So as Mitch is making his way up the stairs, by the time he gets to Level 3, he sees a white Plymouth Satellite driving up the ramp towards Level 2 and, eventually, the surface. It is carefully driving at legal (for a parking garage) speeds. At the wheel is a young woman in her late 20s maybe, brunette, with hair under a scarf. She looks straight ahead, almost rigidly, as she steers. In her car's passenger seat and in the back seat are three men. They wear wrap-around shades, old-fashioned fedoras, and what look like thick dark coats. Mitch blinks as his Detect (History B) goes buck wild and sees instead of three men, three snake-faced humanoids, their heads surmounted with tiny yet wicked-looking barbed horns, a SANGUSH glyph carved into their foreheads where their third eye would be. Mitch blinks again and their illusory human disguise re-asserts itself in Mitch's eyes again. It's powerfully laid on.
Are they between me and the hotel?
Do I have line of sight on a tire long enough to heat it until the pressure causes it to blow?
I'll try to pop a tire.
I'm thinking I can heat it so that the air inside expands and it blows in a way that's not obviously paranormal. But it's not like Mitch has ever practiced this use of the power.
Well, that's a blowout. Driver has to make a roll to control. Effective Drive 11 with the vehicle's SR.
Mitch is hustling back to Roger and Jo to report on these exciting/dreadful development.
Maybe they can use their "command FBI schmucks" powers to contain the irruptors, I dunno, I just know I'm not confronting them head on with something like 7 FP , my Pyro 6 done for the day, and an M16.
If Jocasta has any quick way of getting hold of Padden & Hall (walkie-talkie, yelling through a window) she'll tell them armed and dangerous perps trying to make a getaway through whatever the exit is, interdict at all costs. If not (or if so, then immediately after), she'll dash down there locked and loaded.
Dang it Jo you're already wounded.
Roger talk sense into her.
Mitch can start radioing it in as soon as he is confident he is out of earshot and eye shot, he has a walk-in-talkie and is able to commune with Jo.
Can I roll History-B lore for a threat assessment?
Jo can definitely raise P & H on the walkie; if Jo gives them instructions, she should make a Tactics-14 roll to see how effective the instructions are at the FBI team sealing off all possible exits for the bašmu.
Hmmm. She's gonna want to be deliberately vague, and if Mitch shares his threat assessment, cautious of putting them in too much danger. (If not, though, she might be a bit cavalier, given her current high-strung state.) She'll likely say we might have an armed and dangerous runner; if anyone comes out, don't engage but keep us apprised of their movements and put a tail on them if possible. Does any of this change the roll at all? Again, in character, she'll be a little more loose about engaging them if she doesn't know the exact threat.
Mitch is absolutely sharing his opinions about serpent-men and the foolhardiness of confronting serpent-men, using colorful language that indicates he assumes he's speaking on a secure channel.
Jocasta's instinct is absolutely to run down there and see what can be done. She realizes she's hurt, and these things are a menace, and there's a legitimate threat to her sanity if she even enters the area, but (a) Mitch is no match for them on his own; (b) we can't just do nothing; and (c) we can't have these things out and about roaming the city. So she's gonna basically tell Mitch and Roger she's moving out, and unless they stop her or have a convincing counter-plan, well, she's moving out.
"Shit," Jocasta hisses. "Mitch, it's your call. Can we help the driver? Is it worth running these things down? Or should we cut our losses and do what we can do inside the hotel?" She lights a cigarette to quell some nagging pain.
"I hate the idea of letting those things get out but we may be in a triage situation at this point."
Roger is for calling this one in. This is what an APB is for, and it will take SANDMAN agents, plural, very plural, to take them out. If the tremblor keeps going, more will appear and also escape; better to cut off the source of the flood than go chasing the flood waters downstream.
“We leave chasing them, how many others appear and get out while we’re gone?”
“Harsh toke, damn right, but seriously, we need the hotel stable. It’s shit they got out, but at least they’re not making the folks inside the hotel worse anymore. Just the ones still inside doin’ that.”
“Mitch, were there any more? You said five in the basement, but there was one upstairs at one point. How many still in the zone?
"Five down, two up, if the scorpion and the coin are one each then these three make the whole basement load-out... upstairs there's a bull and something else I dunno what." Mitch is slightly out of breath, by this point he's no doubt approaching the other PCs.
“Seems like the best course of action is to get the FBI boys to issue an all-points on our snakes and head back into the hotel to do whatever we can to to flush out the rest, yeah? We’ll have to be extra careful with all the civilians around.” She pauses for a moment as if trying to remember something.
“The coin?”
Jocasta thinks we should at least take a look.
Well... there's a decent chance the serpent men will respond to the blowout by abandoning the vehicle and proceeding on foot, or commandeering another car, and abandoning the driver either way. So someone should be there for her if that happens... I mean, setting aside the idea of confronting the psychic monsters for a second, y'know?
Yep.
Mitch, since we've identified the situation in the garage, do you feel okay about heading out to the upper levels of the hotel and figuring out where our other irruptors are, while Roger and Jocasta tend to the driver? Don't engage, just see if you can spot them. We'll look after the driver (ready to bug out if the snakes start to snap at us) and join you once you walkie-talkie your location.
On the one hand, Mitch is not thrilled with the idea of splitting up again, not after all we've encountered. On the other hand there is a lot of ground to cover and Mitch is halfway suspicious he has some kind of sanctity that most def wouldn't extend to his companions.
(How many times has Jo been within melee range of a hostile kusarikku and walked away unscathed? Because it's happened to Mitch twice so far).
(The irruptors can’t hurt Mitch because he doesn’t believe in them — that’s my theory, anyway, after Mitch told the bull man in CO to his face that he wasn’t real.)