Promethian: The Search for Humanity

[Inigo Montoya]

What has gone on before:The members of the throng; Robin, Dr. Beaker, Lefty and Ragdoll had taken a job at an unlicensed slaughter house. After they were fired, they got work at a coal mining factory. One of the tunnels collapsed, and all but one of the miners they were working with died. After escaping the mine, they found a strange abandoned town with spirits that showed them visions. After escaping and killing a crazed murderess, they met a werewolf who took them to a cabin, where they were attacked by a living blob of tar. They killed it, and escaped in their car.
((EDIT: OOC thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=164468)))
It's been an hour and half since you have escaped the tar pandoran. Robin is driving right now, and you are low on gas.

Ragdoll: You are still singed from the encounter.

[Vespe Ratavo]

Lefty leans his arm against the car door, resting his cheek on his palm, staring out as the endless plains roll by. He brushes his bangs out of his face, half-listening to the fuzzy, crackling radio. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWzeInQaUk4)

"Take me home, to the place, I belong..."

It was...odd, he had decided.

Colorado. One of the Four Corners states. 8th largest state, twenty...somethingth in population. Home state of John Denver and Flobots. Flobots formed in Denver. Heh.

That. That sound. Thought. Whatever it was. It was...unusual. Irony? He knew the word, not the feeling. Strange. Maybe the others were rubbing off on him.

Perhaps...emotions are the result of experience, changing one's perceptions of the present based on known responses to past stimuli...I sound very pretentious, don't I?

It was the mountains. Definitely the mountains. Not his mountains. Those were seven, eight hundred miles south, but similar. They looked familiar, even in the dark, illuminated only by the moon and stars. The stars. He remembered the stars. Vividly. Model T used to take him up to the top of the mountain to get the best view. He would tell him to take this moment, and freeze it in his mind. The stars would fade some day, he said. The cities, the lights, the artificial light humans surrounded themselves with, clouded the stars, but they were always there.

I wonder if that was a metaphor. For something.

That is what we call a metaphor, he had said, chuckling softly to himself, realizing his creation was much like he was at first, literal-minded and serious.

Probably, yes.

Lefty turns away from the window, readjusting his hat and tie, gradually fading back to the real world, with all its pesky trivialities, like food, and gas to make the car run. Those would probably be good things.

I don't mean to interrupt, he says to no one in particular, but we should probably find a gas station soon. And maybe figure out what to do... He trails off, realizing how blatantly obvious his advice is, returning to his Thinker hunch on the door.

[Mr. Moon]

Seated next to Lefty, leaning into the back seat, is an odd looking woman. There's something wrong about her. Maybe it was the way her left arm didn't match the rest of her body, dark black where it should be dark Caucasian, with black palms where they should be fleshy pink. The arm itself was covered by the folds of a black jacket, over a white shirt with a cheerful smiley face graphic printed on the front, although now much more worse for the wear, flecked with burn holes and charred in several places, to match her skin. Maybe it was her eyes, the pale blue-grey irises lifeless in their sockets, adsorbing the dim light but not reflecting it. Maybe it was the way her flaming red hair hung from her scalp like a poorly made wig, tucked under a dirty, pink toque. Maybe it was the way her right leg was too short, or perhaps her left was too long, her right foot only reaching midway down her left calf. Maybe it was the scars that ran almost uniformly across her middle knuckles, as if they had been punctured thousands of times by some sort of blade. There was something imposing about this woman, some sort of primal anger that lay just below the surface, just waiting for an excuse to bubble up in all it's wild fury.

Either way, Ragdoll certainly wasn't conscious of this, or if she was, she didn't seem to care. All her attention, right now, was focused on a little bundle of fur and bone in her lap, a mutt of unguessable breed, with two bandages wrapped around it's eyes. Ragdoll had a banana in her hand, and she was breaking off little pieces, feeding them to the puppy and watching as he eagerly ate them up. Even though she'd only had the pet for a few days now, and had it had yet to occur to her to name the dog, Ragdoll completely adored the little creature, and she was doing her best to learn how to take care of it properly. She took a kind of joy in the fact that for once, a creature was solely dependant on her, rather than the other way round. So preoccupied in feeding the dog was she that the dull ache of the burns that now covered her body and the long, thin cut along her face didn't even bother her anymore.

It's not until a voice at her side speaks up does Ragdoll look up from her almost trance-like state, blinking at Lefty a few times before shrugging and returning her attention to the puppy in her lap. The need for gas wasn't a thought she saw the need to put the effort into vocalizing. So, for now, at least, she chose not to worry about it. Robin and the doctor were generally better at dealing with the van's problems than she was, anyway.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Probably. Though I might be able to make some gas if we ran out, I think a station would work better. I'm pretty sure I still have some money around here somewhere..." The Doctor dug around in the pockets of his lab coat, searching for the little wad of bills he'd stuffed there some time ago.

Doctor Beaker was a strange sort of man. He had strangely wild hair, strangely singed clothing, and a strangely curious look to him. The Doctor was the sort of person who never stopped trying to learn things. The Doctor was a man of science. And the Doctor believed in ghosts.

After all, he saw them often enough.

[Artemis97]

"I'll pull off at the next exit." Robin informs the others. She flips on the turn-signal and checks the van's mirrors for traffic then looks over her shoulder to check the blind-spots, just like she'd been taught, and checks the mirrors one last time before slowly pulling over into the outside lane. Robin was a very cautious driver, never wanting to get into any accidents or do anything that would attract the attention of the police. She also never took the van over 55 mph.

[Inigo Montoya]

A couple of kids lay on their horns, hooting and hollering as the scream past on the empty freeway. One of them gives Robin a one fingered salute. After they pass by, the world goes quiet again, except for the scratching music on the radio, growing fainter and fainter the further you go. Eventually a sign appears above the road. http://tinyurl.com/27xh5yu

As you enter the town of Micro, you quickly see that it lives up to it's name. Many of the store fronts are boarded up and the only hotel seems to be a "otl 6", the M and e bulbs burnt out. The main street appears to be the only paved road, and you are given the feeling that no matter what time you rolled up, the stores that are still open along the road would be just as deserted. A quarter mile up, you see a small self service gas station, with "Jo's mini-mart". Beyond that a small bar that seems to be the busiest thing in town.

[Destro_Yersul]

"That's curious." Says the Doctor, as the van nears the bar. "There's another in there. Like us. Wonder what he's doing all the way out here..."

[Artemis97]

"Should I stop there?" Robin asks, briefly taking her eyes off the road to glance at the others. "Or should we get gas first?"

A full tank of gas might be the best idea, if they end up having to leave town quickly.

[Destro_Yersul]

"Gas first, I think." The doctor, too, believes it might be necessary to leave in a hurry.

[Inigo Montoya]

Getting gas is fairly easy. The clerk, a portly middle aged man named Dante, leers at Robin, but accepts her money without any difficulty. As you approach the bar however you all feel the Azothitc radiance coming from inside. It feels...searching. Like it's been waiting for you, hoping that you would show up.

Inside, the bar is fairly busy, with cowboys and their girls enjoying a night on the town and data pushers peering deeply into highball glasses. There's a game of darts going on as well, the thump of the dart hitting the board adding to the noise of the bar. Finally, you see him. Tall, thin and with slumped shoulders, his body resembles that of a man nearing his midlife crisis; his bearded face, dirty and heavily marked betrays an even older age. As you look at him, his disfigurements become apparent. his skin is dark, almost a black hue, and deep V-shaped rents run along his arms in a vague zig-zag pattern. His eyes are white, his beard and hair matching this color as well. He looks up, as if something grabbed him, and he smiles at you, waving you over.

[Mr. Moon]

It is not without some reluctance that Ragdoll climbs out of the van, first ensuring that her blind little puppy is safely locked inside it's confines, for fear he would wander off. After clumsily attempting to calm the poor creature before she leaves it, the red-haired frankenstein clambers out of the car, closing the door behind her. Stepping out into the bracing coolness of the night air, she peers up at the bar's name-sign mounted above the door, dead eyes resting upon it for a moment in silent, wary judgment, before crawling their way down to the door. Freckled nostrils flair as she takes in the scents wafting from it's confines - alcohol and tobacco and vomit.

Limping, Ragdoll makes her way into the bar, following her more social friends. The dull, jumbled drone of different conversations mixing together like so many pages from ten different books, torn out and thrown on the floor to create a meaningless narrative, hits her ears and makes her frown as she peers around herself warily. There were too many humans here. If they turned against her and her friends, they would be trapped and surrounded. With a shaking hand, Ragdoll nudges Lefty's good arm, and gives him a meaningful look, the caution and nervousness in her soulless eyes conveying all of this.

Finally, her eyes fall upon the dark-skinned, strange promethean, taking in his whithered face, white hair, scarred arm. He reads age, vulnerability. Because of her own lack of experience, Ragdoll does not consider that his age means he has more of that than her, she doesn't consider that he may have tricks and plans she would not account for. As far as she was concerned, he was low risk, which was good for this situation. Ragdoll didn't want to get in a fight. Not here, at least.

[Artemis97]

Robin smiles when she enters the bar. She loved places like this. Full of people. Full of life. It was a great place to just sit and watch and learn.

Until someone got mad at her and kicked her out.

But she was here with her friends this time. They would be certain to help her. And there was another of their kind here, too. He looked old. But old people knew a lot of stuff. Robin hoped he would share with them.

Excited, the Muse practically bounces across the bar towards the haggard looking man. "Hello!" She greets him with a wave and a smile.

[Destro_Yersul]

The Doctor... well, he was curious, of course, but he was never very good at meeting new people, and the recent adventure had only proven that. So he hangs back a bit, watching the enthusiastic Robin and trying to decipher the menu.

[Vespe Ratavo]

Lefty takes a moment to take in the atmosphere of the bar. The places always intrigued him, they seemed to be the thing that separated him from humans. To willingly impair yourself, to stumble and mumble and break things in the name of Fun, that was something he didn't possess. He casts his gaze across the bottles lining the back wall, a menagerie of shapes, sizes, and colors. He briefly considers buying one.

Ragdoll's nudge snaps him out of it. Turning to her, he gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. It's rather light, to be honest, but could pass for natural. He follows Robin, taking a rather reserved stance leaning against a wall, just close enough to hear the other Promethean.

[Inigo Montoya]

The elderly man smiles at Robin.
"Why hello there beautiful! I'd recognize a Muse anywhere, I would." He speaks with a rustic accent, and a smile comes easily to his lips. "I see...a muse, a nepri and a frankenstein. You make good company, you know that?" He takes a swing from the drink in front of him, a dark colored liquor. "Now you're probably wonderin' why I called you all here." He is speaking very loudly, and people are starting to look at you, their faces dark.

((OOC:))
If you want to try and quiet him down, it's a Manipulation + Socialize or Composure + Subterfuge roll.

[Artemis97]

"Of course we are." Robin replies. "And we're very good company." She agrees, moving to gently rest a hand on the old man's arm. "but there's no need to shout. We don't want to attract any bad company, now do we?"



Right, I'm not sure which roll applies here, so I'm rolling both and you can choose.

Maipulation+Socialize 0 (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2780213/) Successes

Composure+Subterfuge 2 (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2780215/) Successes

[Inigo Montoya]

The old man, who you now see was starting to get worked up calms down almost immediately.
"Sorry about that missie. I'm just...rather excited that I found you. I need help." He takes another drink from the glass. "It's my hometown...You think you can sit down? It's a long story."