Harry, already wedged awkwardly, was saved from being tossed around too much by his bulk and his position. He was still moving to take over the driver's seat so he could get them out of there.

((OOC: 09:16, Today: Rusty Harry rolled 4,7 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,(6+1)7.  Vigor.

09:16, Today: Rusty Harry rolled 4,2 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,2.  Vigor.

09:16, Today: Rusty Harry rolled 6,2 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 6,2.  Spirit.))

After the rough breakout, the skidding, and the possession, Martin was left, for a moment, unable to muster much fight about turning over the driver's seat to Harry.  The spirit that seemed to inhabit the truck didn't seem to have much to say about it either.

Kelly tumbled into the sleeper section of the cab to find a remarkably soft bed, complete with blankets and pillows.  A few of the overhead storage bins have been knocked open and a scattering of small items are strewn around...






Current Issues
-Damaged Truck
-Fire on the side of the Truck
-Storm
-Where to go?

Everyone is good so far, save Kelly's new Fatigue Level.

Kelly! Could you describe one item that catches Kelly's attention?  Something personal that might reveal something about the Driver.  Have fun with it.

Maggie steadied herself then found a seat

In reply to Prospector (msg # 195):

The cyborg considered the situation. He looked around at the rig. It was an older model, but incredibly condition. But as he sat behind the wheel, he was certain the thing was haunted as fuck. He wasn't any sort of Junker, but his friends in the Convoy had been. Tech spirits could be nototriously finicky, and this thing wanted something from him.

He already had one spirit in him. It had mad him do things. Terrible, half-remembered things before he'd been caught and put in his Tin Can. He wasn't going to let another spirit boss him around. But he also didn't want to fight it...they needed to get somewhere more safe.

Thankfully, he had a few tech tricks. He opened up his Cyberjack, interfacing with the truck's systems. This truck was in such great condition that surely the computerized bits still worked, which would give him an edge. If it wanted something from him, this spirit could darn well give them something in return.

Alright. He sent a message through the Cyberjack into the truck's systems. Talk to me, buddy. Let's see if we can make a deal.

Kelly in the meantime was doing her best.  She found one of the cloth pieces and tore it into strips, abusing Connor's exposed edge just a little bit.

So let's try this.  Worst I can do is crit fail right?

1 wound x 2 = -2, 1 fatigue level, total -3.  What me worry?


23:20, Today: Kelly MacLeod rolled -1,-2 using d6-3,d6-3, rerolling max with rolls of 2,1.  Healing.

Predictable.  At least it wasn't a crit failure.

But it was for nothing.  She gave up and let sleep come.  She was too tore up to really be much good at the moment anyway.

The truck's systems began going through interface mode, as Harry jacked in....


A computer's close interpretation of a woman's voice suddenly chimed, "Okay.  Navigating Home."  The main screen on the driver's console lit up and and started to show a map of the CSA....but seemed to be stuck for a moment.  The voice chimed in again, "GPS signal lost."  The outdated digital map remained, lacking any indicator for current location.

Anyone paying attention out the windows, might notice the fire outside the windows flickering out...

Kelly was a bit beaten, but something wasn't letting her nod off.

"Go home... yeah... we need to go there Harry."

She sounded... weird.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:03, Wed 24 Oct 2018.

  Martin slid to the back to check on the others as the big cyborg took over the driver's seat.  Everyone took quite a beating and he hadn't been around to see how anyone else had fared and was a bit concerned for them.  He'd taken more than a few tough licks himself but was relatively unscathed.
 Kelly and Maggie took up the back so Martin settled into the passenger's seat.  I'm not sure any of that stuff has worked since the War.  Not worked well anyway... he remarked, sighing as the adrenaline from the day's events began wearing off.  Maybe we need to find somewhere to pull off and check the damage after the rain stops.


ooc:

06:18, Today: Martin Fine rolled 2,4 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 2,4.  Spirit roll.

06:18, Today: Martin Fine rolled 6,8 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 6,(6+2)8.  Vigor roll 2.

06:18, Today: Martin Fine rolled 6,5 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 6,5.  Vigor roll 1.

Harry scowled. "Hey! You in there!" He growled. "Do you want to get home, or do you want me to chop you into scrap? You got a voice here." He tapped the GPS display. "Don't you dare mindjack my friends to talk to me. You understand me? We do this square or not at all."

The navigation screen flickers and a message bubble pops in indicating that it is: RECALCULATING ROUTE.  As though that wasn't enough, the woman's voice chimes in again to pointlessly say, "Recalculating rooooooooouuuuuu......  The last word stretched out and distorted, quavering through pitches and volumes.  A pattern tried to force its way through the noise, hard to catch at first, then getting clearer, "...ooommme.  Hommme.  Promised.  Saaara.  Sara.  Squuuarrrre."  The distortion wavered back into the original word, "Route."  The navigation screen shifted, the indicator pin landing on Bullhead, AZ.  Three no-longer-in-existence states away and a thousand miles or more.  The voice of the nav system chimed, "GPS signal lost.

Kelly really just wanted to pass out right now, but could she concentrate a moment?

18:40, Today: Kelly MacLeod rolled 8,0 using d6-2,d6-2, rerolling max with rolls of (6+4)10,2.  CK.

Apparently yes.

Maggie realised what the truck was attempting to do and used her arcane powers to push it out of her mind, bitch she thought to herself, no one takes over her mind without permission.

She also realised being in such tight quarters there was very little she could do to help Harry with the truck so she concentrated on making Kelly comfortable

"That's better." Harry said, looking at the readout. "Hmmm. I don't have any particular issue with that as a destination. It ain't like I have anywhere better to go." He looked over at Kelly. "You think we oughta head that way?"

Martin leans back in the passenger's seat, letting his eyes closed for a bit.  Couldn't hurt to head the way the truck wants...  Like you said, none of us got anything else better to do for a bit at least.  Put some distance between us and the Oil Slick back there.. Fatigue had built up auickly in the short but furious fight for their lives.  The cyborg cowboy seemed to have the hang of driving so Martin drifted off pretty quickly in the comfy chair.

Out the front windshield, the station continues to rage and burn into the stormy sky.  The orange glow reaching out even here down the highway.  That firelight reflected off the front of the truck, the hood and chrome.  If someone was paying attention, they might catch the damage from smashing out the gateway "fixing" itself.  It would be like watching something in rewind, pushing itself...knitting itself back together.  The damaged headlights suddenly springing back into life, stabbing bright beams out into the rain, smoke, and encroaching darkness.

"well thank you for picking us up you have a great rig here I'm Maggie I was wondering what we should call you?" She asked as if she was talking to the driver of the truck

Kelly commented, though her voice was low, waning and a bit flat.

"I'm not sure we want to head right into the back yard of the Mutant King himself though.  And that's after heading through gigantic roving packs of the dead that haven't gotten the memo yet... whatever that means."  Her parents used to use that expression but Kelly had no context for it.

"Yeah, but 'roving packs of memo-ignoring dead' pretty much sums up the entire world at this point." Harry says. "And honestly, I'm curious about why this haunted truck is trying to get to 'Sara.' Whoever she is, or was, the spirit here thinks she was important." Harry stares off into the darkness out of the windshield.

Long ago, before he'd been stuffed into his can, he'd gotten himself killed in a bar fight. His death wound was a stab wound, one of a number of them, and it had been in his chest. He'd been killed from the front. He'd seen his death coming, and he'd faced it down anyway. And for the life -- well, not life, but this existence that passed for it -- of him, he couldn't remember what it had all been about. Oh, bits and pieces, sure. He was certain he'd been standing up either for someone, or to someone. Maybe both. And in the fragments of his memory from before, he remembered a woman's face. Heard her laughter. Remembered the bike she drove on the highway with him. He wasn't sure who she was, and that killed him.

When he'd come back, the demon inside him had been in charge. He knew he'd been up to some horrible shit. He had no idea what the thing in him had made him do, but in the nightmares it sent him when he powered down, it taunted him. Made him see snippets of what it had did with his body. He knew it was trying to break him, and that nothing it showed him could in any way be trusted to be the truth, but he also suspected it had killed at least one person he had known in life. Someone he'd cared about. He knew because the fucker kept showing him her face, with his hands around her neck -- or his hands on a knife, stabbing her -- or his fingers on a trigger, blowing her brains out -- or other, even less pleasant deaths.

When he'd been put in the can, those nightmares had been suppressed. Of course, everything else had been suppressed, too...he hadn't had much free will to speak of, and his actions before the Last War were all a blur. But at least he'd been allowed to forget (for a while) the things he'd done.

That didn't mean he didn't wish to know at least a little bit. So much of who he'd been before was just...gone. And it gnawed at him.

"Closure is a blessing." He said, more to the truck than to his fellow passengers.

"That is a fair point.  I don't wish to suffer the existence of a haunted object longer than we have to, and the best way to unhaunt it would be for it to move on."  Kelly considered.

  Home sounds nice... the kid said groggily, fading in and out of light sleep. Even if it isn't our home, it's his home and it seemed nice.  At lest the way he remembered it.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:08, Tue 30 Oct 2018.

Maggie, suddenly feeling that perhaps she should leave the swordswoman alone, settled into the far end of the couch.  As each offered their opinion, the witch pitched in, "I'd rather ride than walk... So...."

The decision made, the truck was (slowly) maneuvered to head back down Confed Route 82 west.  The steering was rough at first.  The tires rolling with a rough bump through the re-direction.  Quickly enough, the ride smoothed out and the truck felt as though nothing had happened to it at all.

Harry, through his link, was able to determine current fuel and range of the truck.  The tanks were at only a quarter of their capacity, but that was still around seventy gallons of go-go juice.  Diesel, according to the fuel management system.  Potentially enough to get near half-way to Bullhead running the truck unloaded; deadhead.  Depending on how many switchbacks and detours the damaged highway system forced them to take.  Point being, fuel was going to be an issue.

Even without fuel concerns, for those not undead-cyborg-hell-powered war machines, food and water were another issue.  Harry could guess, based on experience on the highways of the Wasted West, that they were looking at near a week and half of travel.  And that's if things went right.

Kelly and Harry had traveled from this direction in the first place and remembered passing near a survivor burg outside of Texarkana.  Might be somewhere to try to get supplies.  Martin might know more about it....

On the Road!  HONK!  This will end the chapter, you guys are welcome to play it out a bit more if there's anything left to say.  Martin has a few special tasks.

First, Martin can Common Knowledge survivor settlements in the area...especially for fuel.

Second!  I drew a card for an Interlude!  This one goes to Martin.  To close out the chapter, I'd like for Martin to find something in the truck while they travel.  This something should be something that tells us something about the Driver's personality (music, books, games, notes, receipts, pictures), be creative.  This thing also should remind Martin of something tragic from his own past somehow.  Write it out, but its your call whether Martin shares it out loud or just thinks it.  You'll start the next chapter with an extra Benny for your trouble.

"Hmmm..." Harry considered the situation. "Hey, I gotta keep us steered, but we're eventually gonna need fuel for this rig. The only place nearby I can think of is Texarcana, but we'll need to find things after that. Martin, I need you to look around. See if you can find any maps. There might also be a guidebook for truck stops along the highways...my buddies in The Convoy always used to check those out when we were on the remains of the highway. Since most of 'em are way out in BFE but were still at crossroads, they made good places to set up survivor camps."

((OOC: drawing on my trucking experience. Truck stops were our lifeblood out on the road -- you'd go there for food and fuel, and many of them also have repair shops for the lighter mechanical issue. Those places would make sense as places survivor encampments would form in a post-apocalyptic world. Or raider camps, possibly.))

Kelly surrendered to sleep.  It wasn't an easy sleep, being as she hurt, the vehicle was moving, and she was hacked off, but it was sleep.

At the very least no one would have to listen to her bellyaching.

  Martin cracked an eye open at Harry's request.  It seemed that demon powered cyborgs didn't get the post-battle exhaustion like mortal folks and for him that was fine.  He wouldn't have trusted himself behind the wheel exhausted, injured and most likely possessed.  Diesel, huh? Can it run on anything else? he mused, leaning forward and rummaging through the enormous, yet packed, glove compartment.  He pulled out faded flyers, fuel and meal reciepts, napkins from a littany of fast food establishments and assortment of catalogs and maps.  He set the giant wad of napkins aside for everyone to clean up with later as he turned back to the glovebox.  Reaching in, he grabbed ahold of something plastic and buried deep.  A couple of quick tugs brought it to the surface.  Melted and clumped together in the crumbling remnants of their bags were an admixture of hard candies.  The Driver must've had a bit of a sweet tooth to keep this much hard candy around and odds are "Sara" didn't like him having it since it was buried under so much junk.  Martin had for the Driver's stash.  With it being hard candy, it was likely still good!  Martin considered prying off a piece to try but stopped once he saw the faded label underneath the hunk of colored sugar; the label read Dominion Candies.
  Memories trickled up and he suddenly wasn't really hungry anymore.  The town where the candy was made was the town he had called home up until very recently.  The glittery facetsof the sugar brought back the memory of faces of the people of the town and he wondered at how they fared.  There wasn't enough room in the factory shelter for everyone and no one was really sure if the shelter would even hold against the oncoming dead horde.   Was the town still there or was it overwhelmed?  The faces of his friends and those he considered family haunted him a bit as he set the clump of hard candy aside and gathered up the books and maps tucked into the useful sections of the glovebox.  Here's everything with a map on it... he settled the clump of papers between him and Harry to look through later.  Replacing the clump of hard candy back into the confines of the glovebox he looked out the window and hummed a bit of a tune he remembered hearing being sung from the factory shelter the day he left, _{...happenings happen, happening happened...}

The Black Dog rolled off down the highway....

Continued in Episode Two - Alternative Energy!