The Found Arcana – Second Interlude [IC]
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The Found Arcana – Second Interlude [IC]
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Jawsey was relieved to be invisible, and figured he owed AM a pile of drinks for the spell. But first to make sure they could get out of this situation.
He focused, and called on Granny Iron-Teeth. The spirit was a strong one and Jawsey anticipated a struggle but he found his will flowed flawlessly into the astral and the spirit was pulled in, firmly under his control — but not before leaving him with a burning in his lungs that almost dropped him to his knees. He might be in control, but she’d extracted a stiff payment that might take days to recover from.
When Jawsey focused on the situation again, he realised that Bobby had gone from Bear to Orangutan, and nobody was shooting yet. Very well, he’d hold back his spirit for now.
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AM uses the invisibility to find a superior position to cover for Bobby’s fight in case the others interfere. She is very alert, and waits for any sign of escalation before she interferes.
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Most of the gangers, seeing a giant bear, pop their inhalers. Their guns are up and trained on Bobby. It’s clear that they’re taking aim, although the effectiveness of this while hyper and twitchy is debatable. It definitely does not deescalate the situation, which seems primed to erupt and the smallest spark.
The exceptions are the ork with a spiked baseball bat and the female to his left. They’re calmer and more in control of their actions, but both are tense. One of them is likely the leader and the other the lieutenant, although it’s not clear which is which. The spokesman looks like he still wishes he had his pistol, but he doesn’t, nor does he break his defensive stance to take it back. The woman has two heavy pistols – hers and the spokesman’s – and she’s dual-wielding them with a reasonable degree of control. Both guns are pointed at Bobby as the woman stares down the bear.
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Bobby stared back – now in the shape of an ape, while baring his teeth in a typical grin.
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AM commands her watcher to manifest and make strange sounds above the heads of the gangers, to force them to break aim and instinctively take their eyes off Bobby.
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The troll, impatient with the proceedings – or just jacked up on drugs – leans down to pick up a piece of broken pavement from a Redmond pothole. He lobs it at Bobby with a strong but clumsy throw; it should be easy enough to sidestep.
This earns him a sharp whistle from the female ork, who turns to stare daggers at him. Her teeth are clenched and she might say “Knock it off!” with a guttural snarl, or maybe she just growls at him. She then turns back to Bobby.
This rebuke helps keep the rest of the troops in line… until AM’s watcher appears above them. One ork looks up to assess the threat, one ork doesn’t look at all, and the human completely panics and opens fire. He’s got a large revolver with a bayonet on it – completely ridiculous, and an obvious overcompensation for being an ork poser – that knocks his arm back with recoil. The watcher is unmoved by the display, unlike the bayonet on the gun, which wobbles like a metronome.
The spokesman isn’t phased by the gunshot behind him. He looks content with the orangutan form and starts walking forward to meet it. “Time’s up, chump. Let’s do this.”
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Bobby knew it was a trap – but he didn’t care. With sudden acceleration – rather unexpected for such an unaerodynamic body – he flung himself at the Ganger, ready to punch him in his guts with his long reaching ape arms.
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AM smiles in satisfaction when she watches the reaction of the jumpy gangers to her Buffalo watcher. “Nice work Tatanka,” she thinks and continues to hold her SMG, patiently waiting to punish the gangers if they do not respect the dual. She trusts Bobby to be a mean SOB that can handle himself in a duel, so she is not worried about a fair fight.
Spoiler: -
Jawsey decides that his grip on Granny Iron Teeth is good enough that he can be a profligate with orders. He asks her to “Quietly but creepily materialize in that large pot-hole a few steps behind the troll, then wait for further orders unless someone attacks you, in which case you can scare them.”
The spirit was there in a flash, and anyone watching with meat eyes soon saw what looked like an old, hunched, woman coming oozing out of the broken ground. As her skinny legs and clubbed feet floated free of the ground Jawsey could feel her tugging slightly on their bond, eager to terrorize or even to smother. He mentally sent “… soon …” and she smiled, her face opening up like a frog’s, revealing a broad mouth lined with black iron blades. Her eyes bulged as she seemed to pull in the scent of the gangers in front of her, and she sent back ” … so young, so full of anger and fear, of life… “
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Bobby flung his long arm into a wide arc – and impacted the ganger’s armor with enough force to splinter one of the ceramic inlays and make the guy stagger backwards, although to Bobby’s immense disapointment, it didn’t knock him down. Having used up nearly all his momentum, Bobby prepared to evade the man’s counter attack.
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Seeing Bobby land the first strike, the woman barks advice. “Reset! Catch your breath!” One of the other orks – whose focus stayed on Bobby, not the watcher, cheers on the fighter. “You got this! Find your range!”
Bobby waits for an attack that doesn’t come. The ork coughs deeply and seems to have the wind knocked out of him. Instead of trying to clobber Bobby about with his bat, the man steps back – partly to recoil from the blow, partly for extra space that will favor his baseball bat – and fishes a slap patch out of his vest. He slaps it on his neck and gets his coughing under control. His hand returns to a two-handed grip on the bat; his chin is tucked into his chest to prevent an uppercut from the lanky beast.
While Granny Iron Teeth is slithering out of the sewer – unbeknownst to the gangers – AM studies the terrain for other potential escape routes in case the Crimson Crush – pumped up on combat drugs – are less-than-honorable about keeping the fight fair. There’s a storm grate to Bobby’s right where he could slip through to the sewers below. Usually it would be clogged with leaves at this time of year, but for better or worse Touristville doesn’t really have any deciduous trees.
AM’s eyes dart around as she studies the gangers. Their formation suggests at least a rudimentary understanding of tactics, plus the discipline to maintain formation even after hearing a gunshot. Their weapons are a grab bag assortment. She doesn’t see any automatic weapons; heavy pistols seems to be what the gangers favor, either because they’re intimidating or because there’s some sort of macho association with higher calibers. Besides the ork poser with his Barrens Special and its ridiculous bayonet, she recognizes an Ares Striker in the hands of the troll. It’s notable for being a throwback, and thus unhackable. She might be able to get her brain into many of the other weapons though. A couple of the orks have silver glint in their eyes, telltale signs of cybereyes that might be ripe for hacking.
The orks are excited but its the troll that’s getting really worked up about the proceedings. The gangers in the outer ring are having a hard time not turning around to watch, but they do a good job in maintaining their perimeter and watching out for additional threats. Their backs are turned to Granny Iron Teeth and its not hard to imagine them panicking at the sight of Baba Yaga in their midst with a mouth of black iron blades. Whether that would cause them to scatter or open fire is a separate question. Perhaps in their haste to shoot the spirit they would miss and shoot each other in the crossfire. Perhaps.
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Bobby didn’t intend to give the guy time to get his bearings. Instead he launched himself towards the guy’s face, his teeth clearly visible and no longer a friendly ape grin, showing clearly that this was not a purely vegetarian species.
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The guy backpedals. Seeing a flash of fangs, he throws his arms up around his face and neck to go into what looks like a boxer’s cover stance. (It must be a practiced move because he avoids stabbing himself with his own bat in the process.) Bobby’s attack was clumsy by his high standards and the ganger is able to sidestep the orange fur bomb that catapults by him.
“You got this, Jack!” the female ork shouts. “That’s right, bob and weave! NOW, counter while he’s at range! 2-3, 2-3!”
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With Granny Iron-Teeth in place, Jawsey had a moment to observe the fight, and he realized that Bobby’s opponent was getting coaching! Jawsey’s melee experience was limited to to following some learn-at-home fencing trids, but there was more than one way to encourage someone. Talking might give away his position to some degree, but since a firefight didn’t seem to be breaking out just yet he’d run the chance.
“C’mon Bobby, who’s going to be kind of the apes? He has basic skin-bone-muscle-reflexes ‘ware but you’re faster, push the pace!“
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Bobby had always been of the opinion: if the advice is good, it doesn’t matter where it comes from.
So he avoided the swing with a dodge roll and reached out with his long arms to grab a knee and topple his opponent. -
Jawsey mentall swore when he saw the orc skip back at the last second, not quickly enough to avoid all contact but quickly enough to avoid the strength of the swipe.
“He keeps pulling back to use his reach — close in faster!“
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It’s unclear what a “2-3” is but evidently it involves trying to club Bobby’s brain in with a baseball bat. It comes down in a hard overhead swing that arcs down at Bobby’s brain box like a scythe. Bobby decides he wants none of that and prudently gets out of the way. His tuck and roll gets him out of the way little worse for the wear; all the ganger has to show for his effort is a tuft of orange hair and fuzz stuck to some of the nails and barbed wire around the bat. Bobby doesn’t even notice that it’s gone.
Bobby’s counterattack plan is good and the execution is solid, but the ganger nimbly skips out of the way of the sweeping arm. The cheering of the gangers grows as fight progresses.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!” the female ork shouts, presumably to her fighter even though Bobby would be able to implement it more literally. “Rumble, young man, rumble!”
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Hearing Jawsey cheering him on, Bobby took a moment to regain his balance and take a close look at his opponent, looking for the proverbial chink in his armor.
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Bobby takes a closer look at his opponent’s armored vest. It’s clearly not off-the-rack, to the degree that it’s crimson and covered in gang patches. It does show some low-level customizations beyond that: Bobby thinks he sees a coating offering chemical protection (to better shield it from the acid rain of the Barrens), some ire-retardant, nonflammable materials (just in case the Halloweeners come by), and a thin mesh of electrical insulation and non-conductive materials (for cops with tasers). None of the modifications are particularly thick and, realistically, mods like this are expensive for a street ganger. While there is some nominal protection there, it is not significant.
Bobby can’t get lost in thought for too long because there’s still a fight in progress. His opponent bobs and weaves, trying to make his movements unpredictable and thus harder to hit. He even goes so far as to throw a few feinting jabs with his lead hand before swinging the bat in a vicious uppercut with his other hand, hoping to obliterate Bobby’s jaw from below.
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Bobby nearly fell for the feint, but managed to pull back just in time to channel spirit power into his curled monkey fist. Tiny electric discharges played across his fur as if he had scuffled to much a long a cheap synthetic rug. Thinking of Jawsey’s tipp, he closed in suddenly swinging his long arm along like a whip.
By now he regretted to have limited himself to such a relatively weak form. This fight was draining and his opponent had already used a stim patch to keep him in the fight.
Also, it felt like his totem wasn’t all there on his side – likely because he had so far limited his attacks to non-lethal ones. The urge to go into full blown mountain lion rage was getting stronger and stronger with every passing second.
But he forced himself to be patient. Sooner or later his opponent had to make a mistake too…
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