LogThe City Never Sleeps-Jason-9

Game log for the 2024/02/25 session of AW:The City Never Sleeps, as taken by Jason

It's been a week or so since the last session. The recent influx of refugees has overtapped Churchill's food stocks, and people are once again feeling hungry. MacWillard has assistants now, named Sphinx, Poppy, and Wild Bob. Wild Bob is mostly there for Poppy. Business has been good due to fights over food.

Frost goes to case Snubnose's junkyard, and finda it's protected by (among other things) Bubbles, an akita mix. She and Twiggy go to the grocery store. The loading door is open, and there's a shoeless body in tattered clothes lying there. The lights are on, so there might be scavengers in there right now. Frost decides to hang back and observe rather than rush in, so they go to one of the neighboring buildings and find a place with a good view. Frost does this a lot. A few minutes later, they hear gunfire, and someone runs out clutching a wound with one hand and three bags of Doritos in the other. Then she hears a clang from somewhere in her building, possibly on the same floor. Frost tells Twiggy to blast anything that comes through the locked door of the apartment they're in. Twiggy gets a sense of being watched, and then notices a kid standing in the kitchen. When he realizes he's been spotted, the kid runs out of sight. When Frost investigates, there's a door that leads out of the pantry, which wasn't there when they first cleared the house. Frost tells Twiggy to stand in the entry doorway, then opens the exit doorway. She sees s stairway down, which is not possible since there's another apartment occupying the space those stairs consume. The architectural design of the stairs reminds her of the tunnels under Watervale. The kid was ragged, blond, blue-eyed, with baggy jeans and a red rain jacket. Neither one of the adults could put a name to him, but Twiggy thinks he might have seen that kid at Lollipop's once.

Later on more people show up at the grocery store, and there's a pretty big fight. After that, the winners (presumably) leave with shopping carts full of food. Frost and Twiggy then enter, observing the aisles strategically, and find that the pet food section has plenty of dry kibble, in fifty pound sacks. They improvise a smaller container and head out with a workably sized mess of food. They find a few other useful items amounting to 1-barter each. Twiggy feels like he's being watched again, but can't find the watcher. He decides to open his mind, and has a memory of the blond kid at the other end of the aisle he's on.

Frost tells Twiggy to go get eyes on Snubnose while she gets into the junkyard to do her thieving. She figures her best way in would be the hole someone already cut in the fence, over in a corner near some fsirly precarious piles of scrap. She'll have to be careful to not disturb those piles, but as long as she is, this is an easy way in. She manages to avoid making too much noise on her way in, not least because one of those piles of scrap looks to have been carefully balanced already. Someone small has been using this entry to the junkyard regularly. She gets eyes on Bubbles, laying down next to a pile of crushed cards, with his paw in his water dish. The dog wakes up instantly when he hears kibble being poured, and after a brief moment of inspection, begins hoovering down the food. Meanwhile, Frost finds a very distinctively painted gas tank off a Honda cafe racer motorcycle, which turns out to have engraving on the cap. As she gets a grip on it, she hears growling, which turns into barking when she moves.

Twiggy has eyes on Snubnose, who reacts immediately to his barking dog. He goes in and yells out that he needs help getting a carburetor fixed. Snubnose tells him to wait, grabs a shotgun, and goes to investigate. Frost slides through the gap in the fence, yanking down a piece of metal to cover behind her, and Bubbles rams it head-on. The impact and its vibration unbalance one of the piles, making a terrible amount of noise. Twiggy hears a shotgun blast and more shouting, but then the barking stops, and a few minutes later, Snubnose comes back, holding a mangled bag of kibble, cursing those damn kids. The chopper offers help, but Snubnose doesn't need it. Most importantly, Snubnose does not suspect that Twiggy has any connection to the burglary.

Among other things, Butcher runs a labor gang, headquartered downtown, near the market. Frost goes to check it out. She runs into Jones there, who's looking for work. They both decide to drop in on Butcher and see what he has for work. They find him in a pleasant mood, wearing one of his trademark Hawaian shirts. Frost begins browsing the stuff he has for sale. Meanwhile, Butcher offers Jones some heavy work, riding shotgun on a chuck wagon run. As they talk, Frost looks for the right place to put the tank, where it won't be found. She's pulling it out of a sack, trying to put it on a shelf behind something, and accidentally knocks over a Mason jar full of ball bearings. Butcher turns around looking straight at her, and all she can do is act apologetic. He points her to the broom and dustpan, and sells her act. Meanwhile, Jones indicates that he's not looking for arson work, which leaves only the chuck wagon. Butcher's willing to hire Frost for the chuck wagon job too, but she says she's not feeling up to front line work.

On the way out, Jones asks Frost about the thing she carried in, but did not carry out. She tells him not to worry about it. They then move on to the topic of little kids, doors that shouldn't exist, and all the spooky stuff that goes on in this city.

Augustus hears the sound of screaming from somewhere in the Colosseum. It sounds like Marley, so he goes running off in that direction. He passes her, as she's running headlong from her station. He sees a guy walking out of the guncheck room, and sees Ace walking out of there, holding a shotgun. Gus tries to hail in a cheery fashion, but Ace expresses a desire to murder him, and points a shotgun his way. Augustus runs for it, ducking as he does. Ace misses him but catches Spartacus, then chases after the maestro'd. Gus hides in his tunnels, and Ace slams the tunnel door shut while hollering that he's not going into those tunnels again. Gus loops around and comes up in his office, which is pleasantly empty. He locks the door, grabs his go bag from a desk drawer, and finds Marley and Tinian curled up together under the desk, hiding. He tells them to find Twiggy. He hears more shotgun fire, then banging noises. Tinian heads out into the tunnels as Marley asks what they should do. Gus tells her they're hiding. She doesn't seem to find that reassuring. Eventually the doorknob rattles, and they make themselves very quiet. A voice, maybe Kenworth, curses and then falls silent.

Twiggy walks past Jones and Frost as they exit Butcher's, and suspects that Frost must have been successful since she's not carrying anything. Tinian turns up and tells Twiggy that there's trouble and Gus needs him because there's shooting. Jones is intrigued! Twiggy asks if he should get the Stooges, but Jones tells him they don't need his useless riffraff. Tinian leads them to the Colosseum and shows them one of the secret ways in, through an electrical junction box. Tinian shows them through a couple secret passages, and then they in the Colosseum. Jones smells smoke, opens a door to check for fire, and eats a shotgun blast to the head that drops him in his tracks. Frost opens fire through the door, and so does Twiggy. Someone yells "fuck fuck fuck" and there are clattering noises. Jones reloads as the smell of smoke gets worse. There's also a smell of french fries and mozarella sticks, and they realize the bad guy is in the snack bar kitchen. Frost grabs Jones' assault rifle. Tinian vanishes into wherever Tinian went. Twiggy and Frost go through the door, and both catch some shotgun pellets. Frost falls down in a pool of used fryer grease... which is starting to catch fire. They scramble out, but shoot the hekk out of Ace as they do. Jones wakes up when the burning oil reaches him. Armor isn't going to stop that. He yells out in pain, which tells Frost that he's not dead! He rolls into her shins, and then she's burning, and it's a little crazy for a moment there before they get untangled and stop burning.

Augustus hears someone yelling about fire.

Semmel pokes his head into Grandma's office and tells her there's smoke coming from the Colosseum. She mobilizes.

Gus orders his people to abandon the Colosseum and hope it turns into something else useful when there's nobody inside it. Spartacus doesn't make it out - apparently Ace came back and finished him off.

Grandma and her gang then arrive and lock the situation down right away. Grandma gets some respect from the community for taking charge of the situation and getting things taken care of.

Jones sends Tinian to tell Butcher that he's been burned and can't do the chuck wagon job. MacWillard treats wounds all around.

Frost reports success to Skint. She's content to hear that Frost does not see any reason to worry about blowback.

Grandma checks in with Augustus, who says he's going to rebuild, like always, and maybe throw some fundraiser events to try to pay for it all. She throws him 2-barter to help pay for reconstruction. Gus tries to figure out why she's being so nice to him, and concludes that she's trying to push the town forward. The Colosseum is a big draw for Churchill, and she can't have it closed for too long. He's looking at what would be 6-barter worth of damage if he had to buy it all at market prices, but he knows a lot of people.

Abnett warns Grandma that someone important has come to see her, and she needs to be careful. He's called Sebastian, and he's an envoy from the Mayor. Abnett shows him in and then, in response to a look from this emissary, leaves them alone. The Mayor has heard about how she dealt with Watervale, and how she dealt with the fire, and he's impressed. Given how rapidly and how well she took Churchill from a mere rental property to a municipality, they'd like her to sit on City Council. She asks if she has to do that herself, or if she can send someone. He tells her that while delegates are not unheard-of, she'll likely find it preferable to be present in person in the halls of power. He slides her an embossed csrd with the meeting time and location.