LogThe City Never Sleeps-Jason-2

Game log for the 2023/11/26 session of AW:The City Never Sleeps, as taken by Jason

There's still a riot going on, and the doors of the Bakery have been bashed in and not repaired. MacWillard is inside the Bakery supporting Grandma. Twiggy and team are defending the Bakery, in exchange for some weapons from Grandma's armory. Frost was hanging around inside, but has no interest in these festivities. Augustus is working on making the Colosseum ready for use again, and came out to hire day labor. He got caught up in the riot involuntarily.

Augustus sees that the rioters are pushing against the makeshift barricades on the second floor of the Bakery, which can't be good. He sizes things up and concludes that if he wants out of here, he has to slide along a wall, or otherwise move without making waves. The situation is highly combustible, and if he starts pushing and shoving, it will immediately get out of hand. Abnett is on the outside of the barricade, which implies he's turned on Grandma, and that's another unstable situation. In fact this entire situation is a sort of comprehensive 360 degree threat. The barricade is a scissor gate in front of the freight elevator, defended by a mix of Grandma's gang and Stooges. Gus decides to try to circulate along the wall, and that works out OK for him.

Semmel is trying to get the rioters to calm down, and he's failing. Someone whips a bottle at the barricade, and a piece of glass cuts Semmel's head. When he sees he's injured, he threatens to open fire if the rioters don't pull back. Twiggy tells him to calm the fuck down or the Stooges will calm him down, and Semmel agrees, as long as the Stooges still have his back if the barricade fails. Semmel starts circulating, talking individually to his people, quietly.

MacWillard goes to Grandma and suggests that they need to let a few rioters in, to prove to the rest that there's no food. Cruise is on the leading edge of the riot, and he's game, but Semmel absolutely will not allow it. MacWillard goes to see if Grandma will overrule him.

Jones opens his brain to the maelstrom, hoping it will clue him into where there's food. He has no idea what the food situation really is, but he remembers a food service warehouse, a vast cavern of canned or boxed food, and he knows for sure the place is empty right now. He goes looking for Frost, but since she's inside, he knows he can't really get to her. He decides to try to get picked as one of the five mob representatives inside the Bakery. The mob rejects him utterly because he's worked for Grandma and also because he kills people for a living.

Some of the mob try to draft Augustus to be one of the auditors. He agrees. It's him, Cruise, Simone, Cruise's eight year old son, and Tanker.

MacWillard comes to get Grandma to tell Semmel to open the gate and make the audit happen. She agrees to come down. The situation is still pretty charged, but the five chosen reps have made their way to the front now. Grandma can see that opening the gate is going to be risky. She susses out that Abnet is the one who set all this in motion. This is him paying her back. She asks the people in the front row to bring Abnett forward.

Augustus goes back to see Abnett and ask what he thinks of the whole situation. He thinks it's all bullshit, because Grandma will have hidden the food where it can't be found. Gus reads him and sees that Abnett has no interest in negotiation. He wants to get on with this riot, and anyone not interested ought to get out. Gus tries to talk him into negotiating with Grandma, and fails totally. One of Abnett's buddies comes to talk to him, and Gus notices that the man has an unlit Molotov in his pocket. Abnett sees him see if, and orders his men to seize Augustus. Gus wriggles and ducks and squirms for his life and shouts, "fire!"

Jones starts backing way the hell off.

The screaming tips off the men at the gate, and safeties get flicked. Cruise yells for the guards to open the door, but nobody's going to open it under these circumstances. A bolt pops loose from the top mount of the gate. Grandma starts to order them to reinforce the gate, but the situation has a life of its own, and Twiggy and his men open fire. It's a very short battle of guns vs random crap thrown by a disorganized crowd.

Frost starts moving upward and finds an empty room, where she starts cycling it, hoping it will turn into a way out. Once she opens it and there's a chute there, but she can't tell where it might lead. The room starts shifting around the chute. She's still hoping her luck will improve when the shooting starts. She moves up to the next level as some of the guards, hearing the shooting, start coming down. She finds a window that leads to a fire escape, but the escape ladder at the bottom is missing, so it wouldn't be entirely safe. She trusts her athleticism and makes the superhero landing. She's free of the building and gone.

Cruise's son got killed in the shooting, and he's pissed as hell. He doesn't understand why this happened, and Grandma explains that there just plain isn't any food. MacWillard chastises Semmel some more for his refusal to deescalate the situation, and Semmel punches him directly in the face. MacWillard goes ass over teakettle, which does not make him any more impressed with Semmel's value.

Twiggy and the Stooges loot the bodies.

Simone hires MacWillard to treat her wounded. One of her guards reports in and tells her that it was Augustus who shouted fire.

Frost starts trying to figure out where her next meal is coming from. There's a building that usually has groceries. It's under the control of a different gang, so it's not entirely safe to go there to shop. The maelstrom tells her it's full of food. In that same vision, she sees herself wearing a sapphire ring.

The store is heavily guarded. There are men on patrol and a technical parked out front. She figures her best option is to hijack the truck moving stuff out, when it's got a lot of food in it, but before they start thinking about leaving. If she can get into the building on the other side of the alley, she can shoot down at all of them, especially the driver, who's a stationary target behind the wheel. Once she takes the truck, she either needs an escort, or to get ahead of them enough to break line of sight, and let the shifting city aid her.

She infiltates the nearby building, and waits for someone to drop something and make noise. That starts some yelling. She silently drops from the window to the pavement, then into the cab with the sleeping driver. She kills him with a railroad spike, shoves him into the passenger seat, and puts herself in the driver's spot. She starts the engine, and someone yells that there are two more pallets. She takes off, driving with one hand and holding her pistol in the other. Supplies are falling out the back, a guard in the cargo area shoots in her general direction, and the other guards can safely be assumed to be in pursuit. She drives with her door open, leaning halfway out, so that she's not where the shooter would expect her to be.

Augustus tracks down MacWillard at Simone's. The streets have a different vibe to them. People seem a little angry at him. The bouncer at Simone's, Cage, is decidedly not happy to see him, and tells him he can wait outside until MacWillard comes out. Gus can tell that this guy is pissed at him and not disposed to do him any favors. The guard tells Augustus to wait while he gets the doc, and then goes back to playing solitaire for fifteen minutes. After that, he finally goes to get Mac. The doctor needs another half hour to finish working on Simone and then cleaning Tammy's wounds, so the guard tells Augustus that MacWillard will be another two or three hours. He's been waiting for a while when he hears the sound of squealing tires and gunfire.

Frost caught a train track right before the tram went through, hanging up all the pursuers until it passes. That leaves her one on one against the guard in back. She makes a hard stop, then combat rolls out of the driver's seat with her gun aimed at the cargo area. The guard jumps out and circles to the other side. She tries to shoot him under the truck, but misses, and he jumps onto the running boards on the passenger side. She jumps onto her running board and tries to shoot him through his door, as he tries to shoot her through the window. He's got some sort of fully automatic weapon, she's got her .88 Magnum, nobody is having any fun here. The flying glass cuts her up even as the bullets bruise her ribs under the trauma plate. Frost, never inclined to give people an even break, shoots him again after he falls. She kicks the windshield out and heads for the Colosseum.

Arriving, she finds Spartacus there, but there are also a few townies who seem to be casing the place. Sparty calls for Kenworth, who starts inventorying she brought. There's a whole pallet of breakfast cereal. Frost ponders the fact that Spartacus never really warmed up to her, and figures that he's just too mission focused to warm to individual people. Their conversation turns to the fact that Gus was the one who yelled "fire" and kicked off the riot. She figures maybe creating goodwill for Augustus might make Spartacus like her better.

MacWillard and Augustus start to talk, and Cage orders them outside. When they're done, Gus explains about seeing the Molotov, and Mac believes him. He promises to carry the word back to the Bakery, and asks the maestro'd to let him know how public opinion is trending.

Jones goes looking for work, and by looking, I mean he goes to a bar and waits to be asked. Sure enough, a group of guys are sounding off about who they want to put on trial for the recent atrocity, Grandma or Augustus. They'll pay either 2-barter for Augustus delivered to them, or 3-barter for Grandma.

Twiggy goes to talk to Grandma, wondering what she's got planned for next. She's pondering sending forth some emissaries to try to "trade" for food. Twiggy isn't impressed and decides to take the gang to the Colosseum to burn off some steam. People are giving him and the Stooges a lot of sideeye. It's so tense that he goes right back to the Bakery to Grandma know that the town is a powerkeg. In fact, some of the members take off immediately, without even waiting for him to check back. They start driving around, looking for opportunity, following their instincts.

Jones decides to go the Colosseum, and decides to sneak up on Gus, just to see how the stage sets, as it were. Unfortunately, recent experience has made the maestro'd paranoid, and he spots Jones coming. He decides to try to outrun Jones and get to his own turf before he gets caught, but he fails. Jones sprints after him, and though Gus tries several evasive moves, and the gunlugger somehow loses his SMG in the muddle, eventually your neighborhood thug is more athletic than the king of the vice den, and Jones tackles him. Gus tries to bargain. Jones agrees to go to the Colosseum, whence Gus swears he can get more stuf. They stop outside, with a gun stuck in Augustus' back. As they approach, they see an unfamiliar box truck being unloaded into the building. Augustus wants to go inside and see what he can gather, but Jones wants someone to bring him an SMG and some jingle before he lets Gus go any closer to his home turf.

Spartacus sees what's up, and gets ready for trouble, approaching Jones. His boss tells him to go get an SMG and some jingle, and sure enough, there's an abandoned SMG in the gun check, and tomato soup. That takes care of Jones. Gus and Frost them dicker, and agree that in exchange for providing site security, Augustus and his people will get 30% of the take. Gus also tells Frost about what he saw and why he yelled fire in a crowded space full of angry people.

MacWillard is hanging around the Bakery when word comes from Franklin about food giveaways at the Colosseum. Grandma sends a couple people to look into it, and tells them to keep it on the downlow.

Jones watches the unloading. When it's done, Tinian comes out screaming about free food. People start coming to check it out... and a pair of Grandma's crew come in, and get recognized. The crowd gets ugly fast, but when Augustus steps in and tells them that anyone who fights doesn't eat, things chill. Gus also asks around and finds out that Abnett is one of Tammy's regulars.

Twiggy and his gang are out looking for food or opportunity. They find a bodega without anything of meaningful value left, an apartment building so empty it's almost sterile, and a hotel. The hotel is so big that there almost has to be something good, right? They go to the lower levels, which are pitch black. People pull out whatever they have for illumination and they find some walk-in coolers. They're still cold. One of them is full of poultry, all wrapped up on a rack. They're ogling their find when they hear a scratching squeaking kind of noise, and just then, someone's glow stick stops working. They make a hasty retreat back into the light, or rather, everyone but Clemons and Tart makes a hasty retreat. Those guys are just gone. As they leave, in their mirrors, they see the building rotate and become something else. He's never seen that before. Normally the city only changes when nobody's looking.

The feeding process at the Colosseum goes smoothly. Even Grandma's gang members are tolerated while they eat.

Grandma dresses down a bit and goes to the Colosseum with some guards and MacWillard. Augustus asks Frost to come with him as he goes to talk to Grandma. Grandma talks to Gus while MacWillard goes to cadge some grub. When Gus asserts that the food came from clean living, the ice is broken, but when he holds out for some compensation in exchange for putting her brand on the food, she starts wondering what his real game is. Frost proudly proclaims that she stole the food all by herself, and Grandma asks her to stop by the Bakery sometime and see if the wouldn't like to do some work for her. Then she leaves, and waits outside for MacWillard.

Later that day, the Stooges return. Twiggy goes to check in with Grandma before they go for free food. He tells her about the racks and racks of chicken but also of the building that broke the rules with the bad shit in the dark. It might be worth going back for, but they need someone with some tolerance for weird shit. That makes Grandma think of Lollipop. She's into some pretty weird stuff.