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[Monsterhearts] [IC/OOC] Blackwood: Episode 3 (The Darkness On the Edge of Town)
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Roy isn't a king of the school like Donovan. He's not even a Prince of the school. But then, he doesn't want to be. People that high on the social ladder in school have any number of cliques that they have to avoid or they'll tarnish their reputation. Roy likes to be on good terms with people from all casts of school life, and that pays off.
A friend of a friend in the motor club invited Roy to an after Homecoming party going on in the woods outside of town. There are going to be generators supplying light and loud music. Food, drink, and drink for everyone who showed up. The perfect place to blow off steam after a stuffy School dance. His own date to Homecoming, Emily, didn't want to go to the after party. Too rough a crowd, she said. Roy accepted her choice, took her home, and then went for the good times.
On his way, he passed Ashley Magnus, and seeing her angry, upset, maybe not despondent but getting there, Roy decided she could use some blowing off steam. So he approached her, talked to her, played both the sympathy and humor cards, tried to cajole her, and in the end offered her a trade of promises: If she stayed for the whole after party with him, he'd join her for that 5am Clean Up crew she was now stuck on.
Who needs sleep anyway?
Man, probably the same thing he wanted last time, money or stuff. It's not like the guy is broke or homeless either. I think he just gets off on getting what he wants by asking losers nicely. You'll get to be part of the cool club if you hook him up. Yeah, right.
We'll I'm not falling for it this time! Though it is nice to have actual living company over. Death hasn't helped my social life.
Last time Donovan asked me for a favor he wanted the keys to an empty place my Dad was trying to sell. Like an idiot I gave it to him, and it became the biggest rager of the year. They completely wrecked the place.
Worse, I wasn't invited. To 'protect my father's involvement' Donovan said. Bullshit. If it hadn't of been for cute little (white) Lucy Silver going missing at the party and becoming a national cable news story my Father's company would have been ruined. Dad's dead and he's still not letting that one go. Yeesh.
PSN: Boozer_777
So am I.
But believe it or not, I'm not the scariest thing on the block. Not even close. You know that bloodsucking fuck, Donovan? He's got his eyes on you, and the best way to handle that is to get those eyes to close permanently. I've done my best to steer him away, but he likes to destroy things I find pretty. I've tried to take him down several times, but he always seems to get away. I need somebody's help. Are you that somebody? Or are you gonna throw more of your disposable friends at him and hope he gets bored?
What this means is everyone get ready. EPISODE THREE BEGINS SOON.
It's Monday morning, an hour before class, and the shitty weather that's been hanging over the town for the past week is finally on the outs. Rays of sunlight peer through the cloud cover like a child looking down into a fishbowl while a light fog meanders over the Blackwood High campus. It's quiet, all things considered, but that's to be expected after Homecoming. Everyone is trying to get their bearings after the wildest weekend of the year.
Selvie, needless to say you didn't quite make it to the Saturday morning cleaning funtimes that Mr. Black had assigned to you, because fuck that, you and Cat were making out like crazy. That's how you spent most of the weekend in fact--after that uncomfortable conversation about Donovan you guys shared a communal shudder and decided to not talk about anything else. All in all you feel pretty damn good as you sit on the steps to the school smoking a cigarette. The reverie is broken as your phone chirps. It's Cat and the contents of the message make you feel warm.
"Hey," Ashley says as she walks up to the side of the steps. It's a particularly cold 'hey' and as you look up from your phone you see why: some kid, he can't be more than sixteen, is standing next to your girl. He's got his arm on the small of her back like he's supporting her or something. "Have you met Roy? He helped me on Saturday."
Oh. Oh.
Mika, it's Monday again. Fuck! You're sick of waking up to an empty house. Your mom had a pretty good life insurance policy so all your needs for the immediate future are seen to, but... it's really lonely. You walk by the little end table in the living room with all your family photos on it and the one of you and your mom at Silver Dollar City in Branson hits you pretty hard.
You turn it face down and keep walking into the kitchen and pour some stale cereal. You're chewing your frosted flakes in stony silence when the doorbell rings.
Opening the door a sliver you see it's... Ariel? The wayward dark angel. She's cleaned herself up since Friday but there's definitely something dark, distant and foreboding in the young woman's eyes, like a tropical storm rolling in over gray seas.
Lucas, you're not really sure why you even agreed to this (why did you, anyway?)--this is a phenomenally bad idea, and yet here you are standing in Cat's rather large back yard next to the King of the School himself. He's got his hands in his pockets and looks utterly unconcerned; you by comparison feel your spectral heart trying to climb its way up your throat. "It's simple," he says. "I need you to get in there and get something of her's for me. A personal effect, doesn't have to be anything special, it just needs to come from her room. Just do that thing you do."
What do you all do?
---
tags: @jdarksun, @rainfall, @boozer, @aspectvoid
But after the loud heavy metal music, the smoke and flames of the bonfires, and the sheer rambunctious of the after party, Ashley's anger and frustrations had been worked out. And then the alcohol and the quiet morning drive from the woods to the school had gotten Ashley to open up. And damned if her life wasn't more messed up than his, what with the girlfriend issues, her brother gone missing, and a number of her friends getting killed.
He could have taken advantage of the situation. As they worked to clean up the school after the prom under the watchful eye of Mr. Black (and by Mab was that bathroom a bloody mess) he could have led the young woman in any direction he wanted. It would have been child's play for one such as him. But, Roy had felt, it wouldn't have been right. Its one thing to take advantage of people who don't know what they're getting into. Its a whole different thing to do that to someone who just doesn't care.
So, Roy played the role of the Friend instead. After the cleaning was finished he took her home, got her phone number, and then crashed for the rest of the day and following night. Sunday, though, he gave her and a number of others a call, and got a whole group to spend the day out and about town, catching movies, dinner, and anything else that caught someone's eye.
As the day went on, Roy kept Ashley at the center of the group, making sure someone was always talking to her, telling a joke, or otherwise distracting her from the fact that her cellphone was not going off. As so as the day and night came to an end, and Ashley asked if she'd see Roy in the morning, he had promised so. And there he was, leaning against his car Monday morning as Ashley walked out of her house.
Roy hadn't been looking for any kind of relationship with Ashley Magnus, but now there was something kinda sorta there. As they walked from the parking lot to the doors of Blackwood High they talked about nothing in particular, gossiping about students and teachers. As they walked, Ashley suddenly stumbled, and Roy reached out, wrapping an arm around her lower waist to steady her. Roy was about to ask her if she was okay when he saw her eyes were locked onto some punk girl sitting on the school steps having a smoke.
Ashley walked forward with determination but, Roy noticed, she seemed rather careful about not pulling away from his arm. Kinda sorta relationship indeed. "Hey," Ashley said as she walked up to the side of the steps, her voice cold. "Have you met Roy? He helped me on Saturday."
"Yo, what's up?" Roy asked as he took in the girl's features. He quickly recognized the girl as the violent psychopath who started a fight with Donovan the King in the middle of Homecoming. All of a sudden, Roy felt like he was on very thin ice, and shut his mouth. It seemed pretty clear to Roy that Ashley didn't like the girl, and this seemed to have the possibility of going very bad very fast.
Shit, this is the first food I've had in a day.
Any other day she would have been ready to pick a fight with the girl/angel/whatever that had decided to come to her door. But today, Mika couldn't care less. About Ariel, school, life... Fuck it. I didn't want to go to school anyway.
So she pulled the door open in her ratty black T-shirt and pajama pants and barely even flinched when she saw her visitor.
"Hey. Wanna come in?"
Also I take it since no one piped up when I called for bluebooking that no one had enough for an advance this go 'round, which is fine.
I swallow hard, but my heart is stuck up there, leaving me speechless.
Just do that thing you do? What the hell does that mean? Wait, he can't know about Mika's room can he?
Ohhhh shit.
No wonder he promised to introduce me to her. He knew I would say yes without thinking. Why did I say yes without thinking? Goddamn it. Does that mean Mika knows about me sneaking to her room too? Fuck, this is not good. What do I do? I don't even know how I got into Mika's room!
Wait, I can ask the Whispers, they haven't steered me wrong yet. Hopefully I can make some sense if the advice is too cryptic.
Man, why couldn't I be intangible like a normal Ghost, that would make this so much easier.
Could someone roll Gaze into the abyss for me? I have Dark+2. I'm phone posting and I need to get my Orokos ID reset. I know Arc is not a Geth fan.
Since Michael is in the background, let's say that Roy has a string on me. He knows that I'm dead, and how I died. I assume he learned it via mysterious Fae sources. So Roy has the most strings on me.
PSN: Boozer_777
1x Mika, 1x Roy, 2x Cat (NPC), 1x Ashley (NPC), 1x Donovan (NPC), 1x Sam (NPC)
Strings on Shelvie:
1x (Ashley), 1x (Donovan), 2x (Roy)
Gonna wait on my response until I know what AspectVoid's gonna tag on me.
Okay, lets not leave people hanging.
Lucas - With Donovan manipulating you with Mika, you're tagged with Hot.
Selvie - I think after the weekend, things are on the downswing for you. I'm tagging Cold for you.
"I'm sorry, il mio amore. The issue with Donovan is coming to a head, and distracted me from what was important. But I am glad this boy offered you some small help - Ray, was it?" I don't offer my hand.
Hmm, this...this had potential. This girl had slugged Donovan right in the face in the middle of Prom. And, apparently, didn't even get suspended for it. Power and influence, maybe? Not much in the way of subtlety, but a bull in the china shop could be useful.
He could try and help resolve this whole girlfriend issue for them. It could get him a couple of "friends" that could pull him out of the fire when he hopped out because the pot got too hot. Of course, that would apparently also put him on the opposite side of Donovan, and going against the king of the school wasn't exactly smart.
Maybe it would be best to see where things stand. "So, Ashley, care to make introductions since we've never met before?" Starting at the ground floor seemed best, and then just go whichever way the breeze blows.
Selvie, I dunno what to tell you. I guess you've been replaced.
Mika, Ariel looks at you and you just now notice the gun in her hand--a revolver by the looks of it. One of those little snub-nosed jobs that you saw in all those cop dramas in the nineties. Curiously it's not aimed at you, just sitting there in her palm almost forgotten at her side.
"Sure," she says finally, stepping inside your home. Maybe it's your imagination but as you close the door you feel the brush of a cold wind carrying the sound of flapping wings. "I should kill you right here," the angel says flatly, her grip tightening on the pistol.
Lucas, you rolled an 8 on your Dark roll to seek knowledge from the visions. Go ahead and mark XP and choose one:
* the visions are confusing and alarming
* the visions are lucid and detailed but leave you with the Drained condition
I'll PM you with what you see based on your choice so you can react accordingly.
What do you do?
--
tags: @jdarksun, @aspectvoid, @rainfall, @boozer
* the visions are lucid and detailed but leave me with the Drained condition
PSN: Boozer_777
Turning Selvie on: 2d6+2 11
"Fight you for her."
Roy takes a String on Selvie for turning her on.
And trying to roll for some kind of an advantage to beat Ariel's face in has backfired fiercely. Oh god.
With the words whispered in his ear, Roy gently broke the kiss with Ashley and slid around behind her, an arm around her waste holding her close, though also placing her between himself and the girl smilingwith a wolf's grin. He briefly wondered if he could learn to smile like that; there were a number of girls in school who he was sure would feint if he could.
Still, that was for later. Roy was not about to back down from that. "Fight you for her? Really?" He carefully sculpted his face to have a slightly downcast look. "Don't you see how wrong you are? Ashley isn't some prize to be won. She's not a trophy for us to compete over."
Reaching up with his free hand, Roy gently traced a finger over Ashley's jaw line. "She is a passionate young woman with her own needs and her own desires." Upon reaching the other side of her face, Roy moved his finger to trace over Ashley's lips. "If she wanted to, there's no reason we couldn't all learn to...share. I know just the place to practice, too."
Turning his face toward the girl he was holding, he began to trail a line of kisses along her jaw where he had previously traced. "What do you say, Ash? Its obvious that this is a lesson she really needs to learn. You can help with this, can't you? For me?"
Turning back to the girl with the wolf grin, Roy finally removed his finger from Ashley's lips and held that hand out to her. "Come on, what do you say? It's certain to be more rewarding than this place."
Selvie, I'm going to spend the string I just got on you to offer you XP for going along with Roy's insanity rather than trying to rip his throat out.
I made the roll for Ashley:
Manipulate Ashley: 2d6+2 9
almost 12 hours ago as I wrote this whole thing up before work. But upon reading the rules again after work I am now unsure if I should have named it as "Turn Ashley On" instead. Both rolls use Hot, so it really doesn't change anything except how Ashley responds. I'd really like to know, though, so I don't get confused in the future.
Finally, I really love this game.
Just so everyone's clear so we don't have an action pileup again - when you make a post and commit to an action (ideally with a move behind it!) you need to give the other actors in the scene (whether that's the MC or another PC) a chance to react!
You take a deep breath and... you're inside your house (is this your house?), making your way downstairs. It's warm in the house after the rain, humid, so you open a window with manicured feminine hands (is that right?). You watch the front yard for a minute while thinking about the weekend you spent with Selvie (she's familiar isn't she?) and... well, the things you guy's did. Something feels off, like there's an itch you can't scratch, but you brush those thoughts aside as you turn around to head back upstairs to your bedroom (this isn't your bedroom...) to get ready for school. You stop all of a sudden and you don't know why but you run by the kitchen first, checking the time (it's seven thirty)... and to unlock the back door.
And then suddenly you're not Cat anymore, you're you, and you feel like shit. Donovan is giving you the stink eye.
"Fuck, Lucas, I don't have all god damned day, it's already nine," he says, and shoves you lightly towards the door.
What do you do?
---
tags: @boozer