Train Busters game thread

Everyone stops what they are doing to stare in dumbfounded amazement at the dancers. Persimmon's grip slackens and releases Saul's neck as she discovers that she is delighted with dancing; her snake arm delicately raises, the flexible appendage sinuously describing complex curlicues in the air above her head as she spins and twirls. Saul spins her away from him and she twirls, her skirts billowing out about her. Saul grabs the tip of her reptilian arm/tail and yanks on it, causing Persimmon to spin back to him, the arm wrapping around her like a returning yoyo. He catches her in his arms, their eyes inches apart, both panting, her eyes dilated, and he leans in toward her as if for a kiss...and scratches her with the thorn. The tension goes out of her body with a gasp, and he lays her tenderly to the ground.

The crowd of Cheyenne, US cavalry, various horses, Luke, and the purple-robed giants all break out into applause. Today has been a mixture of horror and beauty like none of them have ever known. Unfortunately, the horror resumes. The hideous gray shape that has formed at the locus of the fire and earth reaches out a fuzzy appendage and smothers one of the purple-robed giants. In the silence, the sound of squishing and snapping is terribly audible. Everyone leaps back into motion, firing guns, riding horses, screaming and yelling and running pell-mell across the prairie as the shapeless mass rears up above them all.

Saul: 3 gum

Clarence becomes a whirlwind of activity, moving into a blur whipping around and around the dining car, disassembling and reassembling it into a locomotive; as a new smokestack rises up, Bonny rushes through, leaping with a graceful bound (her blood describes an arc behind her) to the top of the smokestack, and then flips over into a moonsault double foot stomp, hitting Frank feet-first. He is thrown to the side, stunned, and she lightly lands in the control seat.

Under her control, the Mechanical Man pirouettes (which is something to see), then cartwheels over to the vast bulk of the red-lit beast as it finishes taking shape. Another long "foot" has stomped outward, crushing a horse and its rider. The body has elongated, two smaller appendages have extended from the torso, a head has formed with two protuberances like horns sprouting up from the back. As it rears up to its 30' height and roars, the Mechanical Man grabs it from behind, lifts it up and rolls backward, slamming the head of the Beast solidly into the ground with a tremendously deep "PFFFFT!" noise.

Clarence completes the locomotive; it's not pretty, but he's managed to include some improvements, while allowing for the fact that it will be pushing the coal car and so needs access to the furnace supplied from the front.

Ezekiel continues to fire his pistols at the formerly dead man, who has now turned completely into a giant snake monster. Then his guns click, and he realizes he's emptied both cylinders into the thing, with no apparent effect (other than pushing it back, away from his face for a moment).

Bonny: 3 gum
Saul: 3 gum
Frank: 6 gum
Ezekiel: drops 1, down to 5 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 5 gum
Luke: 8 gum

Frank, head spinning still, comforts himself with modifying the Mechanical Man. It is only when he has completed his task and he's firing the Rotating Exploding Blasty Cannon into the bulk of the Beast that he recognizes it for what it is...

Oh, the Horror...!


Bonny: 3 gum
Saul: 3 gum
Frank: 5 gum
Ezekiel: drops 1, down to 5 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 5 gum
Luke: 8 gum

Clarence completes his new locomotive; all that remains is to start and stoke the furnace so that it comes up to steam, and the train will resume its journey.

Bonny has control of the Mechanical Man; an unmanned turret gun swivels aimlessly at her left shoulder, ready to fire.

Saul sees a giant snake monster (let's call him "Billy") slither past him and strike a horse fast as a blink. The horse shrieks in agony and falls over atop its rider with a crunch. Luke jogs over and retrieves the rifle that the rider dropped, bank notes fluttering out in his wake from his valise overstuffed with money.

Frank has grown to colossal size, standing naked as a jay bird a good five feet taller than the Mechanical Man and nearly as large as King Dust Bunny. The two titans grapple, the assorted bundles of hair and skin cells in the abomination making it hard to get a good grip.

Ezekiel tosses his guns aside. Clearly, this is no longer a gun fight. He grabs the giant snake's jaws in his hands, a fang sinking deep into his palm, and he proceeds to wrestle the snake to the ground. It wraps its coils about him and tries to squeeze the life out of his body, but he persists, bending the snake's jaws back, farther and farther, until he tears the bottom jaw off of the snake and beats the rest of its head with it. The snake goes limp at last, and Ezekiel gains a level (3rd level Snake Puncher).


Bonny: 3 gum
Saul: 3 gum
Frank: 4 gum
Ezekiel: 5 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 5 gum
Luke: 8 gum

The coal shovel snaps in Clarence's hands, and he gets a series of painful splinters in his hand trying to use just the head of the tool. No, it won't work. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be another coal shovel around (the Cheyenne forgot to drop them in their hurry).

Clarence: 4 gum

Clarence creates a hose and begins to siphon coal through the Power of Technology!

The furnace roars up and the boiler regains steam. With a shriek of the new train whistle (he couldn't resist fashioning one), the new locomotive begins pushing the coal car down the track, pulling all the other cars along behind it.

Ensconced in the turret of the Mechanical Man, Bonny sees the train start to leave. Meanwhile, Frank has pinned the King Dust Bunny, but its body is beginning to wriggle around his arms, engulfing him.

The giant snake is swallowing the horse next to Saul. As the caboose begins to move past, another snake slithers out of the back of the train, looking for prey. The cavalry is regrouping south of you, and the Cheyenne are preparing to cross the tracks and head north once the train is past. Luke uses his rifle to shoot one of the retreating cavalry soldiers and leap into the saddle in his place. He wheels the horse west and it rears up dramatically, large-denomination bank notes winging through the air in its wake.

Bonny: 3 gum
Saul: 3 gum
Frank: 4 gum
Ezekiel: 5 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 4 gum
Luke: 8 gum

Frank starts to roll the Dust Bunny, and in its desperation, it picks up a dead horse and slaps him with it. He rocks back on his heels, and the Dust Bunny presses its advantage, flogging him with a dead horse.

(sorry, no spending gum after the fact)

Clarence, in an inventing groove, is unable to do something as prosaic as making food to eat. He keeps making sandwiches that then come to life and run around the passenger car, chittering in their own "Kahld Khat" language.

Bonny hijacks the newly-crafted train engine that Clarence created, but without exiting the Mechanical Man. Instead, she stomps over, lifts the new engine off the tracks, and miraculously hitches it to her own mount. Doubled boiler capacity lends a burst of speed as she hooks the train to her robot's waist and jogs down the tracks.
Saul dominates all of the cavalry and Indians. He wheels his forces to see the train leaving, Luke galloping his horse after it.