Despite her confidence, Smoke Alarm isn't fooled into thinking that these Hunters are anything to toy with.  They're as fleet as a Kang and strong and wily besides -- and they out number her, two to one.  Or two to however many Cheetah equivalents a gang of kitlings comprise.

(When the in-betweens came to Paradise Towers with their teachers and their books, after the Doctor and Mel had visited and helped the Kangs put the Towers to rights, Smoke Alarm had never earned a certificate for fractions.)

The one that Smoke Alarm shoots at seems to anticipate her and bounds high just as she looses the drill-bit, and the prized missile goes ricocheting off into the clutter somewhere as Smoke Alarm pelts away.

OOC:
How many Hunters are there and how far are they from the barricade?
</quote>

OOC: Tbere are just the two.  Two is plenty.  The barricade isn't a really long distance away, and with Smoke's running she can probably make it in a turn.  Thought the Cheetahs are speedy too, go figure. Let's say that if you can beat them in a running check, you'll get a free action to do Something before they make it.

21:15, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 18 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 4,5.  Dodging Smoke: Awareness(4) + Coordination(5).

OOC: I think we got our wires crossed or are picturing this differently. Smoke retreated to behind the barricade in post #831, before the trap and crossbow shot. Anyway, I'll run with it this way – literally, in fact.


Not stopsigning to eyespy where her arrow flew off to, Smoke Alarm turned and footed it, all-speed, running and skipping down the carrydoor, her Kangly confidence growing unbold. This was all outgoing wrong! First they'd dodged the mouse-trap, then they'd dodged the arrow, now mayhaps she couldn't dodge them! She felt icehot spikes running up her back, like the Cheetah People were already clawing at it. Run! she urged herself, Run like a tap!


OOC: Running away, 14, bah. The dice-roller doesn't want me to win this.
19:25, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 14 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 1,2. coordination(5) + athletics(4) + kang fu(2).

For Kalath though, things were going as planned. Hopefully Ulvar could deal with one, and she'd make sure they ran straight into the trap they'd set. Just to make sure of it; she shot an arrow at the injured one, just to keep their attention, just before dashing back towards the trap. They'd made the trap well; it should have some stopping power to get through the Cheetah's hide.

OOC:

00:32, Today: Kalath rolled 14 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,3.  Co-ordination + Marksmanship.
Probably won't hit though it is down 3 co-ordination; and if it does unlikely to get through. But it should keep their attention.

Note, if they have ranged weapons out she'll just run not fire a shot first.

Smoke Alarm is perhaps not as prepared as she'd have hoped to be for the speed of the Hunters: she'd meant to scamper back to the barricade well ahead of them, but they launch themselves after her, careening off the walls instead of slowing to corner.  And when she reaches the barricade, one of them is still close on her heels.

Tiddles and Sunny and more unnamed kitlings bound along beside her....

OOC:

21:25, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 15 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 4,2.  Chasing Smoke Alarm: coordination(5) + Athletics(4).
21:25, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 18 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 3,6.  Chasing Smoke Alarm: coordination(5) + Athletics(4).

With Run Away! you are still out of arm's reach of the nearer Cheetah and 2 areas away from the farther one. 

Kalath hears a muffled thwack and a snarl as her arrow hits its mark, but she knows that the Hunters are pumped up on bloodlust now, even as the same song starts to sing through her own veins.  She certainly has their full interest now -- and for the one that she's injured, perhaps enough rage to make it careless....

OOC:

21:36, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 12 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 3,3.  Chasing Kalath: Coordination(3) + Athletics(4).
21:35, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 10 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 1,5.  Dodging Kalath: Awareness(4) + Coordination(2) -2 (second action)
21:35, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 12 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 5,1.  Chasing Kalath: Coordination(2) + Athletics(4).<darkblue>

Note that in your first Cheetah'd out stage you now have +1 Coordination and +1 Athletics.

You will want to roll those to keep your distance from them.  Also, for your hit that "bounced", I will give you a +2 for the next action which is non-physical in nature, against the one that you, personally, wounded.

She then ran. She needed to lead them to the trap, to make entirely sure she held the upper hand here.

OOC:
14:52, Today: Kalath rolled 17 using 2d6+11 with rolls of 4,2.  Co-ordination (6) + Athletics (5) + Running (2) - 2 (2nd action).
Forgot about that - that put me roll to hit at a 15 if that makes a difference. Should be no problems in keeping out of reach for now at least.

In the TARDIS, Stanley is anxiously watching the controls as the humming from the console grows louder, and higher in pitch.  It's almost imperceptible at first, but gets steadily more difficult to ignore.  For all that, though the readings on the console are remaining within the margins that Trav pointed out to him -- they're repeatedly getting vaguely closer to the red zones, but every so often they do drop sharply again, like a buildup of power was vented, or a release valve got sprung.

Then, abruptly, everything goes to hell.

Patterned panels erupt in red and blue and mauve light all across the console, controls that Trav might have pointed at once or twice and tagged with some incomprehensible Latinate polysyllables.  More startlingly, the TARDIS central console works up and down with its characteristic baleful groaning,  Once, twice, three times, each with a stutter and pause at the bottom of its oscillation.

Stanley barely has time to react to that and the fact that the doors are open when the holo-project dome all around the vault of the control room winks out, schools of animated fishies replaced by fathomless black.

From out of the black come shimmering golden rectangles, tumbling end over end toward Stanley and Olyesa until each in turn comes to hang motionless on the notional "screen".  They continue at appear and fall toward the console, each coming to a halt face-on and slowly beginning to fill up the blackness.

Olyesa stares up at the slowly filling dome in terror, and she stumbles around the console to clutch at Stanley's arm.  "D-doctor Newton?" she gasps.  "What is it doing?  What does it mean?"

On the psychic plane where the Traveller and the Cheetah webwork are feeling out each others' defenses and probing for an opening, both striving powers are shocked by a Ξραση! and a Ξραξκλε! as coruscating light bursts across the mindscape.

Between Trav and the Cheetah-force arc a torrent of burning rectangles, flashing past in elaborate ever-evolving formations.  Squadrons of the gleaming tiles split out of the armada, arraying themselves at intervals around the Traveller and around the Cheeath-force.  Each grouping arranges itself as on an invisible plane, and then each starts to shift and move with increasing speed.

Every group is arranging and rearrange itself into regular, geometric patterns: each will set itself into an array, hold itself there for the barest moment, then shift and writhe and arrange itself again, over and over and over.  Trav finds the whole thing dizzyingly mathematical, and distressingly familiar.  She should recognize it; it should be right on the tip of her mind....

'Paw it! All speed!' Smoke squealed at the kitlings.

The Hunters on her heels, Smoke Alarm footed fast down the carrydoor. The bearicade was in eyespy! This was no mere stack of boxes; Kangs built their box-forts all shapeship, from good solid scrap and blueprinted to be uncrossable mousetraps for all but fast-footed Kangs.

Veering left and right to confuzzle the Hunters, Smoke Alarm suddenly skipped off the wall and flipped sideways over the bearicade, evading the threads in just the right way to leave her sound-and-safe, while the Hunters behind should outgo tripping through a scrapheap.


OOC: I'm not sure how to handle our traps. Since I'm running through them too, the existing Stunt system seems a fair fit, though it doesn't seem to include damage. Difficulty 18, a Success for Smoke.
14:21, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 21 using 2d6+13 with rolls of 5,3. Stunt: Difficulty 18: coordination(5) + athletics(4) + jumping(2) + kang fu(2).

"I...I don't know. I've never seen it do this before." Stanley replies, trying to figure out what just happened. He doesn't understand much about how the TARDIS actually works, though, and if it didn't fix itself there wasn't much he could do. "It sort of looks like the system is resetting itself. I guess that, for some reason, the TARDIS tried to move, but couldn't and something got damaged."

Despite how Trav always talked about her time machine, he still thought of the TARDIS as a vehicle. A very complicated, alien machine, which means that the golden rectangles could be the countdown to self-destruct or something equally disastrous. He looks at the doors leading outside. "Olyesa, just to be sure we should check where we are and how Trav is doing. The exit should still be there."

OOC: Mousetraps it is.

Two days ago, during a particularly fruitful excursion of urban "shopping", Smoke Alarm had happened upon a rare find: a big bin with a grimy sign reading CLOTHES DONATION DROP-OFF.

Not only did the bin turn out to contain several choice new accessories for Smoke Alarm's ensemble, but the pull-down hopper was affixed with a heavy spring to pull the hopper shut.  This both served to keep the clothes relatively intact over the years (wearing them into the shower in the talkiphone box should get rid of the mildewy smell nicely) and gave Smoke Alarm an idea for making a handy-dandy addition to the Institute defenses.  Twenty minutes with a screwdriver and rather more time with bolts, tripwires and careful adjustment of the spring coil later, Smoke Alarm had set up the first barrier in her gauntlet -- which she hurdles through neatly, tucking into an easy roll and coming up on her feet amid a cluster of kitlings.

The Cheetah People on her tail are fast and nimble.  What they are not, relative to Smoke Alarm, is compact.  One of them triggers a tripwire and the spring releases with a K-TANG!, sending a heavy beam scything through the hallway in Smoke Alarm's wake.  One of them catches only a glancing blow from that, breaking its momentum and giving Smoke some breathing space, but the other is smacked full in the chest and smacked flying down the hall.  When it smashes into the ground, its head bounces off the tile and it does not move.

OOC: I'll say that the one that got a Bad failure is stunned and won't be a problem at least as long as this sequence goes on --it probably has cracked ribs and a concussion.  The second one just takes 1 wound after its Tough, and we can call that against Coordination to make things slightly less dangerous for Smoke Alarm.

"Uh.  Sure.  I guess?"  Olyesa doesn't sound sure.  What she does sound like is that the already bewildering TARDIS looks like it has turned, if not precisely hostile, then a good deal more strange and unwelcoming than it was.

She looks to Stanley for his next move.  Most of the TARDIS interior is untouched, and the exit is clearly accessible -- it's only the overhead display that has changed.  But the console's power sounds are more uneven than they were before, reminiscent of a car that's struggling to keep itself running on a frigid winter's morning.

'Icehot!' Smoke Alarm whooped as she eyespied the mousetrap go off in the Hunters' faces. With one Hunter down for ticktock, and the other hurt and slowpoked, Smoke Alarm hurriedly reloaded her arrowgun. She shot it just as hurriedly at the standing Hunter, then footed it down the carrydoor, away from the scrapheap that had been the bearicade.


OOC:
Fight: shoot the remaining Hunter, attack 12, damage 2/4/6 to Coordination
19:50, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 12 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 1,1. coordination(5) + marksman(3) + crossbows(2).
Move (second action): away.

Stanley listens to the sounds coming from the console and hesitates, but in the end he decides that going outside is still the best option, at least for now.

The pair of Hunters pursuing Kalath are well and truly angry now, but she has been methodical in her own hunt: both of them have lost a step to their injuries, and it looks like Kalath will be able to outdistance as least as far as the next surprise that she has in store for them.

But in the middle of the chase, Kalath feels something twitch and snap inside her head, momentarily.  It's only for an instant -- but she feels the Call that is lending her strength and clarity shaken, for that brief moment punctured by uncertainty and confusion.  It's from nothing that her external senses are telling her, and when it passes her intensity has returned, full force, so she has no idea what caused it.

She does see that the Hunters on her trail flinch in that same instant.  So whatever it was, may have come from this common link that the Traveller has said they all share.  Something that the stranger has done, perhaps?

OOC: I think all the die rolls made thus far are aligned, so you can plan your next action.

You and the Hunters are equally affected by the whatever-it-was, so the mechanical effect is a wash.

Smoke Alarms shot goes well wide of the Cheetah racing after her.

From the corner of her eye, Smoke Alarm sees the Cheetah stumble over its feet momentarily, although its native grace serves it well enough to recover almost at once.  She sees the same electric twitch run through all the kitlings pacing them, too, and Sunny actually loses his footing and rolls head-over-tail for about five feet, before his claws scrabble on the floor and get him moving again.

OOC:

21:32, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 16 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 4,3.  Dodging Smoke: Awareness(4) + Coordination(5).

Not sure what your next course of action will be.  There will be another round of running, and from all the Cheetah-connected individuals getting affected by whatever-it-was you can take a +1 for your running roll, or a +1 for however you attempt to resolve the chase next.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:42, Mon 06 Mar 2017.

Stanley and Olyesa retreat through the open door of the TARDIS along the path of the big snaking power cable, as the holo-display continues to be blanketed in glowing oblong shapes.

The cagelike device that Trav built, and subsequently buckled herself into, holds her suspended, and thrums audibly with power.  Trav herself is staring almost unseeingly, her lips parted and her head hanging back in seeming ecstasy.  Stanley is reminded of how the Mailman's prisoner Kuvas was encased in a not entirely dissimilar device.  Seeing Trav like this also brings back forcefully to him the fact that most of the time, she might seem like an ordinary person who snarks and wisecracks and weeps and rages; nevertheless, she is not human, and he just might understand a lot less of her than he normally thinks.

Olyesa looks at Trav, and worriedly back to the TARDIS.  "Is she supposed to be like that?  If there was anything wrong -- anything but your vehicle being so strange -- how would you know?"

Cats didn't normally trip over their own paws – or when they did they tried to act all cool about it – and especially not all at the some ticktock. 'That's it! Trav's breaking the Cheater sickness. She's setting Kestartes to rights!' she told the kitlings, translating for them 'Snappy Tom time!'

Making use of the ticktocks Trav gave her, Smoke Alarm quickly loaded another bolt and fired again at the Hunter's leg, with betterer aim this time.


OOC: I'm a bit short on time and energy these days (had a bad cold, followed up by a lot of work), so right now I'll just try to shoot him again. I really want to just stick him, and the diceroller's protecting this guy. So I attack for 17, including that +1 bonus. Damage 2/4/6 to Coordination.
20:55, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 16 using 2d6+10 with rolls of 5,1. coordination(5) + marksman(3) + crossbows(2).

"Good question." Stanley replies, looking back at the TARDIS. He is trying to spot some sign of external damage if it is there. "I can't help Trav win her psychic battle, the only thing I can do is look for any sudden changes in her vital signs. It is not foolproof, definitely not, but if something goes wrong it is more likely to result in some form of shock. At least that is what I hope."

Cheetah Viruses don't do math. She does.

Trav will use the distraction to integrate and change the emotional vector of virus,to change the story and the tune, exposing herself and taking the risk. All has been planned for, this is expected. Now is the time.  There's a civilization that needs saving, now is the time to make the call. Even further, she grabs the math that's swirling around them, with utter confidents. 6 voices sing out,You might howl, sweet Kitling, but do you dance and sing? You can't dance if you hunt. There is so much more than hunger and the hunter. I do not hunt nor am I hunted. I travel. Come walk with me, such things I have to show you! The stars await!"

She makes the Cheetah Virus part of herself, and frees it from it's hunger. Like Roy Fokker always said, Go big or go home.

OOC: Trav makes her move. She's exposing her heart to the Virus to change it. Presence+Science+4 Story points, so, 4+6=+5D6, vs immeasurable risk?
This message was last edited by the player at 13:36, Fri 17 Mar 2017.

Smoke Alarm's shot tags the following Cheetah Person in the leg, and it lets out an anguished mewl, but scarcely seems to slow down in its pursuit.  Smoke is getting deep within the heart of the Institute by now, hazardously close to the laboratory where the Traveller and her talkiphone box are stationed.  The Cheetah has lost a step, but it still seems like it's a tossup as to whether her or Smoke are faster, though Smoke supposes she knows the carrydoors better....

OOC: I think I traced back to the last action OK.  It may not end up mattering.

19:04, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 16 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,5.  Dodging Smoke: Awareness(4) + Coordination(4) -2.
19:03, Today: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Person, rolled 15 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,4.  Chasing Smoke Alarm: coordination(4) + Athletics(4).

So you hit, but Tough is difficult to get past with a glancing blow.

With the Traveller's whole being laid open to the power of the Cheetah's call, it fairly leaps at the perceived vulnerability.  The array of forming patterns between Trav and that force are smashed aside as it thunders into her.

Only to discover that Time Lords, on occasion, are bigger on the inside.

Rage and desire and a gaping, fathomless hunger boil up inside of Trav as she feels herself bound into the network.  But as the Cheetah consumes her, she feels it greedily devour many things that she considers the finer points of her nature, elements that sing and roar joyfully with parts of the Cheetah-being that have always been present, but are most often buried beneath the red tooth-and-claw of survival.

Curiosity.

Playfulness.

Wonder.

She feels the web binding all the children of the Cheetah shiver and hum with these things, and for some timeless instants they all sing that song.  Fire races along the web, lighting these impulses everywhere it touches, and if the power and need of the Call is not broken by this sudden shower of feeling, it is, at least, tempered by the shock that there are deeper and higher things to be found in the universe.

Trav feels stars exploding in her mind, and it feels very like the surge of artron potential that comes before one of her lives ends and another begins, but it does not quite reach that end: she collapses back into herself, dazed as the Cheetah entity that is now turning slow astral cartwheels and beginning to excitedly pursue its own tail.

OOC:

The roll for the Cheetah entity was its last turn, a defense you hadn't properly "attacked" for.  Don't worry about the fact that it was a pretty good roll "saved up" for a long time.

18:58, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 34 using 7d6+10 with rolls of 6,3,2,3,1,4,1.  Putting the whammy on the Cheetah Entity.  (You missed a +4 for Psychic)

22:40, Thu 16 Feb: The Guardian, for the NPC Cheetah Gestalt, rolled 20 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 6,5.  Resisting action from Trav: Presence(6) + Resolve(5) - 2.

Your "damage" is your Presence * 1 1/2, or 6, which is better than its effective Resolve.  You effectively paid for that by bringing in the new player, of course.  New post for that.

As Kalath pelts away from the Cheetah on her tail, sprinting for her next prepared booby-trap, she feels the pressure of the Call in her head, the power and hunger she is channeling, burst and flower inside her to something vastly different.

It has all the exhilaration that it lent her when it has taken her before, when she took its strength to fight and to run.  But there is an entirely different sense to it: a sudden knowledge that her life so far, narrowed down to her very specific place in the grinding survival machine that is the Stronghold, that is Kestartes City itself, has been unspeakably tiny.  From her encounter with the Traveller and Smoke Alarm and Stanley, she sees that there are incredible horizons out there -- and even if the Call has not left her entirely, if it still has the power to possess her if she gives in to anger or hunger or fear, she sees that can be an incredible strength to her.  If she takes the chance.  If she pursues, not something so banal as meat, but something as wide as the universe.

The shock of this dizzies her, and for a moment that fills her with alarm as she is still in a race for her life.  But she sees that the Cheetah in pursuit has stumbled and fallen, perhaps struck by the same impact as she -- though, in its case, it seems like there is a much greater part of its being that this new sensation has crashed in to fill.

As Stanley and Olyesa consider the Traveller, they suddenly see her strain and arch within the device, shaking like a person in the throes of a fit.  Stanley fancies he can see wisps of a glowing golden energy leak out of Trav.

Before he can make a real move to intervene, though, the seizure seems to pass, and Trav sags and relaxes inside her restraints.  There's a curve of a satisfied smile on her face, even if the blissful picture is slightly marred by the bit of drool from the corner of the mouth.

However, when he looks back through the open door of the TARDIS, Stanley sees that the pattern filling the holo-dome has not stopped.  From somewhere within the bowels of the craft, he hears the deep tolling of the bell, that he has heard just once before and which Trav assured him meant something is very, very wrong.

Hanging in the void and suffused by the impact of her experience, Trav is vaguely aware of the Cheetah-presence snuffling and batting experimentally at her hand, but she is disturbed to realize that the forming arrays and shapes around her haven't ceased to resolve themselves.  Indeed, they are growing more and more complex, different colors and sizes of shapes started to evoke pixellated images.

And then, around her, she starts to hear a ringing, resonant laughter.  The sound is male, a warm tenor.  And she sees that the patterns in her field of vision are beginning to break into finer and finer resolution until they start to comprise a face.

It, too, is male, fine-chiseled and handsome, reminiscent of someone she can't yet place.  It is humanoid.  Mostly.  Swept-back horns curve close through its wavy hair, and when its eyes blink open they are full of stars.

"Well, well."  The voice is rich and thrilling.  "That was a near-run thing, was it not, my dear one?  I should think you were not far from opening your eyes an entirely new woman altogether.  You do spend yourself so very freely for all these others, my dear Traveller.  These mayflies.  These pets."