1. Interviews (Action)

[shaidar]

Edward heads over to the group, but stays standing

"London, well originally at least. What is this place?... I think there's somewhere else I need to be..."

[tibbius]

A shaggy grey and white knee-high dog wanders over - some kind of farm dog, it looks like - and insistently nuzzles its wet nose into Edward's hand. It wags its tail eagerly.

"You're in the glades," the red haired woman says with a pleasant smile. Her voice is lovely Irish. "Sit a while, tell us your story. ... I am a mother of two, a boy and a girl. They're not here yet."

Lucas hears the distinctive noise of an ambulance siren coming to a halt at the far side of the fence. Doors slam open. There's a hustling of people and more jingling of the chain link. "Grab the cutters!" someone says. "We gotta get a stretcher in there."

[shaidar]

Edward absently pets the dog.

Despite the pleasant nature of the glades Edward cannot shake the feeling that there is something he needs to be doing, he looks around for a path out.

[tibbius]

"Not staying?" asks the East Asian man. "Go climb a tree, why not." He grins and with his teeth strips the meat from a spicy-looking chicken wing.

[shaidar]

Edward cannot shake the uneasy feeling that there is something he should be doing. With no other exits, he takes the man's suggestion and looks around for a tree that might give him the vantage of height in his search.

[tibbius]

The geography of the glade is odd. It doesn't seem particularly expansive, yet there are countless people picnicking. It's bright and sunny, yet here's a big tree right to hand, only a few seconds walking from the red-and-white squares blanket. Edward grips a chest-high branch and ...

here, roll a skill (even if it's just a d6 for "unskilled") and narrate

[Marullus]

A pause. The weight shifts off Lucas' back. A grunt as the cop shifts position. A hand on Lucas shoulder. "Hey. How you know this guy?"

Lucas inhales deeply as the weight lifts. "He's a high school teacher. We're helping a kid in trouble. I called 911. Phone. Right pocket."

He rotates again, trying to offer up his right side pocket, wondering if the phone is still connected.
He thinks to himself, FFS, someone talk to dispatch. They better have reached Wells. If all I have is these two trigger happy yahoos, this whole thing could be tits-up.

As he hears the ambulance he sighs with a moment of relief. "Don't let him die. I can explain after."

[shaidar]

Edward

General roll: [1d6]=3

Edward wishes he'd spent more time in the parks climbing trees, but that wasn't allowed by the keepers. He makes slow progress in the unfamiliar procedure of gaining each branch, managing to just stop himself from falling on more than one occasion. He stops to take a break and realises he's probably not even a third of the way up. He also realises it's already a long way to the ground.

[tibbius]

Lucas feels a hand fumble in his jacket pocket, pull out the phone. "Hey this is Officer Clemens on scene. Yeah ... what? Huh. Ok." The phone is deposited back in the pocket. "We'll sort this out downtown." A pat on the shoulder. "No worries, your buddy the teacher is getting onto the stretcher now. He looks fine."

Edward looks down and up the tree. Below is green and light. Above is green and light. Or is that above or is that ahead? There's a weird sense of weightlessness, like he's pulling himself along a green tunnel under breathable water. The branches are obstacles or handholds to pull along or both.

Abruptly, a fierce squirrel chitters right in Edward's face and he startles away from it, losing his grip. And definitely there is something weird with gravity here, because he's not falling downward but instead drifting outward, away from the trunk. What does he do?

After a while, a cop helps Lucas squirm to his feet and duck under the rail of the now-cut fence, in the back door of a cruiser and toward downtown. Does Lucas say anything?

[Marullus]

Lucas tries to get a visual on Edward himself, judge the reactions of the EMTs with him. He also looks for the gun, making sure it got bagged for evidence and not "forgotten."

Lucas thinks things through in the back of the squad car. That gun needs to get to Wells. Chances are the kid got it from this Magout, and if so, the ATF guys need to see what they can learn. As for these two locals... if they weren't sent by dispatch then this is their beat. That means they're suspect for being dirty... that machine shop should be pretty obvious with that many workers in an abandoned building. Also, the fact they shot at me first, carrying a wounded guy - if they weren't radioed by dispatch then their tip probably came Magout.

He watches them, riding in silence.

Notice [1d8]=8

[shaidar]

Edward

After realising he's not falling but drifting, he lets himself float to the ground. Still niggled by the sense of urgency about something, he searches for the path he came in by and starts to head back down it.

[tibbius]

The ground comes no closer. Neither falling nor rising, Edward is drifting outward from the trunk, the branches diminishing in thickness and multiplying, getting leafier as he goes. The green leaves are getting thicker around him and rasping against his exposed skin, it feels like they are beginning to cut him.

What does he do?

[tibbius]

Lucas notices the two men in the front seat are grimly quiet. They're not even trying to cajole information from him.

The taller one is bald by nature, with faint stubble low around his head. He's probably in his early 50s. Unusual for a city cop still to be working patrol at that age; most retire by their early 40s and head out to pasture (literally), working some retirement job as a small town cop.

The shorter one has a thick head of short-cropped kinky hair. He seems to be typing up paperwork on the laptop mounted by a swivel arm to the dashboard.

The car (at least the smooth hard plastic back seat) smells like vomit. And a little bit like blood. Though that could be Edward's blood on Lucas' clothing. Lucas notices he has dried blood on his face. Not much he can do about that now.

The car pulls up behind a low gray concrete structure, brightly lit, almost underneath a highway overpass. The two cops get out, the short one opens Lucas' door. "Come on."

[shaidar]

The ground comes no closer. Neither falling nor rising, Edward is drifting outward from the trunk, the branches diminishing in thickness and multiplying, getting leafier as he goes. The green leaves are getting thicker around him and rasping against his exposed skin, it feels like they are beginning to cut him.

What does he do?

Edward tries to grab a nearby branch and pull himself towards the trunk. "Help!" he calls to those below him.

[Marullus]

What did they do with the gun?
I assume I know the local police department and this isn't it?

How well do I recognize this location and the route here?
Notice [1d8]=1


What are the names on their uniforms?

They never should have let me keep the phone, he thinks as they make their third wrong turn, obviously not taking him to the precinct. He discretely makes sure his voice recorder app is still running, presses the button to dial Wells, then sticks the phone back into his pocket as the car comes to a stop, starting to chatter. "Not the least comfortable ride I have had in the back of a police cruiser." he quips. "You get this a lot Officer [Name]? You been on the force a while, Officer [Old Guy Name]? You must see some stuff in the brownfields..."

"This isn't the precinct," he responds as they direct him. He plants his feet, remaining seated in the middle equidistant from the two doors. "Why are we under an overpass instead of going to in-processing? We turned left on MLK Blvd, is that 91 above us?"

[tibbius]

"What, you've never seen the back of the precinct before?" asks the old bald guy. "No, seriously, look around. You see all the cruisers parked here? This is the precinct. Come on, stop jerking us off. And yeah, that's 91. Are you not from around here? Ever?"

I totally should have told you there were a lot of cruisers there. Sorry.

[tibbius]

Edward grabs a branch and starts pulling hand-over-hand toward the trunk. It's very slow going... it's almost like the branches are trying to force him away from the tree.

Ok - this will take a while. Might as well make a new character.

[shaidar]

Edward

Tired and confused with this strange place Edward just let's go and sees what happens.

[Marullus]

Well crap, guess I misread that. Lucas thinks. He remains suspicious enough to still look into these two later, though. At least I am not going to get offed under an overpass.

With a grunt he acquiesces and gets out of the car. Once he gets in to processing, he tells them, "I need to speak to Sgt. Downs. First, please." Hopefully they stick me in an interview room and I can ditch these clowns for now. Edward better be okay...

[tibbius]

Lucas notices they're Officer Clemens and Sergeant Fitzgerald.

Officer Clemens, the one with kinky hair, lays a fairly gentle hand on Lucas' upper arm and guides him up the back steps in through the steel door.

As he guides you along the dingy, brightly-lit corridor, a woman approaches from the other end. It's Agent Wells. Everything about her body language says pissed. She flashes her badge.

"I've got this," she says. "He's federal. Any questions?"

A long tense pause. "ATF?" asks Fitzgerald, squinting at the badge. "What's going on out there?"

"Don't sweat it. We've got it locked down," Wells says confidently.

"Does this have something to do with that cordon bullshit this guy told dispatch?" Clemens asks suspiciously.

"Yeah," Wells answers. "We're on it now. Let dumbass out of the cuffs, I have to debrief him."

Clemens chuckles and clicks a key in the cuffs. Your shoulders relax as you're able to get your hands around to the front. Your back and elbows hurt.

What do you do?