"We did." Cherrywinks explained, frowning all the while, shaking his head like the whole business could have been avoided.

"You didn't do well in class. You didn't get the movie part. So Ralph fell away, and I was there to pick him up. Pick him up, and cut his head off." Cherrywinks explained. He tossed the head towards Shawn and it landed on the floor in front of him, past the steps. It rolled over and over, bits of hair and matted blood sticking on the floor.

Cherrywinks shrugged, like he had just thrown a soccer ball instead of a head.

"I don't know everything." He confessed.

"Just know what I can find."

Numbly, Shawn bent over and closed the eyes on Ralph's head. Then he looked down the stairs at Mr. Cherrywinks and started walking towards him. Even he wasn't sure what he'd do when he reached the bottom. Run? Cry? Beg? Attack? None of them seemed to encompass the immense pressure that seemed to be building up behind his emotional dam.

"**cough**...**cough**...**cough**" Mr. Cherrywinks raspy fit broke the long silence, between the long stairs between them.

Shawn had a deeply worrying sense that the had experienced at least part of this before.

"Do what I can kid. If I don't, the proprietor doesn't get paid and everyone in the Circus suffers." He explained.

Shawn closed the distance between the two, though it seemed to take forever. When Mr. Cherrywinks spoke, Shawn paused in thought, and his hands balled into fists. He rushed the clown, but instead of attacking, he simply grabbed a handful of his outfit and started weeping into it. Not long, wracking sobs, but more an endless stream of tears that he couldn't seem to stop. He legs buckled, and soon holding onto Mr. Cherrywinks was the only thing that kept him from falling over.

Shawn buried his face into the musty-smelling rags that were Mr. Cherrywink's garments. a A salty tang and the smell of mothballs Shawn's nostrils with each breath that he drew in between sobs.




"You want to kill me kid?" He asked in between Shawn's sobs, the Clown's body, standing there lifelessly, making no effort to harm nor comfort Shawn, completely unmoved by Shawn's reaction, by Shawn's emotion.

"Or you want me to take you under my wings...*cough*...bring you closer into the Circus. Give you someone to show you the way, someone who will let you know what needs to be done. What needs to happen." he posited.

"**cough**...**cough**...**cough**" Mr. Cherrywinks finished, with a dry, hacking cough. A dead cough it sounded like. But then again, looking at him and seeing him this close, Shawn could see it would be hard to judge the Clown as anything other than some kind of walking corpse. A demon from a distant, old place. Far, far removed from anything remotely familiar to Shawn and his life. Or at least Shawn's life before that fateful day on that road with Mr. Sellick.

Eventually the tears trailed off, and Shawn looked up at the clown. He hated Mr. Cherrywinks, hated him on a level his ten-year-old self couldn't even really comprehend. But he remembered his grandfather's words; he had to pick a side, and in his every action since meeting Mr. Cherrywinks, he'd been choosing the Circus. Unwillingly, perhaps, but at this point it didn't really matter. He released Mr. Cherrywinks' garments and hung his head, unable to make eye contact.

"Sometimes, its better to do something kid, than to live in fear of doing it...*cough*.." It was something that Shawn's Dad had said many time to Shawn. And now, it was Mr. Cherrywinks saying it. Dad's words coming through Mr. Cherrywink's leering mouth. Speaking the words in a dead-pan rasp.


"I tell all the kids whose noses I cut off to believe in the best...have a goal for the best, never be satisfied with less than your best, try your best, and in the long run things will turn out for the best." Cherrywinks said, reciting Mom's speech.

"It ain't that hard to understand kid...*cough*...You're in. Or you're out." Now it was the more familiar cadence of Mr. Cherrywinks speaking. Shawn could tell the Clown's tell-tale frankness.

Not trusting himself to look the clown in his eyes, Shawn offered his right hand to Mr. Cherrywinks. Reluctant or not, if it was in or out, it seemed Shawn was in.

Mr. Cherrywinks grinned, taking Shawn's hand, not by the palm and avoiding the fingers altogether, but by the wrist. Cold, skeleton fingers could be felt under those once-white gloves. Cherrywinks' grip was like an iron manacle, fingers curling around the wrist and closing tightly.

"You should choose now." Shawn heard from behind him. Shawn glanced over his shoulder.

It was Ralph's head. Completely severed and laying on its side. "Choose your t..t...t...t...tutor." The head said, stammering and stuttering as Ralph normally did.

OOC: Shawn Chooses

Gaggles: Gaggles will give Shawn missions that focus on killing people and will tutor him on the art of brutal assassination.

The Fortune Teller: The Fortune Teller will will give Shawn missions that focus on contacting 'the other side.' She will teach Shawn about Occult Magic and how to use The Numbers Game. *Shawn will first have to help the Circus bring back the Fortune Teller

The Tattooed Lady: The Tattooed Lady will give Shawn missions that focus on Crafts. She will teach Shawn how to create art that comes alive.

Shawn gripped Mr Cherrywink's wrist back. He was committed now, and that meant proving himself. He couldn't speak, but in his head he picked the Fortune Teller. .

Mr. Cherrywinks lifted Shawn up just as Shawn made his mental choice. He lifted him up in the air by that one hand. Shawn could feel himself being folded--folded in half. And then folded in half again.

Mr. Cherrywinks had the look on his face of someone who was packing up and getting ready to get his stuff together. As he folded Shawn up like a towel--literally--his eyes remained fixed but also staring through Shawn, like he was just another object that need to be packed. Shawn could feel himself being placed into a small, wooden box that had been stamped Oriental Trading. Shawn felt his folded arms and legs being placed into the box as the lid began to close.

Shawn tried to move his limbs - not in a struggling kind of way, but more experimental. He had even less idea what was going on than usual, but at least he wasn't in pain. Physical pain, at least.

The inside of the box was shallow, but snug. The walls shrank back into darkness, the world becoming confined and tight, fitting Shawn's new role as just another one of the Clown's objects.

The confusion that Shawn felt was accompanied by complete blindness as the lit clamped shut, the sound of small latch on the outside of the wooden box clicking to indicate that it was locked. In the darkness, the familiar smell of old, stale popcorn and sour taffy filled his nostrils.

The sense of being packed tight and snug-like faded and Shawn's body unfurled as this new environment was now filled with infinite darkness, allowing him to take on his normal shape and form. His fingers and arms searched wildly for some kind of wall to touch, a corner to hold. Something that would allow him to gain some sense of direction in the darkness.

Shawn spent about a minute walking around in the dark, arms outstretched feeling like a blind-man without a cane. Suddenly his hand brushed up against something...

"Ahhhhh!" It was a boys voice. And from the sound of it, the kid was shocked that Shawn had brushed up against him.

Shawn waved his hands around, trying to get a sense of where the thing he brushed up against was. "H-hello?" He tried to sound brave, but his voice cracked a bit.

"Urghh?" The voice ended its screaming in a grunt that sounded like a throaty question. The inky blackness all around, Shawn heard a breathy exhale in front of him.

"You're...you're a kid." The voice said. Something about the voice sounded familiar. Sounded like it was someone he may have heard of before. Or at least perhaps their voice.


OOC: Shawn rolls Wits + Composure

OOC: 18:42, Today: Shawn Cramer rolled 2 successes using 4d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 4,3,10(+9),2. Wits + Composure.

Shawn struggled to remember in the infinite darkness. Then it came to him:

It was Bradford's voice. That kid that he had sold out long ago. Left for dead. That friend of that one kid. What was his name. The kids at the cabin. The woman-girl named April. The thoughts came flooding in, and with it the knowledge and real memory of his betrayal.

"It's you, isn't it?" The voice probed into the darkness.

Fear and shame gripped Shawn's heart as he recognized Bradford Stork's voice. The cabin, the Book, Mr. Cherrywinks' offer; despite taking the deal he hadn't escaped the Circus, not really. He felt like he wanted to cry, but ultimately no tears came. It was like he'd cried himself out back at his house. "Yeah, it's me..." There wasn't anything else he could say, really. After what Shawn had done to him, it wasn't like he could just apologise and be friends.

"Do you know where we are?"

There was a striking sound followed by a flinty-spark, then a small flame. Shawn squinted his eyes and saw a hand holding a match a few feet in front of him, the smell of sulfur came quick and then lingered.

Than moved in front of a face and Shawn..

OOC: Shawn Rolls just Composure, with the following results

0 Successes: Shawn gasps

1+ Succeses: Shawn maintains his composure, swallowing and grimacing

2+ Successes: The sight is surprising but Shawn is not phased, able to control his appearance and reaction

Shawn gasped!

OOC: 21:57, Today: Shawn Cramer failed (no successes) using 2d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 6,1. Composure.

...Bradford was still wearing his spectacles. The large ones that Shawn has seen before. The one's that made his eyes look bigger. The right side of the spectacles had acquired a burnt and ashy look, the glass tinged with soot.

The right side of Bradford's face was scarred and melted. No other way to put it.

A large scar of burned, melted skin ran from his chin upward to the top of his forehead, making his hairline recede and giving his face a slack, pancaked-look on that side.

Bradford grinned, the left side of his face curling up into a smile, the right side folding several times over, melted flaps overlapping.

"It's good to see someone finally, even if it is you." Bradford said optimistically, shadows from the match dancing on his melted face.

"What hap-where are we?" Shawn had almost asked what happened to Bradford, but he realized very quick that what had happened would've been entirely Shawn's fault.

"Well, well. If it isn't Shawn.  Where are we you ask?..." Bradford repeated in a flat voice, and he gave a grotesque smile, the right side of his face wrinkling up, the skin folding over. It was clear that even that he was wearing glasses, he was blind in that right eye, the skin having been melted over the lid.

His voice was different than Shawn remembered. It was colder. Harder.

"We're stuck in this box. We're going to be traded. Oriental Trading Company, the box said. You saw it. And if you didn't see it, you felt it.

We're getting traded to either the Master Maker, or the Fortune Teller I suppose."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 02:11, Tue 28 Mar 2017.

"Oh..." Shawn had the context to understand it was probably the Fortune Teller, but if he mentioned  that, Bradford would probably want to know how he knew that. Best not to give away too much information. "What happens when we get there?"