Thomas Albertson @Misguided active
VERY WELL. BR…
Thomas realizes that, despite the suddenness of their situation leading to them making no effort to disguise themselves whatsoever, that using real names here was a BAD idea.
BRING NO MORE TROUBLE AND I WILL NOT IMPEDE YOUR ESCAPE. HOT SHOT RELEASE HIM PLEASE.
Thomas made a note to apologize to Brad @arrendek later, and let him come up with a new nickname if he wanted.
He’s lucky I don’t take that point of courage and shove it right up his testes.
Brad
Brad releases the Headless Douchebag and grabs his own arm, putting some pressure on the new wound. He watches the villain closely for any signs of treachery.
Alex
Alex floats back a bit, giving scissor-head room, and tries to casually look around in the process for somewhere to duck out of sight.
dont need to be dropping this brain-whatever-visage with all these people around
María
María steps back, slowly. The realization of how really, really weird this all is slowly seeping in. She’s going to need a couple of days of rest. And a drink.
The Headless Headsman
The villain gives a small inclination of the giant scissorshead, and turns, striding quickly into the halls, the panicked crowd giving him plenty of space. As he vanishes from view, he intones, “Do not try to follow me, or blind ye’ll be.” A Hanging Curse - actually targetted against Thomas, but while your characters can tell it invoked something supernatural you don't know whether it applied to you or not> Not long afterwards you begin hearing emergency sirens arriving outside.
Is there anything else you want to do before the authorities show up and take charge of the situation?
Brad Stevens
Brad retreats into a dark corner and un-invokes his aspect and powers. He then wraps his arm up with something cloth and moves to help any wounded people.
María
María lets go of its aspects… First the glory, and then ghost form.
Suddenly, she feels her weight coming back to her. Her limbs tensing. Taken aback with the feeling, she goes down on her knees.
And then she becomes aware the madness of everything that has happened (everything she has done!).
Ho my god, oh my god, oh my god…
She starts to shake, both of fear and release, on the ground. Her strength gone, in shock, she can’t do anything else.
She tries hard not to cry.
Thomas Albertson
As the adrenaline started to wane Thomas’ thoughts finally returned to a period of time beyond ‘now’. What the hell, perhaps literal, just happened. In the chaos and shock Thomas had acted more or less on instinct. But now? Now there was a problem.
They had acted rather rashly, and in full view. Granted it hadn’t been a conscious choice to take the form of a demigod, but this could have repercussions. He knew for certain that Brad had undergone the same type of transformation he had. He only hoped that whatever supernatural force had given him this insight and ability would not be as apparent to others. It had seemed that only a few persons had not immediately panicked, perhaps the teacher Maria and some others, and this would give them cover. Well, now time to put his already considerable skills of persuasion to work.
The rush hit him, time to get to work. He sees the fleeing students, and sees the teacher Maria on the ground. With nobody paying attention to his direction he decides to play a different hero. He drops the form, as good as it felt, and returned to his natural state.
Everybody to the front lawn. Gather by the flagpole. Teachers start assembling your classes as best you can. We need to get a head count.
Thomas walks over to Maria, and gently places her arm over his shoulder to help carry her out. He whispers to her
We will talk about this later. You, Brad, and any others you noticed. But come on now, we’ve got work to do. Meet me in my office at 4 with any others.
Brad I want you to stay here with the injured, I will be back with the police and paramedics as soon as I can get order outside.
Thomas will do the following, as allowed:
Carry Maria out
Give directives to all teachers and students outside to form up by class. Teachers take a head count and immediately inform me and the police of any missing students
Have the paramedics follow him to the gym to treat injuries
Contact Brad to inform him of the impromptu meeting in his office
Try and get information on any others who have powers, He's pretty sure at least one student was, and was that the janitor?
María
This is nice. It’s nice to feel somebody helping you. This management guy might not be so bad after all. What was his name again?
(To Thomas @CraigM ) Thanks-
Oh girl, my head is really a mess… What am I going to tell Julia?
Ok, a question. What is the damn formatting we are supposed to use??? Italics for external dialog or for actions and internal one?
I thought it was italics for internal dialog so that’s what I’ve used below.
Jose
With a glance back to remember who else was there at the end Jose joins that students leaving the scene. He ducks into a restroom to wash off the blood.
If anyone says anything I’ll say it was a cut. Or a splatter from the Avenger guy.
That’s just crazy. The police officer bursting into flames and the administrator doing whatever that was. I’ll have to talk to one of them later I guess but right now its good to stay unnoticed until I can really see what’s up. Wings? That’s got to be amazing!
Damn, do I need a costume now?
Future plans - during the day Jose just wants to hang out with his friends talking about the day. When school ends (if we get that far without any thing happening) he wants to try his hand at retrocognition on something that should have been facing towards whatever it was going on in the bus barn. He won't admit to powers to anyone but he's not hiding the fact that he was in the center of what went down.
Alex
Seems like they have the situation under control. They don’t need me here. And last thing I need is for cops to start asking a bunch of questions.
Alex looks for a way to slip away unnoticed (and a place to drop the aspect without being seen).
To be clear, this isn’t me asking for your plans for the rest of the school day, just if there’s something you want to do in the minute or two before the first responders that are arriving right now make it to the gymnasium - everyone else is already most of the way out and being collected out on the lawn in front. Once that happens it’ll be scene, and then Screwtapes can make cases for sins.
Also, the idea from the text is that they’ll see you closest to the epicenter of events and get you grouped together off to the side for a little extra TLC since you are presumably the most shocked, giving you a chance to coalesce a bit more as a group. But you don’t have to play along. The railroad is over. You’ve got your demons (and you all know the others have them, too, even if they didn’t do anything flashy - demons can recognize other invoked demons). :)
(Jose being in the larger group would make sense, having been guiding people out.)
Ok, Jose will move with the larger group / students. He’s not trying to hide that he was near the center of things from the other students but he isn’t going to volunteer it to most adults. Being that close to the dying Alliterative Avenger is both creepy and cool in a way.
Consider the bit about wanting to do more retrocognition as a plan if you are choosing to moving time ahead to the end of the school day / evening.
Sorry for the delay, I was waiting for any changed plans and I guess you folks must have been waiting for an update from me so I’ll go ahead and do that.
Jose
The crowd has finally reached the main doors to the school ahead of you and are emerging onto the grounds in ragged waves. You fade into the other students, trying to sync up with your friends (who mostly seem all right, if a bit scared and dusty) and keep your head down as EMTs route you out onto the lawn for first aid and blankets. A few armed police officers keep a perimeter around the civilians, just in case someone of a villainous persuasion survived, while others filter into the building with medics in tow to track down any stragglers. You can see fire fighters moving to put out the lingering flames in the bus barn.
Alex
The halls have mostly emptied at this point so it would be no trouble at all to slip down into the disused underbelly of the building where you’ve been sleeping. And certainly you wouldn’t want to have cops digging into your life too hard. The question is…is that more likely to happen if you move into the aftermath of this incident like another dazed survivor, or if you don’t show up and they start wondering why not? It's up to you, either way.
Thomas and Maria
As Thomas moves towards the exit to try to help with the cleanup, supporting Maria with one arm, he runs into a team of paramedics and police, looking for any stragglers and/or immobilized injured. They are polite but very firm that he should take Maria over to a station in the parking lot that they’ve set up for those closest to the incident, where they will receive all appropriate care. Thomas protests a bit, noting that he is not meaningfully injured (scrapes from flying debris, mostly) and can help organize, but ultimately will have to settle for directing them to the remaining injured in the gym and Brad.
Brad
Being very careful of your arm, you have done a couple of basic checks on the first couple of people that were injured in the Headsman fight, enough to confirm that they are breathing and not in immediate danger of death, when you are joined by a couple of fellow officers and EMTs. Seeing your own injury, an EMT insists on walking you back to the parking lot for treatment. The others will surely be in good hands from here.
At this point, as you are variously patched up and tended to, I think that we can probably safely call it a scene. Screwtapes, this is the time to look at the list of sins starting on page 89 (in the hardcover, at least) and make your case for one sin you believe your human to have committed in the previous scene. This will add at least one point to a sinful tactic (or conceivably, strategy, though that's hard.). Humans, if you have a case for a virtuous act, that's on page 93, and will let you slide one sinful tactic point to its virtuous opposite. (No direct gain of virtue for these folks!)
Anyone? Bueller?
I looked over the rules and I can’t see myself arguing for anything. The specific sins weren’t approached by any character as far as I can tell, and I’m not sure I even want to slide a point of anything to its virtuous side.
Maybe I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be doing with this part and what my goal should be, and I was hoping someone else would go first?
Yeah, I think you’re right that no one really did anything sin-worthy since you guys chose to talk the Headsman down instead of killing him. So I would just remind people that your only source of adding points to your stats is sinning and it’s a-okay to play towards getting those boosts, especially since conflict will be actively sliding or lowering them. In general you do want to be repenting at least some of the time because you need the virtuous stats to some extent as well, and it keeps you out of hell (and eventually may get you to where you can exorcise your demon).
That’s my feeling also.
Same.
And Alex has no interest in hanging around for people to start asking questions.