LogThe City Never Sleeps-Jason-4

Game log for the 2023/12/17 session of AW:The City Never Sleeps, as taken by Jason

Several days have passed since the last session, and people are able to heal up from minor wounds. Time has not mellowed people's anger over the way Jones killed Crushed, though. Jones has been banned from the ring at the Colosseum for life, but that's not personal, and Augustus has been trying to find another job for him. (He may need a litle extra protection, after all.)

In fact, just now, Lollipop's Orinoco cult have handcuffed themselves to the doors of the Colosseum to protest all the violence. Gus puts the word out that if someone could find some bear spray, he'd really appreciate it.

Grandma's at her Bakery HQ when Tinian shows up to notify her of the trouble at Augustus's place. She grabs MacWillard and a few guards to investigate. When she arrives, the Orinoco folk are still there, including Lollipop herself. The maestro'd's people tell him Grandma has arrived, so he finds a quiet way out of the place and goes to meet her on the street. A crowd is gathering, so whatever happens here, it's going to be public.

MacWillard goes to talk to Lollipop and see if there's any sense to be talked into her, but she's an idealist. She really believes that shutting down all the bloodsport in town would make everything better. He reports as much back to Augustus and Grandma.

Grandma suggests that the cult should unchain themselves and discuss things in private. Lollipop reminds her that protest has to be inconvenient to be effective. Grandma sighs, puts a hand on her gun, and says, "I'm ending this right now." Lollipop does not flinch. She'd take a bullet in the cause of pacifism. However, she doesn't want to watch all her people get gunned down. She forces Grandma to make the threat very clear, then tells her people to stand down, because they've done what they came here to do. Someone from the crowd comes out with the handcuff key and unlocks everyone. On her way out, Lollipop spits at Gus and tells him this isn't over.

Someone knock's on Frosts's door. It's Grimes! He wants to know if she's considered his offer, but she's still weighing her options. He tells her about Orinoco's protest and says he, too, thinks the venue should become something else. If he controlled it, he'd make it a casino. He tries to pin her down on her decision-making process. One of her concerns is that Gus is rarely alone, which makes killing him a complicated proposition. Grimes suggests maybe she could hire Twiggy to help, but she doesn't like the idea. That would make it a pitched battle, not a killing. What would really help her out would be for him to help her get Augustus alone. Grimes can tell that she's not really interested in killing for him, and though he tries to hide it, Frost can tell. She decides to attack him right there rather than wait for him to come up with some new scheme, and hurls a spike at him. He's not surprised and throws himself aside, then hastening to hide in the bathroom, screaming all the way. She ignores the screaming and pounding at her front door and goes to kick the bathroom door in. Once she's defeated the door, she finds him in the corner with his holdout pistol, and tries to strangle him. She takes a shot to the guts and renders him unconscious before his goons make it through her front door.

One goon has a pistol, one a machete. She grabs the lid off the toilet and hurls it at the pistol-wielding goon. She domes in, which ends up knocking both of them down, because they were sort of stacked up. She runs for it. She'd left her pistol on the bed, so she snags the edge of the duvet as she goes past and uses that to sort of hurl the gun into her hand as she goes past. She gets out of the room before the goons can recover, but they pursue. She hides in a maint closet on the first floor, thinking to pop out and blast they as they go by, but they hesitate to running into uncontrolled space. When she hears them decide to return to retrieve their boss, she reverses her plan and chases them right back into her bathroom. They're so focused on Grimes that Frost easily gets the drop on them, and shoots the lot. Then she pokes her head back out and assures the neighbors that the fighting is over and everything is fine now. She asks Mr Vasquez next door to watch her door until she can get it replaced. He's a little nervous, though, and once she clarifies that there are dead bodies in her room, he wants no part of it.

Meanwhile, as Orinoco dismantle their protest, Twiggy goes up to Lollipop and asks her what she can do for him. She assures him that she does not require any services from a gang of thugs. In fact, she makes it clear that she thinks the Stooges are part of the problem. It seems pretty clear that if he wants to win his way into her affections, he needs to be genuinely receptive to the ideals of Orinoco. He tells her that he only takes thug work because the Stooges need the money. She's not impressed by this show of regret. She tells him maybe if they started a racing circuit, they could make some money without violence. As he walks away, she tells him that, "It's only when we are at peace with the world that we can see it change." Twiggy decides to get the Stooges thinking about racing.

Having failed to get a gig from Orinoco, Twiggy heads to the Bakery to see if they can find some work from Grandma.

Aside: Tart woke up between sessions, and eventually started talking again, though only in monosyllables. She shuts down if anyone asks her about her experience.

Jones goes looking for work too. Word is that someone is looking for a chain host, so he goes looking for one. He wanders a bit and finds an auto repair shop in the first floor of a big building. The garage doors are closed and the power is off. He snoops around, sees no threats, and brute forces a garage door open. He sees the chain hoist right there, but he also catches something moving in the back. He calls out to see who's there, but nobody responds. He pulls a gun and goes in further to investigate. The deeper in he goes, the less light there is. He notices that every oil-related product he finds is Penzoil. Eventually he spots a kid, who runs for it as soon as he knows he's spotted. The kid gets to the cinderblock wall at the back of the store, waves his arm, and a door appears. He goes through the door. Jones is a little freaked out and opens his mind to the maelstrom to see if going through that door is or is not a good idea. He can't tell, though, because this situation is just Too Dang Weird. There's a window in the door, so Jones looks through it, and sees it goes to a corridor that leads to a stairway headed down, ending in an exit sign. He decides not to solo this one. Sadly, the chain hoist went away. He grabs some oil for trade goods and goes back to town.

Twiggy and Frost arrive at the bakery around the same time. Frost calls out for Mac right away, and since she's a known quantity there, she's ushered right in. She finds Mac, who stabilizes her, taunting her a little about how much it sucks to have to pay someone to save your life as he goes.

Once MacWillard is done treating Frost, Twiggy comes in to see how Tart is doing, and whether she said anything about what happened to her. The doc hesitates (he believes in doctor-patient confidentiality) but when Twiggy realizes that MacWillard wouldn't be honest, it really changes the tenor of the conversation for the worse. The Angel tries to ease the tension by asking Twiggy to sit with Tart for a while, but he needs to go talk to Grandma. He does promise to come back after.

When he goes to see Grandma, she asks him if he's found out anything more about this whole "buildings that change while you watch them" thing. Nada. That clear, she asks him and the Stooges to help keep peace at the Colosseum, since Augustus might be a little jammed up. The Stooges will take that gig.

Frost goes to visit Augustus, who is a little taken aback by her appearance. She explains that she settled Grimes' hash for permanent. Gus would like to see proof of death, which Frost says can only be had at her place. So, they go to Frost's place, whence Augustus tells Spartacus to take Grimes' head. Sparty does not play that style, so Frost mutters some curses, grabs the machete one of the goons had, and hacks the head off. There's a scream from outside, followed by the sound of little feet running. Gus then stops to think about it and realizes he has no practical use for the head, and further, that having it might be very bad for him.

Spartacus asks for a word alone with Frost. Once Augustus leaves them, he quietly tells her that he thinks the pressure is wearing on his boss. As she cleans up her place, she casually makes it known to Sparty that certain recreational activities might not be entirely out of the question. Unfortunately he's having a little too much of a day right now and does not want to get into that. He does, however, get awfully nervous, and he blushes rather a lot.

Once Spartacus is back with Augustus, the boss sounds out his right-hand man to see how he feels about this situation. It gets weird fast, because he doesn't normally consult his security chief about policy, and apparently Sparty likes it that way. He just says, "You're the boss" a few times.

When they get back, Grandma and MacWillard are waiting for Augustus in his office, while the Stooges hang out outside. She tells the Maestro'D that she's added security around his place of busines. She mentions that she heard about Grimes, and his protests that he had no connection with that event ring rather hollow. When the discussion ends, MacWillard brings up the question of whether Augustus really is good for the barter that Frost said he'd owe. Augustus is. Augustus also seems to be lying when he claims not to be connected to Grimes' death, so Mac tries casually mentioned that Augustus ordered Grimes killed, just in passing, Augustus doesn't deny it... and the doc notices him not denying it,

Frost talks to Twiggy about the van, which she'd like to get hold of. Unfortunately the van is no longer associated with the Stooges, so she'll have to try to track it down on her own. About that time, Jones turns up, and they start talking about how Frost needs some bodies moved. They team up to take care of it, and then Jones tells Frost about the kid who made the magical door, and they go to investigate that. There's no sign anyone was living there recently, though a Coleman stove and an old can of beans suggests someone had made themselves at home a while back. They then go looking for a pharmacy, and find one... full of dead bodies in advanced decomposition. One of the walls has clawmarks on it. The bodies have bloody fingers and missing fingernails. They must have tried to claw their way out. Jones backs up to the doorway and tries to stand in the door. It doesn't open. The glass in the door does not shatter. He tells Frost they might be stuck. She pulls a gun to try shooting the glass, and the bullet ricochets wildly. Jones tries to pick a spot where the bullets won't ricochet so much and shoots the glass some more. It doesn't break. The bullets still ricochet. Frost looks around and spots an air duct, so she tries to climb up into it. It's dark up there, and while there are flashlights in the store, all the batteries in the store are dead. They do find some disposable lighters. They climb up into the duct, Frost in the lead with a lighter and a gun. At one point they come to a spot where they can turn right or go forward, and when Frost asks Jones for his opinion, he has a real strong feeling that if they turn, they will never be able to stop turning. At one point Jones catches a barely audible sound of people talking, and when they come to another junction on the left, he hears it more strongly. People are definitely talking, and there's a constant slow beeping. They decide to go straight again.

Augustus is getting the Colosseum ready for tonight's action, which is a full contact obstacle course race. The event goes off, but people miss having a bookie readily available. Gus puts out the word that he's looking for someone to cover the action. During the race, one of the pallets making the course falls down, and suddenly Jones and Frost push a pharmacy basket out onto the race course, covered in dust and grime, armed to the teeth. This brings things to a halt. The staff encourage both to be on their way. Jones and Frost throw some lighters in the crowd, the staff restart the race, and the crowd decides they can live with it, this time. Frost goes to clean up in the locker rooms. Jones just dusts himself off a little.

Outside, Goggles comes to talk to Twiggy. He's been digging, and he's found something Twiggy should see. In fact, he thinks the Chopper should have it. He hands him a piece of folder paper and says not to open it now, but once he's read it and had a chance to digest it, he should come find Goggles again. As soon as Goggles is out of sight, Twiggy opens the paper. It's a wanted poster, seeking the apprehension of one Edward James Bentham, with Twiggy's picture on it. Twiggy has never used that alias. Mr Bentham has been a very bad boy. Binder asks what it is, and when the boss doesn't want to show it, the other members of the Stooges also begin clamoring to see it. In no times, there's a dogpile for possession of it. Twiggy wears a lot of armor and it's a bare-fisted brawl, so he doesn't take a lot of punishment, and the sheer size of the gang means he doesn't time to dish out a lot of punishment on any one person either. As Jones and Frost pass by, Snubnose asks who they think is going to win. Jones has no strong opinion, but he does decide that if the piece of paper happens to be exposed on the outside of the furball, he'll grab it. That is, in fact, what happens. He sees his spot, goes to grab it, has a brief moment of wrestling for it, punches a guy a lot, and runs off with the paper. When the dust settles, Binder is dead, and the paper is gone, and they quickly learn that it's Jones responsible for both. Twiggy immediately orders the Stooges to give chase and get it back. Jones looks at the paper as he runs, takes it in, stops in his tracks, and holds it up so that the people chasing him can see it. With Jones willing to give the paper back, the Stooges almost stop chasing, but there's going to be trouble about Binder. "Maybe he should have let go of it sooner," says Jones. The Stooges don't like that. Everyone puts their hands on their guns. Jones looks at Twiggy, dead-eyed, and asks how he thinks this is going to go, gesturing toward his assault rifle. The gang had started to draw weapons, but nobody's pointed one yet, and Jones says that if they back away, nobody has to die. Twiggy tells him he has to turn over the paper, which he does, so Twiggy gives them all the stand-down sign. The gang seems relieved. Twiggy realizes that if he'd told them to fight, some of them probably wouldn't have.

Grandma skips the fight this time, and instead opens her mind, hoping to gather something about these buildings shifting. When she opens her brain, she dreams of sitting in her office, hearing gunfire outside, realizing that there's no escape, and seeing Grandma and MacWillard walk through the door. She's about to watch her own death when she's awakened by Semmel at the door, letting her know that Frost wants to see her and that someone is dead in the street at the Colosseum.

Frost has brought a shopping basket full of medical supplies, which will square her up with MacWillard. Grandma tells her that there's someone dead at the Colosseum. She, Mac, and her guards go to see the spectacle. Twiggy claims they were keeping the peace. One of the Stooges yells that Jones did it. They're still there when tonight's fun ends and the Colosseum doors open.

Spartacus promptly tells Augustus that there's a problem outside. Gus goes up to Grandma and says, "This is what happens. They killed their own." That pisses off the Stooges, who blame Gus for Jones' behavior, and then Spartacus takes offense at the Stooges' behavior. The argument lets the crowd know that Grandma hired the Stooges. The crowd remembers that the Stooges were working for Grandma when they shot those people in the bread riot, and it's feeling angry. Someone's about to put a fist into Gus' face.