Five Earths, All in a Row

[combatmedic]

You've really put together a fun mash-up, Prince Charon.

Steampunk Earth is my fave, but each Earth has its charms.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

You've really put together a fun mash-up, Prince Charon.

Steampunk Earth is my fave, but each Earth has its charms.

Thanks! Feel free to comment, offer suggestions, et cetra - it feels kind of weird getting views with no comments.

[tshiggins]

I had a hard time writing this one, but it's ghastly enough that I wanted it out of my head.

Quick Hand

The first shot took that prick assistant principal, Mr. Alan “Stain” Stanislovsky, right in the face and went down screaming. It was gonna be a damn fine day.

The black coat billowed out around him in a most satisfactorily dramatic fashion as he wheeled around and unloaded the second round in the gut of the school rent-a-pig, Karen McAllister. Now she’d never call up his dad, again.

(Not that it would do anything, after this morning. Daddy Drunk-Ass wouldn’t lay a finger on anybody, ever again.)

Kelly Grogan, the chubby brown-noser student assistant in the office tried to slam the door shut, but the third round of double-0 buck took her hand off as it disintegrated the doorknob. The fourth round stopped her screams. He had to reload once he finished in there. Principal Gray’s desk chair would never be the same. LOL.

(His shaking hands meant he’d had to reload, one other time, in the office. The Interwebz said that happened, a lot, in combat. It was nothing like shooting the neighbors’ dogs, that was for sure.)

Moving down the hallway, the screaming students at Fairview High School (“Home of the F**gots”) running like little girls. The classroom light turned off behind the third door on the right. Some dumb***t teacher was trying to make it look like the room was empty. Yank the door open and fire into the room just to let ‘em know they’re f**ked, and stride in like an avenging god as they try to hide under their desks.

Oh, look! Bradley Jefferson, “the best QB the Fairview F**gots have seen in years!” That’s what the newspaper said. Hiding in a corner with his white cheerleader girlfriend, Megan Connelly, now. Rack the slide. He’ll never run again. Rack the slide. He’ll never throw again.

(Memory. Twelve-year old Megan looked at him with tears in her big green eyes. “Bobby, why you gotta be so mean to people who like you? Why?”)

Bitch don’t mean nothin’. Rack the slide. She’ll never wallow with a chimp, again. LOL!

Sirens in the distance. Don’t mean nothing. Move through the hallways. Rack the slide. Reload. Sirens right outside now. Coming in soon. Cops had learned something since Littleton, and they didn’t screw around outside, these days. At least, that’s what it said in the Interwebz.

Chased some Fairview F**gots toward the east door. Nailed the last one between the shoulder-blades just as he tried to go outside, and the kid goes down just in time to trip up the cop in SWAT as he tries to rush in. Blast the propane tank left there before the party started, and it goes up with the heat of a thousand suns and fills the end of the hallway with flames. Cops screaming now, too. Hellyeah.mpeg!

(Interwebz said it was hard to set off propane tanks….)

Back the other way. Other exits. They’re coming in the door outside the Chem Lab, where Mr. Drogan had been honest enough to admit that nobody understand that crap in the sky. That tank goes up, too. (WTF /b/?!)

Hell. It’s like Solid Snake, all up in here.

Reload. Rack the slide. The tank left at the bottom of the stairs outside the Computer Lab (All new Apples and s**t…) goes up and nobody’s coming down that way. Shouts from down the hall; the cops are inside.

Running down the diagonal to the other stairs, head up and there’s Mrs. Pritchard, the old hag, taking her Lang Arts students down like it was a fire drill. Better run, better run, outrun my… awww. Too bad.

Shouts from behind, cops are right below. Blast the tank, the stairwell fills with flames and the concussion feels like slamming into a door with his face and the shotgun clatters down the stairs into the flames. Skin hot, eyes watering. Burned! Coat smoking. Goddammit!

Shed the duster back into the flames and stagger up the stairs as the fire system sprays black water all over everything. It feels good on the face. Tired now. Huddle into the doorway to Mr. Craig’s room, and wait for the cops to come and take him. Game Over for the Cowboy Kid; "iron man" setting, no saves.

Asking if I’m alright. (Wat?) Can I walk? Yeah. Led outside, toward an ambulance. Don’t they know? They don’t know. They don’t know! Lucky. Lucky, lucky.

Salve on the face by paramedic guy, in the back of the ambulance. What’s your name kid? Bobby. Bobby Greenwood. Who’s your dad? Don’t answer that. He was an a**hole. Must be shock.

Cop in black gear, burned bad (LOL!), brought in on a gurney. Get them to the hospital, stat! Siren screams and the burning school falls behind. Out to the freeway.

Lucky, lucky, so damn lucky. The /b/ros are not gonna believe this happened, even though the pics are all over Facebook, by now.

Pull out dad’s old .38 POS revolver with its chipped nickel plating and the ambulance pulls over at the sound of the shot. Cop has a sweet 9-mil in his holster, three more mags in his belt. Plenty left after the terrified paramedic takes one in the face. Step outside. Unreal. The f**got stopped under an overpass, which means the helicopter, up there, can’t see. ROFLMAO!

Sweet Cadillac SUV pulls up and the door opens. Ginger MILF steps out, pretty hot. Yeah, a student at Fairview. Need to get to hospital. Oh, poor dear! (Wat? Can’t she see the ambulance parked right here?)

In the SUV. Ginger MILF running her mouth. So horrible. Yeah, horrible. Horrible is the barrel of the nine pointed at the freckles on the nose of the complimentary 12-year-old in the back seat, tears in her big blue eyes.

Drive, bitch.

everythingwentbetterthanexpected.net

[tshiggins]

Dancer

Sybil wiped the steam off the mirror and leaned in close, the vanity lights on either side leaving no shadows on her face.

She saw no wrinkles. Not even any lines. Her hair had started to come in dark at the roots, so she’d have to go to the salon again, but that was okay. They weren’t coming in gray. Not any longer.

She dried her hair, dried her body (perky, with no sags anywhere), slipped into the yellow sun dress from her overnight, went out to the side of the bed and looked at the empty, mindless husk lying there.

He’d been an okay guy, really; a salesman at the top of his game, in Tahoe for a trade show, having a drink in the hotel bar where Sybil lurked every time she came through town. The Bond-wanna-be’s Omega probably would have attracted her interest, even if the tingling in her nose hadn’t told her that Ozzy Riordan hadn’t been playing quite fair.

Ozzy had an edge; the sort of edge that people started to get when the four other earths appeared, five months back.

Edges interested Sybil; fascinated her, even before the sky changed. Some people seemed to have them, some people just… didn’t.

She didn’t used to have one. The closest she’d had was good body, which had allowed her to get out of southern Illinois, on the back seat of a Harley. That had gotten her to Vegas, where Beau had taken a shiv in the gut and left her stranded.

Still, Vegas had been better than Taylorville, especially after she’d learned to deal blackjack. She worked in a couple of casinos, each one a little better than the last, and learned some important lessons on the way.

Lesson Number One was the biggie: People with edges take what they want.

She’d seen it. Card counters came in and took the house, and the smart ones left quickly by the front door. The not-so-smart ones left by the back alley. The guys who hired the talent for the stage shows took what they wanted from the girls. The house took everything from housewives and working stiffs and grandparents who couldn't say “no” to the slots.

When Sybil tried to take her fair share, by slipping in a few extra “tips” from the house winnings, she’d been reminded about edges. The black bruises healed, eventually, but the blackball kept her out of every casino.

Waitress work had sucked, hard. Pole-dancing had kept her off the streets. She’d dropped the name, Sarah Kozlowski, in the first club, and became Sybil Dancer. A year later, she had some decent regulars who always let her take everything in their wallets.

She never got ahead, though. She'd get a couple grand saved up, and Paulie appeared with some top-grade blow. When the money was gone, Paulie stuck around for an extra day or so and took out a few grams in trade, and then vanished.

Paulie never touched his own product. That was Paulie’s edge.

Three years ago, when she turned 35, the club let her go. The rest all said the same thing. The customers wanted younger girls. Cuter girls. Fresher girls, off the farms in southern Illinois and central Kansas and anywhere in Iowa.

You’re used up, honey. You’ve lost your edge. Yeah. Never had one.

Back to slinging hash. Not nearly as much money, not nearly as much blow. She thought about it all the time, thought about the sweet rush and the end to pain and the extra money to make on the streets.

No edge, and that meant losing everything, because she couldn’t take what she needed. She slowly felt the hunger grow, increasingly heard the streetlights and truck stops saying her name. The call got that much louder the first time she pulled a gray hair.

(cont)

[tshiggins]

(Dancer, part 2)

Sybil fought back by taking a job offer from Marty, an okay sap and a former regular who owned a diner three blocks off the Strip.

Then the sky changed, and hadn’t that been the weirdest thing? The TV started to show grainy video from the earth where World War II was starting. She’d seen pictures of the mushroom cloud over that world’s Dresden when the U.S. nuclear retaliation hit. She’d heard the arguments about “justifiable retaliation” and “deterrent effects” and it hadn’t meant a damn thing.

Her nose, septum scarred from years of blow, had started to twitch and tingle, like something from an old TV sitcom.

She didn’t understand it, the first time, or even the second or third. People would come in to the diner, usually alone, on their way from somewhere to someplace else. They'd sit in the back and say nothing to anyone despite Marty’s gregarious best efforts. They ordered their meals and then moved on.

There was something about them; something that made her nose twitch.

The fourth one was a trucker with a scraggly beard and an old leather jacket and eyes wide like a fevered cat. He sat down and ate a horse and said he’d just gotten off his third straight cross-country run. He wanted to blow off some steam.

Sybil’s nose was twitching like crazy, and he wasn’t that bad looking, and she hadn’t had any for awhile, so she let him pick her up.

She could tell that upset Marty, but hey, Marty was a sap.

There was no pretense of romance. They went to the motel and she didn’t even mind when Leroy grabbed a handfull before he got the door shut all the way. After that, it was all fumbling and pawing and tasting, and her nose felt like something on a claymation reindeer. At his moment of climax she thought her head was gonna explode.

It was better than blow had ever been.

When she woke up, well past midnight, the tingle had moved to her entire body and she felt better than she had in years. She used the bathroom, and then didn’t feel like sleeping, so she tried to wake up Leroy for a second round.

He wouldn’t wake up. He wouldn’t move. He was nothing but a lump of flesh, quivering on the stained sheets.

The paramedics couldn’t get any response, either, and the docs at the hospital called it a “persistent vegetative state." They recommended she seek psychiatric counseling to help "deal with the trauma." They didn’t find anything in his blood except traces of THC , but the doctors said there had to have been something.

After all, the cops reported Leroy had busted just about every DOT regulation by running three loads straight, with no breaks, and had apparently been awake for more than a week. Solid.

Sybil didn’t know what to think, but she felt great; better than she’d felt in years. She pulled several double-shifts at the diner, and hadn’t that put Marty in a better mood?

She didn’t sleep. She didn’t feel tired. Not for nearly a month. Then it had started to creep back up on her, but by then Sybil had started to think that maybe, maybe, she’d found her edge.

The next guy was a pudgy, neck-bearded geek in a shiny new Range Rover, on his way to San Jose. Sybil’s nose twitched hard, and the poor guy looked like he’d been smacked in the head when he finally realized what she was offering. He took her to one of the casinos on the strip, instead of a motel, wined her and dined her (which was sorta sweet, actually). He had just about zero clue what to do once he got her back to the room, so she took the lead.

Three hours later, she woke up warm and tingly to find him wiped out. She slapped him and poked him and yelled in his ear. Nothing. Persistent vegetative state.

The shower threw mini-sparks of ecstasy. She made her way down to the floor, started to walk by one of the blackjack tables, glanced at the cards and suddenly realized she knew the odds of the next draw. Just like that. Just like magic.

Just like an edge.

She fled the casino before any of the security brunos recognized her, hopped in her old beater of a car, swing by her house, threw some clothes in a suitcase, and drove to Reno. She took ten grand each at ten different places, and then blew town in a hurry. Tahoe was next, and she took a few chances, but still managed to slide out before the glares and mutters of the pit-bosses got security's attention.

After that, it was every Indian casino she could reach, in California. Three weeks later, she found herself looking in the mirror of a bathroom in a luxury suite in LA. Her body didn’t ache, her eyes were bright and her skin glowed pink with health. Those lines that had started to bracket her mouth had disappeared.

Sybil had $1.3 million in the trunk of her new Lexus. She hadn't spent a dime at a health spa, but she looked at least five years younger. Best of all, she didn’t want any blow. The edge was there, it was real, and it had coke beat all to hell.

It was also temporary, and that was the lesson she learned at the casino in Scottsdale, two nights later. She stared at the cards on the table and realized she had no idea what would drop next. She lost that hand, and then two more, and the pit-boss never even looked at her.

By then, though, Sybil figured she knew what to do. She hung out in hotels and high-end bars, waiting for her nose to twitch. It had done so, three more times, but only the ability to dissolve glass had proven useful (as her friend in the diamond business could now attest...).

She looked down at Ozzy Riordan’s empty body (“RV Salesman of the Year!”), patted him on the cheek, grabbed her purse and her case, left the room and put the “Do Not Disturb” tag on the handle. The maid gave her a bright smile and promised the “señorita” she wouldn’t disturb the “señor” and wished her buenas dias. The hotel desk clerk greeted her warmly, promised the same, and asked her to come back “real soon, now.” The bellboy begged to take her overnight bag, and the valet was practically drooling as he took her keys.

Ozzy'd had one hell of an edge, and now Sybil had a month or so to figure out how to use it. Maybe she needed to visit her friend in the diamond business, again, and apply for a job, this time.

Humming to herself, she switched on the stereo, heard the special bulletin, and started to change the channel. The news was always so depressing.

Then she stopped, and listened a little more carefully. Horror. She switched to an AM news station, and listened some more.

Tragic events. Perfect timing. Officers injured. Police baffled. Manhunt under way.

Everything went exactly, perfectly, extraordinarily right for some loser of a teenaged school shooter, and wasn’t that interesting?

Sybil pulled her phone out of her Gucci bag, and looked up the address. It was only about 340 miles to Fairview. She could make that by late afternoon.

Sybil figured she could use a little luck, and if she was right, she'd like to try two edges at once. Besides, she might provide a real public service if she found this stupid kid before the cops did.

[D10]

I loved it but I want to read all of it again before posting a more deep comment.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I had a hard time writing this one, but it's ghastly enough that I wanted it out of my head.

Quick Hand

Yikes! I can see why you wanted this out of your head!

Bobby seems to have Serendipity, possibly Luck (Aspected: Character Shields, -20%), and levels in some Probability Alteration abilities.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Dancer

Rather sad prologue, fairly sympathetic character, so far.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

(Dancer, part 2)

... and now she's not sympathetic. So, classic Psychic Vampire, with Accessibility: Only during orgasm, I think (not sure what that's worth, as I haven't played games where that sort of limitation would be available). Speaking of that, though, you should run Dancer, especially Part 2, past a mod, before you post it to the Fiction thread on SB.com, as it might end up getting you banned (whereas 'Quick Hand' would not; American values, eh? Can't talk about climax or orgasms, but lethal violence is fine).

All three are quite well written, though obviously disturbing.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Yikes! I can see why you wanted this out of your head!

Bobby seems to have Serendipity, possibly Luck (Aspected: Character Shields, -20%), and levels in some Probability Alteration abilities.

That's what I had in mind. The concept was, "What if the worst sort of /b/tard did exactly what those guys talk about doing, all the time, and it can mostly turn out just the way they fantasize?"

(The character came to me while I was packing boxes for a move to my new place, which is boring and tedious. Those sorts of tasks cause my mind to wander. A friend of mine had told me about Reddit, and I'd taken a look at. Didn't care for it, but it had mentioned 4-chan. Then, G-n-A had mentioned once that 4-chan was the ***hole of the Internet, which made me curious enough to go look at it.)

While 4-chan has some really funny things, in a low-brow sort of way (I'd had no idea that Lolcatz had started there...), almost everything else ranges from disturbing to appalling. It's absolutely vulgar, but that vulgarity, crossed with the "Foster the People" song, Pumped up Kicks, is the origin of the idea for Bobby Greenwood.

The problem is, the more I thought about the concept, the more I realized Bobby Greenwood was quite disturbing in a very "not-fun" sort of way. That was a problem, since the purpose of these vignettes is to create villains for games in your setting. I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to role-play out a hunt for a school shooter, who is a messed-up sociopath of a teenage boy for whom everything seems to go horribly right in the most nightmarish sort of way.

So, I sat on the idea for long time.

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Rather sad prologue, fairly sympathetic character, so far.


... and now she's not sympathetic. So, classic Psychic Vampire, with Accessibility: Only during orgasm, I think (not sure what that's worth, as I haven't played games where that sort of limitation would be available). Speaking of that, though, you should run Dancer, especially Part 2, past a mod, before you post it to the Fiction thread on SB.com, as it might end up getting you banned (whereas 'Quick Hand' would not; American values, eh? Can't talk about climax or orgasms, but lethal violence is fine).

All three are quite well written, though obviously disturbing.

You pretty much pegged the character description, yeah. It's her personality quirks that make her interesting, to my mind, as much as her abilities.

She originally started out as a cross between "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" by Cake, with a smattering of "Leaving Las Vegas," by Sheryl Crow.

The problem is, I personally like smart, disciplined alpha-personality women, so I struggled to think of her as a villain.

Then (once again, while I was working on moving...), I started to think about Tarantino's "Django Unchained," which brought to mind '70s Blaxploitation films, which led to exploitation films in general, which reminded of an actress I hadn't thought about since my days as a 20-year-old comic-book fanboy, Sybil Danning.

As far as actresses go, Sybil Danning was pretty terrible. But she was fun to look at, in a blonde, tanned, silicon-enhanced bimbo sort of way. And, her success indicates to me that while Danning, as a person, is pretty smart, the characters she played were usually conniving, sadistic femme-fatales with poor impulse control who used sex to manipulate or trap.

So, what if one of the female characters in, say, Chained Heat, started to age and lose the only asset that had ever gotten her anything? Not too bright (although not really stupid) and terrified by her inevitable downward spiral, she grows ever more desperate and obsessed -- obsessed enough to attract the attention of a spirit. Once I mixed in a bit of the personality of a woman I used to know who sold cars at a Lexus dealership, along with a splash of coke-head stripper, I had her.

Basically, Sybil Dancer wants to think of herself as the girl in the short skirt and the long jacket, but she doesn't have quite the brains (or nearly the self-discipline) to manage it. However, she wants the good life and believes she's entitled to it. She also as a streak of utter ruthlessness and a nasty ability that substitutes for intellect. As long as Dancer's life is going well, she'll be okay to be around, but if things go against her, it would get ugly.

I actually like her, a lot, and she has considerable potential as a recurring villain -- especially since her abilities would vary a bit, from one encounter to the next. Her motivations are wonderfully simple and utterly comprehensible. She's a predator who enjoys herself so much that she doesn't have time to worry about ethical considerations -- much less feelings of guilt or remorse.

Anyway, given her abilities, it occurred to me to mix her story up with Quick Hand Bobby's, and that gave me a handle on how to make his scenario work. The group gets called in to help deal with this ghastly mess at Fairview High School, and starts to hunt Greenwood down. The scenario gets darker and darker, as they realize they're dealing with a damaged kid who has become sociopath that skews probabilities in his favor, and shatters every life he touches.

However, as the dragnet continues, they run into people who start to say, yeah, there was somebody else asking those same questions. Delightful young woman, very pretty and sooo nice. A lovely, sweet girl like her should not be getting involved in something so terrible. You'll help her, won't you? And make sure nothing bad happens to her?

[Prince Charon]

Thank you. Brilliant scenario, there.

In a way, it's hard to tell which is really the more dangerous of the two. I'd say Bobby in the short term, but eventually, his luck will run out - such as if he encounters a Meta-Psi (standard GURPS Anti-Psi, plus the ability to enhance or manipulate others' powers, but having a -10% limitation, due to other Meta-Psis and various other things being able to affect them), or someone much luckier/better at Probability Alteration than he is. Long-term, it's definitely Sybil.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Thank you. Brilliant scenario, there.

In a way, it's hard to tell which is really the more dangerous of the two. I'd say Bobby in the short term, but eventually, his luck will run out - such as if he encounters a Meta-Psi (standard GURPS Anti-Psi, plus the ability to enhance or manipulate others' powers, but having a -10% limitation, due to other Meta-Psis and various other things being able to affect them), or someone much luckier/better at Probability Alteration than he is. Long-term, it's definitely Sybil.

The thing is about Sybil, she's kind of a /b/tard bane; the perfect foil. Should Bobby get a look at her, he'll think of her the way stereotypical /b/tards always think about pretty females, and he'll want her for "raep."

All she has to do is let herself get taken hostage, and she'll be the one who rapes. She'll take all of Bobby's abilities, and destroy his mind, too. She just has to not get shot, first, and that's the tough part, and she hasn't really thought that through, at all.