Jocasta, Roger, and Mitch dial into Livermore, where they speak with Marshall. The field team then decides split up, with Jocasta and Mitch seeking out irruptors or History B-aligned elements on the upper floors and Roger liaising with Genevieve and the con-goers to start implementing Archie's plan.
Gross.
Okay, well.
Jocasta has a plan. But before she puts this plan into action, she needs to consider a few things.
(maybe you can just have Mitch throw him out the window.)
Given that our priorities would seem to be (a) neutralize this thing so that (b) it can't get out and wreak more havok/recruit more worshipers, and (c) keep it from spilling any human blood which would only accelerate the chaos, but (d) our combination of good health, backup, fighting ability, and firepower all adds up to not a hell of a lot and (e) this thing is probably a lot tougher than the scorpion man which almost killed us, we don't have a ton of options
What we do have
Is a big ass canister of halothane
SO
Given that Mike earlier indicated that it was at least possible it might work on these things, but it would be a contingent Hidden Lore: History B roll to find out, since some of them do have particular immunities, I would like to request to make such a roll.
IF Jocasta succeeds, and knows these bull-men are at least theoretically vulnerable to halothane, OR if she fails and simply doesn't know, then she's going to mouth "RUN" to Mitch, pop the canister, toss it right in the middle of the room (maybe at the bull-man's head, just for a middle finger), and then bolt outside. Halothane acts quickly so the hippies ought to be kayoed within seconds; there's enough in there to knock out a whole ballroom (say, 100 people), so 14 should be no trouble. That leaves the entire remainder to work, if it works at all, on the bull-man; that might make it groggy enough to pass out, after which we can just walk in and empty a clip from a pistol into its ears and eyeballs, or it might make a rush out in which case she'll swap the carbine for one of the M-16s, go full auto sickhouse when it runs out the door, and pray for the best
IF she succeeds and knows for a fact this won't work on the bull-man, well, she's out of ideas. Might have helped to have a reality shard WHO KNOWS, WHO CAN SAY.
(Well, it'd still work on the humans, right? That might not be the worst thing in the world -- if everyone is unconscious, their brain power or whatever won't be fueling this delusion.)
(Yeah, I thought of that, but if it won't slow down the irruptor, it makes them easy prey for it killing them -- it could just stomp on 'em like grapes and who knows how much worse that would make things. I dunno).
(And Mike far as I know, we just left it outside the change room. We noted that it wasn't fading away and I asked if we should do anything with it, but the thread got lost in the chaos of the snakes hijacking that car).
"Mitch," Jocasta says very quietly, slowly opening her duffel bag to swap out the Mini for the M-16, "We're fucked. You know what I mean? FUBAR. We gotta do something quick, and I don't know what that is beyond just opening up on that thing and hoping God loves us. So if you have any ideas, I am extremely receptive."
Okay Mitch is going to spend a good several seconds looking at auras.
Okay, given you all are standing staring a little longer than your failed Fright Checks necessitated, Mitch takes a couple of seconds to trigger his Aura Reading.
The messages from the flavor of the bull-man's aura are all fucked up here this high in the ziggurat. Hotel, Mitch mentally corrects himself. It's a hotel. The rest of the humans in this room are just normal human beings having fun at a cool party with a weird jolly fat dude who wants to take them all back to a more licentious, free time than even the 1970s. Their auras' moods are uniformly happy—bacchanalian, even. Mitch needs to give me a Reaction Roll at 3d6+5 please.
(I bet Mitch is having deja vu given the Stanley Hotel in which this exact scenario was almost beat-for-beat replicated; given Mitch's various Weirdness advantages, this deja vu should feel almost expected)
Okayyyyyyy
So here's what Jocasta is gonna do. It's a pretty long shot but the time for short bets is way over. I imagine this is gonna involve a ton of rolls but I won't tell you how to do your job.
DEEP BREATH
FOCUS
Aaaaaand ... action:
Jocasta will make herself and the automatic rifle she is toting extremely visible, right in the middle of the room. She is going to raise her voice to a battlefield yell, booming out with as much authority as possible (but directed not at the kusarikku, rather at the pleasure-seeking teens). She will wave her fake FBI identification around the room, enough to give all the kids a chance to see it but not holding it in one place long enough to give anyone a solid look at it.
"Nice try, Mr. Marden, but it's not going to work. You and your Atlantean dope peddlers are out of luck; I hope the embassy has good lawyers. The rest of you kids, clear out now -- I'm willing to overlook your little party here to bring in the big shots but if I see you here sixty seconds from now you're looking at a long, hard drug sentence, every one of you. If you're smart, you'll head down to the ballroom and give your testimony to Agent Martin. MOVE IT! NOW!"
(She's going to yell all this quickly, in a rush, so nobody has time to notice that it's mostly gibberish.)
Simultaneously, she'll be kind of bumping and shoving the con-goers, basically trying to hustle them out the door. Whether or not this succeeds, she's going to try to outmaneuver the kusarikku, keep it off balance and not betray where she's going or what she's doing, all with the intention of getting someone in its blind spot. If she can get close enough, she'll do a Fast Draw and try to blast it right in the back of its head with her pistol; if not, she'll try and find the safest possible spot in what are surely closed quarters to blast it with the rifle.
(She'll also repeat some key phrases: THIS IS A BUST - CLEAR OUT NOW - SERIOUS DRUG CHARGES - FIND AGENT MARTIN - THIS MAN CANNOT BE TRUSTED as she goes. She doesn't know shit about memetics or esmology but she did earn that psych degree.)
Mitch’s response to that, I think, is to stand there with a not-too-bright look on his face. Maybe Jocasta can empty the room so they can talk, who knows?
your guess is as good as mine, pal
The only play Mitch has at the moment is to demand to see the kusarikku’s manager. This is probably better than that.
(I dunno, Mike would probably actually let us speak to its manager, who is, like, Marduk or something)
Fast-Talk with bonuses for the gun, the badge, the circumstances, let's call it a Fast-Talk at 17, and then I roll Will for the party-goers.
Mitch says in Danbe, “this worked before, kinda,” then clears his throat loudly.
“This,” he begins, “this ... what even is this?” He gestures indicating the room. “Seems like you’ve lost the plot. Gatsby, now?”
“It’s like, why?”
"Why?"
“No, no, I don’t mean, ‘why Roscoe,’ I mean why should we talk at all? What do you want, that isn’t obviously better-served by just baking us?”
In Danbe: “maybe you should run before it detonates.”
Jocasta doesn't need to be told twice. "Follow on my heels," she replies in Danbe, "we can't stop him alone." If there's any clear path out, she's gonna bolt for the door and run.
Her additional plan is to set a clear path from the suite to the elevator, set up for cover fire to at least slow the thing if he comes after us as Mitch is leaving, and to keep shepherding any of the congoers who are lingering in the halls, hypnotically repeating like the Whisperer in The Last Words of Dutch Schultz* but instead of "ARTHUR FLEGENHEIMER GENEROUS FRIENDLY," she's saying, "FIND AGENT MARTIN, THEY CANNOT BE TRUSTED."
"Apology not accepted, though, ugh, what does it matter? You want to exposit at me some more? Is this picking up from last time? This the proof you jackasses were so all-fired eager to deliver? Or, uh, can I just ask you to leave and you will? No? Didn't fucking think so."
"See, you can't even keep your stories straight." Mitch picks up someone's discarded, untouched gin cocktail, takes a sip as he sits down in a chair located conveniently near the door. "This is your world, but you also have your own private paradise-dimension where the Oldtimer grew up. You need me, but you try to sucker me into I dunno what even." He gestures around the ziggurat.
"This. And now there's damage you need me to fix, when before it was, uh, you have an evil twin from the Depression whom you've been carefully calibrated to murder ..." Mitch trails off, shaking his head. "Christ, you people."
"You think human nature tends naturally towards fascism, right?"
Mitch makes a hand gesture like a quacking duck.
(It's like a blah blah blah kind of thing.)
Ironically, at this moment Mitch is thinking it's a shame Archie isn't here.
Lacking anything else to do, Jocasta will try to raise Roger on the walkie.
Just in time, Roger's walkie crackles to life. "Agent Martin? Everything clear down there?"
The Agent ducks around a corner from the general mob of followers. His voice drops into a lower register: "Oh, there's plenty becoming clear down here, Agent Jocasta. You should come down and join the party."
Jocasta barely recognizes the mannerism. The voice is familiar, but ...
"Uh, okay, Roger ... uh, roger that. We have a [Jocasta will say the Danbe word for "bull" or its closest equivalent] up here in the con suite, and Mitch is, uh, Mitch is talking to it. I'm not sure where the conversation is headed, but there's really not much else we can do at this point; it seems to regard him as a peer and I'm not so sure it feels the same way about me." She pauses, feeling oddly flushed (or maybe it's just the scorpion venom).
"I'll be down ASAP. I think I minted you some new recruits for your, uh, your army. Anything else?"
"Control and Quartermaster have arrived. It may have to be a bit more business before pleasure. But let's see what happens once you get here?" Yes, he's being sultry over a walkee-talkee. It takes strange powers, but it can be done.
"I will definitely want to check you out again. Be seeing you." The Agent cuts off the walkee-talkee.
"You do not wish to aid our masters. This is the fault of this history, that you now can choose to defy Those Who Provide. These bala, these ... rebels, these Sandmen you associate with ... they know more than you. They hide secrets from you. They throw you into our maws, and for what?"
"To prevent the simply inevitable. This present comet may flare and fade, this no-place we stand within may resolve itself back to your incorrect history, but eventually ... we will return. And it will be thanks, ultimately, to the men you serve. Who do not even give you the dignity and respect that our masters would, and do."
After her convo with Roger, Jocasta will say to Mitch in Danbe: "They need me downstairs. Have you got things under control here? I'm worried, call if you need help and we will al come."
In Danbe: "Either no one will be hurt, or only I will be hurt. I believe I will not be hurt."
In English: "This is what I'm talking about. If this was all a play to recruit me, shit, would it be a bad one." He sips his drink, slowly.
"I've seen the dignity your masters give us cattle. You suck at this. None of you can convince anyone of anything, that's why you have all the mind control, because you can't reason your way out of a wet bag. I ask you directly what you want and you speak evasively, you change the subject, you insult Archie ..." He clucks his tongue.
"Yeah, that's what they tell me."
Mitch sips his drink.
"Tell me. You even have any friends? Or were you wished into existence wholly alone, a solitary oyster, the better to throw yourself against the bars of your cage without thought for self-preservation?"
The kusarikku gets ethereal in his rememberings of histories that didn't exist until about nine hours ago. Almost wistful.
The kusarikku gestures to himself; Mitch mirrors it with his own hand pointing to his heart.
At the end of this cryptic prophecy, all the lights in the hotel begin to flutter.
Okay.
Huh.
What's the vibe in the room, in the moment following that, the Doom of Roscoe?
Well, my first instinct is to say "let's see if it'll put its money where its mouth is re presenting a burnt offering and 'could never bake Mitch,'" but there's a chance Jo will fly into a berserker fury and try to shoot it up, or something, so, best to wait, yeah.
Okay, well:
1. Jocasta was going to go down to the ballroom and see what was up there but she had a pang of duty (never leave a man behind) and regret (she asked Mitch not to leave her alone when she was wounded by Mathias Jabs and he didn't), so she's just positioned herself outside with the M-16 at full present arms.
2. If she didn't get the +2 to her Fright check from Combat reflexes, she still made it by a mile. If she did, she got a crit.
The hallway looks very different to Jocasta. The St. Francis wallpaper is peeling off the now-stone walls. The air is heavy, scented, musky. The ground beneath Jocasta's boots is covered is also rough, clay-like. As Jocasta peers into the room with Mitch and the kusarikku (who have ceased speaking cryptic prophecies in unison), she can still see San Francisco through the window and half of the room is still a hotel room. But the other half contains a rough-hewn stone altar, and what looks like a huge copper bowl. Archaeology roll please for Jo.
"Aren't you, though?" Mitch is sweating now. He quaffs the rest of the gin cocktail, ice melt included.
"You were, okay, let's say you were sent here, that's nonsense but that's not important right now... you were sent here to do a thing. Succeed or fail, your whole existence is wrapped up in doing the thing. There's not a home for you to go back to. There's not a convivial after-hours baby-eating party where you'll meet up with your buddies. You don't have a spouse and a passel of baby demons. You're just the hotel monster. Not even the hotel monster, you're a hotel monster."
"You aren't just expendable, you were made to be expended."
("But while the Anunnakku remain asleep, irruptors’ Slave Mentality doesn’t show up in the meta-trait. If a šedu activates an irruptor’s programming, add Slave Mentality to the specific irruptor.") (MD33)
(Also argh, I keep forgetting Mitch doesn't have Psychology).
The kusarikku looks almost bashfully up at Mitch now, its barely-contained fury and desire to inflict fire and pain visibly subdued.
"I ... me. I remember being a man for a brief moment. A human. And the things I was doing for our ... my masters, seemed wrong, seemed cruel. Seemed ... I knew what it was like to hurt someone, to feel pain. I remember Roscoe crying at what I'd made him do. The tears were ... they did not bring me satisfaction. Why was I made to see, to experience these feelings? My role is to kill, to maim, to burn. I did what I was supposed to. Why do I feel ... šērtu? There are no words I know to describe this feeling, I must steal them from your kind. I am made to do their will. I am ... I know more than I did. More than I should."
Will-12 roll, please.
Mitch holds the Corruption within and does not express a negative Quirk thanks to this deep delve into Irruptor Psychology.
"What ..." Mitch's breathing is ragged.
"What ... "
He's picking his words carefully.
"What do you want to happen to you, now?"
Jo hears some feet coming up the stairs, fast. It's Roger, in a suit, looking still fresh despite a ten floor stair climb. He looks good. Really good, actually. He pulls out his gun, holds it pointed up, both hands, puts a back to a wall and slides down it until he's in position.
"We have got to stop meeting in places like this," he flirts.
Jo stands stock-still, the butt of the M-16 notched into her shoulder just above the scorpion tail wound. She's as motionless as a green plastic toy soldier, quite a feat considering the effort it takes not to gaze raptly at this appealing new manifestation of Roger's. Still: business first.
"Mitch is in there with an irruptor, a kusarikku. There were a bunch of kids too but we cleared them out. I'm not sure what's happening; he's ... talking to it. Or through it. Or it through him. I'm at a loss, honestly."
"Do we have any clear sights on it?" Roger seems to have picked up an accent, like Brit trying to do an American accent and slipping.
"What would Agent Hort's move be?"
"I've got a bead on it, or at least where it was when the lights went out. I don't think we've got the firepower to take it out, but we might be able to slow it down a little if Mitch...well..." She rolls it over in her mind.
"Mitch?" she says, not quite yelling. "How we doing in there?"
"Nearly there," Mitch calls back in Danbe.
Jocasta breaks her steel-rod firing posture just enough to glance over at Roger and shrug.
I feel like I've done all I can to this point, so: