Looking at the tracks, Pallor could see two likely scenarios... one acceptable, one quite bad. He focused his thoughts and pushed them forward along the track, to see if they came to a logical end or simply peril...
Seth cradles the helmet like a child and turns back to Vonya and Dust, tromping up to glare at Camo.
"You nearly f@ckin' killed yourself and us all, lad! You workin' with this lot?! What do ye have te say fer yerself?!" he bellows, spittle flying into Camo's face.
"You nearly f@ckin' killed yourself and us all, lad! You workin' with this lot?! What do ye have te say fer yerself?!" he bellows, spittle flying into Camo's face.
Niiice. Since you're contesting what he's trying to do, and he's reaching for Vonya's hip pistol, you're trying to seize control of what he's doing - I'd judge that to be a +Hard roll to see how successful you are.
AT WALKER'S HOLD:
Volcano sees what Camo is attempting and dives forward with a grunt in the middle of his angry ranting. "What're ye-" he screams, as he is interrupted, and wrestles with Camo's hand for a few moments. The huge barrel of Vonya's Magnum is pointing straight up in the air between the two of them when it goes off. barks the heavy pistol, and all Vonya and Volcano can hear for a few moments is a persistent ringing in their ears. Camo is momentarily deafened, too.
"What?"
"Whaaat?"
"Mawp. Mawp. Maaaaawp." is all that can be heard by the three for a few moments. Dust, Chief, you're affected as well, though to a lesser degree.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WABASHA STREET CAVES:
That weird-ass brainer Pallor goes rigid again as he casts his consciousness forward. The psychic maelstrom - which isn't affected by the interference of the rock wall overhead, like satellite reception might be - takes him back to the moments in the past that coincided with the apocalypse.
He sees the same cashier from the vision before. She's not carrying anything - she must have already dropped it off in the safe, at this point in time. She's crying in fear and putting on some long, black, ceremonial-looking robes. Pallor's vision shifts, and he sees another person, a man, also dressed in floor-length robes, beckoning at her urgently from a tour car. The woman goes to the control room and yanks a lever, and then races out to climb in after the man, and the two of them ride down the tracks into the darkness of the caves. The caves ahead have a faint torchlight flickering, and as the mine cart races toward the light, strange chanting is growing ever louder. That's when the vision ends.
Vonya can't even hear Tom's voice over the dull ringing sound in his ears. "You f*cker, that's my f*ckin piece!" he yells strangely, unable to formulate the words properly without hearing them. He tries to grab Camo's wrist that he's using to hold the magnum, and Camo's throat too. "Drop it or I start breakin' yer f*ckin' bones one by one like it wer' nothin'." Vonya growls.
Seth staggers to his feet and shakes his head to clear it before seeing Vonya go aggro on Camo. He smirks a bit as the big man threatens Camo. Wretch deserved it for all the s#it he'd pulled today.
Pallor: the mine carts were meant to be used for guided tours, and they move at a relatively sedate pace at first before slightly speeding up as they proceed down the tracks.
Vonya scares the piss out of Camo and he immediately lets go of the Magnum. The big Faceless scoops his gun out of the air before it can hit the ground and possibly go off again. Camo is unable to breathe from Vonya squeezing his throat closed, and he's choking and gasping.
Vonya lets the wretched beast fall to the floor, and takes a step back, cocking his magnum and aiming it at Camo.
"Make a move, and I take a kneecap. You and I know each other, Camo, and you know I don't make threats lightly." Vonya hisses through clenched teeth, and then nods at Seth to go ahead.
"Well we came here to explore so lets get on with it."
-
Runner hops in one of the cars and points his 9mm down the shaft...
Seth, for his part, yanks Camo up by his shirt and gets right up in his face.
"Start. Talkin'."
Without a pause, Scarlet hops in behind Runner, looking for levers to pull or buttons to press.
TUNNELS
Pallor walks over and hits the switch to move the cart before moving out to get in the tour car with Runner and Scarlet.
Why does Pallor know where the switch is? Who Knows?
AT WALKER'S HOLD:
Camo's blubbering now, sobbing on his knees before Dust, Seth and Vonya's angry stares. He has a dark stain spreading on the front of his pants, and it smells like he fouled himself another way too. The former raider is completely cowed, and clasps his hands together desperately.
"Please please please..." he starts out, before Seth grabs him by the front of his shirt and yanks him to his feet. Camo squeaks in fear and starts talking, his voice cracking up to a higher pitch here and there.
"IT WAS YOUR WORKSHOP! Damnit, your workshop! I was forced to help him...he has my girlfriend...he promised me he'd let her go if Walker's Hold falls, even if I had to die to do it...he's going to kill her...he's going to kill her!" he has snot running out of his nose and over his wispy mustache, and he snorts a deep inhale through his nose before he continues.
"Ugh...we had a little apartment in downtown Saint Paul...weren't harming no one...suddenly these Super Mutants wearing fancy headgear show up and take my Lisa away...send me here, to help take you down..." he shudders and closes his eyes, he can't look you in the face. When he looks away, his eyes fall on Vonya, and he flinches and looks away in another direction.
BACK AT THE CAVES:
The majority of the biker gang isn't able to fit in the mine carts, as there are not enough seats for all of them. Some resolve to follow your carts on foot, and others stay behind to fully ransack the outer tourist area at the front of the caves.
With Scarlet, Pallor and Runner leading the way, the carts begin to power up to life. In the pre-war days, society was just finishing its transition to renewable clean energy, but the transition hadn't reached this tourist trap yet. Instead, a generator filled with petroleum gas fires up and sends the carts chugging down the cart tracks. There can't be much gas left after so many years, but there's enough to send you down away from the entrance and into the caves.
As you make your way down through the rock tunnel, you see signs posted on the walls that explain the history of the Wabasha Caves. You learn that the caves were discovered during the Gold Rush era, and eager prospectors who were too lazy to head any further West tried to dig for precious metals here. Instead, they found quartz, granite, and limestone, and the caves' mining expeditions were cancelled.
There's something here that doesn't fit, though. Across the tunnel, covering the space from wall to wall, is a massive door. The tracks don't end with the door, they pass under it, but the door is shut across the tracks and your carts bump into them to stop.
The door is ornately carved with strange markings and crude paintings of human figures. The drawings are divided up into cells. There's no handle or ring of any kind. On the wall near to you is a control panel, independently wired and powered by a small generator on wheels, and the generator's off.
Seth looks confused.
"My...workshop is holding your girl hostage?"
"He wants what's in your workshop...told me I'd know when I saw...this helmet exploding was the last resort...said he'd hurt her if I didn't help...now she's gonna die..." Camo's full-on blubbering and crying by now.
"Hrrmm...So it's Philophrosyne he's after. THAT'S why I caught ya pokin' her last knight. An' here I was thinkin' you were just lookin' for a hole to stick yer pole in. Ah, I'm an idiot."
He pauses and taps his good foot for a moment, thinking.
"Vonya? Dust? Chief? What do you lot think about turnin' this investigation into a rescue? An' maybe some good ol' fashioned revenge? No one messes with Walker's an' gets away with it, right?!"
Vonya grins unseen under his gasmask. "Tom and I think it's a good idea, long as we're pointed towards a fight." He doesn't stop pointing his magnum at the blubbering Camo though.
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Chief has been standing off to the side, a little winded and sore from the fight, content to let the others deal with Camo. Now he moves in, eyes hard. Crouching next to the sobbing man, he reaches out, strokes Camo's hair almost gently, soothingly, then grips a handful of it and tilts the man's head back firmly.
"Camo. Honey. Listen to me. There's one way you live to see tomorrow, and it's also Lisa's best chance. Now, quiet down. Tell us everything you know about the man who sent you. Start at the beginning. Paint us a picture. Leave nothing out, and do not f~*& with us, because we all kind of want to hurt you right now.
"Start. Talking."
CAVES
"Door. May be new. May be booby trapped."
Pallor walks over to the control panel and focuses intently on it, hoping to see what the woman of the past did in this instance.
Obviously need power. But what buttons to push?
AT THE CAVES:
Pallor climbs out of the mine cart in the dark stone tunnel. This far down inside the caves, you can't even see the entrance hall anymore; you're too far underground. The air feels stuffy and cold.
The brainer can feel his head starting to hurt from so much access to the psychic maelstrom. Even for an experienced weirdo like him, so much exposure is having cumulative effects. His upper lip feels wet as if with sweat; he wipes it away, and discovers that he has a minor nosebleed.
His vision casts back through the years of silence and back to that fateful day of the apocalypse. The woman. She's at the end of the tracks. Her mine cart didn't pass by this door.
Your perspective shifts, and you're looking out from within the woman's eyes. Your gut twists into knots and you nearly feel sick. You climb out of the mine cart at the end of the tour ride, and see three people on their knees, their wrists bound together and bags covering their heads. Tears fill your vision as you walk over to one of them and grab her - she's a young girl - by the shoulders, yanking her to her feet. The vision ends there.
BACK AT WALKER'S:
Chief always seems to know the right words to say to get someone to loosen their tongue. As he yanks back on Camo's hair, the raider nods frantically, trying to convey his helpfulness with a pathetic sense of desperation.
"It was three weeks ago now. My Lisa and I, we were taken. Super Mutants captured us, but they didn't kill or eat us like we feared. Instead, we were taken to a big building in downtown Minneapolis, where nothing looked like it was broken down or ruined, like the rest of the city. I remember it had a big crane logo with its arms outstretched like this," he makes to hold out his arms, but gets slapped down by Vonya. "er-, yeah, like that. They took Lisa away from me, and brought me into a dark room with a man sitting at a desk." he takes a deep breath, his voice hitching with emotion.
"He was just sitting there with Super Mutants waiting on him like they were his butlers or something. Looked like a normal human, though I couldn't see his face. He was wearing these round-rim glasses that kept flashing at me in the light from the one lamp in the room." Camo seems to stare off into space as he tells his story. He snaps back to the current moment when you give a jerk on his hair again. "Ah, sorry, sorry! He said he'd be sending his forces to destroy Walker's Hold and take what you have, and told me to do everything I could to make sure they succeeded. If I failed, they'd kill Lisa! You've gotta believe me!"
You've heard desperation and you've heard feigned desperation before, Chief. You get the very firm impression that this guy's not lying about his girlfriend being held hostage.
"All right, good, you did good, Camo, real good. Now listen, Hugo's going to take you up to the café, and we're going to keep you safe. I'll be honest, that means locking you up, okay? We're going to keep you out of sight, so word doesn't get back to this guy that you're walking around free when you failed. If he doesn't know what happened to you he's more likely to keep Lisa alive in case she's useful later."
Chief beckons Hugo over, borrows his coat and throws it over Camo's head. "Take him back up to Wolf's, ugh, try and clean him up a little. You and Ula get him in the cage and keep him there."
"Hey, Camo, did this guy give you a name?"
(In one of the private booths in the back of Wolf's, there's a bed built on top of a low cage, where Ula sometimes keeps Bad Puppies. Camo's been a Very Bad Puppy.)
Seth scratches his bald head.
"Crane, eh? Matches what I felt from that headset. Whoever this "Crane" f#cker is has it out for the entire hold, not just me. Obviously's got a more than a knack for pre-War tech if he's usin' it to boss around an army of Super Mutants. Could even be a pre-War f#cker, like a ghoul or popsicle. That'd explain why he's after Philophrosyne. She's one of the oldest and most intact pieces from before the bombs fell that I've ever come across, and there may be things in her head. Important things. I was close to getting her back up before Camo messed with her the other night. This guy must want those secrets badly...or maybe he doesn't want anyone else finding them!"
TUNNELS
Pallor turns to Scarlet and Runner, breathing shallowly.
"Door wasn't here in before-time." He shrugs, somewhat mechanically, lifting only one arm in the motion. He sits down in the cart once more to rest.
As Camo is led away, Tom prompts Vonya to ask something to the others.
"This Lisa chick even real? Don't want wanna waste any breath or blood to find out it's just a manne... Manneque? Tom, what are they called? Manneqwins? Whatever. Well in any case my point is that I ain't doing sh*t for him. I'll help the ol' Hold out; especially if I'm getting some jingle for my troubles."
<<The door is ornately carved with strange markings and crude paintings of human figures. The drawings are divided up into cells. There's no handle or ring of any kind.>>
-
Runner stares at the markings on the door and time seems to slow down...
the door seems to grow larger and larger in his sight as if he is shrinking to the size of an ant...
and then something deep in his psyche shifts; maybe snaps even...
-
Chief shakes his head. "Vonya, really, it doesn't matter. We've got to go after the guy who sent these Muties after us anyway. If we can get Camo's girl out of there safely in the process, great, but that's not the mission."
Chief's eyes flick up and down Vonya's massive frame. He leans in a little closer and says quietly, "Tell you what, jingle is jingle, sure, but if you come along and help us out, when we get back, you can spend some quality time with Clarion. She'll take real good care of you, Von."
Dust, who had been listening in stunned silence to Camo's story feels her rage for the wretched man soften as he's led away to spend some time in the cage.
"If there's a rescue mission I want in on it too. I've got a bad feeling about all this and I want to see whoever's behind it with my own eyes"
Vonya stands in silence as he contemplates the offer. The silence lasts a whole two seconds, with Tom simply stating this is a no brainer, f*ckwit.
"I'm in, Chief. Let's do this! We gonna get some back up from bossman? Is Dog and his f*ckhead gang around to help out?" Vonya half yells as he starts getting himself pumped, stretching 'n flexing his muscles.
Francis jogs along behind the carts as best he can, swinging the flamer from side to side in a "U" shaped motion to cover either side of the passage while not putting the carts and their passengers directly in his line of fire.
The last thing I need is to trip and torch somebody - this lot would tear me to pieces.
Eventually he catches up to the carts at the strange wall, and slowly walks up while examining the paintings and carvings on its surface.
"Are these some sort of tags, like the South Side Kings had back there?"
He glances at the generator wired up to the control panel, then resumes studying the wall, now trying to determine how it might open if powered up.
At the Hold:
The intercom in Chief's belt chirps again, and Paul Atreides' voice calls up to him. "I heard that," he says, "And I like your spunk for standing up for the Hold. Come on up to my office, I've got a little something for you to bring along that might help."
Down in the Caves:
Runner doesn't often tap into the weirdness of the psychic maelstrom. When he does, it's often involuntary, and within the confines of his vehicle, his one true home. He's in more familiar environments ordinarily, than down in this black hole in the ground. As he opens his brain, he can't see anything. His vision is black, except for a bit of filtered light that tells him he's wearing some kind of hood. He feels tears streaking down his face as he's being dragged somewhere, lifted...he's being set down on a table, tied down by his wrists and ankles...he's begging for them to please stop, please, no, I'll do anything...he's sobbing now...he feels the hood being ripped off him and he's staring up at a light overhead. A silhouette is standing over him, clutching a knife that gleams in the glaring luminescence. A tear that is not his own falls upon him from above, and the knife plunges down.
"NOOOO!" he screams, and he comes back to reality - to find his own knife buried partway in his own wrist. Take 1d2 harm that ignores armor.
Right before this happens, Francis Benjamin is scanning the door. It's hard to see, but it looks like the doors are split down the middle, and the hinges are on this side of the door, meaning they open "outward," away from you. You're distracted from the door by the weird leather man stabbing himself and screaming.
Seth grins and he turns to the others.
"Well, children? You heard the boss!"
"Let's get a move on, while the day's young."
"Then it's decided. May the thousand suns light our way."
Pallor, seeing that Runner is acting weird, asks, "What did you see?"
Emma slides out of the cart and dashes over to Runner. Snatching the knife out of his hand, she tosses it away, and grabs his face in both hands. "Look at me!" she demands. "Runner, let me see your eyes."
-
When Scarlet's hands grasp his face Runner instantly returns from the void.
There is nothing else he can do but stare into her lovely, oh so deeply entrancing eyes.
-
"Uh, what happened? I was captured? blindfolded? It seemed real but how?
I think this place is haunted. So much death has happened here.
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all."
Chief heads up to Paul's domain. He's still a little amped up from the fighting but trying to dial it back a bit. He feels super uncomfortable around Paul -- he knows just how easy it would be to lose his relatively privileged place in the hold, if he f~$#s something up -- so he doesn't cop attitude with Paul's guards, and he's respectful and friendly toward Crypter, Paul's social secretary and receptionist, when he gets to the office.
"I saw a woman with a captive. Human sacrifice, that was you."
AT WALKER'S HOLD:
Crypter's face is illuminated by a faint green glow from the array of computer screens she's sitting at, that are showing CCTV footage of the area around the Hold. She looks harried and frustrated, and nods at you curtly in acknowledgement, Chief, before going back to her work.
The next room beyond Crypter's reception room is an ornately decorated throne room. A huge chair has been lifted up here to this top floor and decorated with ancient barbarian replicas that the Walker Art Museum had on hand pre-war. The whole room is meant to look lavish and intimidating - a perfect place for a thief to lift some valuables.
You all know better. Approaching the throne, you lift up a section of carpet and press a button on the floor. The stairs leading up to the throne are lifted on ancient servomotors, creaking up to 7 feet off the ground and revealing a passageway through to Paul Atreides' real office.
The hardholder knows that he's a target for vagabonds that want to lift some free artifacts to trade for jingle, so he keeps the barbarian-esque throne room laden with loot that's been traced using pre-war tech. You've seen Paul use such loot in the past to track down betrayers in the ranks. Still, it's not a foolproof system, as Camo's presence indicates.
Paul's wrapping up another meeting when you arrive at his office. A huge man, nearly Vonya's height and covered in biker leathers modded with steel spikes and rivets, wearing a stylized biker helmet, walks past you as you enter Atreides' room. None of you recognize him.
"Greetings, everybody. I want to start by thanking you for jumping to the Hold's defense." the hardholder minces no words, getting right down to business. "I heard on the comms where you're going, and I'd like to offer you some help. I'd like you to bring Old Bessie with you when you go. And because that war tractor is tough and armored, but slower than an arthritic tortoise, I'm giving you access to one of our three War Rigs to carry it with you into downtown." He holds up a keychain with a cartoonish red rocket dangling next to the key. "I've passed word along to the garages, and the gearheads are loading Ol' Bessie up on the trailer hitch as we speak. So who's driving?"
AT THE WABASHA CAVES:
As Runner clutches at his bleeding palm, a light flickers on at the terminal console on the wall. The dirty screen flares blue, revealing a pair of buttons under a lock symbol on the touchscreen display. One of the buttons is red, the other green.
For the first time Dust finds herself in Paul's inner sanctum. For the most part she has had very little to do with him since she arrived at Walker's hold. After arriving with Omega and having him vouch for her she had briefly met him and been told that she was welcome to stay provided she stuck to the rules. Back then she was just a kid and Paul had seemed like some golden age king compared to the people she'd known back home. Ever since she had first felt the presence of The Blind God however, she found him less imposing. As she stood before him she listened and watched with great interest, trying to gain some rare insight into his thoughts and desires.
Vonya immediately yells loudly in satisfaction. "F*CK YEAH! Seth here did a good job with her, I made her purrrrrrrr. I'm gon' be shootin'! Bossman, tell the gearheads to load up on ammo, for sure. She burns through like you wouldn't believe but holy momma she lays down some serious lead."
"Red blood, green sky, go, stop, who knows?"
Chief watches Dust watching Paul with a bit of a sly smirk.
"Better be someone young and quick at the wheel, I think. You ever drive a War Rig, Miz Dust?"
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Looking away from Paul at the mention of her name Dust is surprised to find herself flustered by Chief's smirk. Hands fidgeting slightly she manages to pull together an answer.
"Uh, well. No, nothing that big before. I should be able to make it work though."
Chief is just enough of a gentleman to let that set-up go by with a twinkle in his eye instead of a crude joke.