A truly insufferable heat wave arrived in the City that summer. It glued its citizens to their car seats, filled the streets with nauseating odor of decaying garbage and human sweat – and it uncovered some of the City’s dirtiest little secrets.
River’s water level dropped by a few feet and a body was found: one belonging to a certain Ryan White, missing one arm and one leg.
Not a pretty sight.
Performing as MC: Kapik
Ryan White was a Cryfield resident, however his body was found all the way in the Docks where Cryfield police had no proper jurisdiction. They ended up being mere helpers with the investigation while the Docks’ precinct was ready to put it in the cold case file pretty much from minute one.
There were only two people who really cared about Ryan White’s murder.
Scarlett, a teenage girl who knew Ryan White's son from her high school and she foolishly promised him she’d find his father’s killer.
Scarlett played by Pavel
And Rupert, a voluntary editor of Cryfield Echo’s bird watching column.
Rupert played by Tom
Coincidentally, both of them Rifts.
Now granted, these two didn’t meet under the friendliest circumstances. Not after Scarlett tried to use Cryfield’s Echo newsroom to develop some case related pictures under a fake name of Bob Dylan and Rupert tracked her down to her actual living address to invite her to work the case with him. That coincidentally involved having a tea with her mother, which, for some reason, probably upset Scarlett more than anything else about the whole situation...
Originally Scarlett intended to rush through the hallway with a single “Hey” directed at her mother and continue to her room without as much as a glance in her general direction, but…
“Hey Bob.”
She reverses back through the hallway in front of the dining room door and gives Rupert one terrified look.
[Pavel: This is gonna be a very Civil War type of situation, isn’t it?]
Indeed, their first encounter could have gone much better.
“What’s your deal?" Scarlett whispers once her mother left the room. "What are you, some kind of journalist?”
“Part-time journalist,” Rupert answers. “Part-time soccer coach. Full-time exterminator. But most importantly, I’m a proud member of the Cryfield community, and that community has taken a big hit with Ryan White’s murder. I’d like to fix that if I can. And if I’m not wrong, you seem to be attempting the same. So what do you say, Bob? Shall we take a crack at it together?”
She begrudgingly ignores the Bob. “How about we just focus on not unexpectedly finding you in my kitchen ever again, hm?”
Also, truth to be told, they aren’t exactly a star investigation duo. One of them is a wannabe teenage vigilante with sort-of-a magic coat, major intimacy issues and a severe attitude problem. The other one is that friendly neighbor of yours who helped you fix the drain that one time and always says hello when you meet in the street while getting the morning paper.
And yet, they eventually did find the killer. Or, more precisely, the killer found them.
Scarlett and Rupert first met Walter Stephenson at a potluck in Ryan White’s neighborhood. He seemed like a nice guy. A puppeteer, that’s an odd hobby, but hey, you’ve got to appreciate the craftsmanship. And sure, he’s a little overprotective of his son, who has been in a wheelchair since being born without one arm and... one… leg…
Oh. Oh damn.
Now to give at least some credit, Scarlett was sure Walter had something to do with Ryan’s murder. She also called his son a retard in an effort to cause a distraction, which a) was a gross misjudgment of his character, b) failed miserably and c) definitely caught Walter’s attention.
[Overprotective Psychopath Custom Move: When anyone insults his son, Walter’s true nature kicks into gear and he will stop at nothing until he punishes the one showed disrespect to Freddy. Also gets a cold-and-calculated-2 status to boot.]
Luckily Scarlett had least one decent idea: she spent the entire night in Walter’s house, covered under her coat which made her look like an inconspicuous pile of dirty laundry.
Primary result of this was terrible pain in her stiffed back, but on the other hand she saw Walter get up from his bed in the middle of the night, pack a duffel bag in his workshop and drive into the night.
She hopped on her bike and followed him without any hesitation.
“Mhmhmmopff? Bob? Is that you?” When Rupert picks up the phone he is still half asleep.
“Rupert! Walter left his house. He’s definitely up to something. I tailed him, we’re at the 17th and King’s Road intersection!”
“Hm? What are you doing at 17th and King’s Road intersection?”
“Me? What is Walter doing at 17th and King’s Road intersection, that’s what you should be asking!”
“Well I am at 17th and King’s Road intersection too!”
“What? Why?”
“Because I LIVE HERE Bob!”
As we've mentioned before, Walter would get very protective of his only son. And he might not know where to find that dirty little brat who dared calling his son the r-word, but he noticed she came with Rupert – who had given Walter his business card at the potluck in case he needed exterminator services.
He gets him – and he’ll help him get to her.
That very night, after a whole day of depressingly fruitless detective work, Rupert fell asleep in his house at the edge of Cryfield, mulling over whether investigating these cold trails is actually worth all that effort.
He had no idea Walter would stop his car right in front of his house just a few hours later.
He slept like a baby while Walter opened the door on the passenger’s side and let a line of dozen wooden dolls of all shapes and sizes jump out of it and march across the street to Ruper’s front yard, axes and knives taped to their hands and live-feed cameras glued to their foreheads.
That's when Scarlett called him.
Not exactly a lot of preptime.
But what Walter didn’t know at that point was that Rupert has an army of his own.
See, Rupert is not just a part-time journalist, part-time soccer coach, full-time exterminator. He’s most and foremost an avid DYI enthusiast, especially when it comes to homemade chemicals. And a passionate rat breeder. Also he loves snakes. He’s the Rift of the Pied Piper, what would you expect.
He also builds RC models.
When Walter’s puppet army drilled their way through the fence, Rupert’s rat footmen supported by snake cavalry and RC helicopters loaded with acid chemicals were already at the walls.
[Kapik: The puppets have made it into the house like a swarm of vermin. Looks like you will have to exterminate them.]
[Tom: How you managed to say that with a straight face I’ll never understand.]
What then ensued had to be one of the bloodiest, fiercest and dimensionally smallest battles Cryfield has seen in decades.
[Tom: *burns pretty much every tag he has on Change the Game to create roughly bazillion tags for his animal army.*]
[Everybody else: *grabs popcorn*]
Meanwhile Scarlett slashed Walter’s tires, hoping to stop him from leaving the scene. All too late she realized that she should be much more worried about him staying there with her. He has a bone to pick with her afterall.
“That’s why you killed Ryan White?" Scarlett screams in disbelief. "Cause he got angry at your son once?! You’re gonna cut of my limbs too, just like you did with him?!”
“I might,” Walter nodded, his face devoid of any expression. “Ryan’s didn’t fit Freddy at all. Yours might.”
He takes out a carpentry hammer and brings it down on her forehead with calculated precision.
[Pavel: *rolls 4 & 5 on Face Danger with “Protects me from harm” tag.*]
But luckily enough, the hood protected her.
[Pavel: Okay, this is bad, Scarlett isn’t a fighting character at all… I want to Change the game, give her a Courageous status]
[Kapik: Alright, but I’m invoking your weakness tag: anxiety attack.]
As Scarlett sees Walter towering above her, hammer in his hand ready for another strike, a crippling fear grasps her and a vision of another time just like this flashes in front of her eyes. This is it, she thinks, just like back then, and there’s nothing I can do about it…
[Pavel: *rolls 6&6*]
But hey. She survived that. She’s gonna survive this too.
She wrestles the hammer out of his hands. Walter jumps back at her, hoping to get it back. And she strikes.
The first one’s a reflex. It his Walter on the bottom of his chin and breaks his jaw.
The next two are born out of pure panic. One shatters his right knee. The other dislocates his right shoulder. He falls to the street like a crooked, broken doll and sobs.
Scarlett, albeit unharmed, follows him to do the same.
Rupert arrives shortly afterwards, accompanied by the last of his loyal men (or, well… animals…) dragging motionless puppet’s through the street behind them.
“Holy shit, Bob... Is he dead?” Rupert asks, looking down at crippled Walter.
“I d-don’t know,” Scarlett sobs. “Please d-don’t make m-me look…”
He puts unconscious but still breathing Walter in the car. Then carries Scarlett to the backseat and drops her off at home.
She snaps out of it just as he’s parking in front of her building. “What are you going to do with him?” she whispers.
You know, my friend, I guess there's a moment like this at nearly every one of these stories. The one when the “heroes” need to decide the fate of the “villain” – and there’s no jury nearby other than themselves.
“If you don’t have the stomach for this, I don’t blame you. Go if you want to and I’ll handle the rest, don’t worry.”
Scarlett grips the handle of the car door, but doesn’t move yet. “What about his son? Freddy? What will happen to him…?”
“Authorities will take care of him,” Rupert answered. He probably didn’t want it to sound so grim, but it couldn’t be helped.
On some level Scarlett probably wanted to stay. To follow through with it until the very end to get at least some semblance of meaning out of all of this. But she probably knows she wouldn’t get it anyway. And it’s already too much for her.
That’s why she gets out of the car. And she never learns what Rupert has done with Walter that night.
She cries herself to sleep, remembering how she promised Ollie, Ryan White’s son from her high school, that she’d find out what happened to his dad.
Well she did. And what good came out of it?
None of the things she’s done could make Ollie feel any better and she only cost another son his father.
“Scarlett?” Rupert steps out of the car and calls to her. For the first time ever by her real name. “It was self defense. You hear me? You did nothing wrong.”
That night she takes off her coat and buries it in the deepest corner of her closet.
Rupert took the next day off. He needed to put the house back in order (lot’s of fire and slashing damage, would be hard to explain to the neighbors once they noticed). He also prepared some special snacks for the heroes of yesterday’s battle as a thank you gesture.
When he was sitting on the porch that evening, drinking beer and listening to the radio forecast promising that the heat wave should be retreating tomorrow, he remembered about the Boat-tailed Grackle column he was supposed to write for Echo’s bird watching section.
And he realized that – after what must have been a really long time – he didn’t really feel like writing about birds.
[This play-through of Puppet Show is based on an official City of Mist supplement written by Jack Godwin.]
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