Day 0: I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened

[Ezeze]

Private Ortega confiscates the folding knife but lets Cole keep the Geiger counter. Maybe he figures it's close enough to a communications device to qualify under that Act of 1934 Kacey was talking about. Maybe he figures you'll need it. Maybe he just assumes it's not a weapon and therefore not a concern - who knows? He's not explaining himself. And he doesn't seem to think he owes Cole an answer to his question, either.

Then he moves on to Mr. E who starts to object when Private Ortega finds and summarily takes his sword, but then he glances at Cole. Out of concern or shame, Mr. E remains quiet.

But even if Ortega didn't answer Cole's question he gets something approximating an answer he reports "Nothing further to report, sir" and the voice behind the lights responds "Alright. We'll put them with the others."

You're escorted onward, continuing to climb in elevation. As you walk your eyes adjust to the light (aided by the fact that the lights are now pointed in front of you rather than shining directly in your faces) and you can make out the other two soldiers, both of whom walk ahead of you. The first - and he must have been the speaker - is a bald black man named Corporal Brown (at least, according to the name on his uniform). The second is a Caucasian woman with a shaved head under her regulation cap. Her name is Private Williams.

You don't walk very far. Around another corner is a big, ugly, concrete wall with a big, ugly hole in it. The rebar is visible, nestled between two layers of concrete. It's more than large enough for all of you to go through into a big, ugly basement. It's empty except for dust and trash and some graffiti on the wall proclaiming in shaky red letters that Andrew ****ed Megan here and a big, metal staircase not totally unlike the one you climbed down in the old abandoned bus station (doesn't that feel like months ago?).

Corporal Brown heads up the staircase first. Followed by the five of you. Followed by Privates Ortega and Williams. "Over there" Corporal Brown orders you. He ascends another staircase, taking your weapons with you, but privates Ortega and Williams stay down here - with their guns - to make sure nothing happens to you.

It's pretty obvious where he means. On this second floor (or, second from the bottom, anyway) there is a corner that has been cleaned up, and some cushions and chairs of highly varying quality and comfort have been thrown down, as well as a lit lantern, about two dozen people and even a deck of cards currently in the hands of, of all people, Hannah Miller and Short Amy who seem to be playing Go Fish or some other common kids' game.

It takes Hannah a little to make out your faces in the gloom, but when she does she looks very confused. "... Jackson?" She calls. "Since when do you hang out with Kacey and Emily? ... And Mr. Earles?" Cole, at least, doesn't surprise her. Or maybe she just doesn't know his name. Short Amy glowers at him anyway.

[Mister Doctor]

Cole was entirely happy to be overlooked by Hannah and had exactly zero patience for Short Amy's animosity at the moment. If she wanted to start something on today of all days, Cole's patience would likely dip well into the red. Today was about survival and trying to find the handful of people he cared about, living or dead. There was no time or bandwidth to spare for petty high school antagonisms.

So he did to her what he wished more people would do to him and flatly ignored her. Instead, he broke off from the others and made a circuit around the improvised fallout shelter, looking mostly for his aunt or the AV Club crew but also keeping an eye out for Ms. Bonnie or any of the family members of Kacey's squad that he recognized. Maybe if Jackson or Emily knew their families were alive and well, they might be a little more reluctant to go haring off after Mr. E's supposed vampires.

---

Adversity Token: 2

[Knave]

DiceBrawn10 d20+1
Fight d12+1
Grit d10
Charm d8
Flight d6
Brains14 d4 || StrengthsEasygoing: Get 2AT per failure
Protective: +3 to protect
Rebellious: +3 to persuade children or to resist persuasion from adults or children || FlawsIgnorant
Reckless

Adversity Tokens: 6

---

Jackson generally feels like their situation is improving with the arrival of these soldiers, so he goes along with the group quite happily. He mentally high-fives Andrew for his conquest, and then, fearing he was maybe being inequitable, gives a respectful mental nod to Megan for getting hers too.

"We're not hanging out. We're just going around together today." Jackson is a little defensive about Hannah's question. He's not sure if she thinks he isn't cool enough for this crowd, or if she's maybe jealous. Neither is great.

He looks at her blankly for a while, before it occurs to him that, as her most recent boyfriend, he maybe has some responsibility for ensuring her wellbeing in this scenario. "You okay, yeh?"

Edited May 25, 2023 by Knave (see edit history)

[Dr Jackal]

Kacey walks over to the table, preferring to let Jackson sort out his issues with Hannah on his own. Instead, she saunters over to the table and begins shuffling the deck.

 

"President?" she asks. "I'm also partial to Mao. Or we could do Egyptian War. Cole, Emily ... you want in?"

[Ozma]

It takes Kacey a moment to get Emily's attention, since she's scanning all the faces in the little shelter carefully, and the soldiers most of all. She looks uncomfortable as she look at their weapons.

"Mm? Yeah. I'm good with whatever." She says after a moment, and sits carefully on the floor, giving Hannah and Short Amy a small and polite smile.

[Ezeze]

A sarcastic retort is on Amy's tongue - probably something about how she and Hannah are just fine, you know, aside from behind trapped underground taken hostage by armed guards - but Kacey interrupts, and maybe she is a little bit shamed by how mature Cole is taking all of this. Or by a teacher's presence. Maybe both.

"Erm, yeah, sure, I know President" Hannah says, grabbing on to the first one Kacey offered."Aces high?" It's a question, but it comes with the implication that that's how the game will be played if no one objects. Hannah nods towards the cards in Amy's hand and the second girl passes them over. Hannah starts shuffling.

Mr. Earles speaks up, saying "I'm going to keep an eye on Cole." Cole, for his part, is just close enough to hear him say so. Neither Hannah nor Amy respond; Mr. E doesn't have to tell them where he's going.

"Glad I had a deck in my purse. We might be here awhile. The soldiers are saying it's not safe to leave. Hopefully mom and dad aren't worrying too much." Hannah forces a little smile.

Cole doesn't see anyone else he knows, nor anyone he recognizes as someone the others might care about. But he does notice three kids between the ages of 8 and 14 in white gis, an adult similarly robed who is probably their teacher (sensei?), the children's parents (not together, judging from their body language - seems its two different families), and an older couple with a half bag of popcorn. Which would just seem like a random gathering of people, except that Cole knows for a fact that the only stores still open in the mall are two little shops near the very entrance - a karate studio and a uniform shop - and the old movie theater that's deeper in but manages to limp along because some of the old folks in town still visit it for its senior discount.

He also notices something else; Mr. Earles doesn't keep an eye on him at all. Not in the slightest bit. He walks towards him for a few paces until the others stop paying attention to him, but then he turns almost entirely around - looking in the opposite direction with his back to him - in order to watch the soldiers with purpose.

[Knave]

DiceBrawn10 d20+1
Fight d12+1
Grit d10
Charm d8
Flight d6
Brains14 d4 || StrengthsEasygoing: Get 2AT per failure
Protective: +3 to protect
Rebellious: +3 to persuade children or to resist persuasion from adults or children || FlawsIgnorant
Reckless

Adversity Tokens: 6

---

Jackson runs out of things to say to Hannah fast, and wanders a little aimlessly around. If any of the soldiers are talking to each other, he tries to listen to their conversations.

He looks absently back at Hannah, wondering if she will join him away from the group. Would that be good? Hard to know

Edited June 13, 2023 by Knave (see edit history)

[Ozma]

Emily says little, but takes her cards as they're handed out, though she does occasionally look at the soldiers and frowns. "Did they say why it's not safe?" She asks mildly, looking down and frowning at her hand.

[Dr Jackal]

Kacey plays her hand, but mostly watches the other players, occasionally guiding the conversation toward interesting topics. After a hand or two, she calls out to the guards.

"¡Oye, genio! Your name's Ortega, right?" she calls out. "We're all down here together, so you want in on this? We're about to start playing for money, and I think I can take you to the cleaners. Your friend there is welcome, too. Unless she's, like, a lot smarter than you." The tone of her voice is just mocking enough to be a dare.

[Mister Doctor]

"Chill out teach, you're making me uncomfortable," Cole whispered to the older man, pretty far from happy with how close the self-proclaimed 'vampire hunter' was sticking to his shadow. "And you're not exactly being subtle. I thought secret societies were supposed to be good at this sort of thing."

They were under the mall, that much seemed obvious but as safe as it might appear, Cole had no interest in sticking around. He might not be on the warpath but he still had people he wanted to find sooner rather than later. First step would be trying to find an opening to get away and he was fairly sure he could enlist Kacey and the others for that at the very least.

---

Adversity Token: 2

[Ezeze]

Jackson finds himself staring at Hannah, while Hannah pays absolutely no attention to him. She's busy playing cards with Amy, Emily and Kacey.

 

"Radiation" Amy supplies to Emily, cutting Hannah off. Hannah focuses on dealing cards, keeping her eyes down on it with an intensity that makes Emily thinking she's doing it to avoid crying.

 

Kacey learns what there is to learn from Hannah and Amy during their game. The two girls were hanging out near the mall when the alarms went off. They ran for the basements and that is where the army found them, about an hour after the explosion. They initially came in wearing hazmat suits, rounded them up at gunpoint, asked if they knew Dr. Vogel (neither of them do), then put them here. The little they've put together from listening in the military is that they apparently think China nuked Normel, and that their mission is primarily to find and extract the Doctor and his experiments and only secondarily to minimize damage to civilians. They haven't gone anywhere in groups of less than three - like they expect to be attacked in the mall basements, even.

At least Hannah and Amy will talk to her. The soldiers - even Ortega - ignore her completely. The army must not look too kindly on soldiers stepping away from active duty to play card games with civilians.

 

On the other side of the room, Mr. E responds to Cole. "They don't care what we do" he says. "They're looking upwards, not at us." Cole looks in the same direction as Mr. E and sees that he is right. The soldiers are posed like guards, guns loaded and active, but the way they are standing and where their attention is - they expect danger to come from above. "They don't know anything about monsters - Kacey's gambit earlier confirmed that - so what do they think is coming through the radiation to get them?"

There is nothing to do but watch and wait for another twenty minutes or so, but then Corporal Brown comes back down the stairs. With a gesture Privates Ortega and Williams fall in line behind him, the three of them off to continue their rounds. They're looking for something. Not you. Finding you was just an interruption. But the sound and the voices that carry from upstairs when Brown comes back down tells you there are a dozen, maybe more, soldiers above you coordinating some sort of town-wide search effort.

Your group has been unsupervised for all of a minute when Mr. E tells Cole "They're gone. They took my sword, but I bet they never found the bigger stash. I'm going for it, then going after the vampires. You should all stay here. These soldiers might not know anything about the secret war beneath Normel's streets, but you'll be safer here than with me."

[Knave]

DiceBrawn10 d20+1
Fight d12+1
Grit d10
Charm d8
Flight d6
Brains14 d4 || StrengthsEasygoing: Get 2AT per failure
Protective: +3 to protect
Rebellious: +3 to persuade children or to resist persuasion from adults or children || FlawsIgnorant
Reckless

Adversity Tokens: 6

---

The whole situation is crazy, but one fact from the proceedings of the day is easily intelligible, and as such is pushed to the forefront of Jackson's consciousness.

"Well... Steph's still out there right? So we still plan to rescue her."

He glances a little guiltily at Hannah. Now it's clear she isn't interested, he regrets considering it.

"Do the Vampires have anything to do with the bombs? Like, do vampires have nukes? Or maybe are they actually Russian vampires?"

Edited June 20, 2023 by Knave (see edit history)

[Mister Doctor]

"Probably just keeping an eye out for people. People do dumb, dangerous things when desperate and a bomb going off is bound to make plenty of folk desperate. Not everything has to be monsters. I thought you were a science teacher, you should know about things like..." and here, Cole's face screwed up as he tried to remember the term Chuck had once used, "Occram's Shaver?" Cole clearly did not want to go into it but he spoke with an amount of authority a teenager should not have on the subject. Granted, Cole wanted to talk as little about himself as possible so that was not really new.

He headed back to the others, barely sparing a glance at Hannah and Short Amy. "They ain't really watching us. As long as we ain't stupid we can probably head back down into the cave."

---

Adversity Token: 2

[Ozma]

Emily glances at Kacey first, then nods curtly to show Cole she's willing to keep going with the group.

 

"I think once they realized we were civilians they became less interested in us. I can't decide whether that's a good or a bad thing yet."

[Dr Jackal]

Kacey nods. "Nothing's changed as far as I'm concerned. I want to get Steph. Lead on."

 

She pauses for a moment, lost temporarily in thought. "Although if there are vampires, and they're some sort of ... mutation or virus that's existed for a long time ... and someone started doing research on that ... and someone else was worried enough about the research to drop a nuke ..."

 

After another moment, Kacey shrugs. "Occam's Razor. There's only one really weird assumption in the hypothesis, and the rest sort of follows naturally, more or less. I'm not saying that's the real explanation, because one really weird assumption is one too many as far as I'm concerned."

Edited June 25, 2023 by Dr Jackal (see edit history)