Encounter: "See No Evil"
Players: Max 'Trigger', Young Officer, Innocent Girl
Segment 1A
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You slowly rise from the ground and peer around the nearest corner, spotting a Halcyon security officer with a stun baton in his hand. Your eyes flicker with rage as as you watch a young girl no older than fifteen or sixteen crawl away from the officer, her left eye bruised as a trail of blood drips from her mouth. You feel a silent storm brewing within your mind as you feel like you’re slipping away from your body altogether. For a moment you could swear you’re seeing the officer from the girl’s perspective, an inexperienced patrolman in his late twenties with a glint of violence in his eyes. Shaking the image from your mind, you contemplate what to do next. You can see three colored metal dumpsters beneath a fire escape to your left, while the man stands over the girl further down the alley. The alley turns to the right where there is a fourth dumpster and possibly an exit, or dead end. You can’t see that far from your location. There is trash strewn about the ground, beer bottles, cans, pieces of plastic, and small scraps of metal from a wreckage of some sort.
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Max searches the alleyway for bits of scrap or glass to throw (Find Object: Throw - Roll 4), finding a perfectly-intact bottle of Subterran Rum; moonshine hogwash, but at least its cheap and plentiful. Peering around the corner, he catches a bit of the young security officer's furious yelling while considering a method of ambush. (Sneak: Dumpster - Roll 5) He quickly decides on sneaking over to the large dumpsters, hoping to use them as cover in case of a firefight. Hidden between a rusted metal door and the first vomit-covered dumpster, Max readies the empty glass rum bottle with his right hand as he watches the officer intently.
'P-please, stop!', the young girl painfully moans as she crawls away from him on her hands and knees, her brown factory uniform torn and stained.
'I do as I damn well please!' the officer screams angrily as he kicks her in the stomach.
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<center>(Secret: Memory – Roll 6)</center>
Memories. Why do they choose the most inopportune moments to arise? As your heart-rate accelerates maddeningly you begin to recall a long-forgotten evening you had artificially wiped from your memory.
That week had been chaotic with Halcyon raids as they broke down the doors of countless families, arresting anyone remotely connected to the old mining company Altarax. My father was their head engineer, tasked with overseeing the excavation of what later became the independent city-state of Caldera. I remember watching the news that week, his face plastered on every Visual Unit; his bright smile eclipsed only by the sense of pride and accomplishment in his eyes. That week was the culmination of his greatest goal and achievement, his time to be ordained as one of Halcyon City's heroes... Yet as Halcyon Corporation has shown time and again, only their chosen sons may rise to power. My father's name was Richard, and he is single-handedly responsible for the discovery that changed the Subterran star-system forever. He called it Altarax, after the mining company he built with his own two hands. By sheer luck he discovered a massive network of Altarax crystal in the mountains near present-day Caldera, an exotic substance capable of producing many-times the energy yield of any atomic matter found so far. His life's work, to restore our capitol city to its former glory, was finally coming to fruition.
Then it all came crashing down. In the span of a single week, Altarax was accused of corruption and weapon trafficking as Halcyon descended on it with righteous anger. I'll never forget the look in my father's eyes when he came home and told us he had fulfilled his dreams and more than he could possibly have imagined. They found something even more breathtaking than the Altarax crystals, but as he opened his mouth to explain...
I remember the sounds of splintered wood and the smell of gunpowder in the air. I remember the screams, the screech of father’s chair as he rose to protest the sudden intrusion, and the crack of a rifle butt on his temple. I remember mother’s stifled scream when they dragged her away, hearing my father’s muffled cries as he lay bound on the kitchen floor. I didn’t understand why these men came into our home and did what they did, but when I heard the crack of a gunshot in the back room, I knew they had to pay. Later that week they executed my brother and father... All I had left was the knowledge that Halcyon Corp would one day pay for betraying my family so ruthlessly. I was seven year old when they destroyed my family, leaving a small boy and his infant sister alone in the world.
‘Stop crying, whore!’ I heard the officer screech, spittle flying as he spoke.
I was too young to understand, yet old enough to remember – I’ve heard those words once before. The terror of helplessness as an innocent woman cries out for help, her protests falling on deaf ears. I can hear her screams in my mind; feel the warmth of her blood and the echo of his footsteps…
Now I understand.
Max throws the rum bottle in an arc with all the strength he can muster, aiming for the officer’s back. As the glass bottle leaves his hand, a massive vibration rocks the alleyway and he is nearly knocked over. (Throw Object: Distract – Roll 1) Unfortunately, he scrapes his elbow against the nearby dumpster and ruins his throw. He quickly sweeps his right arm toward the ground to catch his fall while grasping wildly for the edge of the dumpster. Without line-of-sight, Max has no idea whether his distraction served its purpose.
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<center>Officer: Evasion = 2
Officer: Balance = 4
Officer: Investigate = 4</center>
A wicked smile crosses officer Fiore’s face as he activates his Hyperion-Tech stun-baton; a useful tool in the hands of a dominant aggressor. He carefully gauges the girl’s attempt to crawl away, letting her get just far enough to feel safe before attacking her once more.
He is driven by profound sadistic hunger fed by years of anger and uselessness at the hands of his father, his ex-wife, his boss, and everyone who ever looked down upon him. His superiors willingly turn a blind eye on his activities so long as he doesn’t soil their reputation. How many women has he violated? How many innocents have been irrevocably scarred to satisfy his desire for control? This man is a parasite, feeding on the open wound of Halcyon’s lawlessness. Yet he is no fool. This young officer displays a worrying spark of intellect in his spiteful eyes, carefully analyzing his surroundings with the calculating gaze of a sociopath; uncaring, reveling in the carnal pleasures of unhindered rage.
The young officer loses his balance as a glass bottle suddenly strikes him in the back of the head. To make matters worse, the entire alleyway begins to violently sway as debris and centuries of dust rain from atop the ancient buildings beside him. The dazed and bewildered officer loses grip of his stun-baton as he reaches out to the alley’s corner, hooking his hands into the brick indentations. A deep hum seems to erupt from the opposite end of the alleyway where the stray bottle must have come from. Suddenly, the heavily-calcified and undoubtedly rusted green dumpster rockets toward him with tremendous force! The young officer rolls out of the dumpster’s path successfully, though it painfully clips his left leg.
‘Son of a bitch!’
A moment later the officer scrambles to his feet in search of his stun-baton, approaching Max’s hiding place with an indiscernible limp. Though the officer’s stun-baton is buried somewhere in the alley’s debris and dirt, it is unknown what other weapons the officer might have. Max has the element of surprise even though he is cornered. Unless he makes noise, the officer should walk right past him in search of his baton or otherwise turn around and head back toward the girl.
What is your designated action?
Author
Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 313113 times)