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 Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:16 pm
Taym was genuinely beginning to suspect, somewhere under the foggy pain radiating from his head, that Caelius was using him as a decoy. He had, after all, referred to him as disposable. Everyone kept talking to him like he ought to know something, and all he knew was that he didn't know anything. He listened to Mary Saunders rambling and mustered up a flat stare, deciding it would be beneficial to continue to exaggerating how conked out he was. Taym had a lot of experience being conked out. Faking it came easy. He debated holding his silence, and decided to say something without saying anything at all: "You tell me," he mumbled, shooting the bald man a glare. "Surprised I can remember which way is up after what your guy did to my head."
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Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:12 am
"Well that's a pity, because the guy before you," she looked at Mark, "seems a little more disabled at the moment and unfortunately I'm not made out of time either. How about this. I'll let you go, you and your co-worker over there, or does he work under you, he seems more the call center department anyway, and you'll tell me where our missing supplier is. I might even, if things so smoothly, return what I'm pretty sure your call center guy was snooping around for as well. Maybe. This is strictly a business transaction, which requires a mutually beneficial partnership."
She nodded to bald guy, who stood up. "Untie the unconscious one first. If we're lucky we can still salvage this situation before projected sales and stocks plummet over this unfortunately delayed launch our new product."
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Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 1:25 am
The way she talked reminded him on more than one level of his father. He sagged in his confines, and glumly watched Mark being tended to. And while he put on slack-jawed, terrified confusion (well, terrified confusion was accurate, anyway), his mind raced. Maybe he really was just a decoy. Which meant he was either taking the fall for someone else and looking at a short and very eventful future, or he was meant to be buying time. He suspected it was the former. He was banking on the latter, because to do otherwise would have been to give up. "What'd you do to him?" he asked, jerking his shoulder in Mark's direction since that was the best he could do in lieu of pointing. It was not hard to sound scared, because he was. He just resisted the natural impulse to sound sarcastic instead. He watched the bald man and he thought about how much it had hurt to get that punch to the face (his jaw throbbed at the reminder), and what that might or might not imply. Something else he wished he knew more about. "And why?" He tried to sound pleading, nervous; tried not to sound like he knew what he was talking about (easy) or like he didn't (a little harder). Let her interpret things how she wanted to, and keep her talking. She seemed to like the sound of her own voice.
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Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 11:28 pm
She raised an eyebrow at the why. "A business requires product and distribution, how else would we reach our projected quarterly sales -" she narrowed her eyes, "are you sure you have the right person, you said there were two of them right?"
Bald guy nodded his head.
She pinched her nose and sighed. "Then somebody clearly hit someone's head to hard. Look is there somebody else in your department who actually knows what they are doing that we can negotiate with? Actually scratch that, check his pockets first. If he has a wallet there has to be something useful there."
The bald guy stood up and reached over before-
-Thump.
She stood up. "If someone upstairs dropped a single piece of stock I will fire them right here and now. There are only twenty-thousand applicants alone to our business in the last month, I'm willing to sacrifice the turnaround wait."
Another louder thud followed by the walls, crates and light shaking stopped her in her tracks an with a very weary look the CEO exited the room post-haste, leaving Taym, the bald guy and Mark.
A Mark that was actually quite conscious. A Mark that was making subtle winky gestures at Taym to attract his attention.
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Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 11:41 pm
He watched her go, glancing a little nervously at the ceiling, and, seeing Mark's not-so-discreet signaling out of the corner of his eye, turned his attention to Q-ball once again. "Look, man," he pleaded. "Check my pockets if you want. Seriously. You have the wrong guy." And if he did, Taym would take advantage of that to glare at Mark while he was distracted and mouth an infuriated what the ******** ********, dude?. If he didn't, Taym would just address the question to the room in general: "What the ******** am I supposed to do?" Because that question was as easy to apply to the bald guy as it was to apply to Mark.
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 12:43 am
Thankfully divine intervention told Taym exactly what he was supposed to do as the light went out completely. The other conscious occupant of the room swore, and then fumbled for a flashlight, only to be interrupted by a strange shape moving in the dark, then a loud thunk, and then darkness again.
The flashlight turned on, a Death assistant dangling the strap from his teeth as he worked to cut Taym's bindings. "These handy Runic swiss army knives will do about anything," Mark finally managed to explain once he got the ropes free, flashlight in his hand again. "Okay, that's our cue, you know the plan right?" Outside the alarms were already blaring.
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 1:46 am
Relief was tempered by immediate rage at Mark's question. "No I don't know the ******** plan! Fill me the ******** in!" No thank you. No gratitude. Taym clearly felt he deserved neither of those things. <******** you, Mark was the name of the game. He was on his feet the second he was capable, scrubbing at his sore jaw.
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 5:39 pm
Fortunately, having dealt with death threats of a much more grandiose scale, Mark just thought Taym was having a bad day, or something. Probably lost a bet and ended up here. Maybe there was some blackmail involved, who knew. "Okay, well, here." He took out from a pouch tucked inside his jacket a strange looking device, what looked like a flat remote control. "This needs to get back to home base seriously, if you lose it, you know who is going to have both our heads. Bring it back to the portal, it should open up here in roughly five minutes. Stay right here till then okay, I'm going to make a distraction until it's time."
Before Taym could say another word, Mark grabbed the only working flashlight and fled, leaving the Death assistant in the dark. Thankfully bare moments later, the alarm stopped, and the emergency lights went up, bathing everything in an odd orange. There were shapes outside, though none seemed to pay the open room much attention.
That was, nobody paid the room much attention until the item Mark had just given Taym started blaring like well, in a positive connotation, like a screaming dying bestial child born from the abyss of the ninth circle of hell. In a positive connotation.
Immediately there was shouting, and the sounds of voices and shapes getting very close to where Taym was.
Rejam OOC: TIME TO RUN - While its great to barricade the room and all, it seems the device will not stop shrilling and doing a very good job of giving away the fact that Taym is in this very room. Mark did say that this item whatever it was, was very important. Unfortunately, it seems the Death assistant forgot about the extra security on the thing. Taym must escape the guards for a good five minutes! Roll 1d4 dice until you hit the five minute timer (Basically keep on rolling until 5 minutes have passed) - Rolling a 1: You run down the hallway and there is a branching pathway. You arbitrarily choose one and are immediately assaulted by guards shooting at you. -5 damage, +30 seconds - Rolling a 2: You run down the hallway and you see a set of emergency stairs. They manage to buy you more time until two guys spot you. You fight through them to get to the top. -5 damage + 1 minute - Rolling a 3: Both sides are barricaded! You must fight through one of the sides, thankfully you have the power of a Fear shield and uh, a Fear shield. Well, good luck. -10 damage, +1 minute - Rolling a 4: You turn into a hallway that is abandoned and manage to hide for a fair bit until finally some security guards, if that is even who they are, spot you. +1 minute.
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:22 pm
The lull after Mark left was simultaneously comforting and harrowing. It felt ominously weighty--like it would break any moment--and sure enough, the second Taym let himself sneak a bewildered look at the thing he was holding, it did just that.
The thought of barricading himself in occurred to him for about one tenth of a second. But holing up and waiting for things to blow over had never done him a damn bit of good in the past, so why would it now? Taym had one advantage in basically any situation, and that was that he was speedy. So he'd use it. He took a second to pause by the door, eyes closed, to suck in a breath and to try and figure out which way the voices were coming from.
He failed. So he darted out more or less at random. The very first turn told him that this would be a bad idea, as a not-unfamiliar popping sound chased him down the hall and something hot jolted across the back of his shoulder.
Focus focus focus. You have a shield now. Guns are no longer instant death.
He thought of Gale and Kostya. Well. Most guns.
HP: 35
Time: 0:30
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:31 pm
That didn't mean they didn't hurt though. Trying to run, ignore the panic, and remember what turns he'd taken was a complicated bit of multitasking that Taym did not quite feel up to.
HP: 30
Time: 1:00
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
2
Total: 2 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:32 pm
On the one hand, he had no desire to leave this level, just in case "here" about the portal had been highly literal. On the other hand, it was up the stairs or backwards into the zinging bullets, and that wasn't really much of a choice at all.
Granted, it might have been more of a choice if he'd known he'd be encountering two guards on the first landing. He fought like a cornered rat when he needed to. Now was a need-to time. Honestly, this was preferable to the bullets, and for the first time Taym became aware of just how much help Fionnghal really was. He had the dim thought that if he'd tried to do this pre-Deus he'd been a bloody smear about four steps down.
HP: 25
Time: 2:00
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
2
Total: 2 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:34 pm
"Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up," he hissed at the obviously non-responsive thing he was holding. Aside from the obvious problem of letting everyone on Earth know exactly where he was, the thing was giving him a splitting headache. Two more guards plunged into the stairwell, and Taym allowed himself a brief moment of feeling like a badass when he actually managed to dispatch them without too much trouble.
Probably they had an unfair disadvantage, not having had a few minutes to get accustomed to the noise like he had.
HP: 20
Time: 3:00
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1
Total: 1 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:35 pm
He emerged into the safety of what he thought was an empty hallway, but his pause to take a breather was cut short by the thump-and-burn of another artillery welcome. He realized he'd been trying not to make any noise, and then realized how incredibly stupid that was, given the circumstances.
A volley of curses made him feel slightly better.
HP: 15
Time: 3:30
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
3
Total: 3 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:37 pm
And of course, nowhere to go, when he got to the end of the hall. Or at least nowhere easy. He continued expending breath on exercising him impressive swearing ability while he tore through the barricades, throwing a box as hard as he could as he thought about Mary Saunders and her precious inventory.
It occurred to him he didn't actually know what was in the boxes. He threw the next one rather more gingerly.
HP: 5
Time: 4:30
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Rejam rolled 1 4-sided dice:
4
Total: 4 (1-4)
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Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:38 pm
He wound back up to one of the hallways where he'd been pursued, and found it empty. It gave him time to press himself to the wall and take a breather, trying to muffle the horrendous shrieking and wailing of whatever it was he was carrying and failing to make a dent in it. Surely it had been five minutes. It felt like an eternity. So where exactly was this portal? The thought occurred to him just as his hiding place was triangulated, and the arrival of a shape at the far end had him sprinting on the trail back to the supply room more or less in the absence of any better idea. HP: 5 Time: 5:30
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