LogThe City Never Sleeps-Jason-11

Game log for the 2024/03/10 session of AW:The City Never Sleeps, as taken by Jason

Frost and MacWillard go looking for Lollipop. The cult can usually be found in an ex-park near the market, which they use as a campground. Someone there is playing an upright piano, and Lolli is banging out some tunes. When she finishes her song, she asks the two visitors what she can do for them. Mac says they're told she can explain some oddities, she temporizes, and Frost asks her what she knows about the kids. She asks them to walk with her, and they spar a little bit. MacWillard tries to pin her down, but she doesn't want to talk specifics. She wants to talk about how the world is changing, and the way it changes is also accelerating. Frost asks about the vanishing, and Lollipop instead talks about how everyone has dreams/memories that belong to someone else. It feels like she's trying to lead them to some sort of conclusion, and Frost gets the sense that she's looking for allies, but wants to wait and see about Frost and MacWillard, and the cult leader won't commit to anything until she has some certainty. She suggests that Goggles has an inside track on what is going to change next. Mac says that's tactical, but he came to talk strategy. According to Lollipop, conversation about strategy happens at the Spire, and while it might not be entirely safe, MacWillard should go there. The angel is game, and hires Frost to protect him while he goes, and soon.

They go to the Bakery so that Mac can grab his medical kit. While he gets his things together, Frost goes to check in on Grandma. Frost asks for a private chat, so Abnett leaves the two of them alone. The battlebabe fills Grandma in on the incipient vanishing. Grandma asks how to prepare for it, and Frost tells her figuring such questions out is the hardholder's job. She also suggests keeping this news close to her vest, so a riot doesn't ensue.

Abnett comes to see MacWillard and suggests that maybe he should have a talk with Grandma. Mac deflects and waits for Frost to return, and they they set off. They cruise through the city, navigating by sight of the Spire at first, but then Frost shows him how drawing a door works. Frost reaches for the chalk doorknob, turns it, opens the door, and walks through. The door slams shut behind her, all on its own. Mac checks to make sure the door really is just a chalk drawing again, and then screams, "Fuck you, Tinkerbell, you were a shitty fairy anyway!" Then he opens his mind, gets a sense of where the door went, and has a flash of the place the kidnappers from Watervale were holding him. He decides to beat feet back to Churchill, and finds Garfield "guarding the market" by drinking at Joe's Crab Shack.

He finds the ex-Watervalian as he wraps up a deal with Twiggy. The guard can't explain how to get to the tunnels, but he can show Mac... if properly motivated. Mac points out that while he never refuses treatment to anyone, he does have to perform triage, and people who are on his good side may experience better care outcomes. That works. Twiggy observes all this, and notes it, but takes no immediate action. Garfield leads him out of Churchill through the boiler room of an old elementary school, which picks up some steam tunnels that meander all over the city, in a very dark and creepy sort of way. Garfield cautions Mac to stick close.

Frost finds herself alone in the tunnels, with no door behind her. She turns her light on, and goes looking for a portal up to the surface. She feels like the tunnels have more junctions than they used to, and she gets worried that she might be trapped in a loop.

Mac and Garfield hear a loud metallic clank, which at first they take to be steam pipes, but then it happens again and again. Garfield says "oh shit" and runs for it. The angel tries to keep up, but slips on a corner, falls, and bangs his head hard on a pipe fitting. He gets right back to his feet and runs after.

Frost hears some screaming, and then starts to hear the same noise Garfield and Mac heard, and then hears Garfield yelling at her angel buddy. Frost leaves her light on, and when Garfield sees it, he and Mac decide to run that way. Frost gets the feeling that the tunnel is getting longer as she watches. Mac calls out, and she responds with, "keep running!" The three of them all haul ass. Once they're altogether, Garfield decides to go home, and the other two head for the Spire on the surface.

It's race day at the Colosseum. Grandma brings Semmel to her box. Snubnose shows up with Franklin and Lollipop for his team, whereas Butcher has Ferguson and Jones. The place is packed. Augustus tells the contestants he wants a clean race, and that things they learn may be useful later on. Jones asks if they have to be naked again, and when Augustus leaves it up to the crowd, they chant for oil. Total nudity isn't required, but dress is going to be skimpy. Butcher's team decide to bundle up their fire-resistant clothing. Jones tries to skimp on the oil, but an "assistant" comes along and helps ensure he gets a good covering. The racecourse has had partitions added, so one team can't easily see what the other team is doing. At the first corner, Jones finds a chicken, a fox, and some corn. Gus gets on the speakers and says that the challenge is to get all three things across the swamp, and that all three things will be needed later. Jones rips out the post that the animals are tethered to, goes looking for the alligator, and picks a fight with it. Sadly, while Jones was expecting a cheesy animatronic alligator, Gus upgraded to a real one, and it saw him first. Before Jones knows what the hell is going on, it's affixed to his leg, and it pulls him under. He starts trying to strangle it, but it's very hard to keep hold of, and after a couple minutes, people realize that Jones hasn't come back up. Butcher and Ferguson continue the race without him.

At the final event, Snubnose assembles a crossbow from parts almost instantly, uses it to hit a target, and ushers his team to a convincing victory. Lollipop plays a beautiful part on the piano, an event which absolutely stumped Ferguson. Snubnose's team did so well on so many challenges that the audience ends up convinced that the race was fixed. Grandma comes down to officially declare the race over and the conflict settled. Crowd members who bet on Snubnose seem happy with this, but the ones who bet on Butcher feel like they got ripped off. There's a crowd of people at the betting cage who want their money back, and they're rowdy enough that this is becoming a security issue. Then someone yells out that Butcher and Snubnose both got paid by Grandma, which convinces more people that the fix was in, and things look like they're shaping up into a first-class riot.

Augustus tries to get the crowd to calm down and form nice orderly lines. Nobody pays any attention. Twiggy shoots the maestro'd a look to see how it wants it played. Gus clearly wants them to step in, so they do, with Twiggy trying his best to keep the Stooges from overreacting. Augustus tries to also help by wading into the crowd to calm them down, but collects a light beating for his pains. When one of the Stooges gets carried away and starts stomping someone, Twiggy has to step in and quiet that guy down, and manages to do some fairly efficiently, leaving Bradbury in rough shape. With the gang back in shape, Twiggy yells out for the crowd to quit it before the Stooges have to start hurting people. Most of them settle down, but some rioters have already broken into the betting cage and barricaded themselves inside.

Just then, Semmel yells "get down" and drags Grandma to the ground, and a gunshot rings out. Then another gunshot rings out, and hits something near Grandma's head. She concludes it would be better to leave, and tries to head for the exit. She starts moving and also sees that some guy she doesn't recognize somehow snuck a gun in there and is very specifically trying to shoot Grandma. She dives for cover again.

The Stooges move to intervene, and the shooter promptly shoots Twiggy, though his armor takes the blow. The would-be assassin then starts running toward Grandma, firing as he moves. Grandma takes another hit as she's trying to get to an escape tunnel, and ends up in the arena instead. She's out of the line of fire, but still in the building. The Stooges open fire on the shooter, and though he manages to shoot a couple Stooges, this was only ever going to end one way. The assassin falls in a puddle of his own blood.

Augustus determines that Avery is calling the shots among the people who have captured the betting cage, and calls on him to surrender before they go in there with guns blazing. Avery will only come out if the maestro'd cancels his wager. Gus can't do that without admitting that the fight was fixed, which it wasn't. However, Avery refuses to back down, so eventually the boss decides to cancel the wagers for all eight of the people in the betting office.

The Stooges pull Grandma out. She tells Augustus that the experiment with the arena as a means of resolving disputes is over. She goes back to the Bakery to get medical treatment, but Abnett tells her that MacWillard and Frost left that morning. Luckily, Poppy is happy to do the work, for a modestly inflated price.

Jones wakes up in a dark wet place, and realizes he's in an undercut of the bank of the swamp in the arena. He swims out, and sees the alligator floating face up in the swamp. He drags it back to shore so he can get some fashion wear made out of alligator hide. He gets his gun back from Marley and leaves. Word circulates that Jones is alive. Jones goes looking for Mac, but finds him absent. He pays the assistants to treat him, but they can't really do much with their remaining supplies and an alligator bite.

Meanwhile, Frost and MacWillard make their way up town. Frost has plotted a course that includes some subways and other unobserved crossings. At one point they've moving through an enclosed mall, and that lets them cover a good three blocks without being seen. On the downside, Frost sees a Jones at one point, and she's not sure how to push forward without being seen. They double back, post up in a Dunkin' Donuts, and wait a while in the hope that this Jones will walk on by. While they wait, they see yet another Jones, or at least one with a different hat than the last. Frost decides that they'll need to sneak now. Fortunately, her timing is nearly perfect. They freeze right before Jones sees them, and then he goes past, enabling her and Mac to cross behind. As they move, they see two of the Jones talking to one another, which seems to confirm MacWillard's theory that the Joneses are the security force.

They come up from a subway stop to the sidewalk outside the Spire, and a short walk later, they're in the marble and glass lobby of the Spire. It's very modern and very fancy, tan and brown tavertine, shiny chrome, and glass. Frost goes to look at the elevator. All the buttons say 14. Mac presses the first one. The doors close and Muzak plays. It's a very weird tinny rendition of "The Girl from Ipenema." When the doors open, Jones turns around and looks at them, startled. Frost asks if he has flowers. He reaches for a weapon. Frost reaches for hers and gets there first. The Jones ducks down, and there's an exchange of shots. Mac yells out to stop shooting. There's a brief pause, and Mac says that they come in peace. Frost presses a button and the elevator moves. When it opens, Mac yells out that they came in peace and want to talk about the Goddess. There's more shooting. Frost punches for the lobby. They get there safely, and Mac says that he came to find someone to talk to and doesn't want to leave without talking, even if that means being captures, so maybe Frost should leave him to it. She decides to do so, but first, she uses her chalk to make a door, which opens into a spiral staircase. He climbs it while Frost makes her getaway.

Mac climbs a great many stairs before coming to a door. It says 14. He opens it and goes through. He seems to be in an apartment building. He walks down the hallway, and at one point makes a small noise because he kicks a pile of fresh empty shell casings. He sees a Jones and has barely enough time to throw his hands up and say, "I'd like to surrender." The Jones shoots him repeatedly.

He wakes up in a hospital room, intubated and hooked up to shitloads of machines. It somehow seems familiar even though he's never been there before. He lets the machines do all the work of supporting his life, and opens his brain. He has a memory of someone with a clipboard, Doctor's coat, and a nametag saying "Blanchard" coming in to check on him, so he does his best to wait. He comes to himself and finds himself lying in the hallway, bleeding, and Jones is nowhere to be seen.

He opens a door, and finds a completely empty apartment. All it has are basic appliances. He looks out the window and sees the City from 14 floors up. He leaves and finds all the other doors are bare... until he finds one that isn't. It's like someone lives there - it has furniture, decorations, food. etc. There are photos of young people, suggesting the inhabitant is young. There's only one toothbrush, and there are women's clothes in the closet. There are two document boxes on the kitchen table with papers everywhere. The papers are legal briefs, regarding one Edward James Bentham. Bentham's mug shot is Twiggy. Some of the people in the photos also look familiar. One of them looks like Lollipop. One woman appears in multiple photos, a young, pretty, black woman. Amongst the papers, he finds a badge on a lanyard for Elizabeth Winstead from MacAllum Associates. It has the same woman's picture on it.

Mac pauses to treat himself. As he does so, the door rattles. When he looks through the peephole, he sees a Jones, but not the one who shot at him.

Back at the Colosseum, Augustus takes stock. He asks Apple what he knows about the shooter, but doesn't get much of an answer. Apple seems pretty baffled by the situation. Gus decides to fire him, but an hour later, he's long gone anyway. He puts the word out that he needs a new security coordinator. Meanwhile, Marley comes to her boss and asks what he said to Apple that made him take off like that. She seems inclined to blame Gus for scaring off the poor kid, but the maestro'd remains committed to the idea that the kid screwed up. Twiggy offers to help look into the security lapse, and Augustus tells him to start by finding out who the shooter was. Marley is absolutely certain nobody got past her with a gun. The shooter got in another way, or someone helped him. She stares at Twiggy when she says, "someone." Twiggy asks if Apple left anything behind, and finds that he cleaned out his locker completely. Twiggy goes over to the locker and puts some psychic mojo on it. He finds that the last user of the locker was scared, and had replaced a false bottom in the locker. He shows Gus and Marley the false bottom in the locker. That's indicative. Augustus tells Twiggy to find Apple.

Skint is super pissed that someone rigged her carefully planned match. She talks to Gus, and they conclude that someone had to have told Snubnose what to expect. He asks her to find out who it was. She promises that he'll have plausible deniability.

Twiggy opens his brain to see where Apple might be, and has a vision of hiding in a bush while people in the background sing "Kumbaya." He rides over there and goes looking. The cultists are packing up to move on, and Twiggy spots Apple trying to mingle with them. He goes to head the fugitive off, and manages to do so, but the entire affair becomes a spectacle. Twiggy tells Lollipop that he'd love to go with her but this guy is wanted and he has to bring him in. Apple begs Lollipop not to let the Stooges take her. Lolli asks Twiggy what Apple's talking about. Once he explains, she says if Apple wants to be with them, he can stay, and if anyone has questions, they can come here and ask. She will not let anyone disappear the lad. Twiggy leaves a couple Stooges for patrol and then goes to get Gus. Gus assures him that he's not looking to hurt Apple, so Twiggy goes back and passes the message along to Lollipop. She immediately parses out that "I won't hurt Apple" leaves open the possibility that someone else is going to hurt Apple on Augustus' behalf, and she will not let the Stooges take him under such circumstances. Twiggy takes responsibility for Apple's safety, but she doesn't believe him. He tries to push the argument, claiming that the kid is guilty and unworthy of their protection. She's unmoved. He threatens to take Apple by force, and they won't fight to protect him, but that permanently ruptures the budding friendship between Lollipop and Twiggy.

Frost arrives back in town just in time to see the Stooges hustling their prisoner out of the cultist camp. Twiggy offers Frost a ride to MacWillard's office, and she doesn't bother to correct them. Frost can tell that the Stooges are escorting a prisoner. When they get to the Bakery, Frost goes to report in, and tell Grandma that he can't tell when MacWillard will be back. Grandma is fine with that since the infirmary assistants helped her out, but that doesn't help Frost any. She tells Grandma that she knows that the inside of the Spire looks like.