Train Busters game thread

The East is already far behind you; you're in Omaha, boarding the train headed west across the wilderness to the Golden State of California. What will you find there? How will the journey be?

You don't have to wait long to find out, as the conductor yells out "All aboard!!" You make your way to a passenger car with wide leather benches for seating. The train car is full, but you manage to find a place for yourself squeezed between two other passengers. There is a blast of steam, a lurch, a series of crashing noises, and finally a squeak of distressed metal, the train lumbers into motion down the track.

You're finally on your way!

Bonnie, Frank, Saul, Tombstone, Persimmon and Chhun all still have 8 gum.

Saul now knows more than he ever wanted to about the new Remington typewriter, while the prospector has been going on and on about Maggie May, a woman he's going to marry once he strikes it rich in California. Saul realizes that it's about lunch time and not only is he hungry, but wealthier potential suckers - uh, clientele - would be in the dining car. He begins to make his way forward and notices two striking women: a confident one with a fierce expression striding purposefully down the aisle (Bonny), and a voluptuous one looking at Saul with a saucy expression (Persimmon, the NPC).

(OOC: Candi, if I had thought about it beforehand, I would have created an experience system whereby characters get XP for successful mundane rolls. But I didn't before we started, so maybe next time.)
Bonny sees Saul and, behind him, a slightly queasy-looking Chinaman (Chhun, the other NPC) swaying as he attempts to navigate the aisle. No one here looks particularly prosperous, other than the tarted-up fern girl with the pearls at her neck (Persimmon, again). Bonny might notice something else; try a mundane roll, too.

Frank has made his way through car after car, looking for dust, and he's now ended up in the dining car. A trolley with supplies on it needs to trundle past; Frank is forced to sit at a table to make way. The person at the table looks strangely familiar to him. Roll a mundane roll to see if Frank can put a name to the face.

Tombstone finishes re-reading his daddy's letter. Gold! Can it be true? Ezekiel is just happy at the prospect of seeing his daddy again. He was prepared to help with the Lincoln County business when the letter arrived; family won out over duty...this time. When Tombstone has finished folding up the letter, he looks up and may roll a mundane roll to see who he recognizes.

Frank (8 gum): Your eyes widen as you see through the cheap disguise that Thomas is wearing. You haven't seen him for ages, and you're surprised to see him this far from Menlo Park, New Jersey. Edison seems to be horrified to see you at first, but then relaxes as you do nothing but stare back at him in astonishment.
"Frank - oh, Frank - I thought you were one of them for a moment! What a relief to see a friendly face!"

Saul (8 gum) sees the confident woman lean over the saucy one to look searchingly out the window. Perhaps they're in cahoots? He notices the fat string of pearls around the saucy one's neck.

Bonny (8 gum), sauntering casually down the aisle with her long gun under her duster, glances outside and then peers more closely out the window past Persimmon. She sees a number of mounted men riding past in the direction of the locomotive, wildly waving rifles.
Despite their cavalry uniforms, Bonny recognizes how they ride bareback and identifies them as Injuns.

Ezekiel (8 gum) simultaneously recognizes two outlaws in this very car: Chop Sing, wanted fer the death of three white men back in Jackson, and William Bonney, wanted fer participatin' in all that murder bizness down in Lincoln County.

At about this time, everyone hears the unmistakable sound of gun fire further forward on the train.

Dammit. I curse under my breath, this is MY train. I turn, popping a flat piece of something pink and powdery into my mouth and begin chewing. I try to push past those in the aisle, shoving my way towards the front of the car, and the front of the train. The aisle is too slow, I quickly become frustrated and make to leap up on the seat and vault my way to the end of the car.

This just got real! Let's lose some Bubblegum!

Ezekiel "Tombstone" sees Chhun - Chop Sing - recognize him and leap to his feet, and then catch Bonny the Bandit's foot as she soars past him. William Bonney - Billy the Kid - has leapt to his feet with his eyes on the forward door; he has not noticed the lawman behind him yet.

Meanwhile, in the dining car (next car forward in the train): Frank and Thomas are crouched under the table, where Frank is enthralled to find quite a bit of dust. There is quite a commotion in the train car as Edison explains: "You know that I am the real Thomas Alva Edison, but everyone else thinks that impostor is actually me. They tried to kill me, back in Atlantic City, but I slipped out of the manacles and swam to the mainland." He shows you the scabs on his wrists, dimly seen in the shadows under the table. "No one but you and I know that the real Thomas Alva Edison is still alive."

Luke has been busily collecting cash at another table in the dining car, cleaning up dealing games of faro. He's got a banker, a French chef, and a newspaperman eating out of his hand when the gunfire rings out. He notices that the banker reaches for his valise, the newspaperman reaches for his breast pocket, and the chef leaps up in consternation.

Clarence is busy smoking a cigar in the dining car, idly drawing architectural designs on some sheets of paper without really concentrating on it. This is a practice he's developed over the last few years, which he calls Automatic Depiction. He's come up with many of his more fanciful building designs while letting his Muse guide his hands while he enjoys a good smoke. Then he spends weeks or months deciphering what he's written, translating what his hands designed into something that can actually be constructed. His reverie is interrupted by the loud reports of gun shots ringing out, and the screams of alarm from other passengers in the dining car.

Someone pulls the brakes on the train, which lurches and begins to slow to a stop with a long screech.

The young man drops to his knees, completely flat-footed by the lawman. Billy the Kid snarls and brings his gun halfway around to fire in the time it takes Ezekiel to pull the trigger. Billy's fast...but not that fast. Billy's move is interrupted by a bullet, and his finger reflexively pulls his trigger wide of the mark. The sound of the two shots in the close confines of the railroad car is deafening. Sunlight streams through two new holes in the side of the train, making shining beams of light trailing through the cloud of gun smoke. As the smoke clears, everyone can see the ruin of the outlaw man's face, much of it spread across the seats and along the windows on the right side of the train.

If people were panicked before, the passengers in the train car now go berserk with terror. The noise is so loud that only Ezekiel hears the soft "Oh...oh, no...!" from another young man behind and across the aisle from him, as the young man eyes the hole in his coat where Billy's shot hit him. Then the young man slumps bonelessly to the floor of the aisle behind Ezekiel.

Ezekiel: 7 gum

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

Saul thinks back to his life in the Amazon, and recalls how he noted similarities between the different languages of the tribes. In a flash of sudden insight, Saul realizes the connections between those languages and those of the North American tribes. As he tries to form the words, the veil is suddenly lifted, and he sees the inherent connections between ALL languages, leading back to when the world was new, and he speaks forth in the language from which all other languages sprung, the tongue of angels and all living things, and what he says, roughly translated, is this:

"What in tarnation is goin' on?"

Unfortunately, the language of angels is no longer spoken by the fallen people of Earth, and the result is that the Cheyenne are amazed and bewildered by this apparition who has appeared amongst them as two of their number have mysteriously perished, black as the night and speaking the tongue of the sky. The thunder and lightning clinch it, and they speak back to Saul, clearly importuning him to some action.

As quickly as it came, the insight into the underlying language of the universe fades, and Saul is just Saul once more.

Saul: 5 gum

Clarence feverishly begins to disassemble everything close at hand, rearranging it and clipping it together. The contraption that results is the size of a suitcase, with a large cone on the end and a large crank on the side. Clarence aims the cone at the window and cranks furiously. There is another flash of lightning above, a crack of thunder that momentarily deafens everyone, and Clarence releases the trigger mechanism. The air in front of the cone visibly distorts as an incredibly low-frequency wave billows out of the cone. Everyone's ears pop as the air is pushed away, along with the entire side of the train's dining car. The screaming of the passengers and the chanting of the purple robed figures, the whistling of the wind and the sound of cavalry bugles approaching from the south, all are silenced as the wave continues to expand outwards, rolling everything in its path south along the prairie. The sonic weapon fuses, growing hot in Clarence's hands and the cone turns molten and drips onto the floor, scorching the water there into jets of steam. The inaudible soundwave ceases.

Everything is silent for a long moment, and then the wave passes out of (non)hearing, and sound returns with another crack of lightning and thunder directly overhead. Chhun's serpentine body rears up from the water on a neck ten feet long, and continues rising up and up - twenty feet, thirty feet, forty feet - as his body corkscrews into the air. The vast reptile that was the Emperor's messenger circles in the sky just below the looming black cloud, electricity arcing along its flanks.

Luke stands amazed with the others at the faro table, as the wind whips through the side of the train where a wall was moments before, and a dragon roars above them.

The screaming resumes on the other side of the train.

Clarence: 8 gum
Luke: 8 gum
Chhun: 6 gum

At this time, we take a pause from the action in the remains of the dining car, the fierce murderizin' in the coal car, the worshipful importunin' in the engine, and enjoy a brief intermission.



Aaahhh. Don't that just move yer soul?

Clarence strides forward and brandishes his wrench. The purple robed freak in front of him pays him no heed, as the light from his cowl finds another passenger. The passenger's flesh withers as he dessicates, the energy seeming to siphon off the life energy from his body. Clarence's wrench clobbers the cowled figure on the top of its head, and it crumbles with a gruesome crunching noise. Energy flares out in all directions, beams of arcing light flashing out to each of the nearby purple-robed figures, and they all grow noticeably taller as they absorb that energy. The darkness between flashes of lightning and the arcs of energy from the cowls is nearly complete.

Clarence: 8 gum

The engine lurches, even though the brake is applied. Then it jumps as Bonny begins to execute people in the area. The first shot punches Frank in the back, but the jumping of the train causes the shot to go wide. It doesn't sever his spine or pierce his heart; his shoulder shatters and the force and shock cause him to lose his grip on the revolving cannon, which drops to the floor onto its trigger mechanism. It proceeds to roll around, firing randomly at everyone's legs. Bonny's second shot hits a Cheyenne in the face, her third shot misses everyone and ricochets around the enclosed space, coming back and hitting her in the hip. She spins around and lands on her hands as the revolving cannon turns towards her. The engine lurches again and a large seam appears in the floorboards...

Bonny: 3 gum
Frank: 7 gum

Saul sees all this happen from dragonback, and notices that the engine is beginning to fall apart. The wheels have just popped out sideways. Could it be related to the evil ritual nearing completion?

Saul: 4 gum

The engine flips up on its hitch and everyone careens backwards towards the coal car. Bonny and Frank scrabble for purchase as the deck of the engine goes vertical and rises up into the air. They find themselves hanging by their fingers as long legs unfold from beneath the engine and raise it ten feet in the air.



The bugle call of the cavalry is heard again, as they ride back north after the seismic wave rolled them away from the train. Under Saul's musical guidance, Chhun dives down and crunches one of the cultists in his jaws. There is a flare of eldritch energy and the remaining robed figures grow even larger. Chhun's snout blazes with an unholy fire - devouring the cultist is not agreeing with him, and his flying becomes erratic. The last few passengers are fleeing pell mell away from the train, but the robed figures - now each at least eight feet tall - easily catch up to them with long strides.

The train engine, now converted into a giant (25' tall) humanoid figure with Bonny and Frank (somehow still holding on to his rotating, exploding blasty cannon) clinging to its thighs, releases a blast of steam and steps off of the track with a resounding CLANG. Clarence rushes out into the prairie as best he can with most of the ferrous objects in the dining car attached to him. The dark sky starts to turn an angry red color, as if fire loomed just above the thick black clouds. Each giant robed figure leans back and screams at the sky, releasing streams of energy that rise up like columns supporting the descending black clouds. Just then, Clarence reverses the polarity of his magnetic vest, and a fusillade of forks, knives, spoons, screws, and nails explode forth from him in all directions. Three of the giant purple figures are close enough to be shredded by these; they explode in flashes of flame, leaving black vapors in the shape of devils that slowly rise up into the sky. Chhun, already choking on the dinner of evil robed figure, is hit by several pieces of flying cutlery; with a shriek of pain he falls to earth again. Saul is shielded from the flying metal by the dragon's body, but the wind is knocked out of him as he hits the ground. The windows of the passenger car are blown out by pieces of flying metal, showering Ezekiel, Persimmon, and the reptilian thing holding onto Ezekiel with glass. The cavalry and the giant steam mechanical man that was the steam engine are all pelted with a rain of cutlery and hardware plunking down around them.

Bonny and Frank each pull themselves up onto surfaces that were vertical before and are now horizontal. Miraculously, Bonny retrieves her gun and each of them is able to stand, despite their gunshot wounds (they are so kick-ass they don't notice wounds). They are close to one another, but separated by at least two yards of open space (with a drop of about 10 feet) as each thigh groans forward and stomps the leg down in the process of the Mechanical Man's walking roughly East, parallel to the train and toward the cavalry and several of the purple-robed figures. All of the Cheyenne have dropped off of the engine. The furnace is above Bonny and Frank, in the thing's torso, and they can hear whirring and clicking of clockwork as well as someone muttering above that.

The black cloud, shot through with red and pierced by a few remaining columns of screaming light, begins to whirl into a vortex, a vast whirlpool above your heads. Anyone close to a standing purple robed figure is illuminated in piercingly bright white light; everything else is lit with a dull red glow. The cavalry arrives at the train, expecting to find the Cheyenne they've been chasing since they escaped the reservation, but finding instead...well, they plumb just don't know what they've found. Expecting a fight, a couple of the soldiers fire tentative shots at the Mechanical Man; the bullets ricochet off of the engine close to Bonny and Frank.

Bonny: 3 gum
Saul: 4 gum
Frank: 6 gum
Ezekiel: 6 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 7 gum
Luke: 8 gum

As Bonny considers what to do with Edison, Frank has realized that he cannot climb effectively with his wounded shoulder. So he does the natural thing and converts his Rotating, Exploding Blasty Cannon to expel an exhaust plasma that will propel him. Having completed this, he flies up to hover at the top of the Mechanical Man on a jet of flame.

Clarence is right pleased with himself for taking down three of the purple monstrosities, but now he's out on the prairie surrounded by cavalry, bad weather, purple things and a busted train that has, for all appearances, lost its engine to some mammoth automaton. "It's a shame I don't have more time to prepare," he says to himself, "perhaps I could have built myself one of those -- but it does give me some interesting ideas!"

Those ideas, however, aren't helping him get to his destination, and dagnabbit, he's not going to get there if the engine stalks off in some kind of a tizzy. "Time to get that engine back on the train and get us moving again. I'll never get to Alberquerque if I can't even get to San Francisco!" He tinkers with his vest, trying to focus its magnetic push into a narrower beam and then, of course, reverse the polarity. That should allow him to point it at the top of the engine and use it as a kind of grappling hook. "Hee hee!" he says to himself as he tinkers.

The remaining purple-robed figures are silhouetted with crimson energies, and the beams of light streaming from their hoods into the sky dim from the brilliant white to a piercing yellow, then continue to change color as if cooling metal from a forge down through orange and finally to a deep crimson color. The spinning vortex overhead begins to howl with shrieking winds, streams of lightning peeling back the layers of cloud to reveal a sky that resembles a hideous, bloody wound.


Clarence completes his adjustments to the vest and, as fast as a bullet, he finds himself slammed up against the "chest" of the Mechanical Man.

Edison is unable to focus on Frank at the moment, muttering distractedly about how he's going to take back his lab or something. Bonnie, trying to stare down Thomas Edison, do a kick-ass roll for your Presence Attack. He's already gobsmacked, but let's see how he reacts to your Stare.

Clarence, spread-eagle against the chest of the Mechanical Man considers his predicament. "If I turn off the vest, that seems to be a bad thing. Perhaps I can shimmy up this thing, like moving a magnet along a piece of metal." He attempt to shimmy upwards, as any giant automaton would be run from the head, of course. Who would think to do anything different?

The flaming sky has been descending further, until there is no question that there are actual flames in the sky, spiraling down toward a focus point in the midst of the remaining giant purple-robed figures. As the tongue of flame is touching down to earth, the Mechanical Man leaps forward, somersaulting in the air, and lands feet first on one of the figures, crushing it to a soft purple goo. The complex web of energies blasting into the sky wavers, alters.

Clarence experiences a series of fascinating but nausea-inducing movements, as he - stuck as he is to the front of the Mechanical Man behind him (think of an infant in a facing-forward baby carrier on a parent's chest) - is jounced up and down while it runs, feels a moment of stomach-churning weightlessness as the Mechanical Man jumps, then sees the sky and the ground (flame and darkness) spinning past him as it rolls forward in a somersault, and then a tremendous jolt as the robot collides with the ground once more. Nevertheless, he's reached the upper limit of the chest, hanging just at the brim of the cup containing the control console.

Frank, towering on his column of rocket exhaust, watches as Thomas Edison leaps/plummets to his death and Bonny seizes control of the Mechanical Man. Its first step crushes the poor scientist, and Frank thinks Now no one but me knows about the impostor... as the robot thunders away.

Meanwhile, back in the passenger car, Ezekiel has not been idle. He's tried to pull away from the green, dead man, but to no avail. Accordingly, he has fired his gun into the man, which succeeded in getting the thing to let go. But now it has risen up again after being shot, which just ain't right. The freshly re-shot man opens his mouth wide and hisses at Ezekiel. The man's face cracks horribly and the skin peels back from a long reptilian snout...

Persimmon's long, graceful white arm seems to have become boneless at first, but then she realizes that she has many more bones in her arm than before...her arm is flexible, and she uses it to coil around one of the seats in the car. Having done so, she rears up and attempts to kick out one of the windows to escape the gunfire and the snake thing that is confronting the gunman. The glass shatters and she lets herself out the window, using her long, scaly arm as a rope. It uncoils once she's on the ground near Saul and slithers back to her side, looking for something else to grab.

The cavalry has found something it understands in the sight of the escaping Cheyenne; they were sent to retrieve them, and there they are! A pitched gun battle ensues as the few remaining native families try to stave off capture and a return to the stinking reservation.

Billy the Kid's no longer recognizable when he emerges from the back of of the train as a colossal snake, having swallowed a few of the purple-robed cultists in the caboose and grown huge in the process. He slithers toward the cavalry, and the horses whinny and rear up in terror, adding further chaos to the gun battle.

Chhun attempts to change shape once more. The spines in his back shrink and darken, thickening into a coat of sleek, oily fur.

Luke, unable to gamble any further, sweeps up the pot of cash from the faro table and attempts to shoot the other players while they are distracted by all the events happening behind him. bang! bang! bang! three shots from a small revolver, and three more dead passengers fall to the deck. Luke stows the gun back in its hiding place, stuffs the money into his valise, grabs his medical bag, and steps lightly down through the hole in the side of the train to the ground.

Saul, in the midst of an array of purple-robed figures belching fell read beams into the sky, with a dragon shape-changing next to him, US cavalry in a pitched gun battle with grim Cheyenne who are starting to regain mounts all around, a window smashing out of the train on the other side of him, and a giant Mechanical Man thudding to earth, splattering him with gory mud, watches as the incursion of swirling flame touches down to earth just a few yards away.


Bonny: 3 gum
Saul: 4 gum
Frank: 6 gum
Ezekiel: 6 gum
Persimmon: 6 gum
Chhun: 6 gum
Clarence: 7 gum
Luke: 8 gum

Clarence looks down at the spot that used to be Thomas Edison and thinks to himself, "I really should have reached out to save that poor soul, but I barely noticed him passing by and this automaton is quite out of control." He nods resolutely, "Self," he says out loud to himself, "You really need to get this thing headed to San Francisco." He works at pulling himself up over into the control room -- turning off his vest once he's got a solid hold and hoisting himself up into the cockpit. Once he's rolled into the cockpit he'll roll onto his back and reconfigure the vest for "repulsion" just in case there's something untoward. At the first sign of a raised weapon, he'll turn his vest on.

Clarence's appearance, rolling over the edge into the cockpit next to her, is so unexpected (particularly after that somersault!) that Bonny is stunned for a moment, until he lands next to her and struggles to his feet in the enclosed space, working dials and switches on his metal get-up.

Bonny plants her foot on Clarence's metal-clad chest, says "This is my train" in a steely voice, and the crampons in her shoes snap out with a satisfying chung as they scrunch into the metal formal wear. Before she can do anything else, Clarence activates his magnetic field, which repels all metal away from it. Bonny's gun flies out of her hand. But the nearby metal also includes Bonny's boot and much of the train engine around him. Bonny's boot flies backwards, causing Bonny to knee herself in the face, and she falls backwards, hitting the edge of the cockpit and rolling over it. But the boot, as it is forced away, takes with it the front of the vest, held as it is in the clawed spikes of the boot. At the same time, the magnetic force pushes violently on the metal of the train engine around Clarence. It, however, is far more massive than he, so the vest is repelled up and out of the cockpit. For the first ten feet or so, Clarence is in the vest as it flies upward...but then the vest, missing its buttons (and most of its front), loses its structural integrity and flies apart. Clarence falls heavily to the ground, on the other side of the empty Mechanical Man from Bonny.

Nearby, dirt flies as Chhun begins to burrow under the prairie.

Bonny: 3 gum
Clarence: 6 gum

Frank lands in the cockpit with a whoosh and seizes control of the Mechanical Man. It whirls and stomps back to the track at the front of the train.

Clarence runs back into the train, pushing past Luke and retrieves his portmanteau.

The stuff rolling across the ground is massing together at the junction of earth and fire, lit from within with flashes of infernal energy. The few remaining purple-clad figures are shrieking, though with triumph, terror, or dismay, none can tell.

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.

Clarence completely fails to find any snake oil.

But his Snack-a-tons do; running around the passenger cabin wreaking havoc like Gremlins, the living sandwiches slip in the snake oil and begin to mutate. More and more layers of cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, salami, cucumber, tuna, egg salad, bologna, peanut butter, watercress, and many other ingredients grow onto the Snack-a-tons, elongating into monstrous Serpendwiches that attack the passengers in the train.


Frank: 3 gum
Clarence: 3 gum

Clarence explodes into motion, blurring through the train car in a manner that inspires a young passenger years later to invent the first motorized threshing machine. Every sandwich in the car is bisected, and each half bisected again, and each quarter bisected a third time. The Serpendwiches are ended, as well as the little bread snakes, lettuce vipers, cucumber cobras, and anabacondas that attempt to form from the pieces. But Clarence is unable to stop himself, and every piece of food, sandwich or not, is utterly destroyed by his savage sword. After several minutes, he finally stops, standing at the other end of the car, breathing heavily, a gore of yellowish paste dripping from his blade.

"Well the ownership of this here train has recently changed. Can't say I'm keen to honour past ticket payments as I wasn't the recipient of the payment." I spit, and quietly thumb another bit of that delightful pink chewy stuff. I must find myself another supply when this bunch runs out, "I'd be happy to add some value, else I wouldn't be much better than the previous owners. What if I could get you on a direct route to Sante Fe? How much'd that be worth to a keen inventor such as yourself."

Bonny completes her unhooking the passenger cars of the train and leaps back on the robot. Without the extra load, the Mechanical Man surges forward, stomping down the tracks with the dining car strapped onto its back.

As the train disappears in the West, Naked Giant Frank begins to scoop up bodies and squish them in the Dust Bunny's face, squirting it with blood as it continues to pummel him. The dust begins to congeal and collapse as Giant Frank squeezes more and more blood onto it - sometimes from dead things, sometimes from not-dead things: snakes, horses, men, purple-robed things.

Just then, Saul arrives with the assembled cavalry of the United States and the Cheyenne nation. The charge smashes into the pair of giant combatants, knocking them down and trampling them.

Clotted, flattened, and stretched out by vast ranks of trampling hooves, the Dust Bunny is no longer recognizable, spread out across across a gory acre. Bloody Muddy Naked Giant Frank rises up, a whinnying horse clutched in each gargantuan hand, and gives a triumphant yawp that can be heard in Colorado. Saul wheels the giant line of cavalry and turns back.

The Dust Bunny destroyed, the whirling clouds of fire dissipate, and sunlight streams through in broad beams once more. The discarded train cars sit, idle, about a half a mile to the west of the carnage. Of the Engine, there is no sign.

Luke, the gambler, checks the clasps on his valise stuffed with bank notes once more, tightens his grip on his revolver, and begins to walk slowly West, following the train tracks.

Bonny and Clarence ride the giant Mechanical Man off into the sunset, and before too long, they realize that the robot is no longer confined to the train tracks, and so they steer it in a bee line, straight to the New Mexico Territory. It seems likely to be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Saul seeks new worlds to conquer, and so he sets his sights on empire. He wheels his cavalry of just a few dozen mounted men south, and heads to Mexico and beyond.

Ezekiel carefully wraps up the body of Billy the Snake, and takes it down to claim the reward in Lincoln County, doggedly dragging it across the prairie. He always gets his man.

Frank, his dream of fighting dust bunnies realized more completely than ever he imagined it would be, looks about at the devastation of the train, the demonic ritual, the attacks of snakes, and the crushed body of Thomas Edison. The scabrous remains of the Dust Bunny twitch and fragment. Frank observes the scuttling creatures that form from the pieces with interest, but since they are not dust bunnies, he lets them go, demonic blood beasts scuttling in all directions like so many crabs.

Drawing some curtains from the windows of the caboose, Frank fashions for himself a velvet kilt and considers whether he will stay this size so as to get to civilzation faster, or change once more.

Persimmon awakens, some time later, to the sound of a steam whistle. Another train has arrived, and stopped, letting off a work crew to remove the emptry, broken carriages. Many passengers disgruntled by the wait also alight from the train, and one of them, an older man from Connecticut, introduced himself simply as "P.T." They developed a wonderful, mutually beneficial relationship, and, eventually, love affair.

Chhun surfaces again a week later, hundreds of miles to the West, and finds to his horror that he can no longer control his transformations. Despairing of ever returning to the Emperor, Chhun considers suicide.