Jones thinks. The argument continues but Grandma fails to bring Abnett around. He takes a group of guys out there to go make the streets safe for the people of $locality. Jones starts to go with them, but when Abnett says he can't pay Jones, the gunlugger decides to split off and go back to the Colosseum. This does not impress Abnett's team, especially Kinnick, who makes nasty comments about it.

MacWillard and Tinian continue to slowly, carefully, and quietly crawl through the boiler inspection pipes. They hear voices up ahead, which get louder as they approach a louvered grate at the end of the tunnel. MacWillard bangs on the grating. In the locker room, Grimes is refusing to calm down, with Frost listening with some fraction of her attention, when they hear banging on something overhead. She takes a big step back as Grimes heads for the door. She snaps her fingers and points him to the shower, then pulls the giant lever to louver open the grate. MacWillard ends up having to offer Frost some jingle and use of his multitool in exchange for letting them out of the inspection tunnel. It having been some time by then, Frost opens the door, and the four of them take the tunnel that leads to the basketball court. The weapons locker is now the concession stand, and Frost knocks on the door. That's the first sound the people inside have heard in quite some time.

Augustus gets Marley behind him and sends Spartacus to see who it is. Frost identifies her gaggle, so Sparty lets them in. Frost presents her check ticket.