HeyNow

Pretty Woman Redux

“Oh hell no,” Grace mutters under her breath when the girl gets backhanded the first time. She’s shifting gears when the pimp gets a second hit in and the girl goes down hard. “Motherfucker,” Grace hisses and peels out across the wet pavement, flipping on the lights and siren before she grabs hold of her shoulder radio. “Dispatch, this is 11662,” she says, throwing the cruiser into park and shoving the driver’s door open. “I’ve got a 10-32 on Southern and 163rd. Gonna need a 10-13, over.”

“10-4, 11662. 10390 en route, over.”

Hookers and druggies are already scattering in all directions as Grace steps out into the rain and rounds the hood of the squad car, but she’s only got eyes for the girl on the ground and the man standing over her. “Hey, hey, hey!” she shouts. “What the hell you playing at? Get your hands off that girl.”

The pimp backs up a few steps and raises his hands. “Just havin’ a private conversation with my girlfriend, officer.”

“Uh-huh. That what laid her out on the ground?” Grace snaps.

"She tripped. She's real clumsy sometimes."

"Guess that's how she got those bruises too, huh?"

He shrugs and Grace squints at him, sizing him up. He's a fairly big man, thuggish, likely in his mid-thirties. She's taken down bigger, but it never hurts to let them know you're packing. Casually, she pushes her windbreaker back and rests a hand on the pistol grip of her sidearm, makes sure he sees her do it.

“Got a lot of girlfriends on this street waiting for cars to pull up," she says finally. "You know what the penalties are for pimping in New York? Seven years and double the money you’ve made off these girls."

“Those hoes got nothin’ to do with me,” he says. “I told you, man. I was just talkin’ with my girlfriend. Ain't that right, baby?”

The girl looks up at him from where she's sitting, cross-legged on the wet pavement and cradling her face, then she looks at Grace. She stays silent.

“Is that what you call this? Talking?” Grace says, gesturing at the girl’s wide, hurt eyes and bruised face. On her shoulder, Grace's police radio crackles to life.

”11662, this is 10390. Coming up on you, over.”

"10-4, 10390. Ready when you are," she replies and looks over at the pimp. "All right, I've had enough of you. Get your hands behind your head," she tells him as a second squad car pulls up to the curb.

"Bitch, you got nothin' on me," he says warily, but he does as he's told.

"How about assault and battery?" Grace asks. “I got more than enough evidence right here to put your ass in jail. Not to mention all those outstanding warrants that are going to come up when we run a background check.” She nods at the burly Italian cop stepping up onto the curb. “Hey, Jim.”

“What’s up, Jones,” he replies. “We booking someone tonight?”

Grace nods in the pimp’s direction. “That one.”

“I got rights, man!” the pimp says, indignant.

“Shut up and get against the car,” snaps Jim, grabbing him by the shoulder and steering him towards the cruiser. Grace leaves the frisking and cuffing to him and crouches down beside the girl.

“You all right?” she asks.

Starfall | Below A Thousand Shadows

Tangentially, would it be possible to have a few rounds of posts after the op where the team gets to know each other a bit better? The pecking order right now is pretty ramshackle - it'd be nice to have a bit of breathing room to form alliances, rivalries, et cetera, et cetera.

Starfall | Below A Thousand Shadows

Hell yeah!

Pretty Woman Redux

Name: Grace Roberta Jones
Age: 30
Race: African American
Occupation: Police officer, New York City Police Department

Appearance:

Picture

Personality: No nonsense. Suffers no fools and takes no prisoners.

Background:

Pretty Woman Redux

Officer Grace Jones has been called a lot of things in her eight years with the NYPD. “Stupid” isn't one of them. You don’t get to where Grace is by letting your guard down, not when you’re patrolling the South Bronx at 3am, not when you’re breaking up prostitution rings in Hunts Point, and not when you’re shoving sixteen-year-old crackheads into the back of squad cars for anything from petty theft to first degree. It kills her by inches, some of the stuff she sees. It really does. So she suits up and locks it down, compartmentalizes, pulls every trick she knows so it doesn’t get to her too badly. She figures as long as she doesn’t lapse into raging alcoholism then her coping methods are working all right.

It’s nights like this, though, when it’s bitter cold and pissing down rain, that Grace has trouble keeping all that mess from rising to the surface. She’s got the cruiser idling outside a busted-up looking Duane Reade with the heat cranked up as high as it’ll go because it’s cold as a bitch, watching homeless people shuffle past or curl up in the shelter of abandoned stoops. There’s a couple of streetwalkers working the curb in spite of the weather, shivering in tatty halter tops and fishnet stockings, hoping for some john to drive by and get them out of the cold for a while.

Grace is from the Bronx. She knows how it is and how things can go bad real quick, and she's got nothing but sympathy for hookers. She doesn't harass them, and she never picks them up unless they’ve got something going on the side like drug dealing or grand theft auto or (God forbid) they’re minors. The ones on the curb tonight aren’t up to anything apart from being miserably cold, forced to stand out here by pimps who aren’t about to lose business because of some shitty weather, and Grace’s heart goes out to them. She’d pile them all into the back of the squad car just to get them out of the elements, but that’d do nothing but get them beat the next day for getting picked up by the cops. So Grace sits and watches and feels pretty miserable herself.

Pretty Woman Redux

1x1 roleplay between HeyNow and kittyfantastic.

Starfall | Below A Thousand Shadows

DS has moved into room 29 and is gradually asphyxiating the two remaining guards. I suggest someone follow behind and head right to deal with the two guards in that open C bit in room 33 and (eventually) the guy in the bottom right corner. Also, there's no doors between room 29 and room 15 - the guards there might visually confirm that the three guys in 29 aren't at their post anymore and raise an alarm.

Starfall | Below A Thousand Shadows

Dying Star darted through the closing panels of the door separating the luckless 29-3-K from his companions and lingered, huge and silent, on the threshold of Room 29. As the door hissed shut behind it, the Riftosian broke left, tearing down the hallway toward the two remaining guardsmen who stood in the top left corner of the room. It swirled noiseless around their booted feet while they laughed and bantered, slowly but surely swelling into a smothering cloud. The guards' masks would slow down the process a bit, but it was only a matter of time before Dying Star found its way through the tiny cracks and passages that littered any suit of armor and into their vulnerable respiratory systems. It would be a relatively painless death and - more importantly - a soundless one.

Starfall | Below A Thousand Shadows

Basically this:



My character is literally hovering over that top doorway. I can sweep out past 29-3-K as he comes in from room 29 and silently choke out his companions (29-1-K and 29-2-K) while someone quietly kills the first guy (Alsia maybe? I think she's near me). I like the idea of Thalos charging the guy coming from room 50.

And why does this facility have no soundproofing????

Starfall | Below A Thousand Shadows

"A very apt impersonation, Miss Alsia. You have many talents," Dying Star murmured as it flitted over to the door leading to room 29. Its own voice had slid down several registers to the rough baritone of guard 28-2-k. "I recommend, Master Alexis, that you do as the lady says and hang the second corpse in a less conspicuous location. If you could also have your drone tap into the facility communications network as you mentioned, I would be much obliged to you."

"Now, my friends, a moment of silence for the brave guards of room 29," it whispered, warping and expanding into a towering, transparent haze that arched over the doorway like an ominous cloud. "Hide yourselves and allow them to fully enter this room before you begin your work. We wouldn't want to disturb the rest of the guards prematurely. No screams this time."