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Marshal Carper -- Character-first adventures! - CDM 4, Chapter 31: Breach of Contract
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Marshal Carper -- Character-first adventures! - CDM 4, Chapter 15: Self-Sabotage
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The crux of the plan was to get to the priest as quickly as possible, but the size and complexity of the building limited any sort of swiftness on foot. Megan’s plan, with an addition from Nathan and me, was built around that reality and required several tactics to play out in rapid succession.
Megan, Giago, and Hornby took up positions at the very back of the church’s modern addition and were joined by a SWAT team outfitted with riot shields and zip ties. Even if Break Curse appeared to be successful, every person inside would be bound until their humanity could be confirmed, so while our people pressed forward, the SWAT guys would take care of the restraints.
Kimmy and I, meanwhile, were positioned at the side of the building where the addition connected to the original church.
When Megan’s team was ready to breach the ground level, the police set off a dozen smoke bombs with output similar to the military surplus smoke signals the Divas often used. As the smoke climbed, another team of officers shot bean bags through all of the highest windows on our side. Over a dozen windows shattered in time with the boom of shotguns discharging.
For a moment, Mt. Lebanon sounded like a warzone. The growing plume from the bombs flashed red, blue, and gray as cruiser lights reflected off the smoke.
Megan radioed. “Go! Go! Go!”
Her team crashing the back of the church would draw the vampire's attention to where his thralls made contact–we hoped–buying Kimmy and me time to kill the vampire.
I sprinted forward and hopped to plant a foot on the ledge of a window. My 12 strength made it simple to jump up and grab the ledge of the windows the next floor up. My Acrobatics ability gave me the coordination and confidence to immediately pull myself higher, and higher until I was over one of the low parapets.
I scrambled up a third story to another landing.
At the same time, Kimmy zipped through one of the broken windows.
“No lower than five!” he radioed, which meant none of the children in the room with the vampire priest were taller than 5 ft. “Front, far side!”
That meant the target was on the side of the room closest to the main entrance, favoring the opposite wall of the structure.
I loosed a sweeping line of arrows at 5.5 ft.
The instant I felt Momentum trigger, Nathan confirmed the hit.
I pumped 6 more arrows through the wall at that exact point.
“Kimmy landed!” Nathan announced.
That was my cue to jump through the window.
All the action I couldn’t see was captured by Kimmy’s drone camera. In the video, which I wish the CDM would let us release, you can see Kimmy slip by the jagged remains of glass. She stayed high, using the vaulted ceilings of the priest’s office to stay out of the vampire’s reach.
His face was something between a bat and a sabertooth tiger. He still wore black slacks, but his torso was exposed, revealing dull gray skin and enormous wings jutting out of his back. One of those wings hung limp, snapped and folded at an unnatural right angle.
Three young boys cowered in a corner while the vampire held one against himself like a shield.
Kimmy had been in the room for only a second before my void arrows found the vampire’s shoulder. As soon as the priest lowered his gaze to see where the arrows came from, Kimmy dove, crashing into the vampire’s face.
The setup was fairly crude, but a latex glove with 6 oz of Holy Water in it was taped to the front of the drone. The impact pressed the glove into four thumbtacks, popping it.
I heard sizzling and a haunting scream when I came in through the window. In his confusion, the preacher reached for his eyes with both hands, and the boy had enough sense to hit the deck.
After another quick flurry of arrows, I triggered Twist the Arrow.
The scream turned to a high-pitched screech as 17 arrows in the vampire’s body twisted at once. The monster threw itself backward in panic, crashing into a bookshelf and falling to its knees.
I peppered it with another volley.
Unable to manage more than a twitch of its limbs, the vampire hissed at me through one half-opened jet black eye. I dumped a vial of holy water on his head. After the second, he went limp and quiet.
I poured two more just to be safe.
“Target down,” I radioed.
One of the boys bolted for the door. I managed to grab his collar and pull him back.
“Hey! You’re safe. We need to wait for the all-clear.”
His wide-eyed nod was stiff and short.
Three minutes later, Zelinski said over the radio, “Our people are at the rectory door. Hold your fire.”
A team in SWAT gear entered the room, swept it quickly, and lowered their weapons to tend to the victims.
“Hostages coming out the front,” a woman on the team radioed. She turned to me after. “You can come out with us.”
I looked down at the melted face and forehead of the vampire. “I’ll wait with him.”
“He’s not dead?”
“I really hope so, but I’ve never killed one of these before. I’m going to hang tight to be safe.”
She nodded and took the children outside.
While I was in the rectory, Megan’s team bound the hands of the thralls, most of whom were women 30 years old and older. As soon as the priest died, their aggression stopped immediately, but they were disoriented and incoherent. They seemed harmless now that their master was dead, but like me, Megan wasn’t taking chances.
I don’t care if this was fucked up given the seriousness of the situation, but I checked my system profile while I waited for backup to detain the vampire at my feet:
Dorion Carmino
Class: Archer
Level: 17
XP Progress: 11,501 / 52,990
Nice! 5,000 XP for killing a wild vampire. Later, I confirmed that everyone in our party was rewarded with the same, including Nathan, so the system seemed to recognize everyone’s role in the hunt. I’m not sure that anyone has ever figured out how the system calculates that.
For the record, we later confirmed that the priest was indeed dead, and we learned that thralls were relatively harmless once the connection was broken. Several of the women raged at us and the police for separating us from their love as they were packed into vans, but most of them were silent and being treated for shock.
The children were confirmed to be human–not thralls–but they had been through hell nonetheless. The more thorough search and investigation that played out over the next few days uncovered a mind boggling 1.1 terabytes of child pornagraphy going back 17 years. The thralls were carted off to some undisclosed facility where they could be monitored for the foreseeable future.
When we pulled into the CDM garage, we anticipated some level of static for intentionally crashing a government drone, but Chapman praised us instead, which was a nice change of pace for me especially. I hadn't given her many reasons to be happy with my performance as of late, so a sincere “attaboy” affected me more than I expected.
At the end of the debrief, which was about 3 a.m. by that point, Chapman said, “I know you're all exhausted, but since I have you, let me run you through a few quick updates. First of all, the state will have 6 new Rapid Response teams online by the end of the month. Two in Pittsburgh, two in Harrisburg, and two in Philadelphia. They are all 8 person squads, so the Cold Rollers are still a bit of an outlier, but the goal is to lower the stress levels for everyone. If your work slows down, remember that it's a good thing.
“In terms of developments that more directly affect you, we will be interfacing with local and state police more often, but how exactly that will work is still a work in progress. Traditionally, our agency has been responsible for problem crawlers, but the concern is that the Assam Diet will make that a much broader, more frequent challenge.
“We will almost certainly do some degree of training around how to engage and defuse leveled people, especially in very public places where civilians are all around.
“This also ties into ongoing werewolf and vampire issues. You might have missed it, but a feral werewolf ran amok on the North Shore last night. It's not clear how much of our work will go in that direction, but given the strong feelings many of you have about werewolves, I think you deserve as advanced of a warning as I can give.”
Chapman took a deep breath. “Any questions?”
I had dozens, but none were questions Chapman would be able to answer.
“Again, good work tonight and over the last 3 days,” Chapman said. “Get some rest.”
“I'm stoked we're taking the next 3 days off,” Nathan said as he, Megan, de Saint, and I drove from the garage back to the guild house. “I might just stay in bed all day tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll still walk Lil’ Dorion, but otherwise, nothing but pillows and blankets.”
“I shouldn't have scheduled the new content manager to start tomorrow,” de Saint groaned. She checked her phone. “Sorry, not tomorrow. I mean in 5 hours.”
“It will be worth it in the long run,” Megan assured her. “But yeah, that wasn't a great decision on your part.”
We laughed as a group.
“Are we excited or worried that police officers will get levels to deal with leveled citizens?” de Saint asked.
“Ha!” Nathan grunted.
“What?”
“I know Dorion's answer. He hates cops.”
De Saint turned to me. “Because of the arrests?”
“I don't hate cops,” I answered.
“Bro,” Nathan said.
“I don't! I just don't trust them and have never had a positive experience with one. Ever. That was before I joined the CDM.”
“Ah, right,” de Saint replied with realization in her voice. “They probably weren't fun when you were homeless.”
“Fucking nightmare. Like, nevermind that the shelters were full and I had no choice but to sleep on the street somewhere, but do you need to trash my shit? Is it necessary to talk about ‘whooping my ass’ if I don't move along quickly enough? And like, I'm homeless. Not deaf. You and your buddies could at least save your school girl giggles until you're in your fucking cars. And I'm a white dude. I had it easy compared to the people around me.”
“So does this mean you are for or against them getting levels?” Nathan teased.
“Har har.”
“Sorry, dude. I didn't mean to rile you up. My mom dated a cop for a minute, so that and them never actually showing up when you need them soured me on the boys in blue.”
“Can we change the subject?” Megan asked.
“How do we feel about Waffle House?” Nathan answered. “Oh, right. Rainy needs to get home.”
“I do, but steak and eggs sound really good right now.”
“Chocolate chip pancakes all the way,” I countered.
Nathan nodded that he agreed.
“That's a dessert,” de Saint argued. “Not a breakfast.”
I shrugged. “The breakfast category is a lawless land. I didn't choose the world. I just live in it.”
“It is kind of a weird catch all, isn't it?”
Megan answered, “That's because mornings suck. You need chocolate chips and whip cream to face your day? Then here you go.”
“I blame the breakfast cereal industry,” de Saint said.
Nathan shook his head. “Donuts? Muffins? Biscotti? Oh, mother fucking crepes!”
“Waffles, yogurt parfaits, pretty much any kind of pastry,” I added.
“Breakfast bars, smoothies, some bagels,” Nathan continued.
I agreed. “Totally. Some bagels are pretty sketchy.”
“Did you know the inventor of corn flakes intended for them to prevent masturbation?” de Saint asked.
Nathan laughed. “So you're saying my Lucky Charms are why I have a problem? See! Lawless. Nobody is like, ‘Honey, what do you want for dinner?’ ‘Definitely not the meatloaf. If we do that two weeks in a row I might go blind, Linda.’”
“Why did you pick meatloaf for your example?”
“Dude, if we keep talking about it, I'm going to lose control of myself.”
“Please don't bring our waitress into this,” Megan pleaded as we parked.
“We might have cracked the Waffle House mystery,” I said.
Nathan’s grin was massive. “Breakfast is lawless. Therefore, the Waffle House, an oasis for breakfast, is lawless.”
“Exactly.”
“Dorion, you’re a genius.”
“Okay, okay!” Megan shouted. “Your bromance is going to ruin my appetite.
The crux of the plan was to get to the priest as quickly as possible, but the size and complexity of the building limited any sort of swiftness on foot. Megan’s plan, with an addition from Nathan and me, was built around that reality and required several tactics to play out in rapid succession.
Megan, Giago, and Hornby took up positions at the very back of the church’s modern addition and were joined by a SWAT team outfitted with riot shields and zip ties. Even if Break Curse appeared to be successful, every person inside would be bound until their humanity could be confirmed, so while our people pressed forward, the SWAT guys would take care of the restraints.
Kimmy and I, meanwhile, were positioned at the side of the building where the addition connected to the original church.
When Megan’s team was ready to breach the ground level, the police set off a dozen smoke bombs with output similar to the military surplus smoke signals the Divas often used. As the smoke climbed, another team of officers shot bean bags through all of the highest windows on our side. Over a dozen windows shattered in time with the boom of shotguns discharging.
For a moment, Mt. Lebanon sounded like a warzone. The growing plume from the bombs flashed red, blue, and gray as cruiser lights reflected off the smoke.
Megan radioed. “Go! Go! Go!”
Her team crashing the back of the church would draw the vampire's attention to where his thralls made contact–we hoped–buying Kimmy and me time to kill the vampire.
I sprinted forward and hopped to plant a foot on the ledge of a window. My 12 strength made it simple to jump up and grab the ledge of the windows the next floor up. My Acrobatics ability gave me the coordination and confidence to immediately pull myself higher, and higher until I was over one of the low parapets.
I scrambled up a third story to another landing.
At the same time, Kimmy zipped through one of the broken windows.
“No lower than five!” he radioed, which meant none of the children in the room with the vampire priest were taller than 5 ft. “Front, far side!”
That meant the target was on the side of the room closest to the main entrance, favoring the opposite wall of the structure.
I loosed a sweeping line of arrows at 5.5 ft.
The instant I felt Momentum trigger, Nathan confirmed the hit.
I pumped 6 more arrows through the wall at that exact point.
“Kimmy landed!” Nathan announced.
That was my cue to jump through the window.
All the action I couldn’t see was captured by Kimmy’s drone camera. In the video, which I wish the CDM would let us release, you can see Kimmy slip by the jagged remains of glass. She stayed high, using the vaulted ceilings of the priest’s office to stay out of the vampire’s reach.
His face was something between a bat and a sabertooth tiger. He still wore black slacks, but his torso was exposed, revealing dull gray skin and enormous wings jutting out of his back. One of those wings hung limp, snapped and folded at an unnatural right angle.
Three young boys cowered in a corner while the vampire held one against himself like a shield.
Kimmy had been in the room for only a second before my void arrows found the vampire’s shoulder. As soon as the priest lowered his gaze to see where the arrows came from, Kimmy dove, crashing into the vampire’s face.
The setup was fairly crude, but a latex glove with 6 oz of Holy Water in it was taped to the front of the drone. The impact pressed the glove into four thumbtacks, popping it.
I heard sizzling and a haunting scream when I came in through the window. In his confusion, the preacher reached for his eyes with both hands, and the boy had enough sense to hit the deck.
After another quick flurry of arrows, I triggered Twist the Arrow.
The scream turned to a high-pitched screech as 17 arrows in the vampire’s body twisted at once. The monster threw itself backward in panic, crashing into a bookshelf and falling to its knees.
I peppered it with another volley.
Unable to manage more than a twitch of its limbs, the vampire hissed at me through one half-opened jet black eye. I dumped a vial of holy water on his head. After the second, he went limp and quiet.
I poured two more just to be safe.
“Target down,” I radioed.
One of the boys bolted for the door. I managed to grab his collar and pull him back.
“Hey! You’re safe. We need to wait for the all-clear.”
His wide-eyed nod was stiff and short.
Three minutes later, Zelinski said over the radio, “Our people are at the rectory door. Hold your fire.”
A team in SWAT gear entered the room, swept it quickly, and lowered their weapons to tend to the victims.
“Hostages coming out the front,” a woman on the team radioed. She turned to me after. “You can come out with us.”
I looked down at the melted face and forehead of the vampire. “I’ll wait with him.”
“He’s not dead?”
“I really hope so, but I’ve never killed one of these before. I’m going to hang tight to be safe.”
She nodded and took the children outside.
While I was in the rectory, Megan’s team bound the hands of the thralls, most of whom were women 30 years old and older. As soon as the priest died, their aggression stopped immediately, but they were disoriented and incoherent. They seemed harmless now that their master was dead, but like me, Megan wasn’t taking chances.
I don’t care if this was fucked up given the seriousness of the situation, but I checked my system profile while I waited for backup to detain the vampire at my feet:
Dorion Carmino
Class: Archer
Level: 17
XP Progress: 11,501 / 52,990
Nice! 5,000 XP for killing a wild vampire. Later, I confirmed that everyone in our party was rewarded with the same, including Nathan, so the system seemed to recognize everyone’s role in the hunt. I’m not sure that anyone has ever figured out how the system calculates that.
For the record, we later confirmed that the priest was indeed dead, and we learned that thralls were relatively harmless once the connection was broken. Several of the women raged at us and the police for separating us from their love as they were packed into vans, but most of them were silent and being treated for shock.
The children were confirmed to be human–not thralls–but they had been through hell nonetheless. The more thorough search and investigation that played out over the next few days uncovered a mind boggling 1.1 terabytes of child pornagraphy going back 17 years. The thralls were carted off to some undisclosed facility where they could be monitored for the foreseeable future.
When we pulled into the CDM garage, we anticipated some level of static for intentionally crashing a government drone, but Chapman praised us instead, which was a nice change of pace for me especially. I hadn't given her many reasons to be happy with my performance as of late, so a sincere “attaboy” affected me more than I expected.
At the end of the debrief, which was about 3 a.m. by that point, Chapman said, “I know you're all exhausted, but since I have you, let me run you through a few quick updates. First of all, the state will have 6 new Rapid Response teams online by the end of the month. Two in Pittsburgh, two in Harrisburg, and two in Philadelphia. They are all 8 person squads, so the Cold Rollers are still a bit of an outlier, but the goal is to lower the stress levels for everyone. If your work slows down, remember that it's a good thing.
“In terms of developments that more directly affect you, we will be interfacing with local and state police more often, but how exactly that will work is still a work in progress. Traditionally, our agency has been responsible for problem crawlers, but the concern is that the Assam Diet will make that a much broader, more frequent challenge.
“We will almost certainly do some degree of training around how to engage and defuse leveled people, especially in very public places where civilians are all around.
“This also ties into ongoing werewolf and vampire issues. You might have missed it, but a feral werewolf ran amok on the North Shore last night. It's not clear how much of our work will go in that direction, but given the strong feelings many of you have about werewolves, I think you deserve as advanced of a warning as I can give.”
Chapman took a deep breath. “Any questions?”
I had dozens, but none were questions Chapman would be able to answer.
“Again, good work tonight and over the last 3 days,” Chapman said. “Get some rest.”
“I'm stoked we're taking the next 3 days off,” Nathan said as he, Megan, de Saint, and I drove from the garage back to the guild house. “I might just stay in bed all day tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll still walk Lil’ Dorion, but otherwise, nothing but pillows and blankets.”
“I shouldn't have scheduled the new content manager to start tomorrow,” de Saint groaned. She checked her phone. “Sorry, not tomorrow. I mean in 5 hours.”
“It will be worth it in the long run,” Megan assured her. “But yeah, that wasn't a great decision on your part.”
We laughed as a group.
“Are we excited or worried that police officers will get levels to deal with leveled citizens?” de Saint asked.
“Ha!” Nathan grunted.
“What?”
“I know Dorion's answer. He hates cops.”
De Saint turned to me. “Because of the arrests?”
“I don't hate cops,” I answered.
“Bro,” Nathan said.
“I don't! I just don't trust them and have never had a positive experience with one. Ever. That was before I joined the CDM.”
“Ah, right,” de Saint replied with realization in her voice. “They probably weren't fun when you were homeless.”
“Fucking nightmare. Like, nevermind that the shelters were full and I had no choice but to sleep on the street somewhere, but do you need to trash my shit? Is it necessary to talk about ‘whooping my ass’ if I don't move along quickly enough? And like, I'm homeless. Not deaf. You and your buddies could at least save your school girl giggles until you're in your fucking cars. And I'm a white dude. I had it easy compared to the people around me.”
“So does this mean you are for or against them getting levels?” Nathan teased.
“Har har.”
“Sorry, dude. I didn't mean to rile you up. My mom dated a cop for a minute, so that and them never actually showing up when you need them soured me on the boys in blue.”
“Can we change the subject?” Megan asked.
“How do we feel about Waffle House?” Nathan answered. “Oh, right. Rainy needs to get home.”
“I do, but steak and eggs sound really good right now.”
“Chocolate chip pancakes all the way,” I countered.
Nathan nodded that he agreed.
“That's a dessert,” de Saint argued. “Not a breakfast.”
I shrugged. “The breakfast category is a lawless land. I didn't choose the world. I just live in it.”
“It is kind of a weird catch all, isn't it?”
Megan answered, “That's because mornings suck. You need chocolate chips and whip cream to face your day? Then here you go.”
“I blame the breakfast cereal industry,” de Saint said.
Nathan shook his head. “Donuts? Muffins? Biscotti? Oh, mother fucking crepes!”
“Waffles, yogurt parfaits, pretty much any kind of pastry,” I added.
“Breakfast bars, smoothies, some bagels,” Nathan continued.
I agreed. “Totally. Some bagels are pretty sketchy.”
“Did you know the inventor of corn flakes intended for them to prevent masturbation?” de Saint asked.
Nathan laughed. “So you're saying my Lucky Charms are why I have a problem? See! Lawless. Nobody is like, ‘Honey, what do you want for dinner?’ ‘Definitely not the meatloaf. If we do that two weeks in a row I might go blind, Linda.’”
“Why did you pick meatloaf for your example?”
“Dude, if we keep talking about it, I'm going to lose control of myself.”
“Please don't bring our waitress into this,” Megan pleaded as we parked.
“We might have cracked the Waffle House mystery,” I said.
Nathan’s grin was massive. “Breakfast is lawless. Therefore, the Waffle House, an oasis for breakfast, is lawless.”
“Exactly.”
“Dorion, you’re a genius.”
“Okay, okay!” Megan shouted. “Your bromance is going to ruin my appetite.
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