Character Background - Willow

[K Man]

{I thought I would share this everyone since we've been PMing this back and forth. It's the background information for Willow, a new member that will be joining the game shortly. These posts are purely for asethic purposes, NONE of it will be in game knowledge to others unless Will decides to disclose said background.}
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DM -

You see yourself running through the woods...running faster than you ever thought you could.

Your breath comes in short gasps, leaving your chest in the form of cold puffs of white air from your mouth. You bare feet are scraped and sore from the tangled roots beneath your feet and your nude body is bleeding from the thorns and sticks that tear at your sides.

Still you keep running...

Every dried, dying leaf on the trees around you bears the face of your Uncle...or is the face or your unknown child. Each visage leers and jests at you, spouting profanities and curses upon your very existence.

But you run past the mad leaf spectres...

You run past the rocks that strangely resemble your father how he used to look on the couch after a violent fight with your mother and past the pools of water that seemed to reflect images of your mother in a drunken stupor, lying face down on the kitchen floor.

You can't stop for all that now...you have to keep running. Running away from the snapping twigs constantly breaking behind you. You dare not glance back and see what chases you, for your mind could not take it...you just keep running from the noises...

You gently open one eyelid and stare at the ceiling.

Fuck...can these dreams get any weirder?

You think to yourself as you roll onto your side, reaching to the side of the couch for your familiar bottle of medication. You freeze when you hear more of the clicking sounds from your dream, but let out a sigh when you see that its' just Devon, typing away on the computer.

You move quietly and fumble around for one of your many bottles of NyQuil. Your hand wraps around it and you lift it up, only to discover its completely empty. You fumble and find another over-the-counter cough syrup bottle, but its' empty too. Even your little baggie of meth rocks is empty. You curse under your breath.

Devon was always a good friend by trying to get you off of the addictive substances, but lately his throwing them out was getting to be an expensive habit for you to fight.

You yawn and stretch, rising to your feet and wrapping the blanket from the couch around you. You waltz through the living room over to the small nook were Devon sits at the computer, typing furiously. The pale monitor glow gives him an odd halo-like glow, like he's not really alive or dead. He hears you walking up behind him.

"Hey Will...didn't wake you did I?"

Devon doesn't even look up from the screen he stares intently at as he asks. You find it odd since you remember seeing Devon in this exact same position last night before you fell alseep.

You begin to wonder exactly what he's up to...
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[K Man]

{Your an excellent writer, just thought I'd say, mind if I send you some of my stuff later on?}

Still up? He's been doing this more often, school must be really tough. This is exactly the reason I didn't goto college, too much work, god I hated school.. nothing but bad grades and verbal lashings.

Wil walks over and stands behind Devon on the right and looks over his shoulder giving her face a ghostly glow as she reads over his shoulder.

"How'd you sleep?" Wil looked over at Devon seeing the bags under his eyes.

<response>

"Want something to eat?" Pulling the blanket tight Wil brushes a strand of black hair from her face, her hair falling in her face from the tumbled mess of bed head.

[K Man]

DM -

Devon clicks the mouse a few more times before responding to you.

"Didn't sleep...I'm on the verge of something here Will..."

Devon types a few more keystrokes. For the first time, you glance at what your friend is doing.
There are multiple lines of code running over the screen at once, simultaneous programs open, run scripts and then close. Various password pages are opened and bypassed in the blink of an eye. It's apparent that Devon is trying to hack into some site or network.

"Not really hungry right now either, but thanks..."

Devon begins typing faster.

"Oh that's it!!....That's it!!!....YES!!!!"

Devon slaps his hands together and shoves them into the air triumphantly. He pats the top of his monitor like a favored family pet.

"I knew we could do it baby..."

You never really seen this side of Devon before. Normally Devon was the one that kept you from going completely over the illegal edge, and here he was, elated to have committed what you're sure was an electronic crime. He begins to scroll through screen after screen, looking at strange pictures and maps of areas, scanned letter and documents...all manners of unknown records.

"I don't know what MJ-12 stands for Will, but they are into some serious shit..."

It's as though Devon said that just to be polite, he's not even really paying attention to you, or for that matter, any of his surroundings. He reads some of the titles of documents aloud as he goes, and its' as though he's stumbled onto some geek, fan site for the X-Files rather than something top secret, but you let him rant instead of breaking his moment of joy. Suddenly Devon stops and grabs his gut.

"Man...I have got to take a dump. I haven't gone for days..."

The moment of intensity is broken by the humerous comment. You gently slug Devon in the shoulder for such a crude remark as he gets up and heads to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

You sit down in his chair and pull the blanket tighter around you. Looking at the screen, you become engrossed in an article about the Roswell Incident when a small box pops up on the bottom right side of the screen. Not being that technically inclined, you're not sure what it means.

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IP - 63.231.27.34
Logged
Traced
Enable Raptor.exe
Run Raptor.exe
end
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You suddenly begin to raise your voice to holler to Devon, but as quickly as it appeared, its' gone from the screen. Nothing seems out of place, and everything is still on, all blinking lights are in order...so you brush it off and wait for Devon to finish his business.

He emerges minutes later and stops by the fridge, removing a cold drink before gently nudging you out of his chair and sitting down again.

He takes a sip of the beverage and let's out a heavy breath.

"What did I miss?"

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[K Man]

Wil -

Though not the computer genious that Devon was Wil was far from computer illiterate and that didn't look good.

Scooting out of Devons way Wil pulled up a chair and sat near the boy looking at the screen.

"A box came up while you were gone said something about an IP then ran a program. It didn't look good. Maybe you should run a virus check thingy."

Gripping Dev's shoulder for support Wil pulled herself from the chair and waddled into the kitchen to make some coffee.

After returning to her chair Wil sat and watched Devon work at the computer some more while drinking the coffee. He seemed unusually focused and so Willow decided to leave him alone and go take a shower.

[K Man]

"IP? Program? Come on Will, quit fucking with me."

Devon smiles...then that smile fades when he sees the seriousness in your eyes.

"Alright...let me take a look."

You get up and head towards the shower, but you linger near the bathroom door out of curiosity.

"Alright let's see here...firewall reported no attempted hacks. That's good..."

Devon speaks aloud as he digs through the electronic dirt for evidence of your incident. He spends the next few minutes going through various routines and fast clicks of the mouse. A few minutes later he spins in the chair to face you.

"Will...seriously. Did you see something or are you just trying to give me the heebie-jeebies? I've checked everyth...wait a sec."

Devon's face lights up as he gets an idea. He spins back to face his keyboard and tries one last thing.

"The system event log. It can't really be modified and it tracks every activity. That should tell me.......Holy Shit..."

Devon's jaw drops wide open. He jabs a finger at the screen as though the small files with exclamation points are supposed to mean something.

"Someone has copied everything...my entire hard drive...in seconds. Who can do that?"

A few more clicks of the mouse.

"They've also shut out my log on as an admin and re-encrypted the...what the? WHO did this?"

Devon slams his fist on the keyboard so hard that his desk nudges his blinds on the window behind. You see lights dance and play upon the floor as the blinds settle down again. You sit quiet, for it's not like Devon to get enraged this quickly, leaning against the door to the bathroom.

Your eyes dart around the room, trying to find something else to talk about when you notice a strange dancing light.

Devon is hunched over in his chair, his face buried in his hands. Atop the crown of his head dances a small red light, like a laser pointer you've seen so many of your friends play with during class or with cats. The small dot gently floats until it rests squarely in the top center of Devon's head.

You begin to panic, for you worst imaginations take your mind for a joyride.

You call to Devon and he slowly raises his head until he's slouched back in the chair. The dot never moved and coincidently enough, it now rests slightly above the center of your young friends eyebrows.

"What are you talking about? Las..."

Those are the only words to escape Devon's lips before the sound of shattering glass echo throughout the apartment. With a sickening thud, Devon's head snaps back and you hear the distinct sound of fluid hitting a wall...like a modern artist throwing a bucket of paint against a wall.

You collapse to the ground and continue to watch the next few seconds in abject terror. Devon's head rolls back forward as his neck recoils from the hit, and the remains of his face come into view. There is a trench burrowed through his skull where his forehead used to be. It begins just above the eyes and splits in a v-pattern to either side of the top of his skull...right down the path where he used to part his hair. His eyelids flutter as blood begins to flow in a torent over them.

Pieces of grey matter crumble like old clay out of his no longer complete skull and tumble down the front of his sweater. His tongue lolls out of his mouth and hang limply to one side.

Then more breaking glass implodes inward as you realize more bullets are being fired. Devon's body bounces and jiggles as the ballistics fly through him until his limp body finally slides feet first off the chair onto the floor. His outfit begins turning a deep crimson from his own pooling blood which creeps across the floor like a slow growing fungus.

So far you have not heard a single thundering clap of a gun being fired but you are most definetly aware of the fire coming in as pieces of the plaster walls shatter apart and fly off when struck. The noise of ricochets and ballistic velocity projectiles fills your ears.

Whoever it is, they have not stopped firing, nor does it seem that they intend to....
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{You're safe for the moment huddled in the doorway, but your options are limited. You can try to make it to the front door, or leap out the bathroom window to the street below. (I'd say you're in a first level apartment.) }

{Also, SAN Check Success - lose 1 SAN Point for witnessing your friends death first-hand.}

[K Man]

Wil -

Wil sat against the bathroom door just stareing at the gore soaked remains of her friend in horror. To stunned to act.

What happened.. Why did they kill Devon. Devon's dead.. Devon? He can't be dead.

As the bullets continued to rain upon the room Willow half crawled half ran across the room to Devons side, frantically trying to lift what was left of his corpse in her arms. It wasn't untill she looked into his ruined face that she gave up hope; even though a part of her couldn't let it be true she had to run. Whoever killed Devon wasn't going to stop with her friend.

Something on that computer caused them to kill Devon, whatever it was he was doing was obviously important and so the lithe little girl scrambled over to the desk and started to pull out the cables with speed born of desperation while the bullets layed into the wall and desk and floor around her.

As soon as the last wire was undone she dragged the computer out the door.

[K Man]

DM -
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You crawl along the floor and squeeze yourself under the desk to pull every wire from the computer. Pieces of drywall shatter and fall to the floor in a symphony of chaos. Glass showers down like rain and cuts your hands and knees as you slither along, dragging the now pulled tower behind you.

Several times in your agonizing crawl across the apartment, you stop and lay completely flat while the gunfire intensifies. Looking above but covering your eyes from the flying debris, you notice the bullets are following your path, moving in the general direction that you are. Whatever is out there that shot Devon, is still trying to shoot you.

It/He/She must have some way of tracking your position throughout the house. Perhaps a thermal image of the house or even some type of X-Ray that allows the shooter to see you crawling along the base of the walls.

Finally you make to the door, bullets still riddling the walls around you, shattering them to pieces. You're amazed the place is still standing.

You reach up for the door handle and withdraw it quickly when you hear a bullet make the distinct ping sound when striking metal. Looking up, the door knob has been disfigured beyond repair, but it still looks as though it can perfrom its job. You reach up again, much quicker this time and give the knob a good yank, pulling with all of your weight.

The knob jolts and the door pops open, just as you pull you hand back down again. You're filled with relief that you did, for the instant you hand is gone, the door knob again suffers another strike and this time, it flies off of the door leaving only a shattered remnant of itself.

You roll onto your stomach and peer with one eye to the outside world.

The street looks amazing clear compared to what is going on inside the apartment. Since you're not really sure which direction the bullets are originating from, you hesitate to simply run blindly into the street...especially since your dragging a computer and not wearing much more than night clothes. Then it hits you...

The bullets have stopped...

You turn over again and look in amazement. No more pieces of walls are shattering, no more glass is raining down...nothing.

You lie still wondering if you should make a break for it, or if this is an elaborate trap devised by the shooters...
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[K Man]

Wil -

Will hesitated for a moment listening {Listen Check} to the silence. When things seemed that they had settled she tore off the side of the computer and cut the cable connecting the harddrives of the computer and pulled them out before heading out the door not worried about a trap having not liked life much anyway.

Whatever Devon was looking at was important enough for someone to kill him, if I can find out whats on these disks maybe I can find out who shot him and then claw off their face meat.

{Craft (Computer Repair). I should be able to pull out some harddrives}

[K Man]

DM -

Listening intently, you can't determine whether or not the threat is still there...but then again, you couldn't hear anything when it was occuring either.

You take a deep breath and turn to the computer you're dragging with you. You pry on the sides of it, the sharp metal cutting underneath your fingernails and causing blood to smear across the edge of the machine.

With a small feat of strength, you manage to pop several of the small set-screws holding the cover on and expose the interior of the PC to the outside world. You spot what you're looking for and take care not to destroy it beyond repair since you feel it will be your lifeline to the reason behind Devon's demise.

Upon removing the hard drives, you grasp them tightly and edge the door open a bit further, enough to stand up and get a solid run going, once you're ready.

Deep breath Wil...you can do this...

Somehow your mind isn't as convincing as you'd hoped it would be. None-the-less, your body shoots up and your legs begin pumping faster than you ever thought they could.

The apartment courtyard begins to fly past you in streaks. You become aware of metal pings and shattering glass as the shooting resumes. Bullets narrowly missing you and ricocheting off of cars and lamp posts in the parking lot. Tires hiss and squeal as they are popped by ballistics, thumps reflect from the grass as pieces of ground are flung into the air.

You take advantage of some cover and run between two aisles of parked cars, hoping the steel behemoths will shield you further as you try to get out of the area.

They don't do such a good job...

You're flung to the ground as a sharp, hot stinging sensation strikes your shoulder...right in the meat of your shoulder, above your bicep. You roll over and see crimson spreading through your night shirt and the pain is nigh unbearable. The hit was non vital, but the pain makes you wish it had been a more direct hit.

The sounds of silent gunfire cease, probably your attackers thinking your dead. You lay between the cars on the cold asphalt ground, holding all the pressure you can muster against your shoulder.

Time passes, it seems like an eternity. You're only aware of the pain in your shoulder and the cold hard ground beneath you catching your pooling blood. You glance around you, beneath the cars and you see, several dozen yards away, three sets of heavy combat boots creeping across the ground with stealthly movements. You're not sure what kind of person wears these boots, but normally you've seen them worn by soldiers in the military or by special forces teams in movies.

You panic, knowing that in a minute or less, they will be on top of you. Looking around for another option...aside from squeezing yourself under another vehicle...you spot a car, racing through the lot towards the end of your aisle. It's a darkere car, maybe a late 80's sedan of some kind. It screeches to a halt at the end of your hiding spot, about twenty feet from you. The passenger door flies open and a man inside motions towards you.

"Hop in!!!"
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{Took 3 damage from a bullet wound to the shoulder. Mark your character accordingly. }

{You should have max HP at 1st level + CON. for HP}

[Will]

Wil struggled to her feet and hobbled over to the car falling into the seat and pulling her legs in to yank the door closed. After that she crumpled like a ragdoll in the seat, her arm hurt badly and she didn't care so much who her savior was at the moment as to stopping the pain.

[K Man]

Crumpling yourself into the seat, you can barely manage to throw your hand over the handle and pull with the weight of your body to close it. As you near the last few inches of the door being shut, it jumps from your hands and slams itself shut. Then the thought hits you...it was a bullet.

The car is being rained upon by countless ballistics. The door was forced shut by the first few shots, and now the dull thud of the bullets striking the outside echo throughout the vehicle.

You brace yourself for the sting of another slug ripping through your flesh, but it never comes. A spark of lights flashes on the glass of the passenger door, but there is no sound of shattering glass like the apartment you left behind.

The car is bullet-proofed...

You think to yourself as the car's engine revs and the squeal of tires spinning on asphalt can be heard. The car lurches forward, flashes of light from bullets hitting and bouncing off of the windshield cause you to cover your eyes.

You feel the car enter some daring maneuvers, sharp turns and sudden stops. Eventually the car straightens and begins to rise to a very fast speed. Even the thud of bullets seems to stop after a while.

You raise your head from beneath your arms, your head feeling too heavy to lift, yet lift enough to be dizzy and get a better look at your savior. He is a latin man, perhaps in his late twenties. His physique gives away the fact that this man is nothing less than vain, probably working out for hours on end in front of a mirror. His jet black hair is slicked back and he wears a few gold chains around his neck.

He shifts in the seat, relaxing a bit now that he's not being fired on, and straigtens his leather jacket. He breathes a few deep sighs and looks over to you. His brown eyes set evenly over his small moustache.



"You alright kid?"

The man begins looking over your bleeding shoulder and takes one hand from the steering wheel to add pressure to the wound. He also flips open the glovebox and countless first aid devices spill out.

The man looks to you, waiting for some indication that you are indeed, going to live.
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{First Aid Roll by the Man - Success, gain 1HP back}

[Will]

Winceing in pain as the car careens down the bumpy street Wil looks up at the man.

"Whats going on? Who are you?"

{Sorry, I was on vacation}

[K Man]

{Sorry, I was on vacation}

{Don't worry, happens to the best of us.}
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"Name's Javier. Pleased to meet ya, eventhough it's in a situation like this."

The young man relaxes the pressure held on your wound and gently wraps his hand around yours. His gentle grip fills you with a sense of calm and tranquility you've not felt in what feels like hours.

"As for what's going on, I don't really know. I live near you in the complex and I manage the utilities for the building."

"One of my jobs is to monitor the usage of the HSD lines...and I take that job a bit farther with snooping on what people are looking at. I saw the PC in your house, and the site it hit...I also saw the program that stripped his PC...and seconds later, stripped my mainframe down to nothing more powerful than a palmpilot."

The car lurches around a corner at breakneck speeds. The tires squeal as they try in vain to maintain a hold on the asphalt.

"The reason I do this is because I've made some friends that have opened my eyes to the world around me...a world of horrible things kid."

"I keep an eye out for this organization, they keep an eye out for me. I don't wanna join up since I can't justify risking my life yet, but sometimes you just have to do what's right."

"Kind of like tonight..."

"You needed help, I couldn't watch you die. Besides, they got your PC, they got mine. It was probably only seconds before they tried to kill me too."

Javier shifts in his seat a bit. The car finally comes to a stop before a darkened, one-story building on a poorly lit street. Javier turns the vehicles lights off and motions towards the building.

"Good thing I took the advice of my buddies in that organization and got myself a second place to hide out at...and bullet proofed my car."

"Just in case..."

"Well kid, you can either get out now and find a new place, try to forget what happened tonight, or you can come inside. I'll get you bandaged up and we can talk more..."

"What's your choice?"

The car's gently rumbling engine is soothing, but your mind races with the choice you've just been given.
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