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.