midpointsaloon | Round 85: The Long Haul, Part 8

PLAYERS: Rocket and Groot, Taako, Yoda, Jiro Azuma VS. Sam Wilson, Misty Day, Jo Harvelle, Sara Lance
LOCATION: Bank Town, the Ranch
GOAL: Keep hands on the cargo of the stagecoach travelling from Bank Town to the Ranch
WARNINGS: Attempted murder
OTHER: OOC post for plotting and questions!

The stagecoach isn’t ready for transport when the two teams arrive at Bank Town just before sundown, and the bank manager who is in charge of the shipment will only speak to someone on the driver team, so the bandits are shit out of luck even if they try to get to it first. There appear to be some delays, in fact, and the bank manager has many apologies, but the stagecoach isn’t loaded up with its cargo until noon the next day - as Bank Town has no inn, the teams had best find somewhere out of the wind to spend the night, whether by borrowing an empty house in the sparsely populated town or bedding down against the ravine walls.

There are two routes marked as safe for stagecoach travel on each team’s map: one that swings north following the railroad tracks and passing close to Midpoint, and one that swings south along the floodplains. It’s up to the drivers which path to take, and up to the bandits to guess the right one. It’s a breezy day: tracks won’t last for long. (The bandits might do well to check at Booker’s General Store before they leave.)

The stagecoach won’t make good time, burdened as it is, and the horses can’t run all day, but that’s why there’s a note on each route for the drivers on where to change horses. That might be a good place to wait out the darkness-- unless someone is foolhardy enough to drive the new team of horses all night. The cargo is due at the Ranch by the end of the third day, so there’s plenty of time... but there’s the threat of bandits to worry about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I. Departure

Misty wakes early in hopes of getting to North before any other active players think to load up on their respective breakfasts, and once obtained the meal is taken upstairs to her shared suite. The remainder of the morning is spent on one last walk through Booker's, and then waiting in the stables.

"Suited up? Packed?" She'll ask of any and all teammates as they make their way in. There's only so long one can wait and pretend their saddlebags need fiddling with; she might sound eager to be moving. "We're not turning around once we leave, schedule's too tight. Double-check now if there's any doubt. And if you've got any strong leanings as the plan goes, I'm listening. Any secret skills, now'd be the time to share."

II. In Which We Wait

This portion is, in a word, boring. Four people hunkered in the dirt, horses on standby, at the bottom of a large enough dip to keep them comfortably obscured even at their distance. Some hours will be afforded, and either they'll be passed or they'll have ruled this path out and they can cut directly across. They'll know if the other team is close by even without needing to see, but it does require some alertness on Misty's part for sensing purposes. Which proves increasingly difficult, stifling heat and utter lack of entertainment proving less than inspirational.

"Don't suppose anybody's got any interesting stories," she ventures, less than optimistically while watching a beetle scuttle across the toe of her boot. "Or like...a word game."

III. Saboteurs

The farmstead is a welcome surprise, standing out from the empty shacks occasionally passed on the ride enough to warrant inspection. Even were it similarly empty, it would be a stable place to sleep away from the elements. Very little poking around reveals the horses, watered and fed and ready to be hitched, and that's more than encouraging enough to make up for the uneventful ride.

"They're probably set up to overnight here, swap out horses to finish the last leg fresh." Which means it's a resource they can remove and claim for themselves. "Doubtful, but maybe there's food inside. Could dig around, if there's anything worth taking we leave about a quarter of it so they just think the gamemakers are shorting them? Ride a little further on, eat, get a couple cat naps in before entrenching ourselves."

Sam has lost count of the number of times he'd been in situations similar to this both when he was deployed and as an Avenger. Everyone knows about heroic action and fights, but no one thinks about all the quiet waiting and watching for the other side to make their move, to make themselves known.

It's boring as hell and there's not a whole lot you can do in the meantime.

He turns his head when Misty finally speaks up. This could be a unique opportunity actually, "What counts as interesting in this case?"

"Anything that isn't this?" It's left open ended so she can think a little after she says it. In the absence of anything more substantial, she nods and doubles down. "Anything that isn't just waiting around in a desert. Please."

That is strangely helpful -- after all it takes away most of his stories from the military tour of the middle east. Besides the fact that no one probably wants to hear war stories right now. Sam glances around for inspiration, he'd spoken up but now he had to think of an interesting story to share.

He decides to buy for time, "Childhood or a more recent story?"

"Doesn't matter. Childhood'd be neat, I guess-- not the kind of thing people are usually hustling to share, considering the circumstances. Which is a shame. Colorful folks we get, there's probably a lot of good anecdotes around we're not hearing."

Lovely as the beetle is, it's hardly holding attention as well as a story would. What she knows of Soldat's history certainly implies there's some wild potential, here.

Sam leans back, quietly thinking for a moment -- childhood or something else?

"I grew up in Harlem -- so all this wild west stuff was only something I saw in movies or tv. I don't think I even knew how big a horse really was until my mom took me to the zoo at a young age...they had one of those petting zoo things, you know? Horses, chickens, goats, ducks, that sort of thing. We weren't allowed to have pets in the apartment we lived in -- but I was always pretty good with animals. So, when we got to go to the petting zoo, I was having the time of my life, even managed to get all of the ducks to follow me around the pen."

He smirks, as he both tells and remembers the story, "Of course, my sister wanted to try it for herself. She thought she could grab them and get them to follow her too. The ducks didn't like that so much and started trying to bite her. She was screaming and crying, but for some reason wouldn't let go of the duck's wing -- so of course it kept at her. Mom was shouting at her to let go while trying to climb the fence, but I got to her first and managed to coax her hand away from the duck. Not without getting pecked myself a bit -- but by then we had riled up a bunch of the other animals too. Needless to say, my sister didn't go back to the zoo for a long time after that and even for awhile was convinced I had somehow gotten the ducks to attack her."

Sara just gives a curt nod in response to the question of whether or not she's ready to go. She's accustomed to tight timelines and harsh terrain, and she's already triple-checked her - relatively meagre - gear. It's not the loadout she'd like to have, but she can make do.

She's done with far less in the past.

"How closely do these 'game makers' stick to the letter of the law when they're deciding who wins these things?" she asks.

"More than you're probably assuming, hard as it can be to believe. I can't speak to the history of the place, but I think the idea is that they're looking for a creative, effective, dramatic way to get from A to B; not how good people are at finding loopholes."

Cheating isn't the goal, and it's best for everyone on either side of the fence to have clear, straightforward instructions. The logic more or less bears out to her.

"Whatever instructions they give, that's what they're looking at. Nothing less or more."

"Loopholes are creative and effective," Sara notes as she sets about readying her horse for departure with a careful efficiency that speaks both to familiarity with the procedure and with the procedure and with the potential hurdles of equine temperament. "And sometimes dramatic. It sounds like what they're looking for is a bloodbath."

Which makes sense. The more confrontations between teams, the more violence any of them show willing to inflict on each other in order to win these little games and earn a few more creature comforts, the harder it is to build any trust. It's an effective means of keeping their prisoners from banding together.

"Do you know anyone who's tried? To tie a match without triggering either side's losing condition, I mean."

I [to Misty]

Jo isn't convinced this is a real thing. Granted, there's been the chance this is all some kind of illusion from the beginning, but now they have to play pretend? (Maybe not as 'pretend' as she would like.)

"What kind of 'secret'," Here she uses finger quotes to enhance her sarcasm, which she is employing to continue to hide how concerned she is about all of this. "Skills would be useful on this adventure?"

Sorry, Misty.

III [OTA]

Jo rode horses a little as a kid, it came with growing up in a small agricultural town, but that didn't mean she was good at it, or that her body wasn't crying out for a long hot bath.

She dismounts with only a little trouble, scanning her surroundings warily.

"I can check the house. Anyone want to join me?" Jo is no stranger to breaking and entering. She's just as familiar with theft. Maybe, in this case, it isn't so much theft but scavenging?

Round 85: The Long Haul, Part 8

Misty Day | Bandit: the first

II

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I

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I & III