MASKS #17 - BY MY FRIEND BETRAYED! [Recap]

RECAP! [By Dave] All Harry's dad rainchecks their meeting that night until the next day. Adam's feeling things are kind of weird, and it's getting late. Grabs at Jason's t-shirt. Have to head home. Jason offers to take him (so does Charlotte, but Jason wants to chat with Adam). Jason and Adam Head off on the disc, but Adam's concerned about how this will look to his family and neighbors. "This is going to cause a ruckus." Off to one of the pool cars, a (highly modified) Honda Prius. So ... is everything okay? Concordance problems. Jason tries to use diplomacy on the Concordance PLUS Comfort & Support to Adam. (Jason doesn't notice Adam's efforts to do the same.) Concordance find him dissembling.  Parked at the house. Tapping on the glass. There's a cop there, shining a light in. "Your mother's waiting inside." Adam's dad! Jason offers a hand to shake. The cop looks at the hand for a while. Adam lingers once he gets out of the car. "We ... keep track pretty closely of the things Adam's been involved in. Had a lot of good interactions with the Gale family. Were pretty happy about him being with a group of young people, but we had an opportunity to watching him at the press conference. Now, I understood you were the leader of that group, but ..." Adam ... "Dad, am I going to get to say goodbye to you before you go to work?" "I'll be in in a minute." "Jordan has to go to bed." "Your mom made pasta." [Adam rolls a Defend for Jason, burning a condition "Hopeless" ... and fails] Dad orders him into the house [Insecure!] "As a police officer for the city, I've had to clean up some of your activities over the last few days. My son is the first on site, the last one to leave. You're supposed to be the leader. And at the press conference, that [insults about Harry] ... and had some hope for you at the Morning Show, but it's clearly ... I have some doubts about the team." [Take a Powerful Blow] Jason kind of snaps. Yells, shouts, rants "Dammit, I'm doing my best, I was trying to help Adam here, drove him home, it's been so chaotic, so many problems, so many threats, if you don't like the job I'm doing ..." ... and realizes he's looking down on the dad. [Hurting someone important: clear Anger] Adam hears this. Gets to the window. Jessica "What's going on?" And ... there's something sister should not see. Looks at Mom. She grabs sister. "Let's go have a bath." Jason is peeling himself out of the car, tearing out of the vehicle, yelling and gesturing and up in the air suspended on extensions of the nanobots holding him up like stilts (like Doc Ock). Dad is flinching back, hand on gun, alarmed. Adam vanishes Jason somewhere. Anywhere. [Unleashes powers] [The Concordance smiles at the whole idea and the poor roll] Jason ... and the car ... and Dad ... all vanish. [Adam +Angry] Shout at the Concordance. "Bring my dad back!" "I cannot do that. I can only bring you to him." "Do that!" Off to ... the precinct. Dad looks wide-eyed and super-shocked and adult scared-that-turns-to-anger. Jason and a trashed Honda Prius are ... ... falling over a nightscape city. Ghost Girl, Link, Harry Leo -- GG and Mercury have been to the Sepiaverse and returned ... so maybe we can do it again. Build a comm unit to try to communicate with the Dragonfly / Byron Quill. Unclear how Harry got there (can he get there again on his own), but came back on his own. Or did the effect just ... wear off? Digital Pneuma (Pneumina) and ... Travelycia (!) are there. Travelycia has low-level access to database for the Dragonfly, etc. "Oh, I have warehouse access. Must be for shipping." Link tries to Pierce the Mask on Travelycia. <<What are you really planning?>> <<Basic Quill AI, channeling best to understanding to present a "safe" version of Alycia, helping Jason. Readily offering its help: it helps Jason and does what Jason wants to do, and lets her play Alycia more realistically because Alycia would want to communicate with the Sepiaverse.>> Leo building a comm device. Asks AI Byron to provide some clearance codes that would make it clear that the message is not a trap. Sorry, need Jason to provides security code. Where the hell is Jason? Jason ... is accelerating at 9.8m/sec^^2 Jason attempts to keep the Prius from landing on a proverbial bus full of nuns. (Or anyone or anything.) [Defense: Clear Afraid] Push at the nanobots to push it aside. It partially caves in, but can see it ... just barely miss the building. Jason "whew" as hear it hit the ground ... then hit a different parking lot, hitting a car. The nanobots protect him, as designed (and as he hoped), but that's all he sees for a while. It's still night time. Tap tap tap. Uhhhh .... what? Retract the nanobots. Tucked into a collapsed car. A bunch of kids are around the car. "Are you the ponies?" "Yes! He knows us! I knew it was you!" "What happened? Were you in a super-hero fight?" "Domestic disturbance." Being snapchatted. "Those nanobots are so cool." "Nobody was hurt when the car hit." They text GG -- Jason has them add that he's there, will be back soon. AMA ... can you come? "Sure." He's only mildly concussed. GG goes to where he is. "I need to call Adam. Smith. Adam Smith. Chief ... Economist for the Quill Foundation." "Secret identity!" Teleport back to the house. Adam Dad turns, with glacial slowness. Opens mouth. Closes it. "Thank ... you ... Concord. You saved me." "No problem, citizen!" (finger-guns) Heads back to house. Mom is concerned. "Dad's okay." "Why wouldn't he be okay?" "No reason ... to be worried about ..." "Do your homework." To Concord: "Why didn't you tell me you put him someplace safe." "He is the father. Of course." But he doesn't ask about Jason. Phone call. To Mom. "Great to hear you're still involved. No, shouldn't be any problem at all. Full support. Absolutely. We have concerns, but I'm sure talking with all of you will be an immense help." "That was Silver Streak. You and the team have been invited to meet with the whole Halcyon Heroes League tomorrow night." Jason, Harry, Charlotte, Link Jason calls Adam. "Are you okay? Is your dad -- okay? Is? I'm so sorry. I'm not--is everyone okay?" Apologies. "Now I know how the Concordance felt when you were talking before." No! Sincere! "Jason, I know exactly what's on your mind. You're worried more about your dad and Alycia than the team." "I -- can be fully worried about the team and my responsibilities no matter what else is going on." Yeah, well, whatever, sorry, apologies, talk with you later. Harry -- text from dad. Bring everybody! All you can eat! Text from Mom. "It will be fine, Harry." Ghost Girl, Link GG ports Link off to the cemetery to do this thing. Radio does not work. Certain tech functions not working. She goes to the Other Side. Have to walk away from the mausoleum before the radio works. Tucks it in a place not easily visible. Damaged buildings, lots of incremental damage. from 5-10 years ago. Air is thick. Burning throat. Oh, wait ... she's solid. Oh, and Link, back at the other side, the aperture's effect seems to have spread a bit with the use. WRAP-UP LINK - Image of Self - shift labels JASON - Go away from Team [remove infl from Adam] ... plus DOOM [full Doomtrack!] ADAM - Go away from Team [remove infl from Jason] HARRY - Go away from Team [remove infl from GG] GHOST GIRL - Closer to the Team [add infl to PowerPonies]

This is a point I thought about last time but didn't get to ask during the session: when Charlotte came out in the Sepiaverse, did she recognize her surroundings? Was it the graveyard, or somewhere else? This may help us understand if there's a geographic correspondence.

Yeah it's pretty much the same graveyard on the other side just all messed up.

Hmm. Alycia said she wants to rescue her father, but what is her plan to do it? Go through like we did, set up a radio rendezvous? Get her own flying machine and scout out the whole Sepiaverse? Home in on a transmission she knows Dr. Chin would produce? Some of these strategies suggest detection methods we can use. That also assumes Charlotte got our signal over faster that she could get hers.

She may not know anything about the Sepiaverse -- we've only had two folk who've seen it, in a way that Alycia wouldn't be able (yet) to duplicate. She may be focused on breaching the dimensional wall, then evaluate the sitch. That said, not a bad set of speculation. It probably wouldn't be wise to underestimate what Alycia Chin knows.

I'm willing to bet that she's had time to experiment - in the worst case, for example, there might be some citizens of a Pennsylvania town trapped in the Sepiaverse who need rescuing or something.

Oh. That so makes sense. "You can't leave us here!" "Oh, please. There are stores of canned goods in  the freaking stores . Also fresh water. Think of it as glamping, only without any of the glamour, and no scheduled pick-up date." "But --" "Also, no IRS, no Monsanto, no CIA, no MSS, no MSG ... some of you American people would pay _money_ for this." "But --" "Or I could use your brains as motivator circuits for the Combat Spiders v2.0 I'm developing." "I love camping! I was a Boy Scout! Um ... which direction is the Piggly Wiggly?"

Shorter term: when Leo twigs to the HHL having an interest, and if we are going to meet with them, he will have asks for everyone. We know Ghost Girl can reach people remotely and that Concord has telepathy and can relay messages at least to our mobile devices. If one of them can organize the team telepathically, that's a big help. Leo suspects that Harry or Jason know a lot about HHL members and will ask them to share over such a link. For himself, he will quietly try to get reads on whoever talks, and is willing to speak some of the time as well: "out of all of us, I have the least to lose by saying something bad here."

Fair Warning: Jason is going to be the Menagerie Defending Adult in the Room (sort or the anti-Leo). That said, I love the idea that a combination of telepathic link and assisted coms help us speak freely together in front of of the grups.