Session 51 - Leslie's confession, pt. 2

<table class="table-horizontal"> <tr><th>Timestamp</th><td>9/4/26, ??? ~ ??? / ??? ~ ???</td></tr> <tr><th>Drive Link</th><td><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hW6FVFOqsPsPCHZm09OvWlh_Ceon9r_q2d4uE8S8SLw/edit?usp=sharing">Ch7 S51: Leslie’s confession, pt. 2</a></td></tr> </table> KRIS And we are going to cut to the last person we haven't cut to in a bit. Leslie. Last we left off, your old buddy, old lover, was saying something about wanting to rip you apart and drag you down to Hell. And, Leslie: are you letting that happen? LESLIE Yes. KRIS What is going through Leslie's mind right now? LESLIE … Not… very much. I think… throughout the night — I mean, really over the past month — he's kind of become more and more wound up, and restless, and… just incapable of settling, or quieting the sort of gnawing feeling that something has been wrong. And that is gone now. So I think he's not thinking of much. KRIS Right. So. I would ask you to roll Skirmish, but if you are not resisting — are you choosing to just auto-fail a Skirmish roll? LESLIE Yes. I will choose to fail. KRIS Gloriosa is… breathing, kind of roaring at you, there are barely even words. She is more like that tiger from that dream you had a few months ago. Ivan is calling to her, and you can see in your peripheral vision that Emil is beginning to rise as this other entity. His body is being puppeted by something else. But you don't care about whatever's going on there. Gloriosa grabs you and slams you into the wall of the spa. Tiles shatter behind you, and you feel like— you are in so much pain, something— a rib breaks, some blood in your throat— LESLIE (coughs) KRIS —and she is just roaring, kind of yelling at you, why, why, why did you do this, and you can see that same demonic rage in her, the same kind of thing you would see in some of the beasts that they would use in Pride to hunt down sinners. The same kind of fury you see in Thatch. In Cyrus, even, sometimes. After she slams you through the wall, she activates her ability to phase through it. She grabs you and pulls you right through into the hallway beyond, while Ivan kind of disappears. And here she is just slashing at you. And you are just limp? LESLIE Yeah. I think so. KRIS You're stumbling through the hallway as she roars and she leaps at you and shakes you, but there's nothing to be said anymore. And at some point, she is just— you know, it's kind of like— tumbling through, like tossing a ragdoll, until she grabs you and just flings both of you downwards from the second floor to the first, phasing through the floor itself. You come crashing down, hitting some of the wood and paintings of the gallery downstairs, and slam into the ground on the first floor. You are going to take the Bleeding Condition, and you take 3 Stress. LESLIE May I clear Survivor's Guilt? KRIS Yes, you may. You are on the ground and she is straddling you, clawing at you, you're covered in all this blood. Some of it is her own as she was tumbling through the walls and floors, phasing through in and out, partially here and there, ripping herself on things. But you are on the ground, like, really fucked up. And she's still kind of rearing back for another strike. Is there anything Leslie's trying to do or say before she tries to do something more? LESLIE He… I think he coughs a little bit, probably is, uh… I mean, there's blood in it for sure. And he says: … …I did love you, you know? KRIS … She… pauses as she's about to strike you once more, and then she starts sobbing, laughing. GLORIOSA What does that even mean to someone like you? LESLIE (soft laugh) …Not much, I guess. Sorry. GLORIOSA Not much at all—! KRIS She raises her claw, and she looks like she wants to just go for the throat now. She's slashed around, but there's this focused intensity— —and then a bullet rings out. Across walls, a bullet fires from a revolver as you see Ricochet is starting to run over. You see a red pool appears in Gloriosa's chest and she turns— GLORIOSA (choked grunt) KRIS —to see Ricochet with a gun. He is frenzied, he looks like he is panicking as he sees you are bloodied and there is this demon on top of you. And he's kind of shouting, just— RICOCHET Get away! KRIS And Gloriosa is trying to crawl away from you now. LESLIE Uh— KRIS She's phasing in and out, but her magic seems to be weakening. LESLIE —Leslie's eyes go very wide, I think it takes him a moment to register what's happened, and— I don't know if he even looks towards Ricochet, I think he's— he’s watching Gloriosa stumble away, and kind of lifting a limb, sort of… as if he would reach out, but I don't think he's got a lot of strength, and he just says: Why did you do that…? KRIS You say that to Ricochet or Gloriosa? LESLIE To Ricochet. KRIS You are saying that, but Gloriosa is still here, and Ricochet is looking down at you— RICOCHET R-Rabbit, get up! I— KRIS —and Gloriosa is going to start running towards Ricochet. LESLIE I don't— I don't know that there’s anything I can do, um— uh— I-I think Leslie sort of, as— with as much strength as he can, he says: LESLIE Don't—! Ricochet, leave! KRIS He is looking down at you and Gloriosa is running towards him. She looks feral, she looks hungry, and he's going to try to fire again. Can you give me— actually, maybe give me a Sway roll to see if you can make either of them stand down. LESLIE Okay, okay, that is a… that's a 7 plus 3 minus 1, so that is a 9. KRIS Okay. And your goal is to get Ricochet not to kill Gloriosa, essentially. LESLIE Yeah, yes. To get them to not fight each other. KRIS You yell out, and… let's see: you can either mark 2 Stress or a Condition, they're appeased for only a moment, or they ask for something in return. LESLIE Okay, I won’t— I-I'm just going to mark 2 Stress. KRIS Ricochet is about to fire again. He does, but the bullet just misses as you say that. He doesn't hit Gloriosa. She runs into him, slashes him along the side, and he stumbles, but then she is also just really bloodied. She looks around, looks like she's going to faint, and just phases out of that room. Ricochet sees her disappear, and he starts stumbling over to you. RICOCHET (breathless, frantic) Hey, Rabbit, uh, are you— are you good—? What— Get up! We need to get out of here. What… what is going… KRIS He's trying to kind of— he sees that you're just covered in wounds. LESLIE (weak laugh) I wish… I wish you hadn't done that. RICOCHET Wh— what do you— we need to get you out of here, um, okay— KRIS He starts trying to lift you up onto your feet. RICOCHET There's a lot— um— Thatch is here, um, Lenny's trying to deal with it— LESLIE (delirious laugh) RICOCHET But Mor— I— th-the Occult— uh, Chief Occultist…? Said the Diner is— uh— something—? KRIS He just is grabbing you and trying to lead you out of this gallery. LESLIE Okay, yeah, I’m— I'm following. I'll let him. I think Leslie is only half registering what he's saying, not really responding to it. KRIS Yeah. All right. --- KRIS Leslie, Ricochet is trying to lead you around— he can hear that there's fucking chaos happening this way, so he's going to lead you into this hallway over here, and then… he's just trying to get out of the building. LESLIE Okay. Leslie is… following. I think as… as they're walking, um, Leslie probably looks a little bit delirious, and he pipes up and says: LESLIE …Will that kill her? RICOCHET …Uh… I-I don't know, I mean, uh. I didn't aim for the head, I just fired… but I mean, she looks pretty badly… is— who— there… she was trying to kill you! LESLIE Leslie doesn't respond. RICOCHET (sigh) Okay, look, we're— both of us can't be suicidal right now. We need to get out of here. LESLIE I think Leslie laughs a little bit at that. RICOCHET You're not dying if I'm here, so we are going to keep moving, uh— we can get to one of Lenny's cars, I— surely one of the drivers can get us out of here. KRIS He starts moving. And then as you're kind of brushing through the flower garden, he stops suddenly as something jolts him and pulls him back. You can see a faint transparent chain pulling him back in the direction you came from. And he kind of lets go of you. LESLIE Uh— RICOCHET Oh, fuck— I think he needs me right now, I need to head back, um— fuck. Can you get out of here? I don't— she's— I think she's still— Rabbit, you need to get out of here! LESLIE I-I think Leslie looks a little bit frozen, kind of lost, um— LESLIE Where is everyone else…? RICOCHET I-I don't… know, I mean, I-I think I— it just— every— there's demons attacking, I-I don't know, I just— I-I just had to run and try to find Morax, and then I spotted you. LESLIE He's nodding. RICOCHET You need to go. LESLIE You said there's a car? RICOCHET Parking lot, uh— KRIS He'll tell you which car it is. I think you might have seen Lenny drive it, or, like, a driver accompanying the rest of them. LESLIE Okay. RICOCHET Yeah, you can find it and get out of here. LESLIE I guess Leslie will kind of nod, and say: All right. KRIS He tries to kind of reach— to kind of comfort you, but the chain yanks him and he gets dragged back down this way and he just stumbles into a run to try to keep up with it. And he is gone. LESLIE … (sigh) …I think Leslie is… can I see any of the chaos from here? Or is this sort of a quiet zone? KRIS This is kind of a quiet zone. You can hear in the distance, like… bad stuff happening, but nothing over here. LESLIE Okay. KRIS Are you heading towards the parking lot? LESLIE He's… checking his phone first, if he has it. I guess— I don't know if it might be cracked. KRIS I think it's cracked. Maybe you could see a couple texts from, like, the group chat. It's pretty garbled, though. LESLIE Okay. Um… yeah, I guess he's going to head for the car. KRIS You also know the food truck is back this way. But the keys are missing. LESLIE Yeah, we don’t have the keys…! (sobbing laughing) As far as Leslie knows, we don't have the keys! KRIS As you start heading over this way, you see a commotion, and see that Aurelian and the soul of Dmitriy have fluttered down. Jonny and Eden on his back have arrived, and you can see the body of Ivan Rostova on the ground. JONNY I don’t think I’m recognizably Jonny, still. Like, I think— I've been briefly lifting up the mask if I see people, so people who've seen me already know, but just in case, like— just in case the Morax gang… KRIS That’s true. You do have the frog gear, though. LESLIE Yeah, okay— JONNY Yeah, I think Leslie knows the frog gear. LESLIE Well, I think— (laughing) I think the combination of— Marsha said “Jonny's here, he's in a dress,” and I see a lot of my co-workers alongside a woman in a dress wearing, like, frog equipment and carrying Eden on her back, I'm like: that one's probably Jonny. KRIS I'll say that this group also probably is heading over at this point. I guess they're a bit slower, so they're farther back, because they're dragging the dead body… or the— unpossessed body. LESLIE Uh… I’m trying to— I think if Leslie sees them… …I don't know if he's going to them. I think he might… wait behind the corner, and I think he's trying not to be spotted. He wants to see what's happening. But he's not joining.