Train Busters game thread

Saul leaps from his feet, doing a pirouette as he rises into the air and casually discards his superfluous waistcoat (which lands atop as astonished man's top hat). His toe makes the lightest connection with the top of the chair and launches him forward, flying through the air. While he's in mid-air in the passenger car, Frank stands up in the dining car, and memories of his recitations as a child return to him for a moment as he sings forth in a surprisingly beautiful baritone voice that everyone in his family had once thought had destined him for the opera: "Everyooooone, pleeeeease quiet dooooown! Can't you see that we're trying to speeeak in peeeeeeeeace?" The people panicking in the dining car would have found the voice enchanting on its own, but as it is, with the aid of the Magnificent Vocalizer he carries in his pocket, everyone on the entire train and for miles around hears his astounding voice, and all hubbub ceases, if just for a moment, from the engine being overrun with Cheyenne warriors through the cars full of hysterical passengers all the way back to the caboose where dealings better left unsaid are taking place under cover of drawn shutters...all pause and revel in the power and majesty of the Voice. It is as if an angel had descended to earth and lifted their earthly concerns away. The Voice reverberates as Saul drifts through the air, does a forward somersault like a swimmer reversing direction at the end of a lane, and hits the door between cars with both feet. The door smashes apart, effectively braking Saul's forward momentum, and he steps lightly down to the ground in front of Bonny, who had just succeeded in her mundane task of crawling out of the mass of tangled bodies. They face each other, and the tiger that was Chhun Hsien leaps through the broken doors behind them toward the dining car.

Frank: 8 gum
Bonny: 7 gum

The PCs are the first to recover from the shock of Frank's enchanting voice. Clarence whips out his vest and dons it. With a faint snap and crackle of electricity, it comes to life, and all the flatware on the tables is repelled from him, forks and knives flying across the cabin to lodge into the walls. Unable to open the dining car door, Giant Maneating Chhun Hsien Tiger yowls and scratches at the door to the dining car like an alleycat trying to wheedle a saucer of milk.

Clarence: 8 gum
Chhun: 6 gum

Bonny hauls out her gun from under her duster, fires it at the glass and leaps after the shot, intending to catch the edge of the window frame and flip up onto the roof like a gymnast.

Unfortunately, the bullet goes cleanly through the glass, leaving a small, neat bullet hole, and Bonny's hurtling body rebounds off of the glass and back into the cabin with a loud "BONGGG!" noise. She is caught by a dapper-looking middle-aged gentleman, who smiles and says "Pardon me, miss, you seem to have dropped...er...yourself. A most fascinating action." Then he sets her back on her feet in the aisle (not far from where she started). The gentleman then resumes gathering up his photographic equipment.

Bonny: 6 gum

The train has come to a complete stop.

Saul is in the midst of his plea/pitch, but Bonny has heard none of it. The stopping of the train has cued the remaining passengers that it's time to get off, and the rush of bodies carries Saul along with it, and he finds himself hanging on a vertical handlebar on the outside of the car as passengers stream past to hop down onto the tracks and then run out into the Nebraska wilderness. Or are you in Wyoming already? None of you know. Suddenly there is screaming from the passengers who have disembarked, and Saul notices the sky going black. He is distracted from this by a young girl of perhaps fifteen years, whose freckles and dirty homespun dress show that she has spent a fair amount of time out-of-doors.

Apparently, she's heard all of Saul's sales pitch and thought it was meant for her. "Golly, mister, I shore don't want to be scalped, jes' like you said. Shore, I'll team up with ya! Mah name's Shawneen pleastameetcha. Mama allus said, Shawneen, she said, ya can jes' tell good people from bad jes' by lookin' at 'em, that's what my mama allus said. And golly sir if ya ain't a good 'un! So...what you want me to do first?"

Saul: 7 gum

Ezekiel hikes up his gun belt, tips his hat at the purdy lady, and takes a long stride toward Bonny, Muybridge, Shawneen, Saul, and everybody else in the dining car, but his foot is stopped, caught on something. He looks down to free his boot, and discovers that the young man who was shot ain't dead 'tall. Furthermore, the young man's outstretched hand, which has a tight grip on Ezekiel's boot heel, is bright green, as is his wrist all the way down to the cuff of the purple robe he wears under his jacket. There's a shifting noise as, on the other side of Ezekiel, Billy's body slides slightly, leaving a streak in the green ooze.

Ezekiel: 6 gum

The train has stopped, the sky is turning dark, and there is a high-pitched squeaking noise (Chhun) coming from the dining car.

Shawneen obediently begins the gulp down the green fluid as Saul turns away from her, rolling up his sleeves, daubing his face with war paint, kicking off his shoes to better grip the rungs of the ladder on the end of the dining car as he ascends while loading his first dart. Running noiselessly along the roof of the dining car, he leaps at the end over the gap to the coal car. The shifting coal is an unsteady surface, but no less steady than the rotting vegetation of the jungle floor: Saul rolls through the coal and springs up, firing a dart at the first Cheyenne he sees, who freezes up and falls lifelessly over the side. Saul is so fast and silent that the other two natives do not see him, distracted as they are by something to the side of the train. Saul drops from the end of the coal car, black as the sky (at least on this day, which has turned astonishingly dark) from his coating of coal dust into the midst of a band of twenty-odd Cheyenne - men, women and children - who seem to be torn between a desire to shovel coal into the furnace and looking back along the train to see what is making all the screaming noise. Two more drop to Saul's darts before they notice him.

Visions of the organized network of dust bunnies whirling in his head, dreading to imagine what nefarious schemes they are concocting at this very moment, Frank is filled with outrage, rising up with Revolving, Exploding, Blasty Cannon in hand. The Winchester people would have had him call it a "REB-C," but Frank always felt that that minimized the majesty of the instrument of death. There is a momentary, confusing resistance in the air (until Clarence switches off his vest), but then Frank is able to stride through the dining car, pushing the chef out of his way. Certainly the bunnies are organized, though their ways are mysterious: every step seems to splash, as if he were walking into a brook or the shallows of a river. When he throws open the door leading toward the coal car, Frank notices a continuous stream of water pouring out over his shoes onto the rail bed below. But it's hard to see, it's suddenly so dark outside. The screaming is coming from the sides of the train, but the gunfire and the Injuns were coming from the engine. With two leaps, Frank is up the ladder and standing on the shifting pile of coal in the coal car, still mostly full this early in the transcontinental journey. There are a pair of Cheyenne here, looking appalled at something over the side of the train, but with a noise like thunder, Frank sends them careening off of the coal car with concussive reports from his Revolving, Exploding, Blasty Cannon. He continues to make his way forward to see what he can do to get the engine under steam again.

Before he can make any further conversation, Bonny leaves Muybridge to climb out the window and scramble up the side of the car onto the roof of the train. The sky is black with a ponderous ceiling of cloud that looks nearly close enough to touch; the sense of weight above her is pretty overwhelming. A shadowy figure is just dropping from the coal car as she stands and makes her way forward. As she leaps from the roof of the passenger car she started in to the roof of the dining car, she glances to the side and notices the purple robed figures surrounding the passengers as they emerge from the train. Bolts of energy steam from the face of each robed figure, lancing into the passengers, who are screaming in agony. Steeling her resolve, she runs forward as a gunman leaps up onto the coal ahead of her. She sees the man fire two blasts of a shotgun, which throw his two targets off of the train. She's reassured that he will have to reload now. She's at the edge of the dining car now.

Clarence switches off his vest, and Frank is able to walk past with his Revolving, Exploding, Blasty Cannon, each step splashing in the water streaming out of Chhun's pores. Clarence is able to quickly assemble the harness around Chhun's sleek, bullet-shaped body, assisted by the buoyancy of the water as it fills the bottom few inches of the dining car. The water is draining nearly as fast as it is pouring out of Chhun, as now the doors at both ends of the car are open. Clarence hears the screaming of people on either side of the train, the booming reports of Frank's hand cannon, and then the pounding of Bonny's running footsteps overhead. A gleam of light from under one of the dining tables catches his eye momentarily, and then is gone.

Ezekiel looks on with horror as the man looks up at him. His veins bulging in his face are turning a shade of green that Ezekiel associates with gangrene and amputation. The man's eyes are cloudy and yellow, and he still has a tight grip on Ezekiel's heel as he brings his other hand forward.

Persimmon looks at her hand and begins to shriek, as her once-smooth skin of her left hand has developed a supple layer of green scales. She is frozen into inactivity with horror.

Chhun begins to thrash his flukes, which sends him scooting happily forward into the water, assisted by the wheels of Clarence's harness. His chittering and squeaking ceases as his body begins to transform once more, this time with arcs of electric energy. Thunder booms in the sky overhead as his body elongates even further. But between the darkness and the obscuring water, only Luke, sitting at the faro table, is able to see what is happening to the sea creature.

Bonny: 5 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 8 gum
Ezekiel: 6 gum
Frank: 7 gum
Luke: 8 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Saul: 6 gum