The scanner shows the main street through the center of a rural American town: two-story brick storefronts for a drugstore, hardware store, even a post office.  There's a little bit of snow piled here and there, though the streets and sidewalks look dry, and the sun is beaming down out of a brilliant blue sky.  The silhouette of a water tower can be seen looming up behind the buildings.

There is a little foot traffic on the sidewalk, and an occasional car passing by.  The TARDIS seems to have parked itself discreetly in an alley between storefronts.

Outlooking up with interest at the scanner, Smoke Alarm grinned widely, her dark eyes beaming. This town was yawny and clean and the walls were blank and there were only two stories, but it outlooked lots like the streets around Paradise Towers. Built in the late 21st century, its architectural style hearkened back to the late 20th – right about now, in fact, just missing the Eighties. Smoke Alarm had been born in the 25th, but that was where she'd been raised. She eyespied familiar signs and things she'd eyespied in pictures and viddies. But what was all that white fluff piled about? Mayhaps it had come out of an old couch. Mayhaps there would be other interesting scrap. After Arsuran, New Vegas, and Silurian Earth, she was now the closest she'd been to her own time since falling through the big blue bubble. It was almost home-sweet-home.

All it needed was Kangs running riot over everything and scrawling on those blank walls.

'Steady-ready-go!' she cheered, running for the talkiphone box doors.

Once he put on the holographic disguise, Sereth visibly shuddered. To hide himself, to obscure who he really was? It was horrible. Simply... horrible. He had his pride - really, maybe he had too much of it. But to disguise himself, not only disguise himself at all, but as such a weak, powerless race? That was truly horrifying.

But if Traveller thought he'd leave behind his ancestral sword, problems it may cause or not, she had another think coming. And when he left the TARDIS, and felt it was cold... damn. He may -look- human, but he was still reptilian - he felt the cold, though probably not as much as some of the truly reptilian races, like the Silurians for example.

As Sereth's holo-projector activates, a shimmer of static passes over him.  His build does not alter, but his features do: they resolve into those of a striking, dark-skinned human male with a shaven scalp.  However, the essential structure of his commanding features remains the same, and he remains recognizably Sereth to the others.

Meanwhile, Sereth's robes and symbols of office morph and shift, until he appears to be wearing a dark, full-length double-breasted overcoat, over a thousand-dollar three-piece Armani suit with subtle, refined pinstriping.  His badge of office appears as a brushed silver lapel pin -- its abstract design is unremarkable in this form.

It is weird how Sereth's human disguise still looks like Sereth. The way that he still has the same height and other general features probably plays a role in that.

"That is a nice suit." Stanley tries his best not to sound envious. He knows, because he has seen the device activate, that it is just a hologram, but for the random person on the street it looks real. Also really expensive.

Stanley steps out of the Tardis and looks around. He can't help but think that it is not as impressive as some of the previous destinations. It is only a small jump back in time and they are still on Earth, so it is no wonder that everything looks normal and familiar. "Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I can tell."

As Stanley stops and thinks about it, he realizes that he's already in this time -- his younger self is possibly sitting in a classroom, halfway around the world.  It's the first time he has ever doubled up on his own time stream like that, and even though the amount of actual influence he's having on his own past at the moment is negligible, he does feel momentarily light-headed.  But it passes, to be replaced by his awareness that the Montana morning is remarkably crisp and cold.  To be expected for late November, he supposes.

Smoke Alarm turned and started at Sereth's sudden cosplay. He'd lost the egghead, the green, the scales, but the shape of his face and the eyes and the Sereth behind them were all there still. She guessed he wasn't happy about cosplaying as a hooman, but it seemed important. 'It's high fabshion.' she agreed with Stanley.

Smoke Alarm, meanwhile, was in her usual grungy Blue Kang fabshion: old runners with mismatched socks (blue and black); black pants with a quiver tied to her right thigh with a blue rag; and an old stained black shirt with a blue bib tied over the front. The letters GA had been peeled off, but might be discerned on close inspection – it was an old school-sports netball bib. All of it was shabby, stained, frayed, patched, and torn. Another scrap of blue fabric was tied around her left arm. The metallic blue collar still sat around her neck, as did the necklace of dog fangs. A black leather belt (well, it was used as a belt) around her waist her arrowgun and ropegun and other things. Her pack-back held her things, and it clinked and rattled.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:53, Mon 23 Mar 2015.

"Sereth, mere appearance can't suppress your true magnificence. Now Stan, I doubt we'll run into anything which will mess with history, but please let's try to not make too much of a ruckus. Also, Sereth, the local law doesn't take too kindly to the display of large bladed weapons, and unfortunately will not recognize your proper authority. I'm downloading a historical report to your phone. Smoke, there are a lot of wide open plains here, watch yourself." Trav has her pistols recolored to a garish orange and green, looking for all the world like nerf guns. The front nozzles are closed off, and would look to any c20th inspection like a pair of kids toys.

Trav is keeping it simple today, her fedora now a simple black cap:



She's wearing galoshes, one of Boobie's old long scarfs, and snug mittens. "Ah, snow."  She gets together some and makes a snowball. "Hey Smoke, ever been in a snowball fight?"  She playfully tosses a snowball at the kang!

"My first thought is to find the hospital where Phillipe was born. Stan, that means research, right? We're going to need your expertise."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:01, Mon 23 Mar 2015.

His eyes flickered towards the Traveller, and, due to the magic of holographic projector, she now realises that when he gives that flicker of his eyes, it's like an eyebrow raising.

"Is this not why you insisted on having this large coat be part of the disguise? To hide underneath it?" He grunts though; he really hated having to hide behind this facade. A Draconian noble was a Draconian noble; no matter where, or when, he travelled.

Trav beams. "My dear and wise friend - it is not to protect you from them - it is to protect them from you! They're not ready for you yet, in so many ways. But soon, soon. I'll bring you to meet President Khebares, right after the Draconian first contact is made. Humanians and Draconians will be magnificient partners and allies. Together you'll accomplish so many great things! But first, Humanians need to grow up and get their feet first, so as to be worthy to walk with you."

A slow shake of his head.

"I, perhaps, know a bit more about early history between Draconia and Humanity. And if you are against meddling with history, you must let history take it's course there too - and there are many years of war; before years of an uneasy peace between our two empires. If I had been there then; with my beliefs on war now? That could all change; and who knows what other changes that might cause?"

"Sereth, I never said it would be easy - of course there's going to be trouble. Just let's not let our presence here get in the way of what's supposed to happen naturally. Time is like jello, its moves around. Let's give the people up in the future the option of making their decisions free of our meddling. We're here to protect their freedom to make their decisions. If they choose war, that's on them. Who knows? They may choose differently. There's a lot of the universe that's not fixed points in time." She dusts her hat off. "Now, let's find Phillipe, or at least how he starts."

Trav smirks as they walk through the snow. "As for some of that history? I was there when Boobie was made a Draconian noble. I'm not entirely unfamiliar with that period of Draconian-Earth history myself, although I wasn't as deeply enmeshed as Boobie was."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:25, Mon 23 Mar 2015.

Show-and-telled the warning sign by Traveller, Smoke Alarm outlooked all around, 'waring dogs and birds and the wide open blue sky. She didn't like the outlooks of the big bugs on wheels either. So she wasn't outlooking when...



'Eee! Icehot! Icehot!' Smoke Alarm squealed, jumping up and down as the snow splattered down inside her shirt, icehot-cold against her skin. It wasn't fluff at all! It was the stuff Kangs chipped out of old freezers to get at food and make drink-water. Icehot because it could burn if you touched the wrong part or for too long or if you put your tongue to it and got stuck. Vengeful, she ran to the nearest snow-pile, scooped some up dirty snow and hurled it back! 'Icehot!'

"Sure, I can probably convince the hospital staff to give me access to Phillipe's information. The problem is that I don't know how many hospitals there are around here and without more information I don't know how to narrow it down. Hopefully his parents chose the one nearest to where we are now." Stanley turns around and approaches one of the people walking on the pavement. "Excuse me, can you tell me where the nearest hospital is? I am supposed to meet a friend there, his wife is about to have a baby, but I am not familiar here."

The middle-aged woman he stops nods to Stanley.  "You probably want Livingston Memorial.  I'm guessing you took the wrong exit off the interstate?"  Without waiting for his response, she points down the street as it curves off to the south.  "Just follow Main down another couple of miles to where it hits I-90 again, and make sure you're in the far right lane, or you'll have to swing round again."

OOC: Assuming that you all eventually follow the directions as discussed, Stanley can narrate talking to admin personnel at the hospital -- it's a relatively small local hospital; Livingston is not a big town -- and trying to get at relevant records.

I think the roll would be Presence + Medicine + Voice of Authority.  It's a bit of a stretch to use that instead of Convince, but I think it would represent his knowledge of the associated bureaucracy fairly.

However, you need not let this post disrupt the snowball fight. :)

OOC: I just dare someone to throw a snowball at Sereth. Go on, I dare ya.

Splat! A snowball exploded over Sereth. It was Smoke Alarm, of course. Who else would double-dare?

Sereth... shivered, as he wiped the snow off his face.

"Wasn't there a job we needed to do here? Something a touch more important than such childish games as throwing pieces of cold at each other?" Even now he was dignified. And well, perhaps, from Traveller's and Smoke's point of view, a tiny bit boring.

On the bright side, the holo-disguise seems to have passed its first field test with flying colors.  Smoke Alarm did notice a slight ripple passing over Sereth from head to toe (like you got when somebody thumped a picturespout) but the only passerby on the street who seemed to notice merely blinked, rubbed his eyes, shrugged, and walked on.

SPLAT

Trav, of course, would no doubt pay for that later. "Oh, come on, Sereth, show us Draconian snow ball skills!" Trav is tittering madly.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 04:38, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

Trav holds up a finger. "Hold on. We need wheels." She runs back to the TARDIS quickly

OOC: Spending a second TARDIS story point for resourceful pockets. If I need to, I will also spend one of my own because we need to be cool, damn it. I did this back in RIFTS.

Trav pulls up in her 1970 Red Ford Mustang 4 Seater Convertible.


"If we're gonna ride, we gotta ride in style. Red Mustangs are cool."

Trav snaps her hat, they're now shades.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:40, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

'Cool like snow? wondered Smoke Alarm, who couldn't show-and-tell if a red mustang that ran along on wheels like a toy was meant to be cool or not. It wasn't all icehot like Dev's sky-bike. It didn't outlook like it could fly very far or very high at all. It didn't outlook sound-and-safe; at least a hover-car would go over bumps and holes and people sleeping on the road. 'How high does it fly?'

And where are we outgoing anyhow??'


OOC: Exposition time!
This message was last edited by the player at 12:02, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

"It doesn't fly, baby, at least not like that. Make sure that belt is on. To the hospital, so Stan can see where Warlock began." She loads them up. It occurs to her that she hasn't driven since RIFTS Earth.

In unalloyed joy, once in the driver's seat, Trav spins a doughnut and then tears down I-90 towards the hospital.

(OOC: No, Trav does not drive a Subaru.)
This message was last edited by the player at 14:23, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

Curious, worried, Smoke Alarm sat on one of the couches in the back. She remembered a Kang game of racing wheely chairs down the carrydoors; this was a bit like that, but not. Doing up the seatbelt she found easy – the action was completely the reverse of the Kangs' scrapheap farewell, itself a memory of a safety harness in a ship before time start.

Being in the car was also like being in the ship, as it roared and whooshed and smelled and spun around and screamed away. Smoke Alarm could handle a loop-de-loop in Dev's sky-bike, and all kinds of aerial acrobatics, but this was a whole other angle, without the safety-firsts of anty-gravs and things. She yelled and clutched the seat so tight she thought her fingers might go through. Couldn't they have just taken the talkiphone box? In fact, she thought she eyespied a familiar talkiphone box on the side of the road.

'Stan! Why do you want to eyespy where the Warlock begins? How does a Warlock begin anyhow?' she asked at last, once she got her breath back.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:20, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

"Um...hopefully Warlock...Phillipe begins as a normal baby in the hospital. Like most of the humans around here." Stanley replies, hoping that is answer enough. "You know that something bad happened to Phillipe, when he was travelling with Trav and me, right? It is all complicated time travel stuff, so it hasn't happened yet, but something might have already changed here....In any case they messed with him in such a way that his bio-signature is different in the future... I must admit that I don't know how that is even possible, so apologies if I am not being clear. We want to know more about what happened to him and what better place to start than at the beginning?"

Having arrived at the hospital, Stanley walks up to the front desk of the hospital. This is a small hospital and this is before everything is done via the internet, so it wouldn't be unusual for researchers to come look at data in person. He has spent enough time working as a doctor in hospitals, so that is also not going to be a problem. "Excuse me, I am Doctor Stanley Newton. The drive here didn't take as long as I had expected, so we are a bit early, but I hope that's not a problem." He pauses and then looks back at the others. They don't really look like a team of doctors or researchers, but they'll have to do. The person behind the desk, obviously has no idea what he is talking about, so Stanley gives more information, explaining the others and why he needs the data. "My team and I are here to take a look at the records from the maternity ward. Using that we can finish the last bit of statistics we need for the paper. Almost there." Stanley says with a smile

"Well, I expect it is going to take a while to study and copy the data, so I'd like to get started as soon as possible. I am not really familiar with the layout of this hospital, so can you tell where those records are kept and how we can get there?"



Presence + Medicine + Voice of Authority
22:23, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 16 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 1,6. Presence(3) + Medicine(4) + Voice of Authority(2).

This message was last edited by the player at 21:32, Tue 24 Mar 2015.

He grumbled at both Traveller and Smoke; he just eyeballed the pair of them all throughout the car ride. When Traveller fooled around with the car; he shook his head further - if she'd been Draconian, he would have taken her to task by now. Of course, if she'd been Draconian, she would never have been so insolent and irresponsible.

When Stan started poking around at the hospital, it was all Sereth could do to -not-step in and ask the important questions himself. Stanley knew more about what they needed to find out; but his manner of talking was clumsy; to say the least. But this was his party; but Sereth lurked on the edges, so if it went drastically wrong, he'd step in.

OOC: Sereth will watch Stanley; and will step in if he really looks like getting nowhere with his questioning.

The young woman at the reception desk has a name badge that reads STACEY.  She looks flustered at Stanley's assertion that the group is expected, particularly given the appearance of Smoke Alarm and, to a lesser extent, Trav.  But Stanley is throwing the right buzzwords at her, and at last she says, "Director Helman isn't available right now, but I expect that is who you're here to see."  She looks indecisive for a moment, but then says, "Let me take you and your colleague to his office.  You can explain the access that you need once he's out of his staff meeting."

She begins to lead Stanley away from the desk.  From her body language and the eye contact she makes with Sereth, it seems that she has come to the conclusion that the others are not professional associates of Stanley's, but that Sereth is, and that she's only expecting the two men to follow her.

There is no one else at the reception desk, although there's a little bit of patient and visitor traffic through the area.  Trav notices that Stacey has locked her PC before leaving the desk.

OOC:  I'm not sure what you all choose to do with those events.  Anyone who ends up accompanying Stacey will be taken to a modest but well-appointed office where there is also a PC, currently powered off, and left there to wait.

He nodded quietly at Stanley.

"After you, Doctor Newton."

Making it clear by his body language; that Stanley was superior.

He then threw a warning glance at the other two. You know the kind - the one that says "If I hear one more word, I'm turning this car around right now."

Smoke Alarm still wasn't sure if outgoing to eyespy Warlock as a little baby was such a good idea. What could a baby show-and-tell them? But she figured that if they mayhaps found what had made him broken, then they mayhaps could fix what he'd broken on Arsuran. Well, that seemed to be the idea anyhow. But it wouldn't fix the people made unalive, would it?

She outlooked dismally about the hospittle, feeling cold and uncomfortable and kind of itchy. It was yawny, everything was all blank walls and cleaners, smelling like a Cleaner's sprinkle gas. Hospittles were places to be sick and unalive, not to live.

Wisely she remembered the Kang knowhow, and realised they were going about this all wrong. 'Shouldn't we mayhaps outgo up to the roof? That's where the Ship will fly over to drop the babies down the hair-conditioning ducks.' she said, aloud.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:10, Wed 25 Mar 2015.

Trav gives an innocent smiles and giggles, but pulls Stan over for some private words that Sereth and Smoke are allowed to join in for -

"I know this is all fun for right now, but this really important. Someone tried to keep us from here. No matter what happens, we have to let history proceed as it should. Stan, to us, this has already happened. We're here to watch how Phillipe, Warlock, Fortuna, and Evers started, learn about the mystery of the TAROT devices, and find out who wanted to meddle with him. It's Phillipe's past to become Warlock. Remember that, no matter what happens. It might be hard to just stand back and watch, but that's what we have to do. If you can't make the decision, I will. You all understand what I'm saying, don't you?" Trav's voice drops to being grave, as she gently exerts her authority as a Time Lord - something she often does not do. "We can only take action if someone tries to interfere in that. Ask me if it goes against Time - I'll know if it moves the wrong way against time. We're not here to change anything, only to watch, and be part of things naturally."

Trav, like she owns the place, aims her sonic at Stacey's PC, intending to copy the entire hospital network to her IPad. "So, Smoke, I *really* need to bring you to a Rave. Acid house is the thing these days, with the best US scene in Austin and Brooklyn." She waves her sonic like a rave stick, and proceeds to roto rooter the data out of Stacey's Pentium.

OOC:09:26, Today: The Traveller rolled 22 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 5,1. Copy Hospital Database - Ingenuity+Technology+Sonic.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:27, Wed 25 Mar 2015.

"We can wait until the meeting is over, like I said we are a bit early. Waiting in his office will be fine, thank you Stacy." Stanley replies, having read the name badge. It doesn't seem likely that this Helman will have Phillipe's files in his office, but this is a step closer to getting there. He is already thinking about how he is going to convince Helman to give them access.



Stanley wasn't planning on influencing the past, not consciously at least. He can probably do more damage to the timeline here than when they were in ancient Siluria. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be careful and try not to interfere too much."

OOC: That is going to be pretty darn successful against the finest computer security the 1990s could muster, but please clarify what you're doing -- are you trying to find the specific record, suck in the whole database for reference, or what?

Smoke Alarm outlooked bewildered at Traveller, who seemed to always say things without a lot of context. 'Is that muzak?' she wondered. 'Like hop-hip-jump or dub-foot?'

Outlooking at the roof, she eyespied a hair-conditioning vent and the duck above it. 'And what about the babies? Should I be ready-steady to catch one?' She stood under it, and eyespied a soft couch she could drag over to provide a soft landing for the baby. After all, they were small and couldn't jump like Kangs.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:55, Fri 27 Mar 2015.

OOC: Copy the whole database for reference, so that Trav can leisurely go through it on her Ipad, with no messing with it for right now, as well as leave a back door in case we need to get back in. I think Trav's Ipad, made with 91st century tech, can hold probably the entire Internet of 51st century Earth.

Trav is playing with her Ipad, which looks like an etch-a-sketch to anyone else when she shakes it.  "Yes, baby, that is muzak. It always sounds horrible up and down the timestream. Raves are dance parties. No, babies don't come out of those, those are ventilation chutes.  Let me check what was in the Puter. Chibi, find me the records for Phillipe Collinswood," she whispers to the Ipad."

As Chibi does her work, Trav also waves her sonic around, like as if was to raver music, with her headphones on. She's really scanning the local time-space, which she hasn't had time to do yet. Something tried to keep her and her TARDIS away from here. If it was a powerful enough field to almost force her and her TARDIS to forget this piece of space-time, then the opposition was no joke.

10:51, Today: The Traveller rolled 20 using 2d6+12 with rolls of 6,2. Trav uses sonic to check local space-time - Awarness(2)+Science(6)+Turn of the Universe(2)+Sonic(2)

OOC: Wrong name from buh? fixed by the Guardian.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:47, Thu 26 Mar 2015.

By the time Trav hears Stacey returning, she has captured an image of the hospital records onto her iPad and set the ChibiTrav agent to searching the records.  She is a little disturbed that the record isn't immediately called up: even the records of the hospital going back for several decades shouldn't take that much computational effort to search.

The local spatiotemporal scan she carries out in the meantime alarms her even more.  It reveals a number of anomalies and disturbances centered over a wide area around the town, though for the most part they don't seem to be concentrated within the center of it, but rather the surrounding country.  It also seems like they aren't particularly recent; most having occurred around six months ago.  None of this was evident from the scans made while the TARDIS was in the Vortex, which suggests that some further efforts at concealment are afoot.

When the iPad flashes with its result, the face of Chibi is screwed up into a pert little scowl.  "Boss," it says, "something's not right her.  I found what you were looking for.  But for the longest time it ran away from me."

The image on the display shows what the software construct means.  It has hold of what looks superficially like a standard set of hospital records, covering the delivery of Phillipe Collinswood to a Marianne Collinswood; father, James Collinswood.  But the record is actually tagged to a sophisticated software worm that allows the standard database system to interact with it normally, but appears designed to deflect and deter any detailed scrutiny of the information.  As Trav studies it, the worm mutates and tries to escape from the tools she's using, although it doesn't quite manage it.

Trav also sees that the record gives the date of birth as two days from now -- yet diagnostics on the worm show that it has been living in the hospital's system for about six months.

Stanley and Sereth look up as the door to the Director's office opens.  There's a man who looks like he may be in his fifties, with a white doctor's coat over dress shirt and tie.  "Gentlemen," he says, a little warily, even as he offers his hand.  "I'm Richard Helman.  Ms. Rutherford informed me that we had visitors saying that they were here to conduct... a research audit, was it?  I'm afraid that I wasn't made aware of your visit -- in fact, I don't recall having heard of this audit before now.  Can you give me some explanation of what organization you're affiliated with, and perhaps some idea of how this was miscommunicated?"

Someone was preparing for this.

Trav attached a bluetooth keyboard to her Ipad. She starts tapping madly. This reminds her of one of the chronal formatting weapons of the Time War. She suspects that the entire area was seeded and formatted 6 months before the even got here in preparation for a major pivot point in time to be reformatted. Trav knows this because she, as the Marshall did this herself innumerable times against Davros and the Cult of Skaro. She even engaged in it earlier - as the 1st Traveller, in her first great running conflicts with both the Krayloss Empire and the Faction Paradox. She's sickeningly reminded when the Faction attempted and almost succeeded at reformatting the 3rd Doctor into becoming Grandfather, at his regeneration at Metabilis 3. Of course, the 1st and 2nd Travellers always protected regions of Space-Time from tampering or restored them, restoring prior history in the best Time Lord manner.

Of course, she didn't immediately suspect this because Sweet Boy was a research TARDIS, not a war vehicle like a Type 102 like Compassion. The fact that they had arrived 2 days before Phillipe's birth indicates to her that the Time Vortex was fighting back against this gross manipulation. If she were the Marshall and if these were her Exigents, software on their Time Rings would already be sounding alarms. However, the chronal-spatial equations weren't finalized yet - they were softening up the mud, so to speak, before firing the kiln. But they probably weren't counting on her being here.

Or maybe they were. Maybe this was all a lure, like how the Shedraya needed her to come into being, back in R Space.

Well, sometimes, you have to say to yourself, fuck it, and go tits in.

The bad guys probably knew they were here, especially if they could influence the local morphic field like this. She adapts and compensates Chibi's code for this, integrating Time War counter routines she hand wrote from her old days as the 1st and 2nd Traveller and the Marshall, when she struggled with the Daleks and the Faction. She and her companions were Time Travellers - they were already resistant to a degree from morphic manipulation. She could probably rig something more durable for the team back up at the TARDIS.

She found herself reaching down to her thigh for her Rod. In it's stead, she finds the empty holster of her Turbopistol. As this, she smiles. Could the Traveller of now fight the battles of the Time War back then? Hell yes, she could. She won another Time War. She was every inch the better of her old self. No need for those old cruelties, she had better, nobler, more heroic and more fun tricks.

OOC: 00:18, Today: The Traveller rolled 18 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 1,1. Trav does further analysis and coding on local space-time - Ingenuity 8+Science 6+FTTOTU 2.

Trav crinkles her nose. She hasn't seen this kind of subtlety since the Time War. Parts of her brain unused since that time so long ago light up. She has no idea as to what is going on and she needs time. Further, she finds the memories of both the Time War and her great locking of the Shedraya behind her own constructed Time Lock painful, and she finds herself in rebellion of considering higher Gallifreyan chronal and mimetic mathematics. She closes the IPad and puts it away, as her brain starts to unlock, older parts of herself reluctantly starting to cooperate.

She lets her new code compile and shoves her Ipad back into her bag. "Excuse me, Miss. Do you have a local phone book I can have a look at?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:25, Fri 27 Mar 2015.

Smoke Alarm shrugged at Traveller's response; it was all "musak" to her and mayhaps the babies would comeout later. Growing yawny, she wandered about the reception area, show-and-telling herself she was outlooking for clues like Traveller was, but really just curious as a rat. It was all the same anyhow. What was lost-and-found?

At the water cooler, she filled a cup, spilled a little on the floor, and watched it glug-glug-glug so thirstily. She picked up a talkiphone handle, and listened to the mysterious warbling dial-tone, and pressed some buttons to hear it beep-beep. Then put it down again, not on the catch so the call didn't cancel. There were so many appliants here, appliants just like she remembered from Paradise Towers, not at all like the shiny high-tetch ones of the future. Plasticky appliants that Kangs lost-and-found in the scrapheaps, broken and fixed, that they could just guess at the functions of or otherwise reuse and recycle, make things they could survive with. Appliants of mystery that contained sparks of electricky and signs of wear and use so they were unique, and worked so erratically that a Kang needed luck, wishing, and superstition. Appliants that seemed almost somehow alive. One of the old Rezzies had said everything had a kammi, a ghost in the mechine. And so Kangs had adopted these as their totems, as their names. Smoke Alarm outlooked up and eyespied hers on the ceiling, and made the superstitious seatbelt gesture, feeling reassured by its presence. It would warn of hazards.


OOC: Insatiable Curiosity, go!

"Certainly," Stacey says with a smile.  She reaches into a drawer at her station and pulls out a combined White Pages / Yellow Pages volume, handing it over to Trav.

OOC: What was your additional roll meant to be doing?
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:34, Fri 27 Mar 2015.

OOC: Finding out who is trying to conceal and format the local space time. Trav thinks that there's some hinky Time War super high level time-space format bullshit going on, trying to conceal and hide shenanigans around Phillipe's birth and creation, either to guard it or change it. She think's it's Time War level stuff and she suspects that the people behind wanting Phillipe becoming the Great Beast are behind this. She's specifically looking for TAROT manipulation, but she's also reminded very much of what the Time Lords did when they'd use the Eye of Harmony to fix big sections of space-time, what the Faction Paradox does when they rewrite time and space, and what The Moment did, and also what she herself has done in the past (she actually did this back in the RIFTS game when she time-locked an entire species of Demons using psionically powered nanotech to pursue them through the Time Vortex at the Camapign's climax.) Super scary hinky stuff. With a roll of snake eyes I presume a "no, but."

"Thank you."

Trav starts flipping through the phone book, looking up the address of Phillipe's parents, and their phone number.

Trav's further scans reveal no obvious additional insight, except for the fact that the local distortion and damage is plainly visible at "ground level".  There are too many unknowns about the high epistopic flux that occurred when the Last Great Time War went from consuming all of the continuum, to simply being not, and Trav wasn't around to see it happen.

The information in the phone directory for the Collinswoods matches up to what is on the birth record, giving "Box 78, Route K" as the street address.  The precise details of rural U.S. postal routes are among the trivia that Trav doesn't keep ready to hand, but it suggests that they live well outside the town proper.

Smoke Alarm outlooked inside a plant-pot and down the back of the couch (which was always good for lost-and-found keys and coins), opened and closed the doors and wiggled the handles to see if they worked and how, flicked a light off and on, removed a yawny picture from the wall and put it back down-side-up, tried to fish a chocky bar from the vending mechine, and sidled into the office to outlook at the fax machine.


OOC: Does Smoke find anything poking around the appliances and whatnot?
10:01, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 17 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 2,6. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2).
This message was last edited by the player at 02:01, Sun 29 Mar 2015.

Stanley takes a deep breath and gets up, he hasn't talked this over with Sereth and he doesn't know if he is going to approve. Nevertheless, past experience has told him that dealing with management people is never easy and Helman sounds like he wants to verify things before giving permission, so Stan is going to cheat. He smiles politely and shakes Director Helman's hand. "Doctor Stanley Newton. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."

Stanley quickly adjusts his grip on Helman's hand and changes the tone of his voice. He also speaks a fraction slower, all with the effect of getting Helman in a more susceptible state of mind. He is trying to hypnotise director Helman using a quick script this time. "Richard, look at my eyes and focus on my voice. I am going to count down from three and when I get to one, I will snap my fingers and you will be completely relaxed and calm. Three, you are beginning to feel sleepy...Two, your eyes are feeling heavy...One!" He lets go of Helman's hand and snaps his fingers. "Completely calm and relaxed. Calm and relaxed..."

"Okay, we are good. Don't make any sudden noises or movements, though." Stanley looks at the door, half expecting someone to burst in and interrupt everything, before turning to Sereth. "Apologies that I didn't introduce you to him, but it is best to try this when his attention is focused on me. I am going to convince him that he has given us access to the hospital and the archives. Then it is just a matter of grabbing a doctor's coat and we are free to look around."

"Richard." Using a patient's first name tends to give a better response. "Richard, when you wake up you won't remember this conversation. You will remember that we had a pleasant talk and that you gave us permission for our audit. When anyone asks about Stanley Newton or Sereth, you will say that we have your permission to be here and do what we need to do. Remember that you gave us permission."

"Any requests before I wake him up again?" Stanley asks Sereth.

OOC:
Roll to hypnotise the director, spending a SP:
00:43, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 23 using 4d6+8 with rolls of 6,3,4,2. Presence(3)+Convince(3)+Hypnosis(2)+SP(2d6).

About the only thing that Smoke Alarm has turned up in her exploration so far is a lot of attention from visitors in the waiting area that she has been prowling around.  In particular there's an oldster there who seems like he's trying his very best to pretend that Smoke doesn't exist and isn't doing what she's doing, a boy in his teens who's sitting with folded arms and staring morosely into space, and -- sitting in the chair right next to the boy -- a little girl who's watching Smoke Alarm with rapt attention.


OOC: I feel like making such an earnest attempt to interact with a perfectly ordinary hospital ought to yield some kind of payoff, but I can't think of what it would be.  If you want to make a discovery that prompts you to do something worthy of getting into real trouble, you can do so and get a story point for it.  Otherwise I will keep your exploration in mind if anything plot-relevant turns up.

Director Helman's initial reaction to Stanley's efforts is surprise, and even a little amusement, like he thinks Stanley is making a joke.  But he's apparently a natural subject: it takes a little bit of time, but Helman is standing there in front of Stanley and Sereth in a calm and relaxed pose, watching Stanley attentively with a slight smile.

"Of course," he says.  His tone is pleasant, not the stereotypical vacant monotone, but just a tiny bit dreamlike.  "It was all my mistake, and of course, all your credentials are perfectly in order.  If anyone asks you what authority you have for your audit, please, don't hesitate to refer them to me.  You'll have full access and the complete cooperation of the staff."

OOC: ZOMG.  I did NOT expect Stanley to go all Svengali here.  But a +12 success evidently does not lie.  What must Dr. Newton's quarterly review meetings be like?

The Guardian, for the NPC Director Helman, rolled 11 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 2,2. Resisting hypnosis: Resolve(3) + Ingenuity(4).

OOC: Holy crap. I'll post to this tomorrow.

For now, at least, Smoke Alarm's lost-and-found scavenger hunt hadn't turned up much of interest, and she figured that if she delved even deeper then caretakers would comeout. Mayhaps not yet then...

She'd eyespied the littlerer girl eyespying her, and gave her a smile before going back to outlooking around. Smoke found that, no matter how many coins from Paradise Towers, Arsuran, or the Earth empire of the 26th century she poked in the vending machine, they all fell right out again. Clearly it was broken, so she wiggled her hand inside and worked out a chocky bar, and pocketed it for later sharing.

Outlooking back at the girl to see if she was still outlooking, Smoke Alarm stacked one chair precariously on top two others and climbed up to the vent, her back to the girl. Getting her screw-diver from her pack-back, Smoke Alarm opened the vent and outlooked inside, before apparently doing some exaggerated maintenance, passing things up and down. The chairs beneath became increasingly wobbly, but Smoke Alarm balanced perfectly.

Then, in total quietness, Smoke Alarm suddenly struggled, waving her hands around, losing balance. She fell back off the tumbling chairs and rolled back over the carpet, something black-and-white and furry at her neck. Puddy! 'Cat attack!' It was Kang play-acting, show-and-telling to smaller Kangs the dangers of pussy-cats and sticking your head in a duck. The stuffed animal furiously mauled the Kang before, with a throw, leaping away over a row of chairs and flying at the girl! 'Outlook!'

With all speed, Smoke Alarm followed, flipping over the chairs and landing right in the seat next to the girl. She rescued the girl from Puddy, snatching up the worn stuffed toy. 'Gotcha!'


OOC: Well, you never know, aliens might have infiltrated the hospital. I'll leave it a bit for Stan to get his task done, before I cause real chaos. ;)

How old is the girl?
This message was last edited by the player at 14:59, Sun 29 Mar 2015.

The girl -- she can't be more than eight or so -- squeals in delight at Smoke Alarm's antics.  The others in the waiting room are rather less amused.  The boy just stares at Smoke Alarm in astonishment and grabs hold of the little girl, saying, "Hey!  Are you nuts or something?  I mean, I know you're like a refugee from a Mad Max movie or something, fair enough, but you don't mess with my sister!"

The old man, meanwhile stands bolt upright and stalks over to Smoke Alarm, glowering.  "Young woman!" he snaps.  "I don't know where you think you are, but this is a hospital.  People are undergoing treatment here and they do not need young delinquents raising a ruckus.  For God's sake, show some decorum!"

A couple of the people who have been going by dressed in the blue clothes and the white clothes, that Trav had said were doctors (but not Doctors, and it was funny how the words were different) stop and look at the group, though they haven't made any move to interfere yet.

Recovering, Smoke Alarm outlooked up at the boy and the oldster, shocked at their angry reactions and immediately put on the defensive. She knew she was a refoogee and a delinquent, she'd been called that before, but a young woman? 'Décor? You outlook at the décor! It's all blank walls and yawny. This horsepital is totally unfun and I don't even eyespy any horses.'

'And I don't mess with sisters. I was just playing. Mayhaps people going under treatments need fun and ruckuses to be fixed and feel better.'

She ignored the yawny say-so boys and outlooked at the littlerer girl, who was mayhaps the most smarty-pants here and the only one worth talking to. 'How you do. I'm Smoke Alarm. I'm a Blue Kang. You want to play?' 'Merow?' said Puddy from Smoke's lap, nuzzling the girl's elbow.


OOC: Let's just invoke all my Bad traits! :D
This message was last edited by the player at 15:00, Sun 29 Mar 2015.

The old man gives a loud "Harrumph!" and turns his back, walking stiffly back to his seat.  However, what Smoke Alarm says does seem to register with the boy, who relaxes a little bit, although he does keep a close eye on Smoke Alarm now.

"Hang on.  You say your name's 'Smoke Alarm'?  Man, your mom and dad must have been mean," he says.  "And, uh, what's a Blue Kang, anyway?"  He looks her up and down dubiously.

"It's 'cos she's blue," the girl informs him seriously.  To Smoke Alarm, she adds, "I'm Katey.  How you do?"

Trav looks up from her phone book. Where the hell is Smoke Alarm?

Up to no good, probably. The Kang has the best of intentions, but she usually finds trouble or trouble finds her. And Trav knows that wherever Smoke will be, there will be shenanigans.

She gets up. "Pardon me, Stacey, where did the girl with the blue hair head off to? I need to keep an eye on her."

OOC: I'm getting in on the get SP game. Insatiably Curious, here we go! Do I need to make a roll? Trav may get into her own Shenanigans in the hospital.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:04, Sun 29 Mar 2015.

Sereth just raised a brow at Stanley. That was... disturbing. He just shook his head, and grumbled under his breath. Red tape was annoying it was true; but to just short-cut it like that... where then was the important of credentials? If people just continually cheated the system like that... well, that way lay the fall of Empires. No wonder the human Empire had never been able to beat the might of Draconia.

'Humph!' Puddy mimicked at the oldster as he footed away like a loser. Smoke Alarm meanwhile poked her tongue out at his back, before outlooking to her new friends.

'Coz I'm blue.' she agreed with Katy. 'I'm a Kang. A Blue Kang. Blue Kangs are best. And I'm Smoke Alarm because I was warner of smokes and fires.' Smoke Alarm answered proudly and, she thought, pretty obviously.

As if it was entirely normal, she added 'And I don't have no mum and dad. Never ever. So you mean you do?' she wondered, and thought was weird, to be stuck with inbetweens who made you do yawny stuff and acted like caretakers all the time. 'I'm sorry.'
This message was last edited by the player at 02:21, Mon 30 Mar 2015.

"I'm not sure," Stacey says.  "I saw her headed toward the waiting area for the MRI lab...."


OOC: Smoke Alarm is easily locatable in a small and usually quiet local hospital.

"Got a mom.  No Dad for a few years now," the boy says, and he scowls, though Smoke Alarm gets the impression that isn't her he's angry about.  "Mom had to come in for an MRI.  They think it might be, you know...."  He points at the side of his head.  "Well.  Bad."

Smoke Alarm didn't know what an em-ah-eye was, but figured from outlooking at Katy and the boy that it was something unhappy. Like when a friend was made unalive. Mayhaps something was broke in this mum's head. 'Oh. Sorry. I hope they fix it.' she said solemnly. She remembered something said long before time start, tangled up with something said much later. 'Be brave and bold for your mummy.'

Quietly, she pulled out the shoplifted chocky bar, figuring they'd need one. She broke it into three pieces inside the wrapper (so as to save the crumbs), opened and the wrapper and shared out the pieces. 'Here. Sharesies.'

Smoke Alarm thought for a moment, and wondered if mayhaps she could find Traveller and Stan were outlooking for. Well, of course she could. 'Do you know where the babies comeout?'
This message was last edited by the player at 14:47, Mon 30 Mar 2015.

Katey and her brother accept the pieces of the candy bar from Smoke Alarm, with Katey being as excited by it as you'd expect from an eight-year-old.  But she carefully says (or recites) "Thank you, Miss Smoke Alarm," in a way that suggests that she's been taught to do so.

Her brother just nods.  "They don't have a big maternity ward here, but I think the delivery room is down that way.  Maybe the doctors that do the deliveries have their offices there, too?"  He leans over the back of his chair and points down a hallway.  "You should be able to follow the signs okay."

He scratches the back of his head.  "Um.  Sorry about yelling at you.  Mom put me in charge of looking after Katey, so I freaked out when you started jumping around and throwing things.  My name's Tom."

'Miss? I never miss!' declared the crossbow-carrying Kang.

Smoke Alarm followed Tom's pointing, eyespying signs that outlooked promising. Maternity ward, delivery room. Presumably that was where the Ship delivered the babies, rather than dropping them down hair-conditioning ducks. Smoke Alarm decided that was probably much more sound-and-safe for the small dolly babies. 'Okay. I can follow the signs.'

She eyespied Tom then decided to accept his sorries, having almost forgotten him yelling at her anyway. 'That's okay. I get that lots when I jump around and throw things. But we should outlook after sisters. I knowhow; I have lots and lots of sisters.'

Tracking back to the topic of babies, Smoke Alarm explained 'My friends are outlooking for a baby. I think mayhaps they should try lost-and-found... Do you mayhaps know a Phillipe Collinswood?'

Perfect! Stanley smiles as he hears Helman give them the permission they need. He hasn't missed Sereth's disapproval, but Stan doesn't think that it is that much worse than lying to him. He briefly considers using the current situation to help Helman stop smoking, but he doesn't know if the director even smokes. Besides to change that sort of behaviour takes multiple sessions. Stanley snaps his fingers and a moment later director Helman wakes up. He uses Helman's slight confusion to quickly shakes his hand again. "It has been a pleasure talking to you director and thanks again for cooperating with us. I guess that we'll be get started with our audit. Goodbye!"

After leaving Helman's office, Stanley immediately goes looking for the record room or a white doctor's coats for Sereth and him. Being able to deflect any questions by referring people to Helman is great, but wearing a doctor's coat wouldn't hurt.

It isn't too tough for Stanley to find a couple of appropriate coats, but he's dismayed to realize that it doesn't overlay correctly on Sereth's holo-projector disguise.  It's probable that Trav would be able to tune it appropriately, but Sereth's virtual look already shouts AUTHORITY in a way that a coat really wouldn't add to all that much.

Following the directions in the hallway, Stanley and Sereth find their way to the records department.  They're met there by a bright-eyed young red-haired woman wearing half-moon glasses.  "Hi!" she says.  "I'm Janice.  Director Helman buzzed to say you'd be down to examine our data for your audit.  What can I help you with?"

The room includes rows of actual filing cabinets, which Stanley finds rather old-fashioned and nostalgic, and there's also a desk with another desktop computer.

Katey and Tom seem to notice Smoke's arrowgun for the first time.  "Hey, is that real?" asks Katey.  "Not Nerf?  Can I try it?"


Tom gives her a blank look.  "Can't say I know any Collinswoods.  This isn't what you'd call a big city, but it's not that small.  Is that the baby, or the baby's dad?"  He shrugs.  "You could probably ask one of the nurses at the desks if there was anyone checked in by that name...  Only, mm.  You probably want to play it cool.  Say you're a relative or something."

'Um, the baby. He'd be much smallerer now. But he has lots of names... Okay, mayhaps we'll try that later. I'll be cool.' Smoke Alarm promised, who could certainly be cool, icehot even.

At Katey's eager interest in her arrowgun, Smoke Alarm couldn't help herself, and pulled out the arrowgun, displaying it proudly, a small hand crossbow all covered in stickers and doodles and scrawled with "Smoke Alarm's arrowgun" and "No tuching!" 'It's real!' she insisted, 'It's my arrowgun and it's special... But I'll let you have a go.'

She drew a bolt from the canister on her leg; this one had been in another life a screwdriver, now fitted with pigeon-feather fletching. She fitted the bolt, pulled the lever to draw back the string as the limbs bent and creaked, then set the safety catch. Meanwhile Smoke chattered, show-and-telling each part of the arrowgun and the knowhow of it worked. 'You mean you don't have an arrowgun?' She was shocked. What were these kids being taught? 'Every girl should have an arrowgun, or mayhaps a slinkshot or a k-nife, to catch rats and cats and dogs, or shoot things or stop bad people.' In her estimation, Katey was more than old enough to use a crossbow. Smoke Alarm had started even youngerer.

Still, she started with arrowgun sound-and-safety. Safety first! 'Always-always set the safety-first until you want to shoot. Then don't touch this bit or this bit or this bit or else it could go off and bite your finger. And never-ever-ever-ever point at peoples. Dip down like this.' Scanning a row of empty chairs, she show-and-telled how to dip it toward the floor around each chair.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:08, Tue 31 Mar 2015.

"We are actually looking for the records on all the babies born in this hospital since the start of last month." Stanley says with a smile. They only need to look through the most recent files, but only asking for those might be a bit suspicious. One thing to consider is that it is probably too soon for Phillipe's file to have been digitized. If it is here, it is one of the paper ones. "Oh we'll also need the files on the pregnant women currently in this hospital. It would be great if you could help us find them, Janice."

Stanley and Janice, with whatever assistance Sereth may choose to provide, spend some time working through both the hardcopy records and the ones captured in the hospital's computer system.

This is a small local / regional hospital, and the number of deliveries in the last month is fairly low.  When they start to go through the documentation, Janice starts to look worried: the paper files include only twenty-five matching records, but the computer system shows twenty-six.  The record for Phillipe is the odd one out, and there are two notable problems.

First, the birth date is recorded as the 23rd.

Second, although Marianne Collinswood is listed on that record as the mother, and she does have a file with the resident OB/GYN -- a Dr. Teresa Kim -- that goes back for eight years, she's not on record as being either presently or recently checked in, nor are there any scheduled appointments except for a regular check in five months.

By the time all this has been uncovered, Janice is very flustered.  "I don't understand how any of this happened," she says.  "I'm responsible for maintaining this information, and this is just a mess -- it's my mess."  From the look on her face, Stanley suspects she may be afraid for her job or at least that this is going to be a terrible mark on her record.

OOC: All that is basically free for the overwhelming cooperation you got from Dr. Helman.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 23:21, Wed 01 Apr 2015.

Once she was sure-and-safe that Katey had the knowhow of arrowguns, Smoke Alarm released the lever and unloaded the screwdriver-bolt. That one was mayhaps too heavy-duty, better for taking apart cleaners. She fitted instead a push-pen shoplifted from the help desk, and levered it back to a half draw. That would be lighter for the smaller Katey, and sound-and-safe for a first time shoot.

Crouching next to Katey, she put the arrowgun in her her hands, showing her how to hold it. Smoke Alarm put her own hands on it to keep it ready-steady, to be sound-and-safe. They aimed at an empty chair, well away from people. 'Now breath out and... shoot!'


OOC: Proper teaching of crossbows, 16
10:22, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 16 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 2,5. awareness(4) + marksman(3) + crossbows(2).

Teaching crossbows to children in the middle of a hospital waiting room, I'm probably invoking my Eccentric trait here...

"Don't--" exclaims Tom.  He has been watching Smoke Alarm with Katey, open-mouthed, without saying a word (which must mean that Smoke is doing the right thing, obviously!) but jerks into motion to try to stop his sister.  Just a moment too late.

The snap of the crossbow and the thwack! of the pen as it smacks into the chair instantly attracts the attention of everyone around; even Trav hears the commotion as she is wandering the halls trying to track down Smoke.  The old man who had previously berated Smoke Alarm looks up, startled and now angry.  "That is quite enough!"  He gets to his feet and strides briskly off toward the nearest nurse's station.  "Miss!  Miss!  Kindly phone the police!  This young woman is being both a nuisance and a hazard to life and limb!"  He whirls back toward Smoke Alarm.  "And you -- you stay right where you are!"

"Katey!" Tom shouts.  "Put that down and come here!"

Smoke Alarm notes the approach of a big man, somewhat older than Tom, all in white with a short sleeved shirt.  Obviously a musclebrain.

OOC: Well, I can't blame you for not giving Trav a chance.  Take a Story Point.

I will note that this makes an ideal distraction for other PCs to exploit, even Stanley and Sereth if they feel the need, even though I think Stanley's present activity is more or less happening at the same time.

OOC: If it's feasible; Sereth can have heard. He's probably not adding much to Stanley's search anyway.

OOC: He can easily hear the uproar following the shot.

'Yeah!' Smoke Alarm whooped at Katey's successful shoot. 'Good shoot!!' she cheered, squeezing an arm around the girl in a hug, full of that funny warm tingly feeling of helping youngsters learn and play.

But she soon found herself at the centre of a to-do, her happiness turning to unbraveness turning to boldness. 'Now what?' she demanded, snatching up the arrowgun and Puddy. Tom was being a scaredy-cat as boys were, and the yawny say-so oldster was calling for caretakers. Sport-spoilers.

'Nah-uh!' she told the oldster, seeing the big musclebrain caretaker come-out behind. 'Yawny old rezzie! Bet you're full of untruths and Kangs! Don't let him eat you!' she told Katey and Tom, quickly looping the arrowgun strap around her body.

The musclebrain was getting closer. Time to foot it, all speed! 'Build high for happiness!' she told Katey with a quick build-high gesture, a wide devil-may-care grin. Then Smoke Alarm ran, leaping up onto a row of chairs, then leaping off. She grabbed the ceiling fan, whirled around to make a sharp turn, then flew off, dashing past the musclebrain. 'Catch me if you can, musclebrain!' she teased.


OOC: Foot it, all speed!
A stunt to gain distance, or just to impress:
11:27, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 20 using 2d6+13 with rolls of 5,2. coordination(5) + athletics(4) + Kang Fu(2) + jumping(2).

Sereth just groaned, and glanced at Stanley. He just gave a brief nod; before he left, moving quickly to find Smoke - or more precisely, the disturbance, his air of authority unmistakeable. He didn't need to draw his blade - he knew it was there. He would, however, be giving the members of his team a talking to about proper mission protocol.

Stanley checks the date again, just to be sure. There shouldn't be a record for someone who isn't born yet. In any other case he would assume that this is a simple mistake, someone writing down the wrong date on the form for example. He knows that time travel is involved and the fact that Phillipe's mother isn't registered as being in the hospital right now, lead to the conclusion that this is either a side-effect or part of what happened to Phillipe.



Stanley is also getting worried. Worried about the fact that they might have changed the future already. It is due to Sereth and him that Janice has seen this file with information from the future. Who knows what is going to happen when she receives Phillipe's real file in a couple or corrects this one? The Traveller would know. Probably.



Stanley can guess that it is one of the other members of the team that is causing the disturbance. Or maybe both of them. Could it be an enemy taking advantage of the fact that they split up? In any case Sereth is on his way there to make sure that things don't go out of hand.

That leaves Stanley to deal with the paperwork situation. He clears his throat to get Janices's attention after Sereth leaves the room. "Um...this is certainly unusual, but mistakes happen. I guess someone wrote down the wrong date. Maybe we can go talk to the nurse or doctor who filled this in? If they are here today of course. Otherwise it might be a possibility to go look for little Phillipe or his mother. I think it is best if this mistake is fixed as soon as possible."

Smoke Alarm pelts away from the orderly, who is calling, "Wait, miss!  You don't want to make this worse for yourself...."  But she quickly turns down a long hallway and zig-zags nimbly through a collection of people to leave them behind her as ambulatory obstacles.  Startled visitors and staff goggle at her as the man raises his voice and shouts, "Someone, stop her!  Calm her down!"

Sereth hears that clearly as he approaches the diagnostic wing from the direction of the records room where he left Stanley.  The sounds of hubbub are plainly moving toward him....

Up ahead of her, Smoke Alarm sees another pair of the white-clothed men who are pushing something between them: it's a light metal framework with a mattress atop it... on wheels.

The pair of them abandon the gurney and advance forward toward her.

"Uh... okay, Doctor."  She checks a laminated schedule posted above her desk.  "I think Dr. Kim is in to check on a couple of patients today.  We can go try to find her in her office if you want."

Stop? Wait? Yeah, right! Those caretakers would take her right to the cleaners. Mayhaps lock her up in a bouncy padded cell and do medical stuff to her. This housespital was unsafe and unsound; she had to lost-and-found her friends and be outgoing out of here, all speed!

Then she eyespied it.

On wheels.

Smoke Alarm pushed herself to new speed, running right at the two caretakers! 'Slowpokes!' Suddenly, she veered right, and leaped long and high. Her right foot touched the wall, and Smoke Alarm kicked off, bounding over the heads of the caretakers. She planted her left foot against one's shoulder to correct her angle, then propelled herself forward onto the rolly-bed. Her glancing angle should impart all that speedy momentum to the bed...


OOC: Now how can I resist an invitation like that...
21:11, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 21 using 2d6+13 with rolls of 4,4. coordination(5) + athletics(4) + Kang Fu(2) + jumping(2).
This message was last edited by the player at 13:23, Fri 03 Apr 2015.

He grimaced. Whoever was responsible for this...

"What is going on here?"

His eyes glinting with restrained fury, he makes his way very fast towards the area of the commotion. It spelt out quite clearly, once again, you just couldn't trust females. Or non-Draconians. And if it was both...? Well... they were bound to get into trouble, weren't they?

"Let's do that." Stanley replies. "Hopefully she'll be able to shed some light on the situation."

The orderlies try to seize Smoke Alarm to subdue her, but the Kang is agile and slippery and has trained in the arts of Kang Fu, and she makes the leap to the gurney in style.  It barrels away down the hallway, with bystanders scattering out of its path.  Smoke Alarm is just beginning to feel really pleased with herself when she realizes that the corridor ends in a "T" junction, and she's hurtling toward a drinking fountain.

The gurney smacks into the fountain with a jarring CLANG.  Smoke Alarm looks up to see a dark figure approaching her... and she's about ready to spring away again or perhaps kick off to propel the cart in a different direction, when she realizes the newcomer is the disguised form of Leg-it Sereth.

I gave these guys a roll just to see if they might come close to Smoke, one assisting the other.  Nope.

20:44, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Orderly, rolled 11 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 2,2. Grabbing for Smoke Alarm: Coordination(3) + Fighting(2) + 2 (other orderly).

Stanley accompanies Janice to another section of the hospital.  There isn't a full maternity ward here, but there are the facilities for deliveries as well as pre- and post-natal support.  Off of the main area for the delivery rooms and other relevant facilities are a small number of private offices, and Janice leads him to one of these.

She knocks politely on the side of the open door, and at the desk inside, a woman of Asian-American descent in her forties looks up.  "Dr. Kim," says Janice, "This is Dr. Stanley Newton.  He's here carrying out a research survey on behalf of an international foundation, and he stopped here to inspect some of her data.  While I was helping him collect it, we found an anomaly."  She hands over the records of Phillipe and Marianne.

Dr. Kim studies the files for several minutes, and begins to frown.  "This is not possible," she says.  "Simply not possible.  Apart from the dating error and the fact that I would know if Mrs. Collinswood were in late stage pregnancy...."  She hesitates.  "This is a breach of confidentiality, but I suppose you should know the crux of the issue.  Apart from normal measures to make sure her health is consistent, I've been working with Marianne on issues that she and her husband have been having with attempting to conceive.  We've even consulted a specialist in Great Falls to try to find a cause... in any event, Marianne hasn't been able to produce viable eggs, so there is no chance that she would be delivering a baby, now, in two days, or any time in the near future."

'Whee!' cheered Smoke Alarm as she zoomed down the carrydoor on the wheelie-bed, still clutching her Puddy. 'Icehot!' It was a lot like trolley racing, but with much better wheels. Smoke could throw her weight from side to side to steer and veer around obstacles and slowpokes that couldn't jump out the way.

Braking was a bit harder.

She came to a stop-sign with a Kang-shaking crash into the drinking fountain. Recovering, she actually seized the opportunity to have a drink from her wheelie-bed when she eyespied Leg-it Sereth. 'Sereth! This place is full of caretakers! We have to fire-escape! Where's Stan?' she alerted him, water splashing from her lips. She pointed urgently to the bed. 'Give a push and hop on, we'll be outgoing on this.'

Sereth was tapping his foot.

"Smoke. I don't know what you -think- this hospital is filled with; but I can assure you they are not our enemy." He glowered. "What -exactly- happened?"

He wasn't running? Why wasn't he running? The caretakers were getting closer... 'Nothing!' Smoke declared definitively, then realised Sereth's question wasn't actually "What did you do?" She went on more firmly, show-and-telling a story she thought she sounded rather good in. 'All I did was play and outlook and teach Katey to use an arrowgun sound-and-safe. And this yawny say-so oldster rezzie starts a to-do and calls these caretakers for no reason. So I footed out of there. Now let's go!'

OOC: Oh lordy...

IC: Sereth just facepalmed. "Smoke. These people. They're not... they don't have to learn these things at a young age. Not here." He sighed, and shook his head. "Stop running. This can be salvaged... I hope. But you run, it is an admission of guilt."

So he wasn't allowed to have his sword of honor out, or even show his real face, as opposed to this weak, human facade, but Traveller thought it was okay for Smoke to travel around with her arrow-gun? Seriously. Between Stanley's hypnotism and Smoke's... well Kangness; it would be a wonder if they escaped unnoticed.

If she lets him, grabs Smoke and places her behind him, and then brought himself up to his full height, his arms folded, just waiting on the security that was undoubtedly on it's way.

The two orderlies that Smoke Alarm just stole the gurney from are now making their way down the hall.  They're being followed by a man in what looks like a uniform, though significantly, Sereth can't see any badge of office or weapons; he doesn't look like he's in particularly good shape, and the most offensive-looking equipment he's carrying are a walkie-talkie and a ring of keys.

"That's her," one of the men says, pointing to Smoke Alarm.

The man looks at Sereth.  "Sir," he says, "am I right in understanding that you're responsible for this young person?  She has been disrupting the hospital, and disturbing the patients, visitors and the staff."  He holds his hands out in a placating gesture.  "Now, so far, there has been no real harm done, so I think that involving the police might just be an unnecessary hassle for everyone.  If you can assure her good conduct, or that she will leave the premises at once, I don't think there's a need to take this any further."

Well, responsible for might be pushing it a bit; but still.

"Yes. I am. Oh, there will be no further problems from her, I can assure you of that." His stern gaze takes in Smoke Alarm. He'd trusted Traveller to keep an eye on her! Just goes to show, if you want something done right.. get a Draconian to do it. He just nodded quietly at them - they weren't of any consequence; so there was no need to do anything more than that.

'They don't?' Smoke wondered, hardly believing it. 'Why do they get it so sound-and-safe? And I have to shoot an arrowgun to eat rats?' she complained, just beginning to sense the monstrous unfairness of the world and her life.

But she outlooked back and eyespied the caretakers getting closer and closer. They'd be here in tick-tocks, in no time. Her foots were getting jumpy; she wanted to run and jump and never stop running. But Sereth stood big like a statue; he had the knowhow of caretakers. Could he make the caretakers go away?

She was still hesitating when Sereth pulled her behind him and the caretakers arrived. She outlooked around the sound-and-safe wall of Sereth. The chief caretaker was a slowpoke and fat, but she knew not to feel safe with caretakers like that. He said they'd make no to-do, but caretakers were full of untruths. 'Don't let them take me to the cleaners!' she squeaked.


OOC: It seems like an Impulsive moment. Okay, seems good enough to hide behind Sereth.
11:42, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 11 using 2d6+4 with rolls of 6,1. ingenuity(3) + resolve(3) - 2.

He'd have to talk to Traveller; about explaining to Smoke about different societies. He had trouble speaking on a Kang-level to make her understand. However, if he -ever- found out who had given her the heebie-jeebies about authority figures... there would be Words said.

A shake of his head.

"No-one is taking anyone to the cleaners; friend."

Trav has gotten a bit lost in the hospital, and now comes skidding around the corner. "There you are!" She goes white at seeing Smoke being Smoke, and is thankful that Sereth is being Sereth.

She slides in behind Sereth, letting the master diplomat handle the situation.

She whispers to Smoke, "What's going on?"

'Better not.' Smoke hissed warily from her sound-and-safe place, a hide-in behind Sereth. 'Being taken to the cleaners is unfun.' she said, feeling all shaky at the rememories.

The new visitor made her jump, but she was glad to eyespy Traveller. 'These musclebrain caretakers wanted to catch me and take me to the cleaners, but now they say they don't, because pants-on-fire caretakers are full of untruths. Sereth's making them go away.' She craned her neck around Sereth and added an emphatic 'Go away!'

The "caretaker" looks as though he might be about to say something, but then he shakes his head.  "Have a nice day, sir," he says to Sereth.  "Only do keep an eye on your..."  He struggles for a moment, trying to fit Sereth's assumed appearance and Smoke Alarm into some cultural context he's comfortable with, but finally shrugs and gives up.  "Your friend."

He nods to the orderlies, and the three of them all move away, the orderlies after retrieving the gurney which Smoke Alarm briefly commandeered.

OOC: I am evilly tempted to have another one walk past pushing a big laundry bin.  But, no.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:40, Mon 06 Apr 2015.

Smoke Alarm blew a big and noisy raspberry at the caretakers' backs.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 03:09, Tue 07 Apr 2015.

More like misunderstandings, thinks Trav. "Well, as long as nobody got hurt. We're some days out from Phillipe's actually delivery. I have his parent's physical address. Where's Stan? I went and made a copy of the hospital's network. I don't think there's anything else to be gained by being here. Sereth, what did you and Stan find out, and what games were you up to, Smoke?"

Smoke Alarm earnestly show-and-telled her report. There was even mime. 'I outlooked around the housepital loitering area, but lost-and-found nothing fun or icehot or not-belonging. No cleaners here, mayhaps. Only caretakers.' she added sourly.

'Then me and Puddy played and talked with Katey and Tom and we had chocklate. They have a mum but not a dad and she's in for an emm-are-eye on her head and they don't know about a Collins Wood. And I show-and-telled them about Kangs and show-and-telled Katey how to use an arrowgun, coz she asked, and she was an icehot shot. But then this oldster say-so rezzie starts a to-do and calls me a young woman and calls those caretakers for no reason. So I foot it out of there and they go chase me and try to catch me if they can, but they can't, coz they're musclebrain slowpokes... And I rode a trolley-bed! It was icehot!' she exclaimed. That was definitely the funnest part. She outlooked back to make sure the caretakers were footing away.

She was determined to help in whatever strange game her friends were playing. She really didn't know why they wanted to see Warlock as a little dolly baby, but whatever. Did this mean they would eyespy the Ship that would deliver the babies? That would be icehot.

Stanley greets Dr Kim and listens to what she has to say about this little anomaly. When Dr. Kim mentions the medical reason the records have to be wrong, Stanley can't hide his surprise."Huh? That can't be ri..." he stops talking and takes a moment to think things through. Dr. Kim has no reason to lie to him and he has no reason to doubt her medical expertise, so for now he has to assume that her conclusion is correct. Stanley can still think of several mundane, if unlikely, explanations for the situation surrounding Phillipe's birth, but they already know something extraordinary is going to happen. He needs to talk to The Traveller.

"Thanks for shedding some light on this issue, Dr. Kim." Stanley picks up Phillipe's file and looks at Janice. "Someone must have heard that we were coming to look at the data and made this file as a prank. I am going to take a small break, find my associate and, then I'll continue researching." he says, getting ready to leave, still holding the file.

Dr. Kim frowns and looks at him.  "Very well, Dr. Newton.  I'll be here until 4 PM, and then I'm seeing a patient."

OOC: You can get back to the others as you want; just narrate getting together with them again.

Trav smiles bemusedly. As she slips her arm around Smokes, she says, "Baby, first of all, this is a hosp-ee-tall - that's what they call it, here. They patch people up here and make people better. They rest up and get their broken bones fixed and get medicines and worked on when they get sick. That's the reason why they have all the Caretakers and Oldsters around. That's also the reason why there's no fly-bys or ballgames here - people here have been hurt and are trying to get better so they need peace and quiet. Sometimes, however, people are too sick to fix. That's what Stanley does - he makes people better - like the Doctor did - but when people are too far gone or too old they have to be taken to the big pool in the sky, although everyone here fights as hard as they can to make the people brought here ship shape. The Doctors here want everyone to be able to run and play and be well as can be. As for Katey and Tom, well, I'm sure they're awesome and icehot, I'd love to meet them. Here's some more chocklate, by the way. Can't have too much.  A trolleybed? I'm too much of a slow poke myself, wish I could have rode that with you. Sounds sizzling icehot."

Trav is leading her merry little band in search of Stanley. "Did any of the older Kangs show you where babies come from? You do know that a boy and a girl get together and make a baby, right?" Trav guesses that if there's a time that Smoke is going to have to learn about human biological reproduction, and see it, it's going to be now.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:57, Wed 08 Apr 2015.

It doesn't take the others long to find Stanley. It is a small hospital and he is also looking for them. "Everything okay?." he asks, referring to the earlier disturbance. He hands Phillipe's file to Trav. "Regarding the birth of Warlock, this document says that we are a couple of days early. However, his mother's doctor says that it is medically impossible and I don't think she is lying. Definitely something weird going on."

Trav takes a look at the file. "Thanks, babe." She hm hm hms."It's weird, but it makes sense to me. I'm suspecting that Phillipe may have been born on Earth, but he may have been a custom created being being - a perfect partner for the TAROT. You see, while my people from Gallifrey have genetically modified ourselves with the Rassilon Imprimatur which enables us to perceive the Time Vortex and navigate time craft, we're still the end result of normal natural selection. Phillipe, on the other hand... may have been created, as a zygote, in a lab. This doesn't make him any less of a person or any less the child of his parents, even if he's not genetically related to them. I want that clear." Trav's eyes are hard on that point.

"I found in the phone book the address of Phillipe's family. We can run out there and meet them, althugh it's a rural route and the address isn't exact. If I can meet his mother and father, a sonic scan can confirm the truth."

Trav licks her lips nervously, as they all walk back out to the car. Some pieces to the puzzle fall into place. "I think I may even know who may be responsible for Phillipe. She may have escaped the Time War. It now all makes sense, I should have thought of it sooner. Strange thing is, I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to her, during the war - I was obsessed with the Daleks and my power plays with the Master, and my own plan. Heh, she probably did everything she could to avoid attracting my attention. And the TAROT - yes, yes. It could have escaped the Moment and the Time Lock."

The Traveller thinks of Paltree.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:41, Wed 08 Apr 2015.

Listening to Traveller's show-and-tell, Smoke Alarm pouted. Sometimes Traveller could be all... like on the top floor outlooking down on her. Though at least she tried going down the alleviator. 'I know about meddy-cool doctors and hos-pit-als. Kangs used first-aid kits and band-aids to fix broken bits and stop red paint coming out. Like my dog bite. And Doctor Sam made medics take little bugs out of us. But hospitals are full of caretakers and Cleaners and it's where you go to the cleaners.' She shuddered at the unhappy rememory, looking down at the floor. Finally she went on 'But just coz they don't have the knowhow of Kangs – and mayhaps I don't have all the knowhow of hospitals – they don't have to start a to-do and chase me. That's not going to make anyone better, is it?'

She groaned as Traveller asked when babies came from, again, then was surprised by the strange thing she said next. 'Make a baby? You can't make a baby. It doesn't work. We tried. We put snakes and snails and puppy dogs' tails and sugar and spice and everything nice, like arrowguns, together, and the snails ate the sugar and the snakes ate the tails and we didn't get any babies.'

'And a boy and a girl? Ugh. You sound like a Rezzie. They say things about girls and boys sitting in a tree and kissing and babies in baby carriages and icky gross stuff. But they also say babies comeout of tummies. And of course they would say that, they have Kangs in their tummies. They're full of untruths and Kangs. There's no point listening to oldsters.' she decided sourly. 'And what about boy germs? Why can't a girl and a girl make a baby? Door Knob and No Smoking said they tried it, lots and lots, and they didn't get any babies either.'

'No, we worked out where babies come from. We saw viddies that show-and-telled a big bird flies over and drops the baby in a sheet down the chimney. Only Paradise Towers doesn't have any chimneys. But we clever Blue Kangs worked it out. The Ship flies over and drops the girl babies down the hair-conditioning ducks and the boy babies come up through the the waste-disposal chutes. All stands to reason. It's Science.'

When everyone reaches the Mustang, Trav is able to find a connector in the glove compartment that she can use to plug her iPad into the accessory jack.  It calls up a basic road map that she's able to use to navigate out to the address she found for the Collinswoods.

The hospital is right next to the interstate, and there are about ten miles between that exit and the turnoff for Route K.  This is plenty of space to really open up the Mustang for a bit, if she's so inclined.  Once past the outskirts of the town, the countryside rapidly changes to snow-streaked open plain bounded by safety fencing.

After turning off onto the two-lane local road, the iPad map soon indicates they're nearing the destination.  Everyone can see from a long way off a big two-story house with several barns and additional outbuildings.  There are more fences delineating pastures and everyone can make out a number of extremely large dogs cattle standing out there.

A sign at the turnoff toward the house reads WILLOW CREEK RANCH and, in smaller lettering underneath, COLLINSWOOD.

OOC: Assuming you're headed that direction.  Though you should feel free to work out any other intraparty negotiations you want before picking up at this point.

Trav turns back at Stan from the driver's seat. "Ever deliver a baby, Stan? We may be showing our blue haired friend here some real science. Smoke, baby, I've given birth to 3 boys and 2 girls myself and I can tell you, babies don't come via shuttle delivery."

In response to Smoke's complaint - " A girl and a girl can make a baby, but they just need some special equipment to do it. See, sometimes girls have boy parts, and boys sometimes have girl parts. Whoever a boy or a girl is - that's what's in their heart. The body parts? That doesn't meany anything, that can always be fixed, or just left as is. But the usual way is that a boy plants a seed in a girl and woo boy that's fun. There are other ways too, like with machines, people making copies of themselves, stuff like that. That's what my lovie Josh did with me. We made a big family. But there are lots of other ways, all sorts of ways people make families. But that's the usual way." Trav says this nostalgically, but non-chalantly. "Those shuttles? Those were babies who were already born, and needed families - Kang tribes. Homes you and your sisters gave them. Sometimes, people don't have places to go so they have to find places. So, you are right, Smoke."

Trav points out some heavy sheepskin coats she loaded into the back for the cold weather. She indeed opens it up. She finds herself loving the open blue skies of God's country, and missing the shimmering walls of magic ley line energy of RIFTs Earth. She knows that one day she will have to go back. Rifts Earth, Macross Earth, here - 3 Earths where her heart is.  She wishes Amanda was here, she'd love this.

She pulls onto the dirt road and past the COLLINSWOOD sign. "Sereth, there should be a basket back there, full of goodies. You don't visit without bringing gifts." Indeed, Trav made her famous New Kentshire peach cobbler, some friend chicken, a bottle of wine and other gifts.

(OOC:Resourceful Pockets - spending an SP to have goodies for the Collingswoods. Habit from Rifts Earth and years of travelling)
This message was last edited by the player at 14:53, Thu 09 Apr 2015.

"Not really." Stanley replies, thinking back. "I have provided assistance on a couple of occasions, but I was never the doctor who actually delivered the baby."

Exiting the hospital with some relief, Smoke Alarm made sure to stop by Katey and Tom to wave a quick 'Build high for happiness!' to show-and-tell she was okay, and show-and-tell to the yawny that she fancy-free and not taken to the cleaners like he wanted.

Smoke Alarm wasn't quite happy to be back in the car, especially as Traveller made it go with all speed down the long road, with her blue hair flying be. It was like racing down the carrydoors on a trolley-bed, she supposed, but at least they didn't go so fast and you could jump off when they crashed. The Kang fidgeted uncomfortably at the seatbelts while she listened to the talk of babies.

Traveller was still talking silly. 'Of course babies don't come down by shuttles. How can they fly them? Arms are too short.' she explained quite clearly. 'No, they come down from the Ship by parachutes.'

But then Traveller finally started making some sort of sense. 'Oh, you mean innies and outties.' she said as understanding dawned. 'Most Kangs have innie bits and some have outie bits. Just how it is. But we're all girls... But "plants a seed"? Babies are plants? And they grow inside the girl?' Smoke Alarm was horrified, and still more so as she put it all together. 'Is this like when the boy cat jumps on the girl cat, then she gets really fat and pops out kittens?' she wondered. Then: 'Wait. You mean... the outie bit... goes inside... the innie bit?'

(:

|:

):

o:

D:

'Eww! Gross! And the boy germs! Bleh!' Smoke Alarm groaned in disgust, outlooking in dismay down at her own bits.

'My way was much more fun.' she muttered sourly, pouting.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:09, Fri 10 Apr 2015.

As the Mustang crunches onto gravel as it heads in the direction of the house, Trav can feel a prickling on the back of her neck.  She remembers the distortions she picked up while running a ground-level scan from inside the hospital -- she hadn't immediately made the connection, but there are scars on the skin of space-time around here, scars that seem oddly familiar.

On the right, Smoke Alarm spots the flash of eyes very low to the ground, peering out of a big building with a steeply arched roof.

OOC: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 18 using 2d6+12 with rolls of 2,4. Feel the Turn of the Universe: Awareness(2) + Ingenuity(8) + 2.

Trav does indeed feel her spidey sense tingling. "We're getting close to something special." Out comes the sonic.  "Someone may be doing be doing space-time shenanigans. Be on the alert." Maybe closer to the source of the distortion, she can get a better idea of what is going on.

Trav scans around. "Stan, can you get that basket, please?"

OOC:03:55, Today: The Traveller rolled 24 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 6,2. Trav analyzes local space time at Willow Creek Farm. Ingenuity 8+Science 6+Sonic 2
This message was last edited by the player at 07:56, Fri 10 Apr 2015.

Like in Silurian Land, 55 million birthdays ago, Smoke Alarm didn't like the wide open spaces that stretched so wide and open around the car. But her friends had said not to worry about it, so Smoke Alarm tried not too. Now she had the far greater horror of human reproduction to occupy her thoughts... Besides, those parks had all that icehot white fluff and big moo-cows.

As the car rolled into a parking space, Smoke Alarm undid her seatbelt and jumped out even before it had fully come to a stop-sign. She felt safer on her own feets, at her own leg speed. ''Waring cleaners and dogs and shenanigans.' she acknowledged Traveller.

Eyespying eyes spying on them from the big pointy-roofed building, Smoke Alarm footed closer, pulling out her arrowgun and fitting a bolt. Mayhaps it was only a pussy-cat, and even if it was a dog, she could scare it off without planting an arrow in it...

Trav's readings indicate significant damage to the local dimensional membrane.  She has seen this before when tracking and dealing with beings existing in higher physical dimensions, that interact and affect normal space through their 4-space projections.  The distortions are, however, not recent -- they are probably months old, at least.

These traces aren't dangerous at the moment: left alone, dimensional distortions like these will smooth out and heal, just as the ripples in a pond will quiet and still after a time.

Among these traces are a set of tracks consisting of one long ragged wound tracing out from the ranch and away from Livingston, accompanied by multiple, smaller tracks tracing its path.

As Trav scans the area, everyone hears the door of the house bang.  A tall, rangy man approaches the car: he's wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a long, snug-looking coat, as well as jeans and boots.  "Can I help you folks?" he calls.  His manner seems pleasant, but wary.

As Smoke Alarm creeps closer to the barn, she sees the eyes move.  As her own vision adjusts to the contrast between the bright sun outside and the shadowed interior, she hears the owner of eyes utter an inquisitive, "Miaow?"

Smoke Alarm stopped, relieved. Cats were usually sure-and-safe; though they could trip you up, their scratch didn't hurt so much compared to a dog's bite. And what's more, it wasn't a bird-dog. 'Meow.' she said. 'Meow.' said Puddy. She crouched and extended a hand, fingers down, to the cat to see if it wanted to talk.

Trav smiles pleasantly. "Hi, my name is Louise. This is Dr Stanley Newton. We're part of his team that is doing a research survey audit, and we were referred by your wife's GP back at the hospital about some rather unique circumstances concerning your wife's Ob Gyn situation. Mr Sereth here is from out of the country and a professional associate, and the girl with the blue hair, I'm taking care of her for my cousin." Her cousin being The Doctor, of course, so that's really stretching it, but it is essentially the truth. "Since I used to live on a farm in Michigan and had a passel of kids myself, I brought some stuff - your wife is expecting from what I was told, so I figured I should do some cooking and make life a little easier." Again, a Michigan on a world with giant robots and shining walls of blue magic energy, but true. "May we come in?" The turbopistols are in her bag, of course, and the food is warm and in tupperware.

OOC: 20:29, Today: The Traveller rolled 20 using 4d6+9 with rolls of 2,2,5,2. Presence 3+Convince 2+Charming 2+Resource Pockets 2(Fried Chicken & Cobbler)+SP - Trav Befriends.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:30, Sat 11 Apr 2015.

As Trav's conversation turns to his wife's ob-gyn records, the man you suppose to be James Collinswood stiffens.  His expression freezes, and his eyes flicker over Stanley and Sereth.  He takes a step backwards.  "I'm not so sure about that," he says slowly.  "Aren't there supposed to be government regulations about medical records being private?  And if something's not right with them... how come Dr. Kim didn't call us to say so?"  He rallies a bit.  "Can, can I see some identification?"

OOC: Trav's roll and her friendly approach were good, so I'm not exactly giving it a No Sale in the long run.  But you can look at the reaction rolls here and James' response and draw what conclusions you will.

The Guardian, for the NPC James Collinswood, rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 5,2. Reacting to Trav: Ingenuity(3) + Resolve(4).
The Guardian, for the NPC James Collinswood, rolled 10 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 4,1. There's No Problem Here: Presence(3) + Convince(2).
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:27, Sat 11 Apr 2015.

The cat reaches up and bats at Smoke Alarm's hand with a paw, its claws retracted.  It looks curiously at Puddy, then at Smoke, than back at Puddy.

As it looks out past Smoke Alarm, it also seems to focus on Trav and on Sereth for a few moments before it goes back to studying the Smoke-Puddy duo.

With things sorted with the cat, Smoke Alarm said 'I'm outgoing to outlook on your turf for a bit. I'll take no rats.' It was only good manners to make an understanding with the local cats. Standing, she outlooked back at Traveller, eyespying she was getting talky with some inbetween.

Then she footed into the barn to eyespy and lost-and-found. She was amazed just by the outside; it was a tower made of wood. Inside, it seemed all dark and smelly.

OOC: Smoke Alarm, I'd like you to give me a roll of your devising for making friends with the cat....

OOC: Okay... I assume a straight Presence + Convince would do, 13. I can't think of a relevant trait, unless you assume her feral nature would play into it... :)
12:21, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 13 using 2d6+3 with rolls of 5,5. presence(2) + convince(1).

Trav digs into her bag. "Just a sec, while I get my card." She was trying to stall for a beat so that Stanley could jump in. She wasn't ready to make a call to the Brig quite yet. She looks to Stan, hoping he steps in.

"It is true that medical records are private." Stanley begins to explain, coming up with an explanation that sounds plausible. "However, for research purposes it is possible to get access those records, even without the patients' permission. For large scale statistical studies it is just impractical to ask and wait for everyone's permissions. We are talking about hundreds or thousands of patients, some of whom may have passed away or moved abroad. To prevent this from slowing down research there are a couple of exceptions to the law. Of course, research requests still have to pass the ethics committee and the hospital has to give permission. The research itself will only use anonymised statistical data, so there is no way to link that back to individual patients."

"I understand that you might feel a bit betrayed, but it is all legal. Also please understand that your medical information has been shared, but that it still confidential. We are required to keep the information confidential, just like the doctors at the hospital and just like the people responsible for the archive."

"We only noticed the unique circumstances today and when we did Dr. Kim had to go see a patient. That is probably why she hasn't called yet. I don't want to unnecessarily worry you and this could be a mistake in the paperwork, but it might be better to discuss the exact nature of the unique circumstances inside."

Stanley can't show his identification from the future to Phillipe's father. If he looks at the dates, he won't believe that it is real. This reminds Stanley of Arden, only that time his identification was from the past and now it is from the future.


OOC:
Presence + Convince
09:53, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 12 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 2,4. Presence(3)+Convince(3).

Seeing Traveller's and STanley's bumbling attempts at diplomacy spurred Sereth into action - he would be taking a different tack than usual; but no way around it.

"Cut it out Doctor Newton. I told you that hiding the truth was pointless in these circumstances. But would  listen? Of course not." Sereth had no skill in medicine; but what he did have was an excellent understanding of how to bluff people with enough crap that they didn't question it. "You're right of course. It is against usual procedure to share this information about. But there were... irregularities which needed to be examined. And when you have irregularities, that's when you bring in -me-. These are cause for concern; and we are merely wanting to make sure that you, and your family, are safe and secure."

21:29, Today: Sereth rolled 17 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 5,2. Presence + Convince + VoA.

Faced with the three newcomers who don't seem inclined to go away, James seems to sag in on himself a bit, and he sighs.

"Expect you'd better come in, then," he says.  "Just-- just promise me that however this goes, you try and get them to go easy on Marianne.  I knew it wasn't quite in keeping with the law, but he said he'd make it right... and she has wanted this so much, for so many years."

Shoulders slumped, James leads the way up onto the porch to the front door, and leads the way inside.  It's a beautiful, solidly built old ranch house, probably a hundred years old or more, although there is a bit of clutter about the place.  James nods at a coat rack next to the door as he shrugs off his own and hangs it up.

A woman's voice calls from down a hallway toward the back of the house where sunlight is streaming in: her Western twang has a hint of something European in it.  "James?" she calls.  "James, who was it?"  The dark-haired woman appears in the hallway and looks over Trav, Stanley and Sereth in surprise and perhaps a bit of dismay.  She's holding a sleeping baby wrapped in a blanket in her arms.

OOC: Trav, Stanley and Sereth can make an Awareness + Ingenuity roll.  Each of you have a slightly different difficulty for this; there are different details that might be apparent.

Trav scowls at Sereth. She doesn't want to scare these people. This is where Boobie was always tougher than she was. Boobie could be an asshole, Trav could never just march in and push people around unless she thought they were scumbags.

"Don't worry, we won't be long. I'd rather we not have to bother you at all, really." She takes out her sonic, checking the earlier readings.

Trav sniffs at the air again. Something weird was happening, her brain was moving of it's own accord, which it occasionally did when there were mysteries afoot.

OOC:12:53, Today: The Traveller rolled 14 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 1,3. Awareness 2+Ingenuity 8 - Spidey Sense.

I'd also like to get the results of Trav's earlier effort at scanning when James walked up. Trav suspects that this time zone may have been manipulated by Phillipe's later self to protect his own birth, or by someone with a TAROT, maybe Paltree.


Trav's eyes light up when she sees what she presumes is baby Phillipe. "Oh, Mrs Collinswood? Oh, he's beautiful." She clutches her hat. Her babies were so far away. Anyone can tell that Trav is visibly affected by seeing baby Phillipe, the obvious look of someone who has had children herself.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:02, Sun 12 Apr 2015.

OOC: Stupid. Lost the whole post; reallly don't feel like rewriting it right now. Thas has been happening a lot to me lately.

09:45, Today: Sereth rolled 15 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 5,4. Awareness + Ingenuity.

The cat circles around as Smoke Alarm enters the barn, watching her.  Inside the building, it's one big open space with a loft up at the top of it.  There are a couple of metal vents along the walls that let in slanting shafts of light, enough to make out bound bales of straw, a bench alongside some tall metal boxes with lots of drawers, and a thing on four wheels that looks like it might be something like the Traveller's Must-Tang, except that it's smaller and just has the one seat and no doors or roof.

Smoke Alarm is getting a weird, queasy feeling walking around in here.  It's hard for her to pin down what it's like and it's not exactly unpleasant: it's like she can feel shifting bands of warm and cold, or places where the air is more or less thick.

After patting the cat, Smoke Alarm idly outlooked around the barn, eyespying the big blocks of dry grass and sticks and the car in the middle. After riding in a car with Traveller driving, she wasn't in any hurry to poke this one and make it go. She peeked in some of the drawers, but if it was just all tools, then it was pretty yawny in her opinion.

But the patches of hot and cold and thick and thin air were all weird and made Smoke's skin feel funny as it struggled to decide on a temperature. Was the hair-conditioning or heaters broke? Footing about, she tried to lost-and-find the source, footing into a cooler patch and tracking back to where it came from.


OOC: Smoke will try to find the source of the weird weather, 15.
11:59, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 15 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 2,4. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2).

OOC:
06:36, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 16 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,5. Awareness(4) + Ingenuity(4) .

As Trav pulls out the sonic and scans, the Collinswoods look at it in surprise: perhaps they don't understand what a medical auditor is doing sampling the air.

Trav's scans here don't tell her anything new about the dimensional incursions that have taken place.  She's not finding the signs of Blinovitch resonance that would indicate multiple attempts to rewrite the local timeline, however, so that is something of a relief.

Even though he's naturally paying attention to the Collinswoods, Stanley's attention is drawn to the paneled walls inside the house.  Some of them have the obvious patina of age on them, and some look like they've been replaced: there's been a good attempt at matching up their appearance, but it's not perfect.  Now that he's noticed the effect, he sees that some of the older planks have small cracks at the edges that don't look consistent with the rest of walls.

Sereth's attention is only just catching up to James' motion in hanging up his coat -- he only got a glance, but it seemed to him that James threw his big duster over another coat and a belt with some metal objects attached to it.

"Th-thank you," Marianne replies, both pleased and nervous.  "Won't you please have a seat?  So you can tell us what this is all about...?"

She moves to the big sofa in the living room off the entry way: there's a big, homey-looking fireplace there, and several comfortable-looking armchairs.

Sereth notes that James doesn't sit: he drifts to a position between the living room and the front door.

Sereth frowned for a long moment, and regarded James coolly. Something wasn't quite right; and it appears they've only just scratched the surface of how bad things are. He said nothing, for now, he just watched. He didn't think James quite trusted them; but that wasn't the point. The point really was... what was he protecting?

"Don't mind this. This is a non-invasive diagnostic scanning device we're field testing for the CDC. It can take blood chemistry readings, vitals, heart rate - I'm just checking it to make sure it's on. It uses sound waves. Once this gets into production, we'll be able to have doctors check people without using needles." Never mind that Doctors use devices like this in the 51st century - Trav is essentially correct. She waves it a few times, like a thermometer. "I don't even need to touch a patient. All I need to do is aim it, use a setting, anmd voila! See? Let me show it." She quickly reconfigures her I-pad for a grainy LCD green posphor display, and aims it at Stanley, showing his vitals. "Dr Newton's blood pressure is here, as is his pulse, heart rate, respiratory information, and some stuff on blood chemistry and so on. It's even wireless! I'm a scientist and engineer by trade - I designed this device myself. This is a prototype."

Morhedgreim the Megaversal Druid had kept her TARDIS, her pistols, her sonic and her hat in trust for her while she was a girl growing up on RIFTS Earth, and she had adventured with them even though she had no awareness that they were the tools of the Traveller. "Marianne, is it? I used this device to keep track of the health of my own babies. Look here - this is Glenn and Marty and Josie and Linda, and my grandson little Josh, and my husband Joshua, whose in God's house now."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:49, Mon 13 Apr 2015.

Stanley doesn't trust the situation completely, but he sits down in one of the airmchairs.



Stanley frowns a little when Trav uses the sonic on him, but he doesn't say anything.

Just when Smoke Alarm's exploration of the barn is starting to get yawny, she dislodges a loose clot of dirt in the floor.  She finds that it leaves a little hole that goes down and almost at once is completely dark: it's probably not even big enough to fit her forearm into.

There's a rustle of movement, and something scurries up through the hole -- a rat.  Well, that isn't too surprising to her: you don't get cats without rats for them to chase.

Several more rats come up through the hole, though, and while Smoke Alarm is certainly not unbrave about rats, their behavior is very strange.  Six rats show themselves eventually, and array themselves around the hole in a disturbingly regular half-circle.  One pair of the rats orients itself toward Smoke Alarm, one pair toward the cat -- which by this point has followed Smoke Alarm in and has focused on the hole, stiff and straight with all its hairs standing up -- and one pair toward the house.

Smoke Alarm knows from rats, and she's never seen any behave like this.  Even the Us, who all have a somewhat ratlike quality to them (though they're much braver and smarter and wiser than any rat she's ever met) don't behave anything like this: they're proper people, not... whatever these rats are.

Marianne seems a little less concerned about the sonic screwdriver after Trav's explanation, but she still seems to be on edge.

James' expression has gone from guarded, to something a little more obstinate than that.  "Supposing you folks would ask your questions, or say your piece, or do what you mean to," he says.  "I'm not clear on what your game is, here.  If you've got questions, well, fire away.  If you mean to act on these... 'irregularities'... then it would be best you do it.  You are talking all sweetness and light, but if you came all the way out here, it wasn't over a dropped comma or a mis-placed decimal."

As if picking up on their tension, the baby wakes up and starts to cry.

Sereth nodded.

"Indeed." He turned and regarded Traveller. "Say your piece; ask your questions. THere is a time and a place; and you're just making him more concerned about what's happening by trying to alleviate his concern."

There was a reason Sereth had been taking the tack he did - there was a time when, diplomacy, when kindness, when beating around the bush worked - and there was a time when blunt honesty; no matter how it might seem, might be better.

As curious as a cat and as puzzled as a pigeon, Smoke Alarm outlooked on as rat after rat popped up out of the little hole and arrayed themselves around it like a circle. That was... different. In her experience, disturbed rats ran all around at random to confuse you while they got to a hide-in (a tactic Kangs had readily adopted). These ones were staying put around the in-way to their rat-hole (which didn't normally go straight down into the floor like a drain-hole like that, did it?). They were like eyespies, or guards. They weren't even being scaredy-rats with the cat right there.  It was very un-rat-like. Smoke Alarm remembered the RoboSilurians; they didn't act like regular Silurians either. Mayhaps the rats were being controlled by cleaners too, but she couldn't see any wires sticking out of them.

'Stop-sign, Puss. Let's outlook.' she advised the cat. These rats were so weird even the cat didn't want to chase them.

Smoke Alarm decided to try Science, because Blue Kangs were clever as well as brave and bold. She'd shoplifted a sandwitch from Traveller's pickernick basket while getting in the car, and had kept half in her pocket. Moving very slowly, she got it out and tore off a piece of crust, then crouched and tossed it in front of the rats facing her. 'You want some?' A proper rat would have to go for food.

Smoke feels something tugging at the cuff of her pants, which alarms her until she realizes it's the cat, reaching out and snagging her with claws out, like it's trying to hold her back.

The rats don't react to the piece of sandwich; at least, they don't react like Smoke Alarm would expect rats to do.  She blinks, rubs her eyes.  Is it just a trick of the light?

No.

The rats closest to where she threw the bread are getting bigger.  But it's not like they're just suddenly getting chubby or their skins and muscles are popping out: to Smoke Alarm it seems like a weird trick of perspective, like she was bending down to stare at the rats nose to nose.  Except she's not moving.  And the rats aren't moving.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:15, Wed 15 Apr 2015.

OOC: There's a typo in the first line, "she realizes it's that". Is that the cat or a rat?

OOC: Fixed.

'Brave and bold, Puss.' Smoke Alarm reassured the scaredy-cat, continuing her Science with the rats.

Then she outlooked in wonder as the rats seemed to get biggerer and biggerer as she eyespied. She'd never ever eyespied rats do that before. They were almost as big as cats now, and no wonder this cat didn't want to chase and eat them. To Smoke, it was like outlooking through a spy-eye lens, making everything biggerer and closerer without actually moving it anywhere.

She reached out for a piece of straw, and slowly poked it closer toward the nearest magnified rat, to see if the straw got biggerer too. If she could work this out, then, wow, she'd be almost as much of a smarty-pants as Traveller.


OOC: Mayhaps I'm about to attacked by psychic rats led by a rat-king or something, but I'm going to go with Insatiable Curiosity and keep poking it. :)

The straw Smoke Alarm pokes forward doesn't seem to change in size.  However, when it gets within about a foot of the rats, something seizes hold of the straw and tears it out of her hand, fast enough to cause a tiny friction burn.  It shoots straight forward from between her fingers and vanishes into thin air.

When that happens, Smoke Alarm sees the four rats besides the pair that are oriented on her simply melt away, dissolving into the air where they sit.  She catches motion out of the corner of her eye.  Looking around, she sees that the rats have reappeared with a dozen more just like them, in a big ring all around Smoke Alarm and the cat.  She feels a ripple of warmth pass through her.

From all around her, the rats spring!

OOC: Take a story point, you have attracted the attention of something... worth a story point for attracting.

20:04, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Barn Rats, rolled 23 using 2d6+13 with rolls of 5,5. Seizing Smoke Alarm: Coordination(8) + Fighting(5).

'Ow!' Smoke Alarm yelped as the straw was pulled right out from between her fingers. Then it disappeared! She was about to suck her fingers and puzzle over this latest development when the four other rats vanished too. 'Hey, come back!' She regretted saying that when she eyespied them and lots of other rats now all around her. Strangely, she felt like a little mouse surrounded by big dogs, despite being still much bigger than the rats. 'Uh oh.'

'Run, cat! Ware rats!' From a crouch, Smoke Alarm threw herself out of the way, after the cat. But the rats were all around her, they were so speedy, there were so many of them, and they were so small she couldn't block or dodge them all. 'Help!'


OOC: And I'll turn around and spend that SP on making this not be a Disastrous failure. :)
10:32, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 12 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 1,1. coordination(5) + fighting(3) + Kang Fu(2).
This message was last edited by the player at 02:47, Fri 17 Apr 2015.

The rats swarm over Smoke Alarm, seizing her with their mouths.  They're not hurting her much -- not yet -- but as they take hold of her, something far more strange and disturbing takes place.

The warmth that she felt intensifies, and she feels the air turn thicker than soup around her.  The odder thing is that her vision swims and blurs.  She sees what looks like long, curling, purplish shadows streaming back away from the rats.

The shadows all twist and converge in her sight, and where they meet she sees a thing.  It's a heaving, writhing mass of tendrils and glistening flesh, variegated like the twists of a picture she once saw in a book that was supposed to be a person's brain.  Between the folds of the mass, purple-blue light oozes out like mist escaping into the air.

Then the thing shudders.  A seam splits and pulls apart down the front of the thing, and it orients on Smoke Alarm.  Where the space opens up, Smoke's eyes don't want to work: it's like it's making a blind spot right in the middle of her field of view.

She does see one tiny hope to cling to.  She sees the cat bound away for the door of the barn.  Several of the "rats" -- the feelers or fingers of the thing -- reach out to stop it, but she can now see that the cat is also more than a cat: there are shimmering, translucent streamers that stretch out from it to ward off the rats as they try to stop it.

OOC: The SP escalates your roll to a Bad result.  You take 1 damage to your Coordination and 1 to your Strength.  However, note that you've also been dislodged from proper four-dimensional space-time: you can defend yourself physically in a limited fashion and perhaps do things like retrieve equipment you have on you, but you won't be able to really move and run from this unless some help arrives from somewhere.

You should also make a fear check (Resolve + Ingenuity + Brave) at this point.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:15, Fri 17 Apr 2015.

Struggling desperately against the clinging rats, it was like crawling through treacle. Her speed, her agility, so vital to her had been stolen away. She was caught like a rat in a trap. Caught by rats.

Then, her fight forgotten for now, Smoke outlooked up at the Thing. The Kang barely had the words to describe it, had not the experience to process it. It was the dark edges of nightmares, disturbing scenes half-glimpsed and long-forgotten, an absolutely unspeakable horror. She could stare blankly and wonder and quietly lose her mind, but the primitive, animalistic parts of her brain, so close to the surface with her feral upbringing, kicked in, triggering the instinctive fight-or-flight reflex. Smoke Alarm saw cannibal Rezzies and the defleshed bones of friends. She saw being taken to the cleaners, being cleaned by Cleaners. She saw the Great Architect, his brain in the Chief Caretaker's head by corpoelectroscopy. She saw bodies in bins carted down to the Basement, dumped in the mincers and mashers and burners and bakers, recycled into the food that went back upstairs.

In Paradise Towers, the Kangs had become inured to horror.

'No!' Smoke Alarm yelled, denying the Thing. She was brave and bold as a Kang could be. She pulled out Dev's grappling-hook rope gun, and fired it straight up to the roof, to the rafters of the barn.


OOC: Smoke Alarm will try to use her grappling hook to pull herself out of the reach of the rats and the thing, if possible. Rolled a 14 (including Coordination penalty).
13:39, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 2,5. coordination(4) + marksman(3).

Bravery check:
13:12, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 19 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 6,5. ingenuity(3) + resolve(3) + brave(2).

"You are right, Sereth, we should just get to the point Before I continue and for what it is worth, I just want to say that I really am a doctor." Stanley looks in the direction of baby Phillipe. Marianne and James are the only ones who know what is going on and he is just going to ask them to explain.

"Phillipe's file from the hospital says that he was born two days from now. Yes in the future! That shouldn't be possible, just like Dr. Kim told me that it isn't medically possible for Marianne to have children. There have also been a couple of other signs that someone has been messing with things around here, so... we would like to know what is going on? Who helped you?"

Smoke Alarm watches in fascination as her grapple-gun discharges.  The SNAAAAP of its mechanism draws out for far longer then she expects it to, and as the hook starts to fly away, it crawls out slowly in a straight line away from her, like someone poking out... a stiff piece of straw.  It continues this way, picking up momentum almost imperceptibly, until it is about five yards out from her, when it seems to shimmy through a ripple in the air and, all at once, shoots up into the rafters where it loops around a beam and the mechanism draws it taut.

The thing reacts by drawing Smoke Alarm toward it -- and it pulls her a short way before her anchor on the grapple-gun holds her fast, such that Smoke is caught as the rope in a gruesome tug of war.

But even though she's still kind of stuck, Smoke Alarm takes heart in her defiance.  The thing can't just make up its own rules and get its own way whenever it wants!  She can fight against it!


OOC:

Your "No, But" is that this makes it considerably harder for the creature to pull you in further, even though you don't get out of its grip.  And of course it basically fails to intimidate Smoke Alarm.

20:39, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 16 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 1,5. Fear Roll: Presence(6) + Resolve(4).
20:38, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 16 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 2,4. Holding on to Smoke: Strength(5) + Fighting(5).

Stanley notices the look that James gives him, at the word doctor.

Marianne rocks Phillipe, and his crying quiets a little.

"So, you know that he's not ours," Marianne says with a little sniffle of her own.

"Wasn't ours," James says, with a look that dares anyone in the room to contradict him.

"He... I know this doesn't make a lot of sense even when I say it," Marianne says.  "It was back in May.  We were driving back from Grand Forks... we'd been to see a specialist there, that Dr. Kim referred us to.  It was raining, it was getting dark...."  She swallows.  "And he stumbled right out in front of the road in front of us and fell.  James managed to miss him, almost tipped the truck.  But we had to stop and see if he was all right."

"Poor guy looked like he'd been through hell," James goes on.  "And he had a baby, held underneath his jacket.  Stumbling through a rainstorm, way out here, carrying a baby!  Well... we gave him a lift back here.  To find out what was going on, but because it was the right thing to do, too."

"And when we finally got him to say something," Marianne adds, "that was when we found out, that he'd been running."

Stretched out like a lacky band between the grappler and the thing, Smoke Alarm groaned, straining desperately to keep a grip on the handle, her knuckles turned white. It was like holding up Dev's sky-bike on New Vegas. Quickly, she thumbed the switch to make the rope rewind and pull her up, but by the weird way the hook had flown up, she was stuck in some kind of slowpoke zone, so it could take ages. 'Haven't got me yet, big brain!' Smoke Alarm shouted, as much to reassure her and taunt the thing.

She dared outlook back at the brain-thing, her skin crawling in horror, it was so gross and yucky. Brave and bold as a Kang should be, she recited her mantra, brave and bold as a Kang should be, over and over, keeping back the unbraveness, giving her the strength to keep holding on. She wasn't going to get to swallowed up a big brain without a to-do! Brave and bold as a Kang could be!

With her free hand, she fumbled inside her pocket, pulling out her talkiphone, almost dropping it. First, she had to warn her friends, mayhaps they could search-and-rescue her. Her thumb slid around the buttons, until she worked the picture-taker, pointing it at the thing. 'Say cheese, big brain!'


OOC: Smoke Alarm will try to take a camera-phone picture of the monster and her predicament, and send it to her friends with a garbled message reading "hlp1". If Smoke's out of normal time, then that could take as long as you want to arrive. Rolling for the effort, that's 16. If the thing prevents her, I'll spend a Story Point or two to make it a Success, even if her finger is over the lens.
10:32, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 16 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 6,3. coordination(4) + ingenuity(3).

Second action, keep struggling, 13.
10:37, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 13 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 5,1. coordination(4) + fighting(3) + Kang Fu(2) - 2.

Could that mysterious person be Phillipe from the future? Hiding baby Phillipe here in the past with the Collinwoods to keep himself safe? Or prevent himself from being erased or something? Stanley listens and nods as James and Marianne tell their story. It doesn't explain why the record, but it is not as sinister as the things he had come up with. "The question is running from whom?"

The Collinswoods look at each other.  "Well, that part comes later in the story," James says.  "The fact that he was running, that is why he left Phillipe with us.  Said it wouldn't be fair to make a baby go with him, on the run from a whole universe that hated him and blamed him for terrible things."

"He wouldn't tell us much about that," Marianne says.  "But you could see the guilt in him and how much it had hurt him.  He wouldn't even give us his name.  He told us we should only call him the Doctor."

As Smoke Alarm struggles against the monstrous grip of the creature, clinging desperately to the handles of the grapple-gun, she is reminded of when the rescue workers came to Paradise Towers and one of them had given her and Power Point a piece of taffy candy, which the two Kangs had pulled at opposite ends until it was very very long and finally came apart.  Maybe she should check after she's gotten out of this to see if she's any taller.

When Smoke keys SEND on her phone, she's surprised at the result.  She sees the horrible not-there eye of the thing narrow some, and there is a nasty screeching sound that seem to send visible ripples through the air.  Smoke remembers Trav telling her that her upgraded talkiphone communicated by way of Trav's talkiphone box; does that have something to do with why the creature seems to really dislike Smoke sending her picture?

OOC:
I meant to put a number to the benefit of Smoke Alarm's grapple: her roll should have gotten a +2.  So that contest comes out even.

19:01, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 13 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 1,4. Jamming Smoke's signal: Ingenuity(4) + Resolve(4).
18:59, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 15 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 2,5. Pulling Smoke in: Strength(5) + Fighting (5) -2 (second action).

Brave and bold... Clutching tight to her grappler, Smoke Alarm winced at the nasty screeching. It sounded like fingernails scraped down a blackboard, but across the air itself. But the sound was good, it meant she could hurt or annoy it. And being annoying was the key to surviving. 'Ha! Don't like talkiphones, musclebrain? Try this!' Fingers sliding across the screen, she poked the first name in the list, Sereth, hit dial, then kept tapping re-dial, again and again.

Well, that was both hands busybees. Smoke Alarm kept up her desperate struggle with her legs, kicking furiously and trying to shake or knock off the rats that seemed to be tentickles for the big brain. How did that even work, anyway? 'Feets don't fail me now.'


OOC:
First action: ring Sereth and re-dial, 15.
09:58, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 15 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 4,4. coordination(4) + ingenuity(3).

Second action: continued struggling, included +2 from grappler. 14
09:59, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 14 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 4,1. coordination(4) + fighting(3) + Kang Fu(2) - 2 + 2.

"The Doctor."

Boobie had been here

"Oh, oh oh oh. No wonder this place was so well hidden. Marianne, James. Please, you have nothing to fear from any of us. You see... he's the last of my people. I'm called The Traveller. And please do not ever forget this. Phillipe is your son. By all the stars in the heavens, he is yours. I've seen the people he has grown into and he has saved lives and done heroic things and his future is so bright. Genetics, blood, all those things? They're meaningful but only somewhat. Love is what matters and love is what makes families. I'm not here to take him away - I'm here to make sure your son is safe. No matter what happens, he stays with you!"

Trav fumbles with her Ipad. "Did he look like any of these men, at all?"




This message was last edited by the player at 18:03, Sun 19 Apr 2015.

The Collinswoods look astonished at Trav's sudden enthusiasm, and a bit perplexed on top of that when she starts asking them to identify their visitor from among several images.  But when Trav gets to the picture of the man with the intense, sharp features, the crew cut and the prominent ears, Marianne's face lights up.  "That's him!"

"He said that he'd fix it so we didn't have any more problems, with anyone coming here looking for Phillipe," James says.  "He said, he couldn't stay too long in one place, that things would be after him.  And... he was right.  They did come."  He indicates the damage that Stanley noticed earlier.  "Things that tried to crawl through the walls to get at us.  But then he told us, he'd figured out a plan to draw them off.  That he could make them chase him away, while Phillipe stayed here safe.  And that he'd come back, later, to make sure Phillipe and this whole place were hard to find.  He must have done something, with the hospital records.  But maybe he didn't finish?  I don't know.  We never heard from him since."

Meanwhile, out in a portion of N-dimensional space adjacent to the Collinswoods' barn, Smoke's desperate fight continues.

She keys her call to Sereth, and the creature's screech of anguish is, if anything, even worse: it shakes Smoke Alarm with a rippling vibration like an earthshake, and it makes another painful yank on her body, trying to pull her toward it.

OOC:

23:00, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 18 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 4,6. Tug-of-Smoke: Strength(5) + Fighting(5) -2 (second action).
22:59, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 15 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 1,6. Transdimensional interference against Smoke: Ingenuity(4) + Resolve(4).

With a +4 result I'll give Smoke Alarm the option of what happens here: you can take another point off your Strength and your Coordination and keep the grapple intact, or you can lose your tether on the grapple.

Either way, you succeed in alerting the other PCs.

OOC: So does it come through as a text to us; or is it the phone call that did the trick? My reaction will depend on which it is.

As the Collinswoods begin to explain their brief encounter with the Doctor, Trav's and Sereth's and Stanley's phones all start to ring -- but not with any of their familiar programmed tones.

It's a sound that Trav is all too familiar with, and one that Stanley has heard just once before, when he and Amanda Khabares were trying to operate the TARDIS controls to counteract the strength of the trapped Osiran Apep.  A deep, funereal chime, repeating over and over.

BONNNGGG

BONNNGGG

BONNNGGG

When they look at their phones, the three travellers see that they're displaying Smoke Alarm's name and picture, superimposed over an image of the TARDIS.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:24, Mon 20 Apr 2015.

OOC: When you hit answer, you'll see the image that Smoke sent.  The middle portion of it will break up a little, as the TARDIS can't properly process the thing's weird blind spot, but otherwise you'll get the gist.

And Smoke's call will come through to Sereth.

Sereth's eyes flash.

"What. Is. Going. On?"

He glared at James.

"Oh there's more to it. What are you hiding? Why did you hang up your coat -exactly- where you hung it up? What are you hiding? And before you tell me nothing, let me tell you this. Anything happens to my friend, you -will- be sorry."

He didn't give a damn what Traveller thought about 'not scaring the locals'. THey needed answers; and they needed them now.

OOC:
14:32, Today: Sereth rolled 17 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 3,4. Presence + Convince + VoA. .

Momentarily startled when the phones went off, James seems shocked at Sereth's outburst.  "What?  Why are your pagers all going off?"  At Sereth's glare, he holds up his hands and moves to the coat rack.  "Look.  I hid it because it's his coat, the Doctor's -- I forgot we'd left it there, and the stuff on his belt, it's not exactly normal, right?"

James pulls his own coat off the rack.  It reveals a battered, weathered and torn brown leather jacket, and looped over it is a bandoleer with mostly empty cartridge loops, to which are affixed a couple of advanced-looking technological devices and a series of metal badges.  These all look quite familiar to Trav.

If James is faking his dismay, he's a far better actor than Sereth has judged him to be thus far.

A nod.

"Very well then. I'm sorry, but.... something bad is happening in your barn. And I intend to save our friend, before it's too late."

He didn't wait for Traveller or Stanley; but immediately left to the last place he'd seen Smoke - with his blade drawn as he walked.

"Traveller, I think I'll need you."

Violently thrashed back and forth, Smoke Alarm felt like a rat being shaken in the teeth of a big dog, or like an old blue sock in a washing machine. 'Yuh-yuh-yuh-yuh!' the sounds fell from her flapping mouth. Under that terrific force, she could barely keep a grip on the grappler, with palm and handle growing slick with sweat and her small hand paling under the strain. Finally, reflex took over, as her hand spasmed open and the grappler escaped her grip. 'No!'

Smoke Alarm was suspended in space for an awfully long time, in that slowpoke zone, or mayhaps it only felt like it. She eyesied the grappling shooting away, cord snaking. Two hands free, she went for her arrowgun, fishing up a bolt, loading it and drawing it back like she show-and-telled Katey, except her hands weren't so shaky and slippery then.

Smoke Alarm hit the floor with a thud, on her back, the breath pushed out of her. 'Woof!' She almost dropped the arrowgun, but fumbled, snatched it up again, and aimed down the length of her body at the big brain-thing sucking her in like the tentickles of a Cleaner in the waste-disposal chutes. She jammed the heels of her shoes into the dirt to slow the slide, to get an aim. Brave and bold as a Kang should be. She breathed out, a precious moment's stillness. Finger squeezed on trigger, the bolt slipped free. 'Suck on this!'


OOC: I'll drop the grappler, preserving my two most vital attributes, and leave open the possibility of a capture scenario. Instead, Smoke will grab her arrowgun and shoot the brain-thing directly. There doesn't seem to be any specific targets she can go for with Crack Shot. Good roll, double sixes, for 21.
14:24, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 21 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 6,6. coordination(4) + marksman(3) + crossbow(2).

Second action, keep struggling, 14.
14:32, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 4,3. coordination(4) + fighting(3) + Kang Fu(2) - 2.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:35, Mon 20 Apr 2015.

Trav was distracted. One doesn't hear about the only other surviving member of her species and not be affected.

She digs out her phone. "Crap. Smoke is in trouble. Sereth, get your weapon." Trav glares at Sereth. "Sereth, we're in these people's home, and they have a right to be armed here. We are not legal authorities. I'll refer you to the United States 2nd Amendment later. Consider that this man is the lord of his home and you are a visiting noble. Now, come on! James, you have a rifle, right?" As she digs out her turbopistols, they shift from Nerf green and orange to their more familiar gun metal grey and brown. "And those are weapons the Doctor took from me and used in the Time War. I know, because I made them, a long time ago."

"And he's the Doctor again, not the War Doctor any more." That's her old Danger Belt he took from her, one of the artifacts from Rifts Earth that helped the Doctor survive the Time War - more honest weapons of the Traveller than any of the sleek devices of the Marshall. She smiles sadly.

With that, she rushes out to back up Smoke Alarm, staring at her phone to home in on her!
This message was last edited by the player at 13:59, Mon 20 Apr 2015.

James stares, watching Sereth's assumed persona produce the deadly-looking Draconian blade.  But he doesn't hesitate more than a moment before disappearing into a back room.  Less than a minute later, he returns, disengaging the trigger lock from a well-maintained thirty-aught-six.

As Sereth strides purposefully toward the barn where he saw Smoke Alarm disappear earlier, he finds a small feline circling his feet in agitation.  Once it realizes it has spotted him, it orients toward the door of the barn and hisses, the fur on its back ruffling up.

He opens the door, and the light from the late afternoon sun slants in.  Sereth and Trav catch sight of motion -- and they realize that it's the grapple-gun that Smoke Alarm picked up from Dev back on New Vegas, its hook affixed to an upper rafter and the gun itself arcing gently like a pendulum.  Smoke Alarm is nowhere to be seen.

James has his gun aimed low and away from Sereth, but he's moving like a hunter.  "When they came before, you couldn't always see them," he says.  "The Doctor told us they were -- what was it?  Like birds flying over a flat world, who could 'land' and just be out of nowhere."

The creature reacts with incredible speed to what is one of Smoke Alarm's finest shots ever -- it wrenches to one side just in time to keep the bolt from shooting straight into the not-eye in the middle of its not-face, but it still sticks in its brain-flesh and purple spills out of it in a big cloud.

It screeches again, then, and it must have really been angered by that (or something) because the tentacle-arms gripping Smoke Alarm let go, only to whip down at her again with incredible force.  One of them smacks hard into her side and bats her a short and slow and oozy distance, but she realizes that despite the throbbing pain, she's free!

And just then, like the light of Providence, the barn door creaks open behind it and Smoke Alarm sees several figures silhouetted there, with Leg-it Sereth in the lead, brandishing his kitchen-knife.

OOC:

I ordered the actions in part because I wanted to have the cause-and-effect of it lashing out at Smoke, figuring she would likely hit it with that roll.

21:44, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 16 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,5. Striking at Smoke Alarm: Strength(5) + Fighting(5) -2 (second action).
21:43, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Non-Euclidean Thing, rolled 19 using 2d6+13 with rolls of 1,5. Dodging Smoke's crossbow: Awareness(5) + Coordination(8).

Smoke takes half damage(2) to her Strength.  She also does 2 damage to the creature, and she can decide whether that affects its Strength or its Coordination.  It also lets go of her, so you have a bit more freedom in trying to evade it.

As Sereth and the others behind him start in, there is a brief shuddering in the air and a cry like a scalded bird of prey.  Through a ripple of haze, they get a glimpse of the creature menacing Smoke Alarm, a squat brainlike mass supported by a nest of writhing tentacles.  It's only there for a moment before it vanishes in a discontinuous cloud of static, but Trav gets the sense of something suddenly and forcefully aware of her.

OOC: Ingenuity + Knowledge roll for an idea of what you might know about this.

Smoke Alarm squealed in pain and anguish as the rat-tentickles smacked her about like a cat playing with a mouse, making her hurt all over. She couldn't keep fighting. Was she to be made unalive now? Would she go up the alleviator to the Great Pool in the Sky to meet all her lost friends? But who would put her on the scrap-heap and chant for her down here?

But then there was a ray of hope, as the barn doors opened (she hadn't closed them, had she?) and the lights came in. Smoke found she was free of the tentickles and the brain-thing, for now, and eyespied her friends in the doorway. There was Sereth and his kitchen-knife. He would protect her. Picking herself up, she scrambled across the barn floor to them, out of the slow-poke zone, stumbling and tripping and finally running. 'Help! Big muscle-brain's trying to eat me! And I didn't do nothing!' she swore.


OOC: I'll hurt its Strength. I'm down to 1 Strength myself. Smoke Alarm will Move to escape. Can the others even see Smoke Alarm?
This message was last edited by the player at 03:41, Tue 21 Apr 2015.

OOC: Nope.  Disturbing, isn't it?

Trav is running at a full tilt. The pistols spin up - VREEEMMM!!! with their chambers glowing green against possible chronoforms.

Trav draws a bead, but doesn't fire yet. What is that thing?

OOC: 02:32, Today: The Traveller rolled 25 using 2d6+14 with rolls of 5,6. Ingenuity 8+Knowledge 6 - Gribblies Menacing Smoke?

Even with a brief glimpse at the creature, Trav recognizes its kind, although it's just one of a whole constellation of species.  They're known as the Qplotl, that being the closest approximation anyone can make to their name, and they're a species of low-sapience N-dimensional scavengers, attracted to (and feeding off of) time spillage and complex spatiotemporal events.

The battlefields of the Time War were fat feeding grounds for the Qplotl, although they to preferred to feed opportunistically rather than stalking prey.  Usually.  Their ability to step around ordinary three-dimensional space and ride time vectors is the main thing making them dangerous.

From Trav's brief glimpse, this appears to be a small one....

This place then was the equivalent of a residence near a battlefield, with undischarged munitions and toxic waste. People like herself and Smoke must smell like bacon to this thing, considering they were vortex travellers.

"It's a Time Vortex scavenger. I'll scare it off," she says, as she aims.

She snaps off a shot. She'd rather scare the thing back up into the vortex than kill it. A concentrated multi-dimensional artron shot sizzles past it. As a Time Lord, she can see where it is, where her companions might not.

09:21, Today: The Traveller rolled 7 using 2d6 with rolls of 2,5. Coordination 4+Marksman 3+Turbopistol 2+Feel The Turn of the Universe 2 - Scare of Time Predator. Forgot to add in die roller, dice of 7+4+3+2+2=18 total
This message was last edited by the player at 13:25, Tue 21 Apr 2015.

"Stay safe, we'll be right back. I have to go help my friend." Stanley says to Marianne before following Trav, Sereth and James to the barn. He stays a short distance behind the ones with weapons, meaning he only gets a very brief look at the creature, the scavenger as Trav calls it.

He didn't put his blade away; but he looks around, his eyes narrowed.

"Where's. Smoke?"

He looked about, quite annoyed. Those few things he could't talk to, he could usually fight. Here was something he could do neither for.

"What's it done to Smoke?"

OOC: -If- he sees the creature; will attack. Otherwise, looking about for Smoke.

"I don't see her. Use your phone! I'll take care of this thing!" Travel scowls - If this thing had actually hurt Smoke Alarm, she'd never forgive herself. She squeezes off another shot.

The Qplotl whirls as Trav's turbopistol blasts sizzle past it.  The phased artron bursts dissolve the dimensional gap that allows the Qplotl to remain safely out of 4-space, and now it is visible to Trav and Sereth, as well as Stanley, bringing up the rear from the direction of the Collinswood house.  At least, for the moment.

And so is Smoke Alarm!  She's a short distance away from the Qplotl, and she feels the gluey feel to the air around her evaporate.  Sereth and Trav can see that she's rumpled and wild-eyed.

Trav senses motion beside her, as James raises his rifle, though he doesn't fire as yet.

OOC:

19:21, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Qplotl, rolled 16 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 4,4. Resisting Trav's scare: Resolve(4) + Ingenuity(4).

With a "Yes, But" I will strike off half of Trav's Presence (just 1, alas) from its Resolve.  However, this does bridge the dimensions for a bit, making the Qplotl and Smoke Alarm accessible to those of you stuck in 4-space, and vice versa.

Smoke Alarm can make a Coordination + Athletics against the critter to try to get out of its range and adjacent to the others before it can close dimensions on her again.  Anyone else interact with the Qplotl for now, which would include Sereth attacking it.

More concerned with cutting it down so it would -stop- hurting Smoke, he attacked, whilst barking a command.

"Stanley! Grab Smoke!"

OOC: 10:35, Today: Sereth rolled 18 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 6,4. Co-ordination + Swordfighting.

Yes! I rolled well!

Smoke Alarm had stop-signed in dismay. Her friends outlooked but did not eyespy, they outlooked right thru her like she wasn't even there. They were outlooking about,  asking where she was,  like a game of seek-and-hide, but she was totally unseen. A neat trick, but not if her friends couldn't eyespy her. 'I'm here. Eyespy! Pretty please!' she begged, feeling like everything was going down the plughole.

But then Traveller shot it and the slow-poke zone went away, all the gluey air gone. She was free as a mouse! Desperate and frantic, unbraveness icehot on her neck, feeling the rat-tentickles grabbing after her, Smoke Alarm sprinted to the side of her friends.


OOC: Running away,  18
09:50, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 18 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 3,5. coord (4) + athletics (4) + Kang Fu (2)

The Qplotl is just lunging after Smoke Alarm when Sereth leaps in its way.  It frantically tries to phase out, mid-way through its grasp, but it doesn't quite manage that before Legate Sereth's great sword slashes through several of its grasping tentacles and into the belly of the beast.

Smoke Alarm's heart skips a beat as she feels one of its long arms snag the bottom of her shoe, and the shoe comes off as the tentacle phases out.  Smoke Alarm stumbles and falls forward -- but Stanley is there to catch her before she can hit the ground.

OOC:

21:21, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Qplotl, rolled 15 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 4,2. Grabbing for Smoke Alarm: Coordination(8) + Fighting(5) -4 (3rd action).
21:20, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Qplotl, rolled 12 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 3,3. Blocking Sereth: Strength(3) + Fighting(5) -2 (second action).

Which is a most palpable hit: with the Qplotl's already degraded strength it's up to Sereth whether you want it to be flat-out lethal.

OOC: Trav will probably be pissed; but I'm gonna make it lethal.

Sereth's honor blade cleaves through the convolutions of the Qplotl's flesh, spilling violet smoke.  When it intersects the vertical slit of nothing through the middle of the creature's body, everybody feels space convulse around them.  Sereth is wracked by conflicting synesthetic impressions -- he feels the thing howling through the blade; he sees the heat of its agony -- and is flung away as the hulk splits apart.

As he wheels and gets to a defensive position on one knee, just in case, Sereth feels another electrical crackling and Trav's holo-projector gives up the ghost.  He's left there as his true self.  James Collinswood, to his credit, merely nods and calmly thumbs the safety on his rifle.  There are numerous scattered lumps of the Qplotl on the ground, but as everyone watches, they begin to slowly shrink into nothing, venting purple mist as they go, growing smaller as the creature's "rat" extrusions grew bigger during Smoke's first investigations.

Several moments of silence go by.  Then, through no easily explained chain of events, Smoke Alarm's shoe drops straight down from above to bounce off her head, and comes to rest in the straw, smoking slightly.

Sereth eyed Traveller; before turning to James, and bowed elaborately.

"SEreth of the Draconian EMpire, at your service."

Trav runs up to Smoke. "Oh, baby. Stan, over here please? Sereth, thank you." She immediately checks Smoke for her quantum integrity. "Shit." She's examining Smoke on a quantum and Artron level, while making room for Stan to treat her physically.

OOC: 00:25, Today: The Traveller rolled 17 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 1,6. Awareness 2+Science 6 +Sonic 2 - Checking out Smoke.

Trav doesn't seem too bothered by Sereth having killed what seems to have a vortex scavenger. She thumbs quickly some instructions on her phone, setting the TARDIS sensors to ping to them an alert for any more swarms of such things. "Keep an eye out, Chibi."

As she examines Smoke (while also holding her tight, grateful she's still alive), Trav explains, "James, your child is the last survivor of a terrible war my people were involved in... where everyone lost. The Doctor and I, we're the last of our kind. That thing there is a scavenger of a kind. I can't think of a safer, better pair of people for him to be with than you and Marianne. The Doctor and I? We have too many enemies. I have my own children, but I had to leave them, partially for that reason. I might go back to them, some day." She grows quiet as she continues to examine Smoke's artron field and temporal signature, making sure the creature didn't eat any of the Kang's timeline or infect her.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:31, Wed 22 Apr 2015.

Finally free of the big brain-thing, Smoke Alarm could at last calm down and stop fighting. It had been a very narrow fire-escape from something she could barely comprehend, and a deep sense of shock seeped in. She'd been badly beaten, almost made unalive. Wide-eyed and pale, Smoke Alarm stayed quiet as a mouse, letting Stanley and Traveller hug her tight. Mayhaps they needed to feel better. When her shoe popped out and dropped down onto her head, she clutched it tightly for the sense of something real.

'Stanley. My arm popped out again.' she said softly. It was clear that she'd taken a battering from the thing. 'You're not going to make me go back to the housepital, are you?'
This message was last edited by the player at 01:22, Thu 23 Apr 2015.

"I can't promise that, Smoke. That depends on how hurt you are." Stanley says with a faint smile, glancing at Traveller. He trusts Trav to spot any weird Time Vortex side effects of the attack, so he focuses on what he can actually see and learn from examining Smoke. It would help if he knew what that creature has actually done to her. He doesn't know what to look for, so he can't rule out anything. He quickly, but carefully begins examining Smoke Alarm. The first thing he notices is that Smoke Alarm is not as energetic as usual. That is a bad, or at least not a good, sign. Stan tests her reflexes and checks for internal bleeding as best as he can.

Stan asks Smoke a question, to see if she remembers what happened to her, but primarily to keep her talking and prevent her from slipping into unconsciousness without them noticing. "Smoke Alarm, can you tell me what you did before you got attacked? What did you do after you entered the barn?"

OOC:
Spending a SP for examining Smoke, don't want to miss something dangerous this stage:
22:19, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 28 using 4d6+8 with rolls of 6,3,5,6. Ingenuity(4)+Medicine(4)+SP(2d6).

This message was last edited by the player at 20:23, Wed 22 Apr 2015.

The Traveller's scan of Smoke Alarm doesn't reveal any serious quantum instability: her tissues are highly charged with artron flux at the moment, as is quite common when a person has made several unshielded dimensional translations, but that should have no long-term ill effects.

Stanley's examination reveals that Smoke does seem to have a number of distressed muscles and tendons around her shoulder; she also seems to have suffered significant bruising to the ribs.  However, there don't seem to be any broken bones, nor does she appear to be in danger of going in to shock.  Her other symptoms seem to mostly correspond to coming off an episode of severe anxiety, which seems understandable under the circumstances.

"Is there anything I can do to help, Dr. Newton?" James asks.

She loitered while Stan and Traveller outlooked her over, too shaken to squirm or complain. She mostly outlooked with eyespying across the barn at where the brain-thing had been, wondering if it was still there and would comeout back again.

'Nothing!' Smoke Alarm blurted out at Stan's question, on the defensive by reflex, in case this was just like the hospital all over again. But that wasn't why Stanley was asking, so Smoke relaxed and show-and-telled her story. 'I talked to the pussy-cat and footed in and found the air-conditioning was all weird, with hot spots and cold spots and thin spots and fat spots, and I tracked back and lost-and-found where it was outcoming. Then I eyespied a rat hole in the floor and outlooked down it and these rats cameout and they just sat there around it loitering, not running all around at random like proper rats. So I outlooked and did Science and gave them a piece of bread which they didn't want.' As Smoke Alarm show-and-telled her story, she regained a bit of her old liveliness and brave-and-boldness

'Then they started getting bigger but not biggerer at the same time, so I waved a straw at them, but it disappeared. Then some of the rats disappeared like a talkiphone and then they all jumped on me and grabbed me and took me into some kind of slow-poke zone where the rats were tentickles of the big muscle-brain thing and it grabbed me and make me a cowardly cutlet and tried to eat me like a Rezzie. But I was brave and bold as a Kang could be, and used my grabbler-gun to grab the beams and hold on and I used the talkiphone to show-and-tell you, and the talkiphone gave it brain-ache, so I kept doing that and it jammed the talkiphone, then I had to let go of the grabbler because it hurt too much, so I used my arrowgun to put a hole in the brain-thing and got away, then you all came, but you didn't eyespy me, then you did and Sereth chopped it up.' Smoke Alarm finally ended her breathless, punctuation-free account, and only then started to feel properly sound-and-safe, and shape-ship-and-sound, now she'd show-and-telled her friends and made it real.

Then she remembered. 'The cat! The cat knows! The cat tried to stop-sign me, and the muscle-brain tried to grab it too but it had tentickles of its own to make the brain's tentickles go away. Where's the cat?' Determined to lost-and-found the wise pussy-cat, Smoke Alarm pulled away, footing outside and outlooking about for the cat. 'Puss puss puss!' she called, which was apparently the language of cats.


OOC: I'm currently carrying 1 Coordination damage (down to 4) and 3 Strength damage (down to 1). How much of that was due to the slowness field? Does it go away now Smoke's out?
This message was last edited by the player at 06:47, Thu 23 Apr 2015.

OOC: All of it stays around for the moment, until Smoke Alarm gives herself a chance to rest and recover.  Technically it will take her a pretty long time to properly heal, but once she gets a good, long nap she'll just be "action hero" injured. :)

Despite her achy side Smoke Alarm is thrilled when, looking around outside the barn, she spots the cat, sitting calmly atop a wooden fence and licking its paws.  For some reason, she can't see its tentickles any more.

It cocks its head at Smoke Alarm.  "Miaow," it tells her gravely.

'You knew!' Smoke Alarm said, heedless of the fact she was getting talky with a cat who was not a cat. 'You have the knowhow of all this. You tried to stop-sign me. I thought you were just being a scaredy-cat. I should have listened to you.' she admitted.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:59, Fri 24 Apr 2015.

"Maybe you can get a glass of water for her." Stanley suggests to James. Having finished his examination he tells Smoke Alarm the good news. "Smoke, you won't have to go to the hospital. It will take a while for the pain to go away, but you'll be okay."

Smoke Alarm was rather distracted by the mystery of the cat right now, but was relieved to hear it. 'Okay.' she said, and went back to wondering exactly how she could get talky with the cat. Did it need a talkiphone?

James turns back to the Traveller.  "That's what the Doctor told us, more or less.  He had only been here a few days when they started showing up.  I only actually saw two of them, myself, but they did a number on the house, and we lost three from the stock."  He waves out at the fenced are where several cattle are getting their exercise.

"So finally he said he had to leave, to draw them away.  He said he was going to... oh, I can't remember it, I was never too sharp on the high-end science to start with and he told me that what he was doing wouldn't even be guessed at for a few centuries yet."  James sighs.  "It did seem to work.  We hadn't had any trouble, up till now.  Do you think that we're going to get more of those things, or that that one had just stuck around for some reason?"

"Wait a second," he says, as what Smoke Alarm has been saying seems to sink in.  "You think that Boots here was telling you that... thing... was in the barn?"  He indicates the cat.

'Yes!' Smoke Alarm insisted as if it was the most obvious thing ever. 'Boots eyespied the warning-signs, tried to make me 'ware the rats.' Smoke Alarm felt all dark and screwed up inside, regretful, wishing she'd done things differently. If only she'd done what the cat had said, she would have been okay. Curiosity had made the cat unalive, but cats had nine lives. Cats knew.

"Animals are smart, Mr Collinswood. They're sensitive to a lot of things we have to train ourselves to remember. I'm sure Boots here knows the land here just as well as anyone." Trav stands up, and scritches the cat. "Thank you for helping to keep my sweet Smoke Alarm safe, Mister Boots."

"I just came here to check something. I have no designs on your son. See, I know him in the future. I want to make sure that some people don't suborn him and make him into something terrible. Also, now, I know I'm not alone anymore." Trav brightens, and she balls her hands into fists, and does that little happy stomp that anyone who knew her back on Macross Island would recognize. "Smoke! Your Doctor? The one you gave the Fizzade to? He's un-unalive! He's changed his face, but we can find him! He made it out of the war! He made it, Smoke! Oh, he made it! Inexplicably, Trav feels this titanic geyser of happiness welling up inside of her. Things would be OK. If the Doctor was alive, the universe would be safer. The Doctor Lives.

"But first things first. James, Marianne, I'd like to check out your son. I want to make sure he's OK, and answer a few questions, for myself. May I, please?" She holds her sonic up.

If James and Marianne acquiesce, she carefully runs the sonic over the infant, taking a thorough full spectrum scan, similar to what she's done with adult Phillipe, Fortuna, Warlock and Evers. Her smile, as she's glowing.

"Now, this place needs to be made safe. Did the Doctor leave with you something that looked like a pack of TAROT cards? I give you my word, as a Time Lord, that if you would let me see them, that they shall be returned, and I shall only use that deck of cards if they wish to be used."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:42, Fri 24 Apr 2015.

Boots regards the Traveller enigmatically, but suffers himself to be scritched.


Marianne looks a question at James, but he says, "I think these people are all right.  More, I think there's a good chance they do know the Doctor indeed."  He glances at Sereth, as if that is all the explanation that needs.

"Em, why don't you stick with the Traveller and her friends, and I'll see what I can fix up for dinner.  If the lot of you would like," he adds.  By now the sun is starting to get pretty low in the sky.


Marianne shakes her head.  "I don't remember him showing us anything like that.  He did say he had something to do to try to protect this place, that he went into town to work on.  A... perception screen?  Something of that sort."

Not really wanting to go back inside the barn where she'd had the nightmarish encounter with the muscle-brain-thing, Smoke Alarm sat on the wooden fence, her hurty stretched-out arm tucked in her lap as she stroked Boots's soft fur. She couldn't find any tentickles now. Mayhaps she could only eyespy them in the slow-poke zone. Only the brain-thing's tentickles outgoed to the rats, but Boots's tentickles cameout of the cat. The cat was something more, a cat who was not a cat. But weren't all cats something more? She scratched the cat's head between the pointy ears.

At Traveller's happy shouting, Smoke Alarm slid right off the fence in surprise. 'The Doctor Doctor? Un-unalive? Like a zombie? ...Not like a zombie? Alive alive?' she worked out in amazement. She ran up to Traveller and jumped up and down with her in glee, sharing her happiness that a friend was a alive and sound and safe. The Doctor would put everything to rights.

"That's allright, then. I have some tools of my own. Don't worry, Marianne. As a mother myself, I'll do everything I can to make sure your little boy stays safe until he's ready to leave home. He's my kin, too."

As she scans Phillipe, she smirks to herself. That perception screen was almost strong enough to stop her. Boobie was nearby, relatively speaking. She needed to move fast. He and Sexy were slippery - she named his time machine that back when he had his second face and he nearly turned purple with embarassment - Zoe kept on tittering. But she thinks she knows how to contact him. She remembers fondly the games of hide and seek they played, back when he wore patchwork motley, then when he was a short guy, then with his 8th face.

This new one with the leather jacket. It was sexy. That boat had sailed, but still, a woman could imagine things.

OOC:22:51, Today: The Traveller rolled 22 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 1,5. Trav scans Baby Phillipe - Ingenuity 8+Science 6+Sonic 2 - Confirming suspicions about Paltree.



"Yes, yes, alive alive, not a zombie! I think so. He was here and he made this place disappear to protect baby Phillipe. You see, I think Baby Phillipe here is from Gallifrey, where I come from. That doesn't make James nor Marianne any less his Mom or Dad. The same thing happened to me, you see - I grew up as an Earth baby in a place called New Kentshire, on another Earth that had magic and big blue rivers of light, raised by a mommy and daddy not at all that different from James and Marianne. They raised me to be good and brave and kind. I had a 3 cats - Red and Daisy and Felix and a dog named Rosco. I'm sure that Mister Boots will take good care of Phillipe, won't you." Trav scans Mister Boots and the surrounding area perfunctorily, to make sure there are no problems.

"Now, we need to clean up this temporal spillage and deal with any time fissures, and reinforce the perception filter. If I had the TAROT, I'd subject this section of space time to a small Time Lock, so no time travelling meddlers could touch Phillipe's time line until he meets Stan and I. Maybe I can still do it, hm. Either way, I don't want anyone to mess with Phillipe and the Collinswoods."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:51, Sat 25 Apr 2015.

The smell of cooking burgers wafts in from the kitchen as Trav works.

As she takes deep scans of the baby's genetic and dimensional signatures, she finds, much as she did when she first met the older Phillipe, a predominantly human genetic structure with the interlaced grafts of Gallifreyan symbiotic nuclei and resonant structures to the TAROT analysis she was able to carry out.

Now that she has the right hunch to play, though, she also finds that the Gallifreyan sequences include long chains of nonactive, "junk" DNA -- except, of course, that there's no good reason for it to be present.  Any examination with human technology (after the completion of the Human Genome Project, that is) that would be available within Phillipe's projected lifespan would identify the splices as nonhuman, making Phillipe an obvious chimera.  So the junk sequences must be for some other purpose: when Trav subjects the information to some of the shortcuts and tricks that she remembers her old colleagues using, she finds the characteristic marker sequences used for tagging and identification by Paltreesalvanaron.  The old goat never could resist signing his work.

And when she knows that, she is able to read the header data planted within those sequences.  This is clearer with the baby than it was with the adult Phillipe, much less his subsequent incarnations, because the ravages of benign mutation and replication errors have had very little time to accumulate in his cells.  Decoding Paltree's record protocols, she is interested to note the designation Paltree must have put onto his project.  It's a very simple name: a single grapheme from Old High Gallifreyan:

Alpha.

OOC: This probably doesn't tell you a lot of substance you didn't already guess, but your description was vague, so if you want to refine what you're looking for, I'll either add to this or call for another roll.

Boots has snuck inside the house with the rest as Trav came in to conduct her examination.  When she does her casual scan of him, at first she thinks she failed to clear the pattern buffer from checking over Phillipe, and then she realizes that Boots, too, is walking around with some portions of his physiognomy extending out of 4-space, which is not very normal for most cats Trav has met.

Trav learned how to do this long chain human genome analysis not from anyone at the Prydonian academy on Gallifrey. She owes <a href=http://robotech.wikia.com/wiki/Emil_Lang/>Doctor Emil Lang</a>, the human father of Robotechnology, with whom she worked on proving the Zentraedi were indeed truly human. In 1999, she should be working with him on Macross Island and finishing deciphering the Zor's encryption of his master matrix. Breetai's fleet was on it's way with Dolza's much larger Armada behind them, and the UN Security Council of that world had given them permission to crack Zor's master matrix. She was of course doing this all under the nose of the Time Lords. It was the last great heroic act of the 1st Traveller and what had gotten a first exile from Gallifrey.

OOC: I'm more interested in whether or not Phillipe is originally an Earth native, if he's genetically Terran or Gallifreyan, and if he's James and Marianne's kid, taken away and changed, and given back, or a Gallifreyan native like Trav. Also, dammit, I can never make links work right in RPOL.

Trav casually asks, "Hey Smoke. Mister Boots - he's a good cat and your friend, right?""

Trav thinks that she and Mister Boots need to have a conversation, but that it will probably be on Mister Boot's terms.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:23, Sun 26 Apr 2015.

Smoke Alarm was outlooking at Marianne and the dolly-baby. So that was Phillipe and Fortuna and Evers. And Warlock. It wasn't what she'd been expecting. She'd been expecting some kind of very small Warlock, or mayhaps an octopuss, but it was just a little dolly baby. That baby couldn't be the Chief Architect of the Fists, could it? It was too small and floppy. It probably couldn't even run. It was hard to make the two match up. It was hard to blame the baby for what it would do.

Smoke shrugged. 'I spose so. You have to ask him. But Boots tried to warning-sign me about the rats. He's wise. He's like Puddy.' Smoke Alarm fluffed up the cat, and mewed 'Can you be talky with Traveller? Miao?'


OOC: Links never seem to work right in RPOL.

Trav squats in front the cat while Trav joins Smoke in scritching him. She makes a low whine-growl, having learned Cat during the Invid occupation of Garuda. <<"You're a very special cat, Mister Boots. Mind telling me a bit more about yourself?">> It was hard when you didn't have a tail.

<OOC 09:19, Today: The Traveller rolled 14 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 3,2. Trav talks to Mr Boots - 3 Presence+2 Convince+2 Charming+2 Psychic.>
This message was last edited by the player at 13:24, Sun 26 Apr 2015.

Delving further into Phillipe's genetics, Trav believes that she has confirmed that he's much more a human with enhancements added from Time Lord material, than vice versa.  She still can't remember ever discussing with Paltree or the other members of the War Council any project that would result in someone like him, but, she supposes, Phillipe's genetic composition would stand up under casual scrutiny: the Daleks, for instance, engineered a great many seek-and-destroy genetic weapons keyed to attack Gallifreyan DNA, but she believes any but the most sophisticated of those would have passed by Phillipe and left him unscathed.

OOC:

"Earth native" is a wildly open question here, but it definitely looks like his makeup is Earth-human based.  A comparison against the Collinswoods shows that Phillipe does not really seem genetically related to them, although his various superficial characteristics match up to theirs closely enough.

Boots gives a start and backs up a step.  He looks at Traveller.

<<"I'm caught, then, am I?  If you're using Language then you must know me for what I am.">>

He glances at Smoke Alarm.

<<"Well.  I knew that trying to warn your kitling away from the Qplotl might come to this.  Understand that I mean no harm to the humans here-and-now.  This is a deeply disturbed region of 4-space and I was sent here to observe, under Article 8, Section 7 of the Shadow Proclamation.">>

Smoke Alarm watched amazed as Traveller made cat noises – and the cat talked back. 'Traveller! You talky cat?'

Trav rolls over on the ground, like a cat exposing it's belly. She nods to Smoke, as she mewls like a cat in a sunbeam, she opines, "<<So noted. I'm the Traveller, of Gallifrey. A pleasure to meet you, and I mean you no harm. Please, don't run away. I'm here to clean up. Who sent you to observe? For saving my kitling, I'm indebted. Please introduce yourself fully? Unless you prefer 'Mister Boots'. Can you speak primate, so Smoke Alarm can join us? She's young, but an adult of her species, Kang, a subgenus of homo sapiens, very wise and clever.>>" Trav half expects the cat to run away - the Traveller is just as terrifying to some people as the Marshall was.

Trav rolls up onto her knees and makes a purrr, arching her back, wiggling her butt. <<"I've been away for a while. What is the Shadow Proclamation?">>

Trav looks sideways at Smoke - "I'm asking Mister Boots if he speaks english or Kang."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:57, Mon 27 Apr 2015.

Boots regards the Traveller patiently.

<<"Please, Traveller.  Such formality is not necessary, and, even if it were, we are peers; the Ninth Ritual Abasement might be considered ostentatious flattery.">>

He considers.  <<"I am afraid my larynx isn't properly constructed for English; however, if I align my perception properly....">>  There's a pause.  "Mew."  There.  I should be attuned to the paratelempathic translation field transposed from your time capsule now, so your fellow primates--  He notices Sereth observing the exchange.  "Ffft."  A thousand pardons: your fellow bipeds should be able to understand me tolerably, now.

(Smoke Alarm is momentarily surprised.  This is like how the Us talk!)

"Mrrrrrr...."  Now.  As I said, I am an agent and an observer from the guarantors of the Shadow Proclamation.  This compact was assembled by significant polities in the aftermath of what our collected apocrypha name The Last Great Time War, and while it undertakes a number of preventive measures to reduce conflict and harm to unspoiled cultures, its primary aim is to forestall the revival of forces with the power to threaten the continuum itself.  Boots eyes the Traveller sharply.  As such, extradimensional incursions and pseudo-temporal anomalies are of primary importance to our mission.  I'm sure you'd agree, on those grounds, that this particular family of livestock breeders merits close attention.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:55, Mon 27 Apr 2015.

Trav rolls over onto the grass. She nods. "I'm down with these efforts. I'm working on a parallel project, called the Parliament of Time. Please communicate to this 'Shadow Proclamation' these things - first, this family, and this planet, are under my protection. Neither are to be messed with." She lets that hang in the air for a moment.

Trav continues, after a beat. "Secondly, I'm fine with being a good neighbor, and I applaud leaving unspoiled cultures alone. I'm happy to help out. I'm sure most of your member polities probably want to kill me, but I'm still willing to abide by the local traffic laws. Can you transmit the Proclamations ordinance's to this device? I don't want to get any more people pissed off at me than I already have." She kippups and digs into her bag, getting out her Ipad. She reminds herself to have sharp words for Desryn and sharper words for Dorium Maldovar. They both certainly knew of the Proclamation and both had chosen not to tell her about it.

She sighs."Just so we're understood - I have no designs on conquering the universe or becoming a warlord. I just want to be allowed to travel in peace and to lend a hand where I'm needed. However, I claim exclusive right to deal with anything from Gallifrey or the Time War. My people are dead, and are to remain that way. I locked it all away, and my punishment for my crimes is to make sure that the Time War never occurs again. I'm your Proclamation's best pal."

"As for the temporal spillage, my people were responsible for the the mess that resulted in the Qplotl causing trouble. So, it's my responsibility to clean it up. I'm going to be cleaning up that up and reinforcing the perception screen around here. It's in our joint interests that these people in particular and humanity in general be left alone, yes? Also, I'm asssuming that discrete cleanup efforts are in line with the Proclamation's mandate. So, any data you can pass me on the local temporal spillage and 4th dimensional toxicity levels would be much appreciated."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:39, Tue 28 Apr 2015.

Smoke Alarm laughed out loud to eyespy Traveller being talky with the cat in all the catty ways. Then the talkiphone box gave her the knowhow of cat talk. It was like how the Us talked, she realised. After all, that was talkiphone boxes did, let people be talky with each other. Smoke Alarm kept laughing, finding this all completely funny.

But her laughs dried up as the talk got serious and yawny. Smoke grew concerned. That many big words from big fancypants bosses and architects about taking care of things was never a good sign. 'Are the Shadow Pro-clay-mation caretakers?' she wondered to Traveller.

Trav replies to Smoke: "Seems like." She sits cross legged on the ground, chin in palms, waiting for the reply of Mister Boots.

Is that a bad thing?  Boots looks at Smoke Alarm.  I am sorry I did not do a better job of keeping you out of harm's way.  It did take me some time to realize that you were a time traveler, and would naturally attract the Qplotl.

James appears back in the hallway from the kitchen.  "Got some burgers grilling and a salad together, if anyone's...."  He blinks.  "Ah... what is it that I've missed?"

"Our barn cat is also a space alien," Marianne informs him.

That's a somewhat parochial way to frame the matter, Boots points out.  I am also a five-dimensional intelligence officer, but I do try to fulfill my barn cat duties as well.

Meanwhile, Boots is putting his forepaws on Trav's iPad, for all the world looking like an ordinary cat doing a keyboard dance.  You have what you asked for, he says.  You may not have known of us, but we know of your history.  He gives Trav a meaningful look.  All of you, that is.  We look forward to responsible cooperation in the future.  Well.  And the past, of course.

A grunt.

"It appears, this place is already protected. Do what you came here to do; and let's go on. I don't fancy trying to talk around the next group of people if we get into trouble again. From what I understand, alien contact still has not happened."

'Well, mayhaps if you'd been talky then, I could've wared the rats more.' Smoke Alarm pointed out. It was different when Boots was only a cat, but since Boots was a cat who was not a cat but a five-dimensional intelligence officer, she had to wonder if mayhaps he could've tried harder.

She jumped up at James's announcement, exclaiming 'Hamburgers!'

Trav smiles as she stands up. "Thank you, Mister Boots. May the rats you catch be plump and fat, but be merciful." Any time problems were solved without fighting was a win. "I still have to do clean up here, Sereth, but I'd be delighted to have dinner. I think you'd be delighted that things were solved in a dignified and diplomatic manner without yelling and screaming. Yes, hamburgers! You'll get to experience terran beef, no doubt farm raised and free ranged. After dinner, I'll make things so that there aren't any more brainy monsters, and James and Marianne can raise their son in peace."

Trav snorts when Sereth makes his comment about "alien contact." "Sereth baby, this place is crawling with "aliens", as she makes quotation marks with her fingers. "The 21st century, which is only 7 years away from here, is when everything changes. This Earth is famous for it's extraterrestrial expat population. If you weren't up to anything bad, a photo of you would be written off as a bad made for TV movie and UNIT would just give you a stern talking to and then leave you be."

Trav smiles as she examines with her IPad the information that Mr. Boots has given her. She opens up another window.


This message was last edited by the player at 02:59, Wed 29 Apr 2015.

"I guess that UNIT is also very good at covering things up. Before I met Trav, I never would have believed someone claiming that there are aliens living on Earth." Stanley remarks. "Maybe those aliens are very good at hiding or camouflaging themselves. Like Mr. Boots or Sereth's holographic disguise."

James' hamburgers turn out to be even more delicious than Smoke Alarm expected.  She suspects that they might not have been made with dog and mouse, like the ones that Safety Rail used to make for everyone back in the Towers, but maybe even with real hams.

Trav's scans suggest to her that the dimensional instability left in the wake of the original Qplotl incursion (and, according to the Collinswoods, the Doctor's effort to lure them away) might require some equipment from the TARDIS or perhaps a phased projection of Sweet Boy's shields to further stabilize.  The group has spent long enough checking over Phillipe and discussing matters with Boots that the sun has gone down, in a magnificent violet display, by the point that it's time to think about heading back into Livingston.

One other thing Trav notices when she checks what she can do about the perception filter is that it's not being generated near the ranch: the epicenter of the field is back in town somewhere.

'Ham!' Smoke Alarm squealed as she got her hamburger, a product of watching Ponyo and other Studio Ghibli films in the TARDIS rec room. Then she took the top off the burger, using her fingers to steadily dismantle it layer by layer, so she could eyespy inside, to be sound and safe. She took a tiny bite of each piece too. The Rezzies had gifted the Kangs with foods, some mayhaps being friendly, but some had contained rat sprinkles that left a Kang feeling tummy-ached, or yawny, or unalive and ready-steady for the cook-pot. They'd learned to 'ware all strange foods that they'd not scavenged or shoplifted or shot themselves.

Finally deciding the burger was shapeship and sound, she reassembled it and tucked in, satisfied as to its genuine yummyness. 'Ham!'

Trav takes a moment with Marianne and James, outside, as the sun gloriously sets. "I am so sorry that my people's trouble and war have intruded into your lives, but The Doctor wouldn't have left Phillipe in your hands unless he felt that this was absolutely the best place for him to be. I've seen the evidence of the absolutely great job you guys do - he does go through some hard times, but he holds, he doesn't break. He's going to do amazing, great things for people." Indeed, if not for the moral center that Marianne and James gave him, the encounter with Warlock may have gone much, much worse.

If either of them are carrying a 90s style clamshell phone, she asks to see it. She takes out her sonic, and makes the appropriate adjustments. "There. If you need me, don't hesitate, call."

Trav looks a little nervous, as she smiles, shyly. "May I hold him, please?"

Marianne looks a little apprehensive for a moment, but then she smiles, and carefully passes baby Phillipe over to Trav's arms.

As Trav holds the little form, she can feel a hint of the history and the future stretching out around him: the inheritance of eons passed on to this one tiny life and bound up in such potential -- potential for good or, she has to admit, for evil.  She has a few more pieces of the puzzle, but not so much about the why.  What was Paltree thinking?  Why did he pick Earth's children to carry that legacy ahead?  Why not invest in the Draconians, the Silurians, perhaps the Martians?

On the other hand, there was the Doctor.  And that, at least, was so like him: handing a child with such great importance off to two essentially random humans -- and all because, on a wet and gloomy night, they had shown themselves to be kind.

Perhaps that is all the answer that is needed.

Now the baby was being passed around, Smoke Alarm hopped up eagerly and outlooked over Traveller's arms, eyespying the tiny little dolly-baby with wide, amazed eyes. It really was very small and floppy, and Smoke Alarm sposed it would take a very long time to crawl through the air-conditioning ducks. It couldn't stand or jump or shoot an arrowgun. But it still seemed a bit too big to fit inside anyone's tummy. And yet, as small and as feeble and as alien as the baby was, it was so cute and adorble, like a puppy or kitten. The Kang was fascinated by this dolly-baby. She reached over to touch the tiny little fingers, with the itty-bitty fingernails. 'This will be Warlock?' she asked, frowning.

Of course, because the Traveller had visited several Earths, she knew that this particular thread of homo sapiens were indomnitable. Their rise from the ashes on Rifts Earth, their unimaginable bravery and goodness during the Robotech wars. Zor had trusted them with the unimaginable power of Protoculture and Robotechnology. Trav even suspects that Paltree may have accessed the APC net and had gotten hold of some of her and the Doctor old records. No, there was absolutely no question as to why these people were worthy, nor this couple - Trav had seen the first hand evidence, in the weird time wobbly way. Boobie had made absolutely the right decision.

She kisses baby phillipe on the forehead. "Auntie will be seeing you." She wrinkles her nose. "And someone needs changing!"

In response to Smoke Alarm's question: "This is Warlock. Now you know why we had to not throw punches and fight with peace back there? Here, hold him like this. Be careful now you do so, put your left arm around him like this, and hold his head like so, that's it. You were once like this. If you find someone you care for, you can have a child like this. I was a mommy, Smoke Alarm, and you can be one too. Phillipe, this is auntie Smoke Alarm. Please grow up to be as brave and bold and good as she is!"
This message was last edited by the player at 02:32, Sun 03 May 2015.

What? Smoke Alarm was startled and, well, alarmed as Traveller passed the baby onto her. Stiff-armed and not feeling very brave and bold at all, Smoke Alarm did exactly what Traveller showed her, cradling the little round head in her left elbow, and putting her right under the body. The baby was so fragile, like a china vase. Smoke felt so very unbrave; what if she had to jump or run, or dropped him? But, mayhaps, they were sound-and-safe here. She'd already grabbed up Puddy to show-and-tell the baby to, so the worn and ragged stuffed cat outlooked in on the dolly-baby. And then, the baby smiled like a mouse. 'He smiled!' Smoke Alarm cheered, heart jumping. It was weird; just outlooking at the baby made her feel all tingly inside. The baby didn't do anything, but was so fascinating anyhow.

'I can be a mummy? Have a dolly-baby?' she wondered, hardly believing it. She wasn't sure she wanted one, but didn't think it would be so bad now. If only she had the knowhow what to do with one. 'Wait, you can change him? Like how he changed into Warlock? Like Time Lords change?'

Trav passes Phillipe back to Marianne. "Well, babies change all on their own, it's called growing up. That's what everyone does, you and I were like this." Trav carefully deflects that whole thing - that's business between Phillipe and his folks. "We can go all over that back at Sweet Boy. Now, I think we've bothered Marianne and James long enough, they've been fantastic hosts. I think we're done here. Marianne, James, thank you for everything." She carefully hustles her crew out, looking to Sereth for help mostly with  Smoke Alarm.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:02, Sun 03 May 2015.