Act 37: Barons, Madness, And Ink
--- Joshua ---
“Okay, can’t put this off any longer…” He sighed, staring at the museum…’s roof several blocks away. “We’ll just… we’ll just take this nice and slow, and… and hopefully I won’t black out with another nosebleed.”
(...)
Not able to put it off much longer he began running and leaping across the rooftops towards the museum, not wanting anyone to spot him should things get a little crazy. Something he was slowly coming to regret as he drew closer to the museum, a sense of trepidation building up inside of him. Almost as if he was looking down and on the verge of falling into an abyss. All while the abyss watched with a grin on its face.
He felt a shiver run down his spine as he came to a stop.
“It’s… it’s all in my head.” He told himself, forcing himself to ignore the way he could feel a bone chilling draft cut through his jacket.
(No… wait…)
He paused, looking around a bit before noticing that, (there’s no wind.)
His eyes drifted back to the museum as he realized the draft was almost pulling him towards it.
(Right, I… I felt something like this before. The last time I was here…)
Deciding that now that he was close enough to feel… whatever he was feeling, he should try to experiment with his powers and figure out what it was that caused him to blackout before.
As he reached for his powers a little voice in the back of his head told him he should back away from the ledge before it was too late. Only to promptly be strangled by a louder voice telling him to quit being a little bitch and take the plunge already.
His Madness twisted as he latched onto the draft, the flow of Madness through the air and he immediately felt a pressure growing inside of his skull. One that he forced himself to push through until-
The sound of laughter filled the air in spite of the gunfire focused on them from all sides, the mad man completely uncaring as if he knew none of it could kill him.
An insane thought that seemed to spread through them all as-
-he had to let go with a gasp.
Feeling something warm on his face, he wiped at his mouth only to pull back a hand covered in black blood.
“Okay…” He swallowed. “That’s… something…”
He gave his healing factor a moment to fix the ache in his head before once more reaching out and-
Blood filled the air as a figure in black darted between the gangsters gunning down the mad man who refused to slow down in the face of death almost as if he welcomed her embrace with a suicidal recklessness.
A death that grew ever nearer with every bullet to take its pound of flesh and spray the ground in a gallon of blood, staining the ground and-
-he fell to the ground panting, his eyes burning as the edges became cloudy and a steady stream of blood poured out from his nose.
“Fuck… that’s…” He gasped, some part of him begging him to just reach out and embrace the Killjoy’s Madness like an old friend, but after reaching out twice he knew a third time would melt his brain inside his skull.
“Can’t… can’t do that… again…” He told the insane part of him that still wanted him to reach out as if death isn’t the end.
With that admittance, he felt the tides of Madness pull away from him leaving him to lay there in an aching pile of hurt.
Scene Consequences
-For connecting with the Killjoy’s Madness gained 2 Laughing Madness and took (1+2=3D6) damage.
---
Eventually he was able to pick himself up, and despite the pleading part of him that wanted him to try just one more time, he instead dragged himself home before ink flowing through his cracked window and back into his bed. Something that seemed to just make his headache worse.
After he had no idea how long, he was able to start thinking about something other than pain and had only one question on his mind. (Who the fuck were the Barons?)
Pulling up his phone -and only wincing slightly as the light came on- he began searching for the Barons, finding that he had to repeatedly refine his search to avoid a number of bands and the voodoo religion, but after several frustrating tries that did nothing for his headache he found something of value.
From what he could gather the Barons were a gang from the voodoo wars, the nickname for an underground Deviant war during the prohibition era. One that was largely thought to be myth or aggrandization at a time that no one actually believed in Deviants, but that was slowly being revealed to have been accurate if suppressed by the various powers that be.
Due to this, discerning what was fact and what was fiction was… difficult for historians to say the least, since a lot of false information was purposely thrown into the mix to muddle everything up about people who already wore masks and stuck to the underground.
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What was absolutely true however was that the Barons were a small gang of no more than twenty at their peak but probably just under a dozen excluding temporary hands. Each of these members was considered a mix of a folk hero and criminal in the same way some people viewed Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, or half of the rap music scene.
Criminals, but publicly liked criminals.
With that in mind there were seven Barons that everyone knew for sure, with the most infamous being Papa Sammy D. Bones and Mama Bridget. A pair of Deadmen who were known to still be alive having last been seen during the Amityville Nightmare.
(Ha! Not even death could keep those two apart…)
Following them was the leader and founder of the Barons the Cheshire Killjoy, real name unknown. (Jackie…)
He blinked, before thinking that (yeah, this pain in the ass does look like a Jack) as he looked at the half-burned photo of a man in a suit and skull mask.
Next to nothing was known about him beyond him having a blood feud with several gangs, that ended with him having a down right obscene body count. One high enough to have many people considering him one of the first confirmed Slashers.
(Heh, he’s way scarier than that…)
Speaking of scary, there was one Cassandra Jackson, a confirmed Arcane who made no effort to hide the fact that she’d killed and cursed hundreds. All in what he was able to piece together was a vengeance quest from her parent’s shop burning down, killing both in a crime that saw no justice from the law due to the sheer amount of racism directed towards a black family owning their own business in the south during the nineteen twenties.
(Can’t say I blame her…)
(Surprisingly, she was the nice one…)
Moving on to the non-Deviants of the Barons, who sadly were less famous, he found James Griffith one of the co-founders of the Barons, and a complete non-Deviant. Having been a lifelong enforcer, and done a short prison stint, there was next to nothing special about him beyond the fact that he apparently jumped gangs and survived.
(Mostly because the other gang was dead… or they were made dead at least.)
Thomas Donovan was another non-Deviant, a first generation Irish American who had fought in WWI before helping found a factory union for various immigrants. Around which point he joined up with the Barons to provide muscle for said union before opening up a boxing gym that made it all the way to the Rift Riots.
(Shame, at least he could pass it on to his kid.)
Now these six barons told him a decent amount about the Barons themselves, as he slotted them into something of an extremely violent vigilante group in an era of violence and racism where the law definitely was not on their side.
The seventh though, they were the one to leave him with more questions than answers, because he’d actually found the man fairly early on, having apparently been the most famous of the Barons.
(Naturally.)
Unfortunately, everytime he pulled something up on the man he found the webpage covered in massive ink strokes that he knew no one else could see.
“Okay… so… someone is being black boxed… and I want to know why…”
Scene Consequences
-Joshua has learned more about the Barons.
-Joshua is aware that his thoughts are being censored.
---
Aware that if he wanted answers on what was happening with him and his powers he was (going to have to steal that gun) he decided he needed to push his powers even harder to make sure that he pulled the heist off without a hitch. And so knowing that Ink was arguably the most important part of his kit -(Beyond being the Cabaret’s support anyway.)- he found himself once more trying to push the limits of just how much ink he could create in one go, something that was an absolute necessity if he wanted to go all out in a fight.
Unfortunately, there was a catch to this relatively simple but essential exercise…
“I am so fucking bored…”
… it was boring as fuck to just sit there producing ink.
“Gah, there’s got to be something I can do to spice this up.” He told himself, staring down at his ink covered hands, he watched as the black liquid dripped between his fingers. “Huh…”
He pushed the ink out to form one of his Ink Blots, noticing how the black substance had taken on more solidity sticking together almost like jello before letting it fall to the ground where it reverted to liquid and splashed across the ground. With the idea that he was onto something, he went on to form a knife out of his ink, before tapping the now solid ink, noting down how it felt like actual metal.
“Okay… this stuff is pretty… malleable…”
He rolled his jaw for a moment before trying to shift the ink into a number of different shapes. All of which quickly lost any solidity they had, falling apart the moment he started to get them to take a new shape.
After a fair while of trying and failing to create anything with his ink he found his internal ink well beginning to feel a little dry. And so as was habit when he needed to solve a problem with his powers, he downed a vial of Malice.
With a sweet sinful symphony of song playing in the back of his head, he found his ink well quickly refilling with enough ink to keep playing with his powers. Whatsmore he found that instinctive connection to his powers growing just enough for him to get an instinctive prodding in the back of his head, asking him, (Hey, if you want to make something new why don’t you try Toonifying the ink?)
Giving into this curious thought he began to form another blot of ink in his hands, before cupping it between both and trying to get even more ink to sink into the blot. At first this just made the ink blot grow from the size of a baseball to a volleyball, but eventually he got the idea to try and keep a grip on his connection to the ink he was pouring into the growing blot.
From there he was able to pick up the odd sensation of ink drifting within even more ink. Which while disorienting on a certain level, also gave him a good idea of where to twist his Madness to actually begin toonifying the ink blot in his hands.
This had the odd effect of making the blot itself twist and spin in a little whirlwind as he grew and spasmed before shrinking back down to the size of baseball. A baseball that did not collapse like all of his previous ink constructs.
“Ha, yes!” He laughed, because while this was a small breakthrough in the short run he felt like it was the beginning of-
He froze staring at the jiggling ink blot.
The ink blot froze staring back at him.
“Uh… Hi?” He told the little googly eyes that had opened on the blob of ink in his hands.
The blob made a sort of gurgling sound in response.
“Okay… Well… this has happened.” He admitted, still processing what this was.
The little blob gave him a nod, causing its entire body to bounce and jiggle a bit.
“I’m uh, I’m going to need a minute to process this…”
The blob nodded again.
Scene Consequences
-Malice Chain bonus: Gained 1 Malicious Madness
-Thanks to Malice Vial gained (1+D6=3) XP to Ink Production.
--Currently: Lv. 6 (13/14)
-New Power: Ink Blobs at Lv. 1 (0/4)
--Joshua creates up to (Skill Rank) Ink Blobs, with HP equal to (Ink Production + Skill Level) and attack equal to (Skill Rank).
-For developing a new Ink Power gained 1XP to Ink Production.
--*Power Rank Up* Ink Production Lv. 7 (0/16)