apocalypsehowcomm | Event

For Sport

➥ Breaking It In

(cw: mentions of apparent mutilation of/violence against animals and animal death)

The conference room on the upper floors of ADI HQ is bright, airy, perhaps unnaturally so for the grim tidings that bring people here today. Those who have recently arrived will be ushered to the meeting by ADI employees or by Bonnie. It's not just the newest arrivals, but some other people who seem to be longer-term employees. The room is rather large and arranged like a lecture hall. Bonnie takes up a seat near the back, looking somewhat uncomfortable, but smiling at anyone who greets her.

At 9 AM sharp, a person steps into the room and heads to the front. They have curly hair and are wearing a gray business suit with a dark blue bow-tie. When they address the group at large, they speak in a calm, measured tone. "Good morning. I appreciate some of you may be here more reluctantly than others, but… there are matters of import to all of us to discuss. Some of you may have seen me already. I am Reyes Amador, assistant to Ms. Lehrer, the head of ADI. Earlier this week I sent out a message regarding some unusual activity at Coffin Beach. Thank you to those who investigated."

Their eyes seem to find the people who did, in fact, go looking, whether they found something or not.

"We have determined the creatures are shape-shifters. Some sort of, em... horse thing. In lieu of a term they might give themselves, we are referring to them as kelpies. Given the locations these were found, as well as other information into disappearances and deaths and mutilations of sea mammals in the area, we believe the kelpies are coming from the Essex Bay area to the north.

"For those willing to assist, we are mounting a reconnaissance mission. This is not intended to engage kelpies, just to find out where they are and how we might best approach an attack. All supplies, transportation, and monetary compensation will be provided. We will meet at ADI HQ in main lobby at 6 PM three days from now. Essex Bay is a remote site and conservation area, accessible only by boat, and not without a scientific permit. As you may guess, we will be traveling under cover of nightfall." Reyes smiles.

"I will be accepting questions about further details. I understand this is the first mission away for many of you, and you may have concerns. I will do my best to allay them. Bonnie also has some experience in these missions, if you would like first-hand accounts. Please also feel free to discuss amongst yourselves if this is a mission you think you are ready for. You will not be required to attend, nor penalized in any way if you do not. There is additional work to be done here, both with continuing examinations of the bodies we have and other efforts unrelated."

➥ Move the Goalposts

(cw: kidnapping, violence, sadism)

It happens away from the safety of ADI HQ one evening or so early in the morning, it's still dark, away from the potential for help, maybe. One moment, you (and possibly someone you're with) are walking, and the next, you will find someone has grabbed you and slammed you into the nearest surface. For those unable to fight back, a cloth will be held to their noses and mouths--chloroform, something to knock them out. For those able to fight or even to escape thanks to not actually being corporeal, they'll find that it is a trio of people who have attacked them. They wear jagged smiles and they're all much too sharp around the edges beneath their clothes. Those who saw the kelpies at Coffin Beach may recognize these people as something like them.

"Run, rabbit, run," one of the group says, voice rolling out like a gurgling tide.

Those who run will be chased and, if caught, chloroformed. Perhaps you're lucky, though. Perhaps you can race them back to safety. Or perhaps you'll find help along the way to protect you. Either way, the kelpies are relentless in their pursuit unless one of their number is injured or their prey can make it to ADI. The kelpies seem reluctant to actually enter ADI HQ or their housing, and will break off pursuit there, slinking back to the shadows.

➥ Curveball

(cw: kidnapping, violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, sadism, body horror, transformation, potential for claustrophobia)

For those unlucky enough to be caught, they'll find themselves waking amongst mud and bodies. Living, breathing bodies, thankfully. You have been tied up, but not gagged, and left with a group of other captives. A nearby fire casts light over everything, showing a large group of naked people with long, scraggly hair hauling a seal up out of the water. The animal fights them with a cunning that might seem odd, but the kelpies just laugh at it. They get it up near the fire, one raises a knife, and stabs into the seal, dragging the blade down its belly.

The seal bellows and then goes limp, seeming to collapse in on itself. It isn't long before a woman is drawn from the skin, shaking, fighting, wild-eyed with terror as her captors shove her around the fire in their own game. A few others turn their attention to the captives who are just beginning to wake and move about. They approach, one grabbing the skin the woman had come out of, others grabbing more skins from a nearby pile.

"Hush, hush... you'll have your freedom soon... while you can swim." The words come just before the kelpie slices your bonds and throws the skin over you.

The skin grapples your body, twisting tight around you, encasing and restraining. Your body is different now, thick and round, ungainly in the mud. Your legs have fused together and your arms have shrunk to thin flippers. This is not your body, you can feel how foreign it is, how you're crammed into the too-small confines of it... but you have instincts to go with it. Water is freedom! Or it's an attempt at freedom. It's either swim for your lives as some mockery of a selkie or stay and see how it feels to be cut open. Luckily for you, you'll find yourself psychically linked to the other selkies around you. Maybe you can do something together? Best think fast because the kelpies are setting their sights on new prey to chase once they've finished with their latest victim.

➥ Below the Belt

(cw: violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, body horror, gore)

The journey to Essex Bay isn't a long one, but it's somewhat treacherous as a small group of powerboats make their way into the refuge. The mission is simple: find where the kelpies are and see if there are any strategic points of-

Was that a seal? There are, in fact, many seals that pop up once boats enter the bay. The animals might seem to have an unusual cunning about them. Will they lead you somewhere useful? Perhaps try to flop themselves into your boats? The point is, there are seals accosting you in the middle of the night, and that's weird. Perhaps they have something they want to communicate.

Or was that a horse? A crocodile? There's something that seems to have noticed you, and it's smart enough that it's going to try to tip you and anyone else in your boat into the water rather than trying to engage otherwise. Sit down, you'll rock the boat.

➥ Sticky Wicket

(cw: potential for severe burns/injury, pain)

ADI is engaged in far more than one mission at a time, and for those not dealing with Essex Bay, or even before that, there are pick-ups to handle. Artifacts, you've been told as you're paired with someone else, whether you like it or not. The mission is simple: go to the Docks, collect a package from a locker there, and return with it to ADI. You've been provided an exact location and a code for the combination lock. The section of the Docks you've entered seems to be one with a lot of empty warehouses covered in graffiti, but the locker is there, something heavily reinforced and designed to be virtually impossible to get into. There's evidence that people have tried to gain entry without success.

Your code works, though, and you have your prize! You've been given strict instructions not to open the box the artifact is in… but there's nothing technically stopping you now, and there is a strange pull toward it.

Those who can't help themselves will find they have just picked up… some piece of sports gear! It looks wholly innocuous. Touch even a finger to it, though, and a horrific, searing pain will consume your entire body as 3rd-degree burns bloom across the skin where you've touched your artifact.

Or maybe you have a will of iron and sense enough not to touch strange, supernatural objects. What should be an easy mission is quickly derailed by some young punk darting out of an alleyway to try to steal your package. Or, at the very least, knock it from your hands. The youth is not alone, either. You've found yourself on someone's 'turf,' and they want what you've got. Are you cruel enough to let them have it?

➥ Mod Notes

BREAKING IT IN (21 July): Both Reyes and Bonnie will be available to answer questions that characters might have or listen to their complaints. Please put "NPC Requested" somewhere in your top-level response if you would like a mod response. For characters who can access their supernatural abilities and have some measure of supernatural spidey sense, both Bonnie and Reyes will register as off, but in different ways. Characters are welcome to attempt to use whatever powers they believe will work on the NPCs. There are potential IC consequences for this.
MOVE THE GOALPOSTS (23-24 July): Characters are welcome to capture or kill the kelpies. The only information they will be capable of providing to those who capture them and attempt to compel them for information is that they consider the entirety of the Massachusetts coast as their 'hunting grounds.' Whether that's true or not, it's what they believe.
CURVEBALL (23-24 July): Kidnapped characters will become seals! Sort of. Psychic seals who are extremely ill-fitted to the skins they're in. The only way to escape their current state is to be cut open and pulled out. As soon as they start to flee, the kelpies will chase them. Those who are captured will be cut out, toyed with, and shoved back into a skin again and again to continue the chase until they simply can't go on anymore.
BELOW THE BELT (24 July - night): Characters may encounter their selkie-fied comrades! Unfortunately, while the selkies can communicate with each other psychically, they are incapable of human speech. They are also being actively hunted by the kelpies. Characters may kill any kelpies they come across. Capture will not be possible in this case while they're in their horse forms. If PCs do not eradicate the kelpie threat that night, NPCs who have joined the mission will do so. Unfortunately, reconnaissance has become engagement, whether they like it or not.
STICKY WICKET (21 July - 5 August): You may select any piece of sporting gear you'd like for your character to pick up as long as it can fit in a reasonably-sized box. The pain associated with the burning will last only as long as a character is touching the object. Holding onto it for more than a minute will likely result in coming very close to death. Characters with inorganic appendages will find that the artifact will start to melt that appendage, whatever it is made of and it will still, somehow, hurt while it does it.
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Smart, straightforward, opinionated and not afraid to show it. And just a little petty. Gil fights a smile. This kid reminds him more and more of Malcolm, in a sidelong way. That thought earns Malcolm another look from across the room, but he seems to be in fairly animated discussion with someone. Good. That’s good.

The half-formed smile fades at Tim’s obvious tension. Gil will just carefully not mention he’s never heard of a place named Gotham in New Jersey. He will, however, execute one of his duties as a New Yorker.

“Jersey? I’m sorry to hear it.”

Tim sucks in a breath through his teeth, lips twitching into a smirk that doesn't mean anything, really, other than the fact that he's ready to play the role. It's good to know his world is, so far, one of the more... volatile ones. No, really. It's cool.

Doesn't mean he's gonna let that friendly little slight stand. "Yeah, I bet. Full decade's gone by and New York still can't get any new material."

Also: Tim does a very obvious follow of Mr. Arroyo's gaze just then. It means he has to half-step a little into the man's space, which isn't ideal, but it's all the better for conspiring.

Sorry, Malcolm.

"So what's the deal with that guy, do you know 'im? Is he gonna spontaneously combust?"

Gil hasn't gotten to his position by being unobservant. He catches that little inward breath, the blankness of the smirk, and logs that information away without showing that it's registered. Tim gets a more genuine smirk in reply.

"What can I say, I'm a traditionalist."

Tim gets a look that somehow manages to be sidelong even though Gil is actually facing him. Like a cat who's spotted a dog moving into warning swat range. "His name is Malcolm Bright, and I've known him since he was a kid."

Silently he adds, Depends what kind of combustion you mean, but he's not about to say that to someone he doesn't know.

He'll barrel on. Tim nods like he's satisfied with that answer, and again he tells himself he's not protective over the man who wakes the apartment with incessant night terrors. So that's a Yes to the spontaneous combustion; the wonders of omission.

"He's one of my roommates," Tim says. It strikes him that he could seem kinda douche-y right about now, and he has the decency to drop his gaze to the tile of the floor for a blink in a show of boyish apology. The relief colors his face a little when he meets Gil's eyes again, and he rocks back somewhat onto his heels.

"I just saw you looking over at him and I wasn't sure what your business was with him."

And he'd say it wasn't any of his business but... here they are.

"Cool to have someone in your corner like that, though."

The revelation that Malcolm is staying with Tim takes him by surprise and it shows. It also makes him wonder if that's why Tim approached him in the first place, the way he was tracking Malcolm around the room. It's an idle thought, another one to file away and consider later.

When Tim says I wasn't sure what your business was with him, Gil's lips twitch into a tiny microsmile for about .3 seconds. So Tim has some concern for Malcolm. Again, that's a good thing, even if he's probably twelve years Malcolm's junior at least. Gil nods a little, focus straying back to his ward. "He's a good man to have on your side. A good person on top of that. He's had a rough time."

He looks back at Tim, studying him carefully. "You've heard how he wakes up, I take it."

It's right about now that Tim figures he has spent way too much time on the sidelines doing nothing but cringing at the spats Bruce and Dick would routinely get into. That's a hell of a wash of affection Mr. Arroyo is painting that canvas with.

It's mildly uncomfortable.

Tim pinches his brows together again, a small frown on his face.

See, any other... lifetime? he wouldn't be entertaining the notion of what he could learn here, y'know, if he just... pushed.

"I don't think he'd appreciate us talking about it," he lands on. Because decency wins out. And Malcolm's a good guy.

A little line of tension Gil was barely aware of snaps away, and he finally relaxes. As much as he's going to relax in this situation, at least. Tim gets his first genuine smile.

"You're a good kid," he says, and somehow it comes out not in the least demeaning. Just stated factually, a well-meant bit of praise. "He'll explain in his own time. He doesn't like keeping secrets, and he'll probably feel like he owes it to you eventually."

There's a mixture of worry and softness in his expression as he looks Malcolm's way again. He hesitates, considers whether or not he's asking too much of someone Tim's age, but if he really is anything like a teenage Malcolm, it's not that big of an ask. "Keep an eye on him for me? Right before we got here, some things happened. I don't like being in a different building right now."

A twist of a smile, one that's not as warm as before. "He's a grown man, I know. I just worry."

The praise is essentially shrugged off; there's no use in anything else and Tim suddenly finds himself talked into a corner so he waits for his best opportunity to spring back out of it. If anything, it's the most boyish he's been in the span of their interaction. He fights away the urge to shift.

Again, there's a voice in his head wondering what he's doing in surrendering this chance for gathering information. It's self-preservation to know all he can about the people he's now living with, right? But Mr. Arroyo has that concern that his dad would get, sometimes, and Tim nods.

What's the weight of another life on his shoulders in the face of death, anyway. (No, that's not fair, and Tim knows it.)

"We're all on the same boat," he responds lamely. It's a... healthy sort of stilted. (Right?) He returns a smile and it's just short of sheepish, actually. Tim shifts his weight to one leg, and wishes he was just a few inches taller. "So you can count on me. And I'm sure Malcolm would like for you to come visit. We wouldn't mind."

Or maybe they would, if Meredith is having a bad day and no one has slept and--

Tim's polite enough, though. He gestures towards that front of the room and the people there. "Amador's free. Now's your chance."

Gil gives him a little pat on the shoulder as he heads for the front of the room.

"Oh, I'll be stopping by. You lot will need plenty of looking after."

Event - For Sport

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