Act 29: Three Women, Three Criminals, And Three Mistakes Made

--- Joshua ---

His school had a bit of a bullying problem.

This wasn’t too surprising given the location of the school, its underfunding, the number of people in gangs, hormonal teenagers, and everything else.

What was surprising was how blatant the teens tended to get throughout the day, because while they never did anything in front of the teachers they had no problem outright torturing each other in front of their fellow students.

Something he found himself taking exception to, as he watched a kid forced to empty their pockets out for a ‘protection fee’.

(You don’t make the people pay you to protect them, they pay you by going to you for their vices. You protect them for their loyalty, and their loyalty protects you from the boys in blue.) Some dark part of him growled. (Robbing your own people, this is just… disgraceful.)

He felt his Madness field spasming as if it wished to be let free from the passive control he had over it.

He saw no reason to stop it.

Near the little ‘protection racket’ he saw one teen bump into a girl as she was going for a drink of water, causing her to drop the bottle, sending water all over the floor.

The thug mugging his fellow student took a step back into the small puddle and seemed to lose even greater traction than he should’ve as his foot went sliding, causing him to slip and slide until the thug’s head impacted a nearby locker hard enough to knock them out.

---

After his first bout of mayhem, he found himself letting his madness field loose anytime he saw someone being bullied, causing a series of odd events that ended with the aggressor in pain.

And so with each break between classes he found himself going on a walk, (a very enthusiastic walk), all the while humming a happy tune as his every step caused another minor disaster to befall someone he’d taken offense to.

It was in the middle of one of these enthusiastic walks, that he came across Annette surrounded by a group of female students, throwing insults at her while shoving them between her.

For a brief moment he considered leaving Annette to deal with her own problems, given how every other time he’d tried to get involved she’d run him off or snap at him for one reason or another.

(Some people just have to fight their own battles to stay sane.)

But then one of the bullies grabbed Annette’s backpack and pulled it off of her at the same time that another shoved her, causing her shirt to catch and tear as several buttons popped off.

(Then again, sometimes people pick fights they can’t win.)

Frowning at the scene in front of him, he snapped his fingers.

The strap on Annette’s backpack snapped, causing the girl tugging on it to lose balance and stumble backwards where she stepped on a football someone had left on the ground before having it roll out from under her foot, sending her crashing into the ground with a nasty knock to her head.

“Oh shit, are you okay?” One of the girls cried as they turned their attention to their downed friend.

He snapped his fingers again.

Another one of the buttons on Annette’s shirt popped off, only instead of hitting the ground it shot straight into one of the girl’s eyes.

“Agh, fuck!” The girl cursed, stumbling backwards before an opening door slammed into her sending her toppling forward, dragging two of the other girls down with her.

“The fuck?!” One of the last two standing asked, looking around in shock.

He snapped his fingers once more.

“Watch out!” A voice called from down the hall.

Stepping out of the way, he watched as a janitor’s cart rolled past before one of its wheels collided with the football from before, sending mop water flying all over the last two girls causing both to shriek as they ran away from the mess.

For a moment everything was silent as Annette looked around in shock, before eventually her eyes met his. She glanced down briefly at her torn open shirt showing her- (Ah, ah, gentlemen don’t look.) (It’s just a bra.) (That was enough to shoot someone back in the day.)

Annette clenched her shirt shut before grabbing her backpack and sprinting away.

“Hope she’s okay.” He said to himself, wiping at the wetness below his nose.

Scene Consequences

-Gained 1 XP to Rube Goldberg Field

--Thanks to Malice Vial gained (D6=4) additional XP.

---*Power Level Up* Lv. 4 (0/10)

-For consuming Malice consistently gained 1 Malicious Madness.

---

“Okay… I guess this is the place.” He figured, checking his phone once more for the address as he shifted his package under arm.

The favor Zylah had apparently needed was a delivery of some kind, which is why he’d grabbed the container from a rooftop near his school before bringing it to the tall apartment building in front of him.

He didn’t actually know what was in the container, and though his curiosity was peaked by the package’s contents, he did know he wouldn’t be able to open it and reseal it without letting the receiver of said package know he’d tampered with it. (Which would probably get back to Zylah, and I don’t need her being even more pissed at me.)

Walking up to the building’s entrance he tried to open the door before frowning as he found it locked, leaving him stranded on the street with no way to actually deliver his package.

Briefly, his eyes drifted upward as he considered trying to scale the building. (Yeah, no. I don’t have anywhere near the mobility or acrobatics to pull that off.)

Deciding it was best to find out what Zylah wanted him to do since he couldn’t finish her favor, he tried calling her number only to have it hang up half way through the first ring.

“Oh, are you here to drop something off?” A woman asked as she pushed a girl in a wheelchair to the door.

Thinking fast, he nodded as he subtly opened a food app on his phone before quickly flashing it. “Yeah, I tried calling but the customer isn’t answering, and they didn’t give me a code to get into the building.”

“Ah, then just give me a moment.” The woman told him before entering a code and unlocking the door. “There you go.”

“Thank you ma’am.” He nodded, before holding the door open so the mother and daughter could get through.

“It’s no problem at all, the elevator is this way if you need it.” The woman smiled as she pointed towards a wall.

“Ah, thank you.” He smiled back as he followed the pair.

“What floor?”

He checked his phone. “Uh, fourth floor.”

A few moments later he found himself parting from the mother and daughter and followed the phone’s instructions to a potted plant before grabbing it by the stem and pulling it out to reveal a fake bottom that he dropped the package in.

Pulling out his phone, he tried calling Zylah once more only to have it hang up as soon as did so. So instead he texted her, (“Dropped the package off.”)

As he got in the elevator once more Zylah texted him back a quick, (“Thanks.”)

And as he rode the elevator down, he couldn’t help but, (Wonder what the deal with this package thing was?)

Scene Consequences

-Grown a bit closer to Zylah.

-????? ??????? has gotten ?????? for their next encounter.

---

Laying in bed and blissfully asleep, he found himself slowly dragged awake by the rapid buzzing of his phone as someone texted him.

“Who the fuck is calling at-” He checked his phone. “Two AM?”

???: [Josh.]

???: [Joshua.]

???: [Joshua Durand]

???: [Are you asleep?]

???: [I’m going to bug you until you wake up.]

???: [Wake up.]

???: [Wake up!]

???: [Wake up!!!]

???: [Are you ignoring me?]

???: [Don’t ignore me!]

???: [I’m bored…]

???: [Answer me!]

???: [I’m not stopping until you get up bitch!]

Running a hand down his face he groggily answered by asking.

You: [Who is this?]

???: [Yay, you’re awake!]

You: [Thanks to you.]

???: [You’re welcome!]

You: [Again, who is this?]

???: [The GM.]

He blinked at that.

You: [How did you get my number?]

???: [Better question than why does the gang leader have your number, is… WHY HAVEN”T YOU CALLED ME YET?!!!]

He blinked again, because while he did have the gang leader’s number…

You: [Why would I call you?]

???: [Look Josh, I get that you’re an inexperienced teen, but when a pretty girl gives you her number, she expects you to call her dumbass. Not ghost her for two weeks!!!]

(Yeah, this one is on you kid.)

You: [I figured you’d be busy with gang leader stuff and wouldn’t want to talk to me!]

That was a blatant lie, he’d completely forgotten the GM had given him her number since he’d had his heist just a day or two later.

???: [I wouldn’t have given you my number if that was the case.]

(That really was a terrible lie on your part.)

???: [Now I’m bored so entertain me!]

He couldn’t help but roll his eyes, feeling like he should point out the time and the fact that she should probably go to sleep. Before remembering that as a gang leader she probably worked really weird hours and that excuse wouldn’t get him off the hook.

You: [So what exactly am I supposed to do then?]

???: [You’re a theater Wonderlander put on a show!]

You: [Over a phone?]

???: [You’ve got a camera!]

He ran a hand down his face before shaking his head.

You: [Yeah, no. Theater is closed for maintenance.]

A thought occurred to him, one that was probably manipulative but…

You: [Why don’t you, I don’t know, complain about your job and I’ll pretend to care.]

(Too mean?) He frowned, rereading his text.

(Little bit, might want to reel it in to make this work.)

???: [Pretend to care?!]

You: [You shouldn’t have used Charisma as a dump stat.]

???: [I’ll have you know that Wonderlanders get a bonus to all Charm checks!]

You: [Well you still failed this check. You’re at Fellow Wonderlander right now so you need more Rep gains to make me actively care as your Wonderlander Friend.]

He was hoping the video game jokes would play into her Wonderland theme just enough to smooth things over, at the very least it fit with what he could remember of their conversations a couple weeks prior.

After a few minutes the GM responded with,

???: [Fair.]

???: [So what part of my ‘job’ am I supposed to complain about then?]

You: [Well, I doubt you want to bad mouth your guild so since you’re a supervillain, why not complain about the heroes? You know, ‘Fuck the po-po!’ or some shit.]

(Might be being a little too obvious with this one.)

???: [Yeah, I don’t actually interact with them all that much given how I usually run things from behind the scenes.]

(Damn.) He knew that was a bit of a longshot since the GM wasn’t as openly active as all of her lieutenants. (Alright, how can I salvage this?)

You: [Well, running your events like you do can’t be easy. What kind of problems do you have doing all of that?]

???: [At this point most of it is automated through my Gamer System, but I do spend a fair amount of time trying to tweak everyone’s personal experiences to be more fun for each of them.]

You: [Really, how do you do that?]

???: [Well first thing you’ve got to do is figure out what kind of gamer each person is. Do they prefer speed, stealth, outright assault, minions, or so on. That’s actually why I give people a class selection every so often to try and get an idea of this and if their style is changing one way or another.]

(Interesting, that’s kind of the polar opposite of what we have to do with our shows. Since we have to be both consistent but make sure people won’t get bored of our antics either.)

He blinked as he realized that before asking the GM for her opinion on that little detail, as they began to go back and forth discussing the need for Wonderlanders to read people to maximize their gains.

Scene Consequences

-Grown a bit closer to the GM.

-Despite not getting desired information, gained 1XP to Slyness for her not realizing what you were doing.

--*Skill Level Up* Slyness Lv. 3 (0/8)

Informant/Contact Tutorial:

Questions to Informants are split into Social and Professional, Social questions will boost relationship with the Informant while Professional questions will offer more info about various things.

The higher your Rep level the more information the Informant will freely share, but asking information outside of your given relationship (I.E. Friend, Minion, Spy, etc.) will cause you to lose rep with them. (Though there will be a Slyness saving throw before that.)

It is up to you the players to figure out what information your informants are willing to give based on your current relationship with them, be it professional or personal.

(Hint: The GM is excited to know another Wonderlander is in the city.)

A/N: Realize this one kind of makes Josh come off as a jerk, but given the context…