LogWanderers-Jason-14

Game log for the 2017/05/07 session of Wanderers, as taken by Jason

Ace tries to get parallel to the wall, so he can rake the bad guys with the war buggies machine guns, but the guards on the wall mistake his intentions and think he's trying to get under their guns. They concentrate fire on him, blowing through the buggy into him, and knocking him out in the midst of a powerslide. Nobody is going to do well out of this.

Spoonman appears on the wall and uses the Doof Cannon for crowd control. Mission: accomplished. The good news is that now the scum outside the walls know the answer to the age old question, "bass: how low can you go?"

With the crowd dispersed, Spoonman can see Fifi lying on the ground and the war buggy lying on its roof. Spoonman goes down and starts dragging Fifi to safety, demanding that the guards open the gate. He also tells the guards that the war buggy is friendly, although since its on its roof, the point may be academic. Spoonman calls for a doctor, and Conrad directs him to 'Traz. He also says that Spoonman looks familiar. Spoonman doesn't acknowledge any prior acquaintance, so while the guards take Fifi to 'Traz, Spoonman goes to look in on Ace and the war buggy. The buggy's a wreck, but it can be fixed. Ace happily agrees to help the big mechanic up to 'Traz, since he knows how many favors he owes Spoonman.

At the gates, there's so much confusion that nobody inspects Ace for the Fix, which is good news. Major Tom sees it all but doesn't expect to be so lucky. The band will stay outside the wall and loot the abandoned scum camp. Just like that, Major Tom is suddenly the richest guy around.

Grey Rat is up in 'Traz, hanging out, when a commotion occurs. Four guys come running through the hallway with Fifi on a makeshift stretcher. He offers to help, and Simon, who wasn't there a moment ago, asks what sort of air he could give. The Rat explains about his healing mojo, and Simon asks GR to accompany him to the hospital - the old prison infirmary. It's not a wonderful place, what with the paint peeling off the walls, and the rusty gurneys, but the actual surgical implements are shiny and clean. They have very few beds, but several birthing stations, one of which they've put Fifi in. The Brainer suggests that they ought to do a little brightening up, but Simon explains that they're looking for a particular aesthetic. He leads Grey Rat over to Fifi and asks the guys who brought her in for an explanation of her condition. Conrad explains how she got hurt. Simon then says that it looks serious and they'll need to fetch the Bone Mechanic. Hey, we've heard that name before.

Fifi, unconscious, acceses the rain forest. In the rain forest, she finds herself tied to a bed, legs in stirrups, with a bunch of guys around her trying to impregnate her with something unnatural. She wakes up just as Grey Rat puts his hands on her abdomen to heal her. He heals her a little but but she's still completely freaked out. He tries to calm her down a little bit, but just then is when a bunch of guys with masks arrive, and one of them starts putting on the gloves. She hears one of the doctors tell Grey Rat that they need to leave it to the experts, and the Bone Mechanic will take it from here. She asks what they're going to do, and the big guy with the gloves doesn't answer, just continues prepping. Grey Rat reads the situation and realizes that Fifi is on the edge of committing to mortal combat, and she has a knife. He interrupts the doctors and asks to talk to her for a moment, and they pause. They don't back off, but they pause. He approaches her, and she asks him to get her out of here. He tries to calm her down while surrepetitiously disarming her. Yeah, no, you don't disarm Fifi like dat. Nope.

She covers Grey Rat's hand, flings him aside, rolls off the table, grabs an orderly, and puts the knife to his throat.

Spoonman and Ace arrive at the elevator that goes up to 'Traz, and find Simon waiting. Spoonman says, "Simon says get me on the fucking elevator." Simon agrees, and the two of them ride up the elevator. At the top, Simon welcomes us. Spoonman ain't got time for him, but Simon wants to enforce "the rules." Simon explains that leaving the community comes with consequences. This is all revelation to Ace, who might be briefly but fairly described as "gobsmacked." 'Traz will accept the Doof Cannon as payment. Ace asks if he's covered by the payment, but Simon just says that he'll live. Simon leads them to the building and asks them not to stray from the marked corridors, and they walk in to the middle of a hostage situation.

Spoonman immediately sees that the Bone Machanic has palmed a scalpel and is sidling up to Fifi. He assures Fifi that the doctors here are cool. Ace, refusing to be daunted by the situation, asks why they have the bullet wound victim on the birthing table. Nobody answers, but Fifi frees her hostage. Spoonman lies down on a birthing table, and they promptly put his legs up in the stirrups. The Bone Machanic gives Fifi an injection that knocks her out, as Grey Rat takes her knife for safekeeping. (-ish.) The Bone Mechanic has a short conversation with Spoonman, and then down her goes.

Someone asks Ace what he's there for. He tries to ask what Simon's deal is, but Simon has no idea what Ace is talking about. Ace decides to let it slide and says he's there to get the Fix cured. They immediately hustle him into a holding tank and begin hosing him down with a mixture of noxious chemicals. It all makes his wounds hurt.

Simon hires Grey Rat to find out why Spoonman is really here. He'll take that job, and the situation allows him plenty of time to get into Spoonman's mind. He plants a command in Spoonman's mind to tell Simon why he's really there. He then advises Simon to stabilize Spoonman, but not heal him completely until he coughs up the information. Simon agrees to get Spoonman conscious again.

The Bone Mechanic gives Spoonman an adrenaline shot, which perks him up into a world of pain. He tells Simon that he's here to fix the goo, because he thinks he can save the world. Grey Rat confirms that it's truth. The Bone Mechanic puts him under again. Grey Rat sees something transpire between Simon and the Bone Mechanic, and then Simon walks out of the room. Grey Rat begins wondering about how to proceed, and sees an orderly, back turned to Grey Rat, filling a syringe with pottasium cyanide. He asks the Bone Mechanic if they're actually going to heal Spoonman. The Mechanic just says he has work to do. Grey Rat realizes he has no intention of healing Spoonman, and doesn't care about Ace either. He doesn't think he can stop them from killing Spoonman without violence. Grey Rat casually says, "Well, I guess I'll leave you to you work," then brushes past the orderly ad psychically commands the orderly to hold the Bone Mechanic hostage. Unfortunately, the orderly refuses to comply, and only grunts a few times before falling over. The Mechanic says, "It's like that, is it?" and he and Grey Rat both rush for the syringe. The Bone Mechanic gets it first and ends up on top of the Brainer, syringe full of poison in hand. Grey Rat uses the violation glove to command the Mechanic to get off him, but he doesn't get enough leverage to make the command stick. The Mechanic accepts the pain and delivers the injection, sending cyanide coursing through Grey Rat's veins.

Outside the walls, Major Tom and the band go looking for Jack Link. They meet up with the trade caravan, and in the caravan, they see him! Jack Link ambles over to greet them. Tom asks about the hospital Jack mentioned, and Jack confirms that it's inside the Spires, so the Major can't get in. They'd have to go the back way. Tom's remembers how the last of Jack's back ways resulted in him getting a new body, and decides he's up for the adventure. In an effort to sweeten the deal, he offers to tell the caravan about the recent trouble outside the gates. Jack isn't officially with the caravan and doesn't find that motivating. Nonetheless, he's willing to either put in a good word for Tom at the gates, or help him get into the valley, with the valley sounding like a better option. Jack boards the bus and they go for a drive.

After a time it gets pretty steep, and they need to continue on foot. The band will have to go acoustic on this tour. It's a long climb up into the hills. Jack warns them to be quiet.

Grey Rat struggles to get to an adrenaline syringe, poison be damned. If he can wake up Fifi, the balance of forces here changes. He just barely sticks the needle in her before the orderlies mob him with scalpels and bone saws. She gasps and sits bolt upright just in time to see an orderly grab one of the ears of Grey Rat's mask to tilt his neck, slit his throat, and toss his body to the ground. Fifi lunges out of the bed and kicks the nearest orderly right in the face, knocking him down. That leaves the Bone Mechanic and an orderly in the room. She'll take those odds. She goes human tornado on their asses, and puts them both on the floor, but an orderly who'd been cowering unseen in the corner runs out of the room before she can stop him. She leaps through the window, shattering the rusted bars, and lands in the courtyard below. She's bleeding badly now, unarmed, in the middle of a courtyard in 'Traz, but she's on the loose now. Priority one: try to self-stabilize and get a weapon.

They stop hosing Ace down. He hears some shouting about trouble in the infirmary, and suddenly he's alone. He hears someone ask if they're gone. It turns out fo be someone named Copper, who's in the next cell, also with the Fix. All they're doing is feeding Copper nasty blue pudding and checking his mouth. Coppe's small and thinks he can squeeze through the bars, and sure enough, a few minutes later he shows up in Ace's cell. Ace gives him a boost and Copper climbs through the hatch that they were spraying him through, and just like that, Copper's out. He won't free Ace unless Ace promises to take Copper with him, and while Ace reflexively says he'll absolutely do that, Copper sees right through Ace's lies. He slams the door in Ace's face and runs off.

Fifi's still looking for weapons, but she bumps into some random guy. "Hey, stop!" She does not stop, she just goes through him, KOing him along the way. She rips him his robe for bandages, trying to stop the bleeding, and while she's doing that, she sees Copper go running past her. She moves on into the old boilerhouse, and picks up a bigass wrench to use as a weapon. Of course, as soon as she touches it, she hears Simon say, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." She offers him fifteen seconds to explain why she shouldn't schwack him, and then repeatedly shortens the deadline until she brains him. His stammerings about politeness do not motivate her. Unfortunately, when she splatters his head, it turns out to be full of goo instead of blood.

She goes running off with her prybar and sees another guy grabbing Copper. She uses Copper as a distraction and slides right by unnoticed, then goes back to the infirmary. She finds Grey Rat, lying in a pool of blood; an orderly, bled out; the orderly she kicked out, unconscious; the other orderly, dead; the Bone Mechanic, dead of head injury; and Spoonman, unconscious on the table. She takes Grey Rat's mask off and sees that his extremities are all blue from the cyanide, so he's, like, super-dead. She looks to see if she can grab an adrenaline syringe, but they aren't labelled, so she just grabs a syringe at random, then starts escaping while pushing Spoonman on a gurney.

From behind her, Simon says, "we've been through this. It's not helping anyone." She hadn't seen multiple Simons before and can only conclude that he's some sort of unholy goo zombie, so she just runs for it, not stopping for anything. She makes it to the old docks, where the cable car connects up, and another Simon tells her to stop. She doesn't feel like listening to any more Simons today, and tries to just ram him into the cable car. Simon jumps back and slams the door before she gets there, calling out, "I hoped it wouldn't come to this." He just wants to help her, really. She dodges around Spoonman's table and kicks her way into the cable car, though the glass cuts her up on the way through. She tries to use her prybar to send Simon flying out the window, but he ducks out of the way, and now he's between her and Spoonman. She tries to pound his ass again, and this time, she knocks him right off the jetty, leaving an icky black splat down there somewhere. She looks down and sees yet another Simon investigating the dead Simon she just shipped down there. Then she realizes that she can't run the cable car from inside the cable car. Someone needs to run the winch.

She decides it's time to take a risk and sticks her needle into the Spoonman. He doesn't wake up. Whatever he got, it wasn't adrenaline, though he seems to be stiring. She starts shaking him to wake him up. She hears a gunshot, and drags Spoonman into the cable car, keeping low so they're out of sight. She keeps tryin to wake Spoonman, but he just starts snoring.

A guy comes up to check on Ace, asking Ace to lie on his back. As he starts to examine Ace, another guy says, "Subject 12 is gone!" Ace seizes the moment to run for it, and before they can react, he's gone, though he promptly goes running past a Simon. "Excuse me?" "Sorry, in a hurry!" He comes out of the building, probably on the opposite side of the complex, and goes around to get to the other side, three guys in pursuit. When he gets sight of the dock, he sees an overturned gurney and Fifi poking her head out. He sees someone in the water tower shooting at the cable car, and goes running for the ladder up to the water tower. Ace's astonish reflexes serve him well, and the shooter is scope-locked and doesn't realize it's Ace coming up to him. Ace lands a punch before the guy can react, grabs his gone, and punts him off the water tower. That's when Ace sees that the gun is single-shot and jammed, with a round refusing to be seated. He tries to unjam it but the gun just breaks, leaving him with just an awkward club and three adversaries at the top of the ladder.

Spoonman wakes up and looks around. He does not get shot. Fifi looks and sees that Ace has taken out the rifleman. She and Spoonman head up the jetty.

Ace uses the rifle as a club and clubs out the first guy up, but the impact knocks the rifle out of his hand, and there's another guy already up there. Shit's getting hectic. He tries to bum-rush the bad guy on the platform, and use him as a sort of a landing mat. It doesn't go quite to plan - the impact kills Ace's victim, but leaves Ace with compound fractures. He links up with Spoonman and Fifi, and they go back into the complex, looking for lab equipment. Spoonman seems convinced that he can make this place work for us, and asks Simon to help them get Ace back to the infirmary. That's the first time Spoonman's seen the place since he went down, and he's a little dumbstruck by the blood. He tells everyone to get into a bed. Ace calls dibs on the one that isn't a birthing bed. Fifi gets into another, and Spoonman puts Grey Rat on a third. Then he starts giving Simon orders to get him the supplies he needs. This will be a difficult job, even for Spoonman, and he'll need Simon's help. Simon will help, based on Spoonman's assurance that he can fix the Bone Mechanic, so long as the Bone Mechanic gets treated first. Spoonman wires up the brain and proves that there's still activity there, and then Simon will let him treat his friends. He then gets nuts with the organ transplants and stuff.

During one of the rest breaks on the cliffs, Major Tom opens his brain, trying to figure out what it's going to be like when they arrive. Yeah, it's going to be blood everywhere, with Spoonman in the middle of it... and the blood isn't blood, it's goo. Something horrible is going on and Spoonman is clearly in the thick of it. When they move out again, they walk into an ambush.

The first warning they have is when Rhino's head explodes. Major Tom and company move to fight their way free. It's a short and bloody fight in which the band blasts their way out, scattering the bandits and inflicting casualties, but they have to leave Rhino behind.

It's another day and a half of picking their way through the ruins to get into the valley. They don't run into any patrols, and they move into the valley and head for the hospital. They first hike through agricultural lands, then onto a road, and they just sort of merge in with the other valley traffic and infiltrate the town. The first trouble they bump into is an armed patrol just outside the back of the Spires. They chat with the band, just to see if they're cool. Major Tom uses his voice box to talk without opening his mouth, hiding the Fix. It almost works until they recognize the band. He goes full MC on them, and convinces them to join up with the band, escorting them to 'Traz. It's a bit of a hubbub over there, with Simon's impact splatter cordoned off. They tell Simon they're there to be healed, and Simon lets them up.

As usual, they're met by another Simon. Major Tom asks him to keep an eye out fo a drummer. They hustle the band through the clinic, which involves passing through a room where they see Spoonman elbow-deep in Fifi. They lead all the band to decontamination. They recognize this drill. Simon notices that Major Tom is a head transplant survivor and says, "Fascinating... it does work." Then they hose the band down.