>>30939592
You read on some message boards that the T1 guys have their own entirely separate staging areas.

You wonder if you’ll live that long as you push a thumb onto the small round disk that breaks the otherwise smooth lines of the locker. It sits and thinks and eventually moves from red to green with an audible click.

The door of the locker pulls neatly down towards the floor. Inside is...well, you knew you were trading one uniform for another but at a glance these seem almost identical.

You strip down and fold your clothes in silence before pulling on an undershirt, compression shorts, and socks then moving on to a pair of...very well fitting...black pants (might as well be denim for how they feel and wear), sitting down to lace the...pretty? boots before shrugging on a very thin, very light , very flexible vest for your torso, before getting the jacket pulled on. Even the jacket feels well tailored. There are a few magazines of ammunition you place into the obvious, matching compartments in the jacket and zip it up and pull your hair up loosely.

Of course there’s a mirror nearby… You spend a few moments looking at yourself. None of it looks all that paramilitary, though you wouldn’t want to be out in daylight with all of it on. You idly wonder what company policy is on wearing uniform off-duty as you clip your sidearm onto your belt and tuck the jacket over it. There’s also a pair of black gloves. You run your claws through it quickly to open them up, just in case.

You grab the rifle and do a quick double check to make sure everything you need is on you, or in the locke- oh. there’s an earpiece with a small boom microphone. That looks important.

As you put it in a voice comes in over the line.

The voice is a male with a beautiful southern accent. “Final-fucking-ly. Nice of you to finally come online.”

>>30939649
“Why are all the handlers here so asspained?”

“Because we have to deal with shit for brained operators is why. Miss Saint Claire can you read me, over.”

“Yes I fucking read you. Jesus. Who are you?”

“Ray Yates. I drew the short straw today. Your SL will get into the specifics, but the big picture is this should be easy even for you, headcase. All you need to do is stand around and watch as a few idols sign autographs.”

There’s a pause.

“Oh, also, we’re not expecting trouble. These are third and fourth tier girls. Probably not worth someone’s blood and money.”

“Probably?”

“Legal department says analysts have to say it. But someone could also ramraid your shit.”

Great… “Awesome.”

“It gets better. There was that awesome shootout at Madison Square Garden not that long ago. I think the body count ended up somewhere in the forties all told.”

He laughs.

Oh my god your life is in the hands of a madman. You just keep your head down and follow the greenline.

“Don’t leave me hanging like that baby. I think I know what you’re thinking, and don’t worry. I get a bonus every time my operator comes back alive, and daddy likes his cash bonuses.”

Oh god…

>[2/?]

Rolled 96

>>30939592
>inb4 injured left breast

File: 1395269832041.jpg-(100 KB, 720x960, 1386898869106.jpg)

100 KB JPG

>>30939661
At least there’s something else, now. The green line has deposited you into what looks like a combination of loading dock and lounge. A man and a woman are sitting next to each other on a L-shaped couch drinking out of plastic bottles.

The woman swallows what’s left down and looks towards you and says, “Michelle?”

You nod.

With a voice like that you’re pretty sure she could’ve been an idol herself.

“I heard from Price you nearly brained one of the idols.”

You nod again, less enthusiastically.

She shrugs. “Shit happens. Management knows what they’re getting into when they hire vets. There’s a counseling office if you need it. A lot of the idols and some of the combat group use them.”

She stands up and offers you her hand. “Wendy. I’m going to be lead for today. Did you get your handler?”

You nod and say, “Yates.”

She laughs because it’s easier than crying. “Oh my fuck.”

Now that she’s standing you can see the differences between her uniform and yours. She’s wearing an olive jacket that looks like an older US army model with a black and white scarf around her neck. She’s wearing grey pants and a pair of brown boots. You don’t see any laces on them. Her hair is in a single, loose braid.

She slaps the man on the arm and he enters this reality and leaves whatever one he was in, and he gets to his feet.

>[4/5]

File: 1395269899415.png-(1.4 MB, 1227x829, Michelle-Wendy-Skyler.png)

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>>30939774
He holds out his hand and says, “Skyler.”

You take it and reply, “Michelle.”

Unlike you and Wendy, his jacket appears to be closer to an actual field jacket instead of just fashionable inspirations, although it’s so old it’s lost almost all of its original olive drab dye. He’s wearing it open and you can see his vest and the butt of his sidearm, which he wears just a bit above his sternum. His dark khakis are very tapered and tuck into a pair of chukka boots. His hair is a medium blonde and has a bit of length to it. Right now it’s combed back, probably held in place with a bit of product.

Wendy says, “So, I’m sure Yates mentioned it, but all we’re doing is babysitting a few of our idols as they sign for about three hours. The venue is indoors and door security has been contracted out. All we need to do is keep an eye out and look less interesting than the girls. You’ll have your sidearm on you, but our rifles will be hidden underneath some furniture that can be used as cover if shit happens, which it might. Anyways, we need to move. We’re supervising set up and we’ll take the girls from the transportation team until they come back around.”

You sling the rifle over your shoulder as you follow her. She keys something into a small pad and one of the many doors in the bay starts rolling up to reveal a very generic looking SUV with polished alloy wheels and a very dark tint on the glass.

Wendy lifts the trunk open and pulls up some carpet, and slots her service rifle into a more-hidden compartment. She waits for you and Skyler to do the same, then replaces the carpet and shuts the trunk. Wendy walks along the car and pulls open a door and climbs into the back, leaving it open for Skyler and you.

>I was wrong, [5/6]

>>30939791
It’s not a long drive, and set up doesn’t take much. Your rifle is strapped underneath a folding table packed full of t-shirts and other merch. The idols arrive quietly in the back and the transportation team leaves once Wendy and Skyler take possession. Thankfully the little girl from earlier isn’t one of them.

Eventually the event begins in earnest.

This is kind of boring.

>Ask Skyler and/or Wendy a question
>Comment/mock the fans
>Pick your nose
>Something else

>[6/6], finally.

>>30939712
That's kind of weirdly specific, yo.

>>30939933
Ask if there's anything specific we should know that the company doesn't specify, because everyone leaves something out.

>>30941317
Cool. I'll start writing in 5 minutes.

>>30939933
>Try to talk with the little girl. I'm so sorry, but please don't sneak up on me, just knock on the door next time.

>>30942025
Different girls. "...little girl from earlier ISN'T one of them."

>>30942116
Whoops, oh well, then just be the silent and watchful veteran

>>30939933
You inch closer towards Wendy and Skyler while keeping eyes on your zone - you’re watching...uh.

You forget their names. Those two on the left. Wendy is watching the third on the right and the crowd, and Skyler is facing the opposite direction towards the back of the small space the idols are in.

“Been on the job long?”

Wendy replies, “I just hit month three.”

Skyler speaks up, “Six months.”

“Jesus...is turnover that bad?”

“Magazines get that part right. Job security is nice and comfy, though.”
You frown at her.

“Just saying. Silver linings, right?”

It doesn’t really leave your face.

Skyler says, “Tell her about the bar.”

“Oh, yeah. One of the graduate- oh, we call anyone who lasts five years in operations and retires alive a graduate-s owns this restaurant near the complex and he lets the combat group eat and drink for really cheap. Like, fifty cent shots and dollar beers and stuff. Sometimes some of the older idols hang out there. Paps don’t usually hang around, but only the edgier girls can get their managers to agree or whatever.”

“That sounds nice.”

Skyler says, “Music sucks. I think he does it on purpose.”

Wendy says, “We’ll take you there tonight after we gear down and debrief.”

You smile. “Thanks.”

Wendy waves a hand dismissively and says, “You’re new to Echo, right?”

>Yes
>No

>>30942219
>>Yes
Clearly.

>>30942219
>Yes
Forsooth.

>writing

>>30942219
“Yeah.”

Skyler says, “Adorable.”

Wendy punches him in the arm and says, “Cool. Welcome to Echo, I guess. Fun fact about the city! When Detroit burned in the ‘20s the governor ended up selling off all the land. In case, you know, you didn’t already know that… The music industry stuck around though! Although the whole idol thing got imported from the japanocorps but whatever.”

“Thanks, I think…”

She beams at you. You’re starting to get the feeling she’s a chatty kind of patrol person and Skyler...isn’t.

“Anyways, did you find a place to live yet?”

“I’m in a motel for like another few days I guess but I’ve been looking around and I saw something I liked.”

“Oh? Like what?”

>I found a nice apartment
>There’s a nice house I’m looking at
>Something else

>>30943440
I'm half tempted to say a storage unit or under a bridge, but
>I found a nice apartment

>>30943440
>There’s a nice house I’m looking at
We are apparently have a lot of money from this job.

>>30943581
I was similarly tempted to write something like "I found this really nice cardboard box..." but I thought I should try to be at least a little serious.

>>30943690
Writing in a few minutes.

>>30943440
“Or, well,” you say pulling at your collar with two fingers, “maybe two somethings. I guess I’m still on the fence…”

Wendy laughs and slaps your ba- Her arm doesn’t make contact. “Shit.”

Her voice has turned into a low gravel rumbling. “Nathan, are you seeing this?”

…

“Double shit. Ok, Michelle, be cool. Keep your head at twelve and move your eyes over to ten. The four goons in track suits who are definitely not here for an autograph.”

Wendy looks at her watch quickly. “And we’re not even close… At least the girls haven’t noticed them yet. Look, we can’t go hot until we see something actionable, but Nathan - he’s my handler - says that these idiots are known and not in the good way.”

“Fuck me…”

“Skyler…”

“Yeah, I know.”

Wendy is quiet. She must be getting something through her earpiece. “Management says we’re clear to engage if they do something stupid. Flip the tables, get the girls down, try not to brain the crowd. I would really try not to do that on your first day.”

“Thanks for the tip…”

Wendy smiles at you again. “I’m sure they won’t try anything! It was only supposed to be me and Skyler here today, you were a late addition to replace...um. some turnover. so it’s possible they might back off once they see their intel is bad.”

“But if you see a weapon I need you to shoot to kill. Even if it’s small.”

You stick your hands through your belt loops near your sidearm and stare them down. They’re standing politely in line, or...at least as politely as four sides of beef can in a room full of parents and children.

And...what’s he doing with his hand?

>Roll 1d10+3

Rolled 4 + 3

>>30944927
Rolling.

Rolled 4 + 3

>>30944927
Rollan

>>30944953
>>30945025
doubles 2spooky.

Rolled 5 + 3

>>30944927

>>30944927
>8

You can’t see his hand oh shit where did it g-

Wendy shouts “WEAPONS FREE!” and sprints towards her idol and horse collars her to the ground and flips the table, hiding behind it.

You’re a few moments behind, and you have two girls you have to wrestle down. Bullets are already in the air by the time your table’s down and you to your right someone’s crying but you lost track of the go- wait, what?

You look over.

Oh SHIT. One of them is bleeding on the cheap carpet as the other holds what was her scarf against the entry wound, the light red fabric quickly being saturated to another shade entirely.

You rip the rifle from its securing posts and quickly activate the smartlink and stick the barrel above the edge of the table and sweep it, letting the smartlink feed into your contacts.

You only see three faces. Shit. Hopefully Skyler and Wendy can deal.

>Roll 1d10+4

Rolled 5 + 4

>>30945695

Rolled 4 + 4

>>30945695

>>30945695

>9

You settle the small crosshairs in the smartlink HUD over one of their chests and pull the trigger. Three rounds of 6.8 SPC hit him in between collarbone and hip and he leans backwards slightly as he falls down.

You’re about to re-engage as Wendy cries out.

So, that’s where he went.

>Keep engaging the two remaining with your service rifle
>Engage the hostile on Wendy with your service rifle
>Move to engage the hostile on Wendy with sidearm and claw

>>30945960
>>Engage the hostile on Wendy with your service rifle

Rolled 3 + 4

>>30945960
>>Engage the hostile on Wendy with your service rifle

>>30945960
“Wendy! Down!”

Oh shit you hope she heard you because the bullet has left the chamber.

>Roll 1d10+3 (+1 point blank, -2 shooting into H2H)

Rolled 9 + 3

>>30946150

Rolled 10 + 3

>>30946150

>>30946254
That's pretty good. I'm not gonna ruin it with my inevitably worse roll.

>12

She looks at you for a moment before understanding. The bullet hits the man dead center of mass. He gurgles, trying to scream. He must’ve lost a lung or two. He slumps down, dead or dying.

Wendy holsters her sidearm and pulls her rifle out and begins to engage the remaining two men.

You do the same.

>Roll 1d10+4

Rolled 10 + 4

>>30946557

Rolled 4 + 3

>>30946557

Rolled 9 + 4

>>30946632
derp, fucked the roll up

>>30946557
>14

You switch your rifle back to burst and stick it above the table. Three rounds within one inch, at burst. He dies, immediately, without protest.

Wendy’s burst connects high, and he falls screaming until his brain dies.

Wendy stands up and motions for you to do the same.

“CLEAR!”

You shout “CLEAR!” as well.

Why isn’t Skyler cleari- oh, there he is.

“Clear. Johnny Tracksuit had a pair of pals try to break the lock behind us.”

Skyler sees the bleeding girl and moves to deal with that as you and Wendy survey the damage. As far as terrorism goes, you’ve seen a lot worse. From your end it looks like you only had one miss, and that dug itself into some drywall, not any attendees.

There are more bullet holes behind you than in front of you. You wonder what sort of deposit the company has to make to rent space for events.
Wendy hooks the three point to herself and turns towards the crowd. “All clear, everyone! You can stand back up now!”

She looks at Skyler, who makes a tepid sort of hand gesture.

“Manami is no longer signing, but Imai and Akiko will be present for the full duration. Everyone please form an orderly line and do not disturb the bodies.”

Her hands - and yours, for that matter - don’t leave your rifles for the rest of the afternoon. Skyler has Manami stabilized but she’s floating in and out of realspace. You suppose being shot is pretty overwhelming for a fifteen year old...although at nineteen it’s not like you have much more perspective.

>[1/2]

>>30947249
The atmosphere certainly isn’t as fun as it was, but you are shocked (maybe not the right word, considering…) at how ….normal it seems to be proceeding. The crowd just watched a quadruple homicide and they’re more than willing to pose with the girls.

What the fuck, Echo? You had read that old Detroit was more or less a tiny Afghanistan, but this is just insane.

At least the next two and a half hours pass without incident. Manami is helped (mostly carried) into the waiting SUV by Imai and Akiko who thank you profusely, and give Skyler a kiss on the cheek each, and climb in after Manami.

Your SUV and a black van pull around about fifteen minutes later. A pair of men hop out and start breaking down the tables and cleaning up the merch as Wendy and Skyler motion for you to follow them into the SUV.

As soon as the door closes and you lay your rifle across your lap Wendy throws herself at you, wrapping you in a big hug while sobbing “thank you,” repeatedly.

She smells like gunpowder and blueberries and her face is buried into your neck and you can feel the heat of her breath and the warmth of her tears falling on your collarbone.

You haven’t been hugged in so long.

You glance sideways and see that Skyler has checked out, either out of politeness or maybe on account of whatever small atrocity he had to perpetrate, as you slowly wrap your arms around Wendy and let her cry.

The three of you don’t even notice when the engine shuts off.

END SESSION

Sorry if my posting time seemed janky and disjointed. Still trying to get comfortable on this quest horse.

I hope you all enjoyed reading and participating. Stick around if you want to ask any questions or discuss the quest or anything.

Don't forget to follow https://twitter.com/WetworkIdols me on twitter so you can stay up to date.

>>30947333
Level of interactivity is kinda low and the thread was short, but if you're new at this that's how it goes.

>>30947333
I think this is a very promising quest.

My noob advice is to get some consistency down, like the world and the characters firmly place in your mind. I thought am not sure who Wendy is now, she seem initially experienced team mom and now she is crying on our shoulder.

Also, I am not really sure it matters for your first? quest but either adopt more complex system for dice rolls or clarify it some more, like explain where the bonuses comes from and where we can consistently earn or lose them.

Thanks for writing!

>>30947391
I started the thread at 3 PM my time, it's just nearing 10 now.

Although I agree, it does feel short because I ended up taking way too long to post and post count is low on account of not a whole lot of dedicated Anons like you.

I'm still trying to figure out the "best," time slot. So far 3 to 10 PM is worse than 11 PM to 2 AM. I think 6-7 PM to 12 AM might be where the gold's at but who knows.

I'll try to make everything more...active. I think once everyone (esp. me) gets acquainted it should be easier to build more choice into the narrative.

What did you think of quality? Today's feels better than yesterdays, but I don't exactly have perspective.

>>30947487
MC was better this time around, work on nailing down characterizations and keeping them consistent. Getting more expository setting stuff in character would be good too.

The writing isn't bad by any means but it is pretty slow.

>>30947487
The quality is better, but there is definitely room to improve. It's mostly in showing not telling what is going. Flesh out the characters and environment more and you won't need to explain the actions of the characters.

>>30947465
The mechanics are going to (very loosely) resemble Unisystem. I don't know if you're familiar, but it boils down to rolling a 1d10, adding Attribute, Skill, and any situational modifiers.

The target number is 9, and does not change. this means it's possible to eventually roll 1d10+8 where you can't fail, except on a 1, which halves your roll. A 10 adds itself and the next highest roll together, and so on as there are as many 10s to add.

I was planning on getting into the meat of the mechanics in a later thread, but now isn't a bad time either.

Michelle's stats are (roughly, it's possible these might need to be adjusted down the road):

Strength 2(+1)
Dexterity 2
Constitution 3
Willpower 3
Perception 2
Intelligence 2

Attributes scale from 1 to 5. It's possible to have a 6. A 2 is average.

This makes Michelle quite average, but also well rounded.

Her skills expressed so far are Awareness 2, Handguns 2, Rifles 2, Improvised (Claws) 1

Traits are the final facet of the character sheet. Right now Michelle has "Chronic Headaches," which imposes a penalty on certain rolls (like Awareness, which should be a +4 bonus, but is only a +3) as well as "Cybernetic Arm."

Now, as for the Wendy question, I wanted to show that even though she is pretty experienced (relative, for the business...), she's still a young woman thrust into a very uncomfortable spot (being overpowered by a far larger man, for instance) and how that being faced with your own mortality is a very harrowing experience.

As a more social, outgoing character it felt more appropriate for her than to shut down (like Skyler) or bottle it up (which I think will be Michelle's coping mechanism).

But I could also be wrong.

>>30947676
I think I'm getting there. The more words I type out the more I get a feeling of how each character's unique.

>>30947708
You and 7676 share a lot of the same in terms of comments so I'll address both in here: You're absolutely right, it's something that I'll definitely (try to) work on.

>>30947719
I had a bit of consulting with a friend who's really experienced with Unisystem (even more than me) and he had some good advice.

Strength and Constitution as 2 separate stats is really shitty in tabletop play, and there's really no reason to let it creep into a quest.

Consider Str and Con deleted and replaced with "Fortitude 2."

I guess just keep up high level of details. I think it dropped when combat was happening and thus I didn't get any idea of what Wendy was going though.

>>30948003
Mmm. I hear you, but I'm not sure how I want to (can) deal with it. Although I use second person, I want Michelle to be the only narrator/POV/etc. Everything that I write or that you read is filtered through a Michelle-colored lens.

I feel like if I wrote everything Wendy and Skyler were doing or thinking it'd lose a lot of the tight, in-focus humanity I want to try to have. You know, very young people doing very awful things, for reasons that are basically "because it pays, a lot," and "because I won't fit in anywhere else."

Feel free to debate me on this, though, god knows I could always get smarter or better.

>>30948082
Oh that's alright then. I guess it'll become less of a problem for me when Michelle gets more development.

So if somehow Michelle gets some sort of situational awareness skills, more details will get written? That'll be awesome.

>>30948362
>>30948362
I...wasn't even thinking about that. Like, even remotely.

Shit that's a good idea. I love that.

Oh, thread's also been archived.