Jack
[Percept + Alert. + Spec!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Jack
[+6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Jack
[Sneak, sneak! Dex + Stealth.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Jack
[Whoa. I am not here. I never was? Vanish from the Mind's Eye. Char+Stealth(+Specialty? Maybe?)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
Gotfred
Many warrens run through to Jack's destination. Some twist and turn, others drop off and are scalable only by those with a vampire's sense of balance and unnatural abilities. Others, especially those closer, are more direct, and more treacherous for it. But Jack still remembers where to hop over razor wire, where to duck under or skirt around triggers for axeheads, blow torches that will be explained away as gas leaks when the rumbling above sets off car alarms and blows manhole covers loose.
And as he ends his journey the rats become more and more abundant. He can see them, following at a respectful distance, but unperturbed by his presence. One even sits eating a cockroack in his back, not deigning to allow his meal to be disturbed, and Jack is forced to either trample him or jump over him.
To jump deftly. Perhaps his movements will become more careful as he proceeds, because that rat darts away at a sound. And another. A rat-a-tat-tat that sends the deserters of the Rat King's little army off to find less dangerous nut crackers to terrorize.
The sounds of gunfire, of howling rage and fury, of bodies thudding, the smell of not-blood-but-vitae fresh on the putrid air.
And the vanguard of that Rat King's army? Oh, they come. Fiercer rats. Larger rats. Loping in swarms around him, blurs of black and grey and white-patched and every hue of fur, a torrent, a flood that parts around Jack like he is a large boulder in a raging rapid's path.
They have their scurrying orders. And they ignore him as they press onward and deeper.
In the same direction Jack had been heading.
And as he gets closer he can hear it. More gunshots. Automatic weapons. Above it would barely register. Maybe some dogs with bark, some cats would run up trees or book shelves mysteriously, and their owners would never know the war raging just below the foundations of their homes.
But down here the clamor is almost deafening as it echoes through the narrow places, strictured chambers, and subterranean architecture of this cathedral-city-state to filth and humid foetidity.
The chamber opens up ahead. He can see an outline in firelight where a gruesome clanmate is manning...
A minigun, bolted in place to the ground, what must be a recent addition to the warren's defenses.
A fucking minigun.
The smell of gunpowder as it taps out its explosions, the clamor as the balls of launched lead explode rock or explode on iron fittings, is all ahead.
As is the battle.
He either hears or sees or somehow knows that Jack is coming up behind him, and the teeth-with-a-side-of-mouth that is his face turns toward him in a rictus grimace. "It's you. Gotfred's below. There's more than a dozen of them," spittle-blood running down his mouth from his last meal and where those teeth constantly grate against his gums.
This is Hubert. Jack knows him. A fellow Nosferatu of the Camarilla.
Or Jack knew him. A moment later, in a shower of teeth and skull fragmentation, his head explodes as a bullet enters and passes through it, ricocheting down the tunnel behind Jack - barely missing Jack.
The minigun is silent. A submachine gun, smaller arms, and a shotgun crack off below.
Jack
This is Jack, okay:
This is Jack. Jack, surprised and wary and dropping immediately into a cautionary tale quiet and not turning back. He can guess from the sound of gunfire that what he'll find in the warren has nothing to do with the mystic threads that've been coming together like a net over Denver; he can guess that it's The Sabbat. The Sabbat, penetrating again into the Nosferatu's secretest lairs, bypassing all their cunning, and going straight for the cold dead heart. Again.
Where's the trick? Where's the word? Where's the key that keeps giving itself over to the wrong, wrong hands? Is the riddle not clever enough? Is the enemy just that sharp, that shrewd? History repeats itself. How does history keep repeating itself?It really does. Once again, Jack is fighting a war that he does not believe in because by fighting the war he'll be able to fight his own war. Because the war believes in him.
It's you. Jack grimaces. Gotfred's below. And looks off, toward the bellow of guns, past the river of rats, his eyes gleamless and narrow. There's more than a dozen of them.
He takes a breath to say a word --
(They're all hideous: all mal-formed, all gruesome, all creatures touched by a curse to make them ugly if ugly was the worst and the most wretched thing that ever there was. They're all gruesome, the Nosferatu who Jack is certain he can -- perhaps one night -- un-curse. Because that's what Jack is: a hero with a vision -- with the drive to make his vision real: with the sure, swift knowledge that it is not impossible.)
-- and then Hubert's gone. Sorry, Hu. It won't be you.
And it has been more years than ever he spent in the Daylight since he last handled a firearm of any sort; but a soldier never forgets, does he. Not really. Not even when he tries. So Lucky Jack -- Jack whose head is still intact, more-or-less, who'd pressed himself (even if he should be invisible, even if he should be vanished, trust to tricks, but never trust) --
gets low, gets small: and takes Hubert's place at the mini-gun.
[Bloodpoint to up Dex, sir.]
Gotfred
Laid out below is carnage. A feast of vitae and fire. One of the Sabbat is lost in that feast, frenzy leaving him fang-deep in the neck of another Nosferatu whose bulk is draped over him like an inhuman shield.
Circles of burning trash and feces from shattered Molotov cocktails are a flaming pox upon their house, the Nosferatu cavern below, other tunnels opening upon it, some only alcoves with the comforts of the world above. An old radio is playing from one, blaring - and this would be amusing if it weren't so fitting - a Jimmy Hendrix song loud and clear.
Stone Free. Tear me loose baby. The first long guitar solo, punctuated by the occasional, Yeah!. In the voice of perhaps the greatest guitar player that ever lived.
In that same alcove a struggle between another of the monstrous Nosferatu and two shovelheads takes flight. First an upholstered chair form within its living quarters is belched forth to also set alight in the flames below, and then behind it the three figures fall to thud ungraciously and ungracefully against the ankle-deep runoff water and continue their struggle to Final Death.
Gotfred is a hellion moving through the carnage, braving even the edges of the fire, grabbing another pair of shovelheads in both hands and tossing them into the fires where they are set alight and begin running in circles, screaming horrible.
His strength is impossible for his sinewy and gaunt frame, paper pale skin that seems to have once been pulled like an elastic hide dried to leather, far too pulled though, to the point that when it now upholsters a lanky frame striations of the covering run like lines in the bark of a trunk. Its mouth is a parsed thing, small and lined with six visible teeth, each sharper than the next. Two miniscule canines and incisors set on the tip and bottom, and then three coming down like razor sharp stalactites from the upper hinge of the jaw, the lower a single broad blade that they clack against as he barks orders.
The monster wears an ill-fitting suit that his gaunt frame swims within, though without shoes, even his feet disfigured by the curse of his clan. The middle three toes are long as a bat's would be if the size were comparable, the two on the outside shriveled to ineffective lumps. At least there is a symmetry to the odd form, though. And they give him better purchase on the slick sewer floors.
A dark-skinned and equally as calmly collected man stalks through the field of battle. He is the man with that shotgun, chambering another round with a pump of its barrel. His hair is cut short and he wears what look like surplus fatigues, though a bandana is pulled over the lower half of his face, covering his nose and mouth. He takes aim at another Nosferatu, perhaps not noticing that Jack has taken Hubert's place at the now-quiet minigun.
Three more shovelheads rage toward Gotfred. One in a mechanic's uniform, another in a security guard's, and the third in bloodied a pantsuit with her blonde hair choppily cut close to her skull in preparation for this battle.
Individual fights are breaking out. A blob of a Sewer Rat, a Nosferatu with wisps of strawlike hair and a frog's mouth, is in the midsts of a struggle with another shovelhead that looks dressed as if plucked from some fraternity or American Eagle ad, though his face is still transforming in a manner similar to the Nosferatu Embrace. The look of disgust on his clanmate's face says he's surprised to be facing such a strong foe in the form of a single shovelhead.
Jack
Jack takes in what there is to see and does not think very much about it. Not consciously, of course. But subconsciously, everything is being transfigured; it is all transformed; it all fits just so, each terror, each terrible sight. The Cainite lost in the glory (trick-trap) of frenzy, of the feast; the Hellish shadows, This-Is-Hadestown-Alight shapes, burned out of the dark by fire. The shovelheads; poor bastards. His brothers-and-sisters-in-blood; poor, poor bastards. They all get their place in Jack's thoughts; in what he thinks about tonight's tale of woe.
Three more shovelheads rage toward Gotfred. But first, and we say first, because he likes the number three does Jack, and they'll be next --
But first
There is the matter of Hubert, given to Final Death and no Chance-of-Hope by a shotgun, chambered by some cold bastard stalking like he knows what it is to be Creature-of-War, War's darling. Jack watches and he doesn't feel alive. His heart isn't racing, and his palms aren't sweaty, and his adrenaline isn't pumping the way it used to; he still feels something, though, and that something tells him when to pick his moment.
The moment between some other's steady aim and
That's the moment. Fire.
Jack
[Hello. My name is Jack. You killed my friend. Prepare to -
Current-Dex-5 + Firearms [Zilch] + 10, Diff 8. Leeeet's spend some WP on this sucker.]
Dice: 15 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [WP]
Jack
[Did I scratch it? DMG: 10 + 5, again.]
Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 )
Gotfred
[ Gui's soak. ]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Gotfred
[ Two bashing. ]
Jack
[Rinse. Repeat. Damn Monsters-who-Walk.]
Dice: 15 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
Jack
[Repeat. Rinse. DMG?]
Dice: 16 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Gotfred
[ Gui's soak. ]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
Jack
[Jack: Noticer of Things?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Gotfred
[ Oh no! Someone is throwing a Molotov cocktail at the minigun embankment from the shadows of another alcove! Luckily Jack notices. ]
Jack
[Jack decides that Molotov cocktails are the mainstay of low-down no-good dirty-rotten scoundrels. But he also decides that the minigun embankment might be too hot to handle, and he's not as as swank as he used to be. So he ditches it in favor of cover.
For now?!]
Jack
[Dex! + Ath.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
Gotfred
[ YOGA FIRE! HADOUKEN! ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Jack
[Courage. Do I fear the light?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Gotfred
The Nosferatu below are fighting back and well. Jack unloads round after round from the minigun, a barrage of bullets that sink into Gui round after round and that the Brujah antitribu just seems to shrug off.
His shutgun is being put to a practical use. As the shovelheads that are now running around aflame near him a bark from its barrel puts them down, keeping him save from their burning corpses as they too are put down. This slows him in his advance toward Gotfred, who now has three angry shovelheads to tangle with...
Until they rise form the water below, the horde or rats he'd summoned, descending on their form, skittering up clothing to gnaw at eyes and ears, to nibble undead flesh from bone.
It is upon witnessing this that Jack catches it out of the corner of his eye. In the alcove across from him, first a small flame, then larger as it is put to a cloth. The improvised explosive is launched from the confines of the alcove and toward the minigun...
He runs deeper into the warrens, first away from the explosion of fire that singes his Beast, but is kept under steely control. A weapons cache to arm himself is... Maybe a few turns, maybe a drop and a climb, but reachable.
Jack
[God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(Please think you made me up inside your head.)
Vanishment?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )
Jack
[Y'know what. We'll try it this way, for Hu. Shotgun? The same ol' song. +2 for rear-attack.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
Jack
[Does it sting? Damage. 8 + 6.]
Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 9 )
Gotfred
[ Soak ]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 7) ( fail )
Gotfred
The warrens hold many secrets and many dangers, and one that can be turned to their advantage in situations such as this is the cache where Jack arms himself. Arms himself before again scurrying through like the sewer rat he is. Unseen. Forgotten. Across and around, to the line of alcoves with stone paths carved out of cement, more conduits and disused pipes leading to that dark place from whence the Molotov cocktails had been pitched.
The woman had forgotten him, made him up inside her head, maybe she thinks she'd just wanted to destroy that minigun just in case...
Just in case.
In case of what?
Maybe the realization hits her as hard as the spray of buckshot that puts her face through a blender.
The shotgun parks and her head meets the same fate as Hubert.
Below the battle is ending by the time Jack is again able to look down as what's left of the Molotov-chucking woman, dressed in her Hooters attire that is now visible in the light of the shotgun, and then in the light of the fires as she pitches forward to thud at the cavern's floor.
That shotgun-wielding Brujah is gone. The shovelheads have been disposed of. But at what price? Hubert is gone. The Jimmy Hendrix fan is lost in his struggle. And whatever had been diablerizing that inhuman shield is also gone.
The blob, known by Lucille, the Keeper of Elysium, as Petit Gourmand, has slayed the Nosferatu antitribu amongst the shovelheads. He finds Gotfred, like a right-hand-man ought to. Finds him howling in rage and triumph amidst the bodies, burning husks of fallen enemies and allies alike.
The few surviving Nosferatu cheer with the howl, but the chorus is not as strong as it would have been only minutes - long minutes - before.
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