The five card stud table Lucy had been at had been just the way she wanted it for hours.

Now, she was wondering if it was time to wrap things up. She had enough money to live on for the next two or three days...

She'd just been dealt: 10 of spades, 3 of hearts, 4 of diamonds, 4 of clubs, King of diamonds.

The thirty-something blonde woman on her left and the older man on her right (late sixties maybe?) had good poker faces. The dealer, also a white guy, just seemed a bit bored.

Lucy had a slightly funny feeling about this hand. She didn't think it was anything psychic? Or was it?

And either way... was it a bad feeling or a good feeling? She couldn't tell-- it was too small-- so far.

(Choice time.
--Should she get rid of any cards in order to get new ones?
--If so, which should she lose, and which keep?
--Or should she just fold and walk away?
--Or is it time to try a mental check of one or both of the other players? The blonde and the older guy are both new enough to the table that she hasn't tried looking into their minds yet...)

At first, Lucy will just play the hand straight:  she'll ante up, keep the pair and the king, and take two new cards.  Trying to read every opposing player every hand would get really exhausting really fast, maybe she'll legitimately luck into a great hand, or maybe one of the others will fold and she'll only have to try reading the other?  She takes a sip of her vodka tonic - comped, of course, she's been playing for hours, and she had become a familiar sight at the stud and hold'em tables over the last few weeks.  The more perceptive servers knew her drinks by now.

Lucy loses the 10 of spades and 3 of hearts.

She gets the 5 and 6 of hearts.

So, the 5 and 6 of hearts, and the 4s of diamonds and clubs, and the King of diamonds.

The other players don't drop out. In fact, the older man doubles his bet. The others call. The blonde, in particular, doesn't seem to mind the pot being raised at all, but that could just be her being hard to read.

That funny feeling grows just a bit. Again, not sure if it's a psychic thing or not, nor if it's good or bad.

(Call, fold, raise, or do a mental check on someone/everyone?)

Hmm.  Not exactly lucky, but not particularly unexpected either.  She's not at all confident that a wimpy little pair of 4s is going to carry her, especially betting into so many other players.

This is the way she's disciplined herself to play: relatively conservatively, mostly only betting when she knows she has value in her hand, or the occasional straight-up bluff just for the sake of appearances, timing her big plays (and saving her psychic scans!) for those occasional moments when both she and her opponents think they have something worth betting.  A pair of 4s isn't going to get the job done for her:  time to fold this one.

Lucy folds. She's still got more than two days' worth of winnings for the night.

She goes and cashes out.

Now what? Food, sleep, or other?

Dinner time!  Or, whatever would be the proper name for a meal at one-thirty in the morning on a Wednesday.  Fortunately for Lucy, a hard-core night owl, most of the establishment operated 24/7.

She takes half of her night's proceeds in cash, arranging for the other half to be credited to the bill for her suite upstairs in the hotel, and then heads for one of the casino's restaurants, the one with that fantastic jambalaya she'd gotten a few nights ago.  She'll place her order and sit alone at a table off in the corner, thumbing idly at the screen of her burner iPhone, checking for texts: she's getting low on her "medication", she'll need to be making contact with her dealer in the next day or two.

Before she's done, the blonde and the older guy from that last hand come in and order, too, about three minutes apart.

The older guy keeps shooting very quick glances Lucy's way. Like seriously, every minute or two. Very fast, not like he's trying to get her attention (far from it) nor catch her eye (though it keeps happening anyway).

The blonde, on the other hand, only looks at Lucy once (or does Lucy only catch her looking once?), but noticeably frowns when she does it. Hm.

Hmm.  Not good.  Cops maybe?  That could be unpleasant.  She doesn't know of any actual formal law against using psychic powers to cheat a casino (as far as she knows, she's the only actual legitimate psychic in existence, why would there be a law for that?) but she's been unabashedly guilty of things which are very unambiguously illegal, before she arrived at her current poker-cheating scheme, starting with stealing twelve thousand dollars from her stepfather's safe four years ago on the night she ran away.  Not to mention she's got what's left of her "medication" in the inside pocket of her black leather bomber jacket: a few pills of unprescribed Vicodin and a few ounces of some really excellent cocaine.

She'll have to try reading them both.

13:27, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 11 using 2d6+1.  read the blonde woman.
13:27, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 7 using 2d6+1.  read the older man.

Wow, the blonde woman has a pistol in her purse-- she's some sort of assassin! A hitwoman! And she's on-duty!

Lucy checks the man, to see if he's one, too.

But it doesn't go the same as it did with the blonde woman.

The man is not only aware of Lucy poking into his mind... he responds, mentally, too.

"I thought you were like me--! Please, you've got to help me--!"

And right then, the blonde jumps up, whips out the pistol, and fires six times at the man, hitting with most of the shots. There is screaming from the waitstaff.

The blonde immediately runs out, and out of sight.

(What now?)

... what the fuck!!

For half a moment Lucy is just simply too flabbergasted to do anything at all other than just blink big-eyed at the bizarrely inexplicable events that just happened, trying to process them and utterly failing.  Though her confusion only lasts until the first of the screaming starts, at which point the immediacy of the obviously required response becomes clear in her head:  the place is going to be crawling with cops in about half a minute.  I need to get the fuck out of here.

She slows only for a moment to spare a lingering glance at the gunned-down man as she passes by him on the way out of the restaurant.  Until fifteen seconds ago, she'd thought she might be the only legitimate psychic in the entire world; now, the very instant she learns there was another, it turns out she might be no less alone than she'd been when the night started.

She wonders who he screwed over, to get a professional assassin sent after him.

Then she's gone, back out on the casino floor, making for the elevator to the hotel above the casino.  Get to her room, grab her stuff, get the hell out of this casino.  Maybe even out of New Jersey.

No one stops Lucy from hurrying out of the place and back to her room. She packs fast and is ready to go soon.

As she's about to leave her room, only a few thoughts give her pause:
--Would she have been seen leaving the scene on any security cams? (Probably.)
--Would that probability be a problem for her later? (Maybe? But mmmmaybe not?)
--Would anyone try to give her a hard time when she checked out? (Maybe?)
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:32, Sat 08 Aug 2020.

Security cameras very certainly would have picked her up in the restaurant, and though that's not exactly to Lucy's preference, she's not overly concerned about it.  They wouldn't have recorded her doing anything questionable, just sitting at her table with her dinner and then leaving in a hurry when the place suddenly erupted into murder, which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, in her estimation.

Checking out shouldn't be a problem: she's not going to check out.  She's just leaving.  She'll be burning a few hundred dollars for the balance on the suite she won't be using up, but if that's the price to be paid for getting out of here clean then she'll pay it gladly.  Once she's got everything she owns stuffed into her backpack and and her little carry-on sized roller suitcase, then she's on her way out, by one of the side entrances.

She's less and less thrilled about the whole idea of staying in Atlantic City, but for the moment, without a plan in mind for where to go and what to do next, she'll just be intending to catch a bus to some other casino hotel in some other neighborhood of town, where she can carry on with her poker cheating in order to build up enough of a stake to blow this town.  The entire state, really.

Getting out-- and not via the front entrance-- presents no problems.

There's only one problem-- it's after 2 in the morning, and even in Atlantic City, all the buses stopped running a bit before midnight.

Hmm, not ideal.  Cabs are more expensive.  But they do operate 24/7.  And 2am is bar time, cabs or Ubers should be easy to come by?

Lucy uses her burner phone to summon a ride...

She waits.

A teenage girl is coming slowly up the sidewalk while Lucy waits...

On a normal night Lucy wouldn't take much more than a mild curiosity in the sight of a teenage girl out walking the streets alone in the wee small hours of a Wednesday morning.  (She is in fact that exact thing herself!)  But this night is weird enough already that Lucy isn't taking much for granted; she'll keep an eye on the girl, and in fact on anyone else who should happen to pass through her proximity too, on the alert for suspicious behaviors or sudden moves.

The girl, perhaps lost in her own thoughts, doesn't seem to really notice Lucy until she's about 20 feet away. Then she noticeably puts on an air of casual nonchalance. "...Hey," she says, slowing down... stopping. "You okay?" she asks Lucy.

Aside from having just witnessed a murder, which is definitely a new experience for Lucy but not one that's exactly going to leave her in a weeping shambles, Lucy is in fact pretty okay.  Lightly unsettled, maybe.  But she's easily herself enough to not be particularly enthused about strangers nosing into her business.

"The fuck is it to you?  Mind your business, tipa."

The girl backs up about five steps and makes chill, chill motions with her hands. "...That's cool, cool. Just wondered if you need any help."

Lucy sighs and does in fact chill, chill.  She leans back on the bus stop bench (yeah, the bus isn't coming, but it's as good a place as any to wait for her cab) and crosses her arms over her chest.  "I don't need any help.  Just waiting for my ride."

"Cool, cool... It's just, like, a gal at a bus stop at 2 inna mornin with luggage... That says to me either her family's kicked her out because they're asses, she's left them because they're asses, or she's left her signif ot because the signif ot's an ass, y'know?" She just says it like that, "signif ot."

"And... also, I guess, because you looked maybe just a little spooked?"

... okay, seriously, what the hell.

This was not how the world worked, in Lucy's experience: random girls wandering up off the street in the middle of the night asking for strangers' life stories.

She's been pushing her luck today, reaching into more minds than she usually liked to at the poker table.  She felt like she was on the edge of bringing on one of her "headaches," which would not be a fine experience to have to endure at a bus stop outside a casino.  But this girl didn't feel right, asking all this shit, and Lucy was done screwing around.

14:02, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 12 using 2d6+1 ((5,6)).

Actually, it turns out that she's for real. Her name is Kate but she calls herself Astrid. She ran away from home six months ago when her mother's boyfriend moved in-- she didn't trust him at all, and she didn't get along with her mother in the first place, anyway. Trying to help out other girls and women makes her feel like she's got a purpose.

She's actually very lonely, and a little worried about her future. Part of her wants to find a way to go to NYC, to Manhattan, and live on the streets there. Part of her feels like that'd be way over her head.

She figures that she might have to get some kind of job, before the next bad winter, but she doesn't know what nor how. Her reaching out to others and offering to help is kind of a cry for help in and of itself, but she doesn't consciously realize that at all.

She's got a good heart, does Kate/Astrid.

Lucy just sort of regards the girl for a long moment, her expression blankly neutral, taking a long moment to let her naturally cynical mind catch up to the apparent genuineness of the girl.  Even despite the evidence, it still wasn't easy for Lucy to believe anyone could be truly so innocent of intent.  But neither was she going to lie to herself about it, just to fit her preconceived notions: the girl is what she is, apparently, no matter how unlikely it seemed.

Though perhaps ironically, that made Lucy even less likely to want to indulge the girl.  She was after all planning to spend the next couple of days cheating casinos and visiting drug dealers, which she didn't want to drag anybody at all into with her, much less so someone so guilelessly innocent.  And so she let her voice soften a bit as she answered again.

"Yeah, I'm spooked because I just saw someone get shot in the casino," she says, gesturing back at the building (which is likely screaming with sirens by now?).  This had the benefit of being true, even if it wasn't the whole truth.  "But it wasn't me or anyone I know and I'm fine.  And yeah, I've dealt with my share of assholes, but I left them years ago.  So really, I'm fine, thank you but I don't need any help.  Really."
This message was last edited by the player at 14:17, Sun 09 Aug 2020.

"WHAT?! Ohmigod! Really? Just now? Was there a fight? Or was it a racist thing? Like a cop shooting somebody? What happened? Are you okay?"





"Ohmigod, really? You sure?"




She nods. "Yeah, good for you..."




"Dang, girl, you seem more together than I do. I think maybe I should be taking together lessons from you."

"I don't know what happened, there wasn't any fight or any cops, it looked like some woman just pulled a gun and shot some other guy just out of nowhere."  Again, very true, even if not the entire truth.  "But I'm about the last person you'd want to take lessons on anything from, seriously."

"What, really? Wow... Guess he probably had it comin', though, huh..."





"Really? Y' think? I dunno, you sure you're not selling yourself short? What do you do? You don't vibe like you're livin' on th' streets like me..."

Lucy just shrugs without elaboration at the girl's speculation.  She basically agrees: probably the guy did have it coming.

"I win money at poker."  More partial truth.

"Like... professionally? Wow, that's awesome, you're that good? You've gotta be so good you win more than you lose, or else you couldn't just... I mean, do you have a side-hustle 'r anything?"
This message was lightly edited by the player at 15:09, Sun 09 Aug 2020.

"I don't have a lot of stuff I guess."  She gestures at the two pieces of luggage which along with her jacket pockets literally contain every object she owns.  Neither of them is very large.  Cocaine and black market Vicodin are not cheap.  "But I make enough to stay in the casinos' hotels, so."  Another little shrug.  "Comped breakfast bar in the mornings."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:14, Sun 09 Aug 2020.

"Wow, because you're a bigshot professional gambler, huh? Wow, I wish that was a career choice I could make, but I don't see it happening. ...You're probably used to hearing that sort of thing by now, huh."

An actual faint trace of a grin.  "Everyone who pays for a room gets the breakfast bar.  Actually..."  She pulls her keycard out of her jacket pocket, and offers it over.  "You want my room?  There's still two nights on the balance that I'm not using, I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.  It's room 1108."

"What?! Seriously?! That sounds awesome! Two nights? Wow!" She takes the keycard. "...Uh... I can't get in trouble for using your room, can I?" Another thought crosses her mind, and she immediately tries to cover it up and keep it off her face. Even without telepathy, her attempt is obvious. "Ummmm... it... wasn't... you who shot a guy, right? Or... I... guess you wouldn't be sitting out here at the bus stop, if you were... right...?" She plays it off like she's teasing. She's actually seriously wanting to know. She's not afraid of Lucy right now, just afraid of the idea of being caught hanging out in a murderess' hotel room.

She shakes her head, casually brushing off the concern: "Nah, it was some gringa.  It'll be fine, just if anybody asks tell them your name is Lucy Lopez.  Get cleaned up, sleep in a nice bed.  Show them that card in the morning at the breakfast bar, eat all the omelets you want."

"A gringa's a white gal, right?"





"Ummmm... Okay. Wow. Thanks... Lucy?"

A nod, yes, that's what the word means.  "That's me," she nods again.

"Okay, cool, cool, no doubt, no doubt... Well... Thanks... and, so long, then, Lucy. I'm Astrid. Maybe we'll meet again some day..."

"Yeah, sure, maybe."  Lucy nods.  "Go live it up, Astrid, have fun."

Very thoughtfully, Astrid moves off toward the hotel...

A couple of minutes later, Lucy's ride pulls up... "Lucy?" asks the driver. (Did she go for a taxi or for some sort of Uber-type service?)

Lucy checks the car's license plate against the one the Uber app on her phone told her to be expecting.  If it matches up she stands and moves to get in the back.  "Yeah, that's me," she says.  "Going across town to the Tropicana."  She'd rejected the thought of the Tropicana when she first got to Atlantic City, too stereotypical to go trolling around a Havana-themed place.  But the circumstances seem to have made the stereotype seem a little more comforting.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:21, Sun 09 Aug 2020.

It does.





"Got it," says the driver, a black woman, and she starts driving... The traffic is practically nil this time of night, so the ride doesn't take long, and soon Lucy is at her destination.

And that's about all the brain space Lucy has for tonight!  She'll check in at the front desk, pay cash in advance for a night, make her way up to her room, and get a shower in before heading to bed.

But one last thing to take care of first: she taps the screen of her phone to life and thumbs a text to the contact number she has for her dealer:  ok to stop by tomorrow afternoon?

Around what time? comes the reply.

3pm?

Drug dealers were not generally celebrated to be morning people any more than Lucy was, and this one even less so than most.  3pm would be right around the time he'd be dragging himself out of bed.

Yeah okay comes the reply.

Lucy's plan then is as follows, which she'll more or less adhere to unless she's interrupted:  spend the rest of the night and morning in uneventful quiet in her room, setting a wake-up call for the last moment when she'll still have time to get downstairs to the restaurant before the breakfast bar closes.  While she sits eating she'll be checking news sites on her phone, searching the websites of the local TV stations and newspapers for information about a fifty-something man shot to death in a casino last night - the only other psychic Lucy has ever met, even if only for a few seconds.

Then it's the bus to one of the neighborhoods of Atlantic City where tourists don't usually stray, but people looking to score street drugs are more likely to be familiar with.

In the morning, Lucy finds nothing on the web so far about the shooting. Maybe by the evening news?

So, when the time comes, Lucy takes the bus to one of the neighborhoods of Atlantic City where tourists don't usually stray... She arrives at her destination in pretty much exactly the amount of time she expected it to take.

Nothing on the news about a guy gunned down in the middle of a casino restaurant...  that's a bit weird.  There definitely was the expected swarm of cops buzzing around the place when Lucy was leaving last night?

Lucy debarks the bus in front of King's Pawn, but she doesn't go inside the actual pawnshop.  Instead she circles back behind the building to the door leading up to the apartment above the store, and jabs the doorbell at 3:12pm.  A few minutes fashionably late is an expected courtesy when arriving at the place of business of Hector Ortiz.  Hector's uncle would be downstairs running the shop, and despite Lucy's advance text last night, it may very well be that the doorbell would be what finally woke Hector up.  She makes sure to stand plainly in the security camera's field of view, looking up into its lens so Hector could see who was at his door.

Lucy definitely remembers hearing a siren or two... And some flashing lights... But in retrospect, maybe it was a little more calm than she was expecting...?




(Gonna let you keep doing this interaction a little longer... But I will confirm that yes, Hector is home, and will come to the door when the doorbell rings.)

BUZZZZZZZZ, says the door, after only a half-minute or so; possibly Hector was already up?  Lucy pulls it open and climbs the steps into the front room of the apartment Hector shares with his uncle.  And aha, that explains his early rise today: as she steps into the room she hears the TV, a Phillies game on the screen matching an array of Phillies paraphernalia adorning the walls.  She checked the score: good, the Phillies were up by five over the Mets in the top of the seventh, Hector should be in a good mood.

He was lying sprawled on his couch in faded jeans and no shirt, cigarette in one hand, Corona in the other, and as always, he made no secret of brazenly checking her out as she entered.  This did not bother Lucy; she was used to people perving on her (it was pretty hard to hide such thoughts from her after all).  And he couldn't help it, he was Mexican.  Though Lucy tried not to hold that against him.

He stretched out lazy like a self-satisfied cat as his eyes oozed over her, and greeted her in Spanish.  "We going to finally get it on today, mamacita?"

Lucy answered in the same tongue.  "I might, I don't know what you're going to do, cabrón."

Hector just smirked; they had danced this dance before.  It was more like a ritual greeting than actual flirting.  "Here for your usual?"

"Sí."  Her usual was thirty Vicodin and a couple of grams of cocaine.  The good stuff, not the mierda he sold to junkies.

He nodded and sat up, but before he could get up the sound of the crowd at Citizens Bank Park surged: the Mets had hit one out, two of them jogging the bases.  "... hijo de puta," Hector observed, grumbling sullenly as he stood and moved out of sight into one of the back rooms, leaving Lucy to wait while the game went to commercial as the pitcher got pulled.

Hector returns just as the game is coming back from commercials, with a white paper bag in his hand, printed with a red and yellow stripe and the McDonald's golden arches.  Where he'd managed to get a case of McDonald's takeout bags, Lucy had no idea, but he seemed to find it endlessly hilarious to distribute street drugs in them.  "The McFlurry machine is down," he says in English as he hands off the bag to Lucy, who responds in kind by handing back four hundred dollars, constituting most of the cash she had left on hand.  Today is going to have to be an earning day.

She glances into the bag, lingering while he counts the twenty fresh green twenty-dollar bills.  Then he nods, slipping the money into the pocket of his jeans.  "Esta bueno."  Another grinning pervy leer.  "You sure you don't want to stay around a while, watch the game with me?  I'm a real good time, manguita."

"Coño, Hector, you need to get a girlfriend."

"The fuck would I do with another girlfriend?" he grinned.

"Whatever fucked-up shit you're thinking of doing with me, I suppose," she shakes her head with an amused eyeroll, as she turns to head back for the stairs.  "Adiós, Hector," as she starts down.

"Adiós, Cubanita," he calls after her, flinging himself back down on his couch.

Errand complete, she heads for the bus back to the Tropicana.  Only a hundred and twenty dollars left on her, that's not even going to cover her room for the night.  She's going to have to spend the night at the tables.  The plan for the immediate future: spend not more than twenty of her remaining dollars on dinner, then once she's back at the casino, trade a hundred in for chips, make for the hold'em tables, and start grinding her way back into a stash again.

(GM rolls dice)

It isn't easy, but after a few hours, Lucy has once again amassed just barely over 400 dollars. Of course, she started by converting 100, so...

(Lucy has been just barely using her psychic ability in the smallest ways during these hours, so as not to risk tiring herself out.

Does she now:
--keep playing?
--keep playing but use her ability a bit more to try to get more money faster?
--stop for the night?)

She'll keep a couple of Vicodin at the ready, but she doesn't like being this close to zero.  She'll try to find a table full of nice fat fish, maybe frat boys on a bachelor party or tourists from out in the sticks or something?  People who bluff too much and play too loose and who are generally too dumb at poker to know that Lucy really wins way more than she should.  And then she'll lean on her psychic reads a bit more.

There's a bachelorette party over at a blackjack table who are drunker than they should be...

There's one middle-aged guy who is frustratedly trying to get back what he's already lost over at the roulette table (and it's not working) but Lucy can't do anything about roulette...

There's one black guy who's dressed very street (is he a rapper or something?) also betting big at one poker table... so far he's not really losing more than he's gaining... but if someone with Lucy's special skills were to join the game...?

Definitely option C.  Blackjack isn't any more vulnerable to psychics than roulette, and someone playing mouthy might distract attention from Lucy.  Though if she gets a few hands in and the rapper seems susceptible, she'll consider trying to just gently nudge him to invite those drunk college girls over to the table to join the game.  They're soooo pretty, and soooo drunk...  and wouldn't it work out nice for the real players to have them throwing their money around the table?
This message was last edited by the player at 16:12, Tue 11 Aug 2020.

The rapper (or whatever) is betting big, though... use telepathy? Or risk losing at first, to make him confident?

Or use telepathy to get him to invite the bachelorettes over right away?

If she's getting good action from the maybe-rapper and can get good enough psychic reads on him, she'll stick with that for now.  Nudging him to invite the drunk sorority girls over is the backup plan.

(So... Use telepathy to help win, now? Or just play it straight for now?)

She'll be waiting for her moment, but yes, she'll lean on her psychic reads to know when her moment arrives:  the true goal in hold'em is to wait for that hand when the opponent is confident enough to bet huge, but your own hand is good enough to beat him out.  She plays it straight until the hands come up where the rapper (or anyone at the table) bets big but her own hand is pretty great too.  Then she peeks into their thoughts, to learn what they're holding, how high they're willing to go, whether she can scare them off with an overbet, et cetera.

When such a moment arrives...

11:31, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 7 using 2d6+1 ((2,4)).

Lucy wins the first game, then loses the second and third-- but it's because she folds quickly, so her losses aren't too bad. Then she wins the fourth game... She's now got 900 bucks.

There's just one problem-- the rapper (he IS a rapper, as it turns out) is Confident with a capital C. He's got even more confidence than he does money on him-- and he has a lot of money on him.

This is not a problem. The problem is that his Confidence is bleeding over to Lucy, thanks to her access into his mind.

(Lucy will get an extra +1 to her telepathy rolls until further notice-- but the penalty/penalties, if there are any, will be larger, too.

In fact, she wants to keep going and win MORE right now.

Or maybe get the guy to call the bachelorettes over.

Or both.

If she doesn't do one or the other (or both)? Then fighting that impulse is going to hurt, emotionally speaking...)

If she's been leaning on her psychic powers for a while and still doesn't feel the stirrings of one of her headaches coming on, then that's just going to bolster her confidence all the more.  She'll do -both-, keep trying to take the rapper's money -and- nudge him to invite the girls over.

When another moment to possibly win a huge hand arrives...

11:46, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 7 using 2d6+2 ((3,2)).
This message was last edited by the player at 16:47, Tue 11 Aug 2020.

GAH, Lucy lost 200 dollars that round. Now she's down to 700.

However, it makes the rapper happy. He goes over to the bachelorettes and invites them over. Lucy doesn't hear what he says to them, but they do come over.

It turns out that he's staked them for the first round... (after that, they're on their own.)

This is gonna be a big pot.

(Try to use telepathy to try to win this...?)

Absolutely!  This is Lucy's moment, she can feel it!

12:45, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 9 using 2d6+2 ((6,1)).

(GM draws cards...)

One of the bachelorettes has a pair of 9s (the rest have nothing).
Lucy has... a pair of 5s.
The rapper has... a pair of aces.

Now, that's not exactly good for Lucy. On the other hand, the gal with the 9s is clearly pleased, and the rapper has noticed, and it bothers him. He's considering folding, but hasn't made up his mind yet.

There's one chance for everyone to try to draw something better...

However... Lucy has one ace. So at least that lowers the odds of the rapper drawing another one...

No one else has a 5, but Lucy... (Then again, no one else has a 9 but the gal with two of them.)

But there's one more problem... checking on the bachelorettes has made Lucy feel a little drunk, herself.

What now?
--Play and pray?
--Try to plant one or more suggestions that BOTH the players who've got a pair fold? (After all, everyone's betting their own money at this point...
--Fold, yourself?

(Lucy's extra bonus +1 is now gone, counteracted by feeling kinda drunk.)

If the rapper is already considering folding, Lucy is pretty sure she can scare him off the pot with a big bet.  The girl with 9s feels like more of a problem though: if she's so happy with just a pair of 9s that the rapper is considering folding his aces, she's probably not savvy enough at the game to get scared.  Lucy will just call the bet on the table, no raise, and see how the hand plays.  Maybe she'll hit another 5!

She's forcing herself to stick to her preferred disciplined approach, despite the psychic wooziness coming off of the drunk girls.  Slow, steady, conservative play, waiting for your moment and them pouncing all over the big hands, that's how to win money at poker.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:34, Tue 11 Aug 2020.

(GM draws cards...)

Lucy gets a 6. No help.

The other bachelorettes fold, except for the gal with the 9s. She doesn't look like she got anything better.

Without using telepathy, it's impossible to tell if the rapper got anything good or not... but did definitely looks like he's not going to fold...

--Fold?
--Use telepathy?
--Keep calling?

Fold.  She's drawing against two other players who already have better hands than her, that's begging for disaster.  Her moment will come, eventually, and she'll play it hard when it does, but this didn't turn out to be it.

The rapper wins-- turned out he drew a 6 himself, and he already had one, so he finishes with 2 pair.

Lucy lost another 150 bucks, but it's a good thing she folded when she did.

Current total: 550 bucks.

--Keep playing? (The Confidence with a capital C has mostly worn off now...)
--Go to bed and try to sleep off this half-drunk feeling?

(If you keep playing, I can speed the evening up a bit...)

Lucy's decision points will be when she's either down to just enough money to cover her room the night, or up to enough money to cover her whole next week.  A week will be enough time to put together a plan for getting out of Atlantic City, maybe up to New York, maybe the City or maybe one of the Indian casinos upstate.

When either of those two moments comes, that's it, Lucy cashes out and heads for the front desk to get a room.

(GM rolls dice... and it doesn't go well.)

Lucy keeps playing, but it doesn't go well. She stops when she's down to just enough money to cover her room for the night.

Well, even psychics have an off night once in a while.

Lucy cashed out, gets a room, and plans to get back to the tables tomorrow.

The night passes uneventfully...

...In the morning, both the Confidence and the Drunken feeling have entirely dissipated...

Then it's back to the hold'em tables!  Lucy needs to get together enough of a stake to cover her move to a new town, one where psychics aren't getting gunned down in casinos.  Not that Lucy has any suspicion that that guy was killed because he was a psychic, she suspects probably he was killed because he tried scamming the wrong sort of people.  But still, it was enough to get her attention.

(GM rolls dice...)

This morning, things are going much easier. Lucy is able to do well without pushing her power, just taking the tiniest peeks, or of eavesdrops if one prefers, into the other players (and dealers') surfacemost thoughts...

Soon she has ALMOST as much money as she wanted... but she's getting hungry... Time for a meal? Or push a little more...?

... is Lucy picking up anything interesting from the dealers?  They shouldn't have any relevant information, right?  All they should be doing is just distributing random cards.  If Lucy catches any thoughts that actually affect the game from them, this turns into a whole different kind of scenario.

As to the game though: this is a marathon, not a sprint.  She'll cash out for the moment, take two-thirds of her money up to her hotel room and stash it in her backpack, then stop by one of the casino restaurants for a sandwich or something.  Then she'll take what she's got on hand, and try to repeat the morning's success.

Lucy goes to her room and stashes most of her money in her backpack.

She's just about to go down and get a sandwich or something when she notices her hotel-room phone flashing. She's got a message.

On a hunch, she looks at her phone-- she's got a couple of voicemails there, too.

(Which does she check first? Or does she check either of them right away?)

... that's weird.  Nobody should even know I'm here.

Are the voice mails on her phone associated with a phone number she recognizes?  Or just "unlisted number" or whatever?

She'll check the hotel phone's messages first.  Maybe it's just housekeeping or something?  In her mind though, she's already halfway poised to bolt, ditch the burner phone, and get the hell out of town, with or without a plan.

No, just a number. Not one she recognizes.




"Yes, Miss Lopez, this is the front desk... There's a detective..." --sound of a piece of paper being consulted-- "Delancy who would like you to call him... He's wondering if you might have been a witness to a crime that happened at a different hotel a couple of nights ago... Here's his number, and he'd like you to call him back as soon as you can... He said something about a teenage girl in another hotel room or something... Thank you..."

Hm, turns out that Delancy's number is who the two voicemails on the burner phone are from...

(Unless Lucy didn't give her burner phone number to the front desk at either hotel, in which case there are no voicemail messages on her phone, but I figured she would because why wouldn't she...)

... fucking pig cops!

The cops taking even the slightest tangential interest in Lucy is far more unsettling to her even than watching a random stranger get gunned down twenty feet away from her.  Time to go; if the porcas knew what room she's in then the room is no longer a viable sanctuary.  "Almost" as much money as she wanted is going to have to be enough.

She hasn't even really unpacked from the night before, so getting herself ready to GTFO is a function of less than a minute.  And then she's out the door, intending to be on the bus out of Atlantic City and out of New Jersey completely within the hour.  She'll decide where she's going when she gets to the bus station, though she's leaning towards New York City.  It has to be pretty easy for a girl to get lost and anonymous with ten million neighbors, right?

She powers down her phone and takes the battery out, dropping them both into her jacket pocket.  She doesn't really have any clue whether that's a useful precaution to take against tracking her, but she's seen it in movies, and it only takes a couple of seconds, so why not?  She intends not to even power it up again until she's at the bus station, then she'll at least listen to the motherfucking cop's messages before she ditches the phone and boards her bus.

Nothing interferes with Lucy's relocating to the bus station.

Voicemail 1: "...Yes, Miss Lopez, my name is Aaron Delancy, and I'm a detective with the ACPD... I'd like to talk to you about you possibly being a witness to a shooting that happened recently in the restaurant of a hotel and casino here in Atlantic City... A woman who might be you was definitely a witness to the crime... and also, there was an unusual thing with a young homeless woman named Violet Wells in your hotel room... Please call me back at..." He gives his number.

Voicemail 2 is pretty much the same thing, except that in it Delancy sounds more tired and weary and irritable.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:01, Wed 12 Aug 2020.

Hmm, a conundrum.

On the one hand, nunca hables con los cerdos.  Everyone knows this.  This is holy scripture.

On the other hand, maybe she can maneuver the cop into telling her who the killed man was?  And also she's curious what he's talking about with Astrid / Kate / Violet.

She frowns at the phone for a long moment, pondering.

Then she dials the cop's number.  She has fifteen minutes before the bus to NYC leaves, she can spare a few minutes.

"This is Lucy Lopez," she'll say, when (if) he answers.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:53, Wed 12 Aug 2020.

"Ah, Miss Lopez, good, good! Glad to hear from you... This is Aaron Delaney, ACPD... I'd like to talk to you about a shooting that happened a couple of nights ago at the Ocean Casino and hotel...? Did you happen to witness anything like that...?"

"Yeah, I was on the other side of the restaurant.  I didn't see anything though, it just looked like that gringa just shot that guy for no reason.  And then I just got out of there, I didn't know what the fuck was going on."

"I... see... O... kay..." (It feels like he's taking notes, either writing things down or typing them into some devices...) "I also wanted to ask you about a young woman who was found in your hotel room, a Miss Violet Wells...?"

... "found"?  That sounded ominous.

"I never heard of any Violet, there was nobody in the room when I left.  Who's she?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Miss Wells claims that another homeless girl called her and said that a woman said she was leaving the hotel early, and gave her her room key. Did you give anyone your room key?"

"Yeah, but that girl was called Astrid.  Just some girl I ran into on the corner while I was waiting for my Uber."

"Astrid? That's the first time I've heard that name... Maybe it was a fake name." Lucy knows it wasn't a fake name, because telepathy, but on the other hand, "Violet Wells" could be a fake name... "What did Astrid look like?"

(Astrid looked more or less like the portrait I used for her.

Do you describe her?)

[I thought we established that "Astrid" definitely was a fake name, and that her real name was Kate?]

"Skinny blonde white girl," is as much as Lucy offers by way of painting a portrait.

"Uh, no, the girl claiming to be Violet Wells is a redhead, built like a... uh, like a tank. Doesn't look like her hair's been dyed lately, either. I don't think we're talking about the same person. And she says that the girl who gave her the roomkey was a black girl. I'm starting to get the feeling that your roomkey was traded around who knows how many times..."

"Maybe."  The mostly indifferent shrug is audible in her voice over the phone.  "Why do the cops care who slept in a hotel room, anyways?"

"Because suddenly the witness to a murder was magically replaced by a homeless girl who knew nothing about it-- and the hotel knew nothing of the replacement. It made me very curious to try to understand it." Delaney is keeping irritation from entering his tone, but he's doing a less-than-perfect job of it.

... fucking cabrón cop wants to get all huffy with me?!  Lucy was sorely tempted to tell Delancy exactly where and how deeply he could shove his curiosity.  But she hadn't gotten all the information she wanted.  She took a breath, informed herself that this was a time for calm.

"Well now you understand it.  Hey, who was the shot guy, anyway?  He owe money to the mob or something?"

[Can Lucy psychically nudge someone over the phone?]

"I'm afraid that's not information we're releasing at this time, Miss Lopez. Ah, let's see, I... Where are you right now?"




(I'm gonna say it comes with an extra penalty. Since she's never met him in person, I'm gonna say -2.)

... yeah, like she's going to tell the cops where she is.  "I'm at the Tropicana."

If they weren't releasing the information, that meant there was information she probably wanted to know.  (Or so it seemed to someone naturally suspicious of cops, whose entire knowledge of police procedure came from TV.)  She'll try to give the cop just the gentlest little nudge in her favor: Miss Lopez deserves to know.

05:56, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 8 using 2d6-1 ((6,3)).

"Come on, I could have almost got shot, don't you think I deserve an explanation?"
This message was last edited by the player at 13:38, Fri 14 Aug 2020.

"I... Look, I... I shouldn't be... Look, this is a big case. It's very important. I don't really understand myself why the victim was so important, so I'll leave it to you to use your imagination about why, but-- this guy, who didn't seem to matter to anyone, does, to someone, a lot. There's a lot of pressure on handling this investigation carefully, and I-- look, when can I meet with you face-to-face? Are you staying at the Tropicana, or are you just playing at their casino?"

"Why do you even want to talk to me?  I already told you everything I saw, I don't have anything more than the cameras or the waitresses could tell you."

"The only camera inside the restaurant was up above, near the ceiling, and pointing at the cashier's station--and unlike what they show on TV, I can't really magically get them to zoom in on people's faces for details. The waitresses weren't paying that much attention to the situation. You're the best witness there is, or certainly the best I've found."

Another dilemma.

Lucy definitely wanted an answer on why the World's Only Other Psychic^TM had been murdered.  And she wasn't likely to be able to get it herself.  Which meant talking to the cops.  Which wouldn't have been her favorite idea just on general principle, even aside from the fact of her own flagrant and repeated criminal activities over the past few years.  But the fact was that she probably could help Delancy's investigation in one respect: she could tell him where else to look.  She knew what poker table both the murderer and the victim had been playing at for an hour before the game broke up.  And those tables all had cameras recording every deal, every pot, every bet.

Of course, Lucy herself would show up on that recording too.  But by the time Delancy got around to discovering that, she'd be poof, in the wind.

Maybe she could just nudge him along, without getting any more deeply involved?

"Come on, it's a casino, Delancy.  There's more cameras in a casino than an airport.  You're telling me none of the other cameras in the entire building caught her going into the restaurant, coming out of it, at the slots, at the poker tables, at the front desk of the hotel, nothing?  If she's honestly that cagey then nothing I could tell you is going to make your job any easier.  And anyways, if the one camera that saw the shooting couldn't make out any details, how did you know to look for me?"

"Huh," says Delaney. "Huh. You've got something there. I should have 'em check the cameras in the..." He trails off, lost in thought.




(Do a Charming roll, please...)

[Am I understanding your rules correctly?  The default roll is 2d6+1, and Lucy is +2 Charming, for 2d6+3 total?]

11:31, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 5 using 1d6 with rolls of 5.
11:30, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 9 using 1d6+3 with rolls of 6.  Lucy is Charming!

(No, the default is just 2d6 if one is not using psychic powers.

So, 5 plus 6 plus 2 is 13. Lucy is still super charming!

Now, before I go on, as for how Delaney knew it was her-- wouldn't the meal at the hotelcasino restaurant have been charged to Lucy's room...?

And even if not, hadn't she been there for a while? Long enough for the staff to maybe (with someone to put pressure on them) figure out that she was associate with a given room?)

[Aha, gotcha re: the rules.

First question, maybe or maybe not?  Lucy is making all reasonable efforts to go incognito, paying cash for things as much as possible.  But second question though, maybe more likely?  As much as she wouldn't enjoy admitting it, her appearance makes her at least somewhat distinctive.  Someone on the hotel staff might have been able to tell Delancy about "the tiny blue-eyed Hispanic girl."]

(Yeah... if you don't mind, I think I'm gonna just say ooc like this that in-character, Delany explains this to Lucy. tl;dr: Lucy is a little more memorable than she would prefer to be (at least in Atlantic City casinos. In El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, probably not so much.))

[Ok by me!]

In Texas the Hispanics were more likely to be Mexicans; it would be Miami where Lucy would be more likely to fit in.  Or perhaps New York City.  Which was not coincidentally where the bus ticket in her hands was ready to take her.  Not that she was about to tell the cop any of that, of course.

"Yeah, try the gaming floor cameras, there's hundreds of those things," Lucy suggests.  "And anyways, I got places to be, so.  Beuna suerte finding your killer, Detective."

(Yeah, but white people can't tell.)




"No wait, I have to talk to you, when can we meet--?!"

But by then Lucy has already ended the call, and a few seconds after that, the phone is ditched into a garbage can completely.  (She's got the detective's name, she can get back in touch with him if she wants to.)

And her bus should be boarding any minute now.  Her plan is to get to NYC, find a cheap hotel, and start to work on putting together a new life.

Nothing interferes with Lucy arriving in NYC... Soon she's downtown, just a few blocks southwest of Times Square...