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.