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.