[kill puppies for satan] the terror of Consequence

[Marshall Burns]

So, the other night, my group had just wrapped up a Super Action Now! scenario (the first one to span over one session), and we still had a couple hours left.  I got a little mischievous glint in my eye and said, "Hey, why don't we play kill puppies for satan?"

So we did.  We just ran the Gerald's birthday party scenario from the book, since we were playing on no notice at all.  It went pretty slow, mostly due to the fact that me & Stephen were rusty on games with GMs and Courtney's never played one, and we never did get very far with it, but there was a bit that really tugged at me, and still does now that I'm think about it.

I played a character named Chavvo, Innit.  Courtney played a character named Crypter.  Crypter took her mom's car to get us to the party.  But we didn't have enough gas.  But there was a TV in the back seat (which belonged to Crypter's mom's boyfriend, who looked like one of the guys from ZZ Top and whom we called ZZ), so we went to the pawnshop. 

So, right, the fucker in the pawn shop was being a total dick.  He was only gonna give us four bucks for the damn TV.  Which was enough to get us to the party, but, shit, man, it's a TV and it's the kind with a VCR built in, innit, so it's worth more than four fuckin' bucks.  So, like, while Crypter's arguing with this asshole, I sneak around behind the cash register.  And then, like, Crypter TAKES the goddam four bucks, which the guy just takes out of his pocket, and she leaves.  I'm like, fuck this, and I open up the cash register while the guy's still not looking.  And it goes "ding!"  Fuckin' "ding!"  So now I'm looking this asshole dead in the eye for a second, then I just grab some cash out of the drawer and bolt for it as he grabs a fuckin' shotgun.  I just make it out the door when the window fuckin' EXPLODES right by my fuckin' head, right?

So I get in the car, and the fuckin' piece of shit won't start, right?  Only Crypter knows how to start the damn thing, and where the fuck is she?  She's nowhere to be fuckin' seen.  So this asshole's blastin' at me, and the windows get fuckin' blown out, and the tires are deflated, right, and he's re-loading the shotgun.  So I got no choice but to use some Evil and hide under the car so he can't see me.  Then Crypter shows up comin' out of the store, and she fuckin' cold-clocks him with the damn TV and he goes down like a sack of fuckin' potatoes, right? 

And I'm like, fuck, Crypter, where the fuck were you?  And she's like, I had to kill his fuckin' cockatoo, okay?  And I'm like, dammit, I almost got fuckin' killed!  I grabbed the fuckin' money out of the register!  And she's like, what, I had to kill the fuckin' bird, okay, 'cause that guy was an asshole.  And she's like, how much money did you get?  And it turns out I grabbed like $600, right?  So I'm like, dude, let's go get $600 worth of booze.  And she's like, hells yeah.

The car was all kinds suspicious on account of looking like a block of swiss cheese thanks to the shotgun, and there had to be someone in the neighborhood who witnessed the pawnbroker being put into a TV-induced coma, and the tires on that side of the car are totally ruined.  Did we get new tires?  Hell no.  We spent the $4 on gas and the $600 on booze. 

Then we went on to crash the car on the highway, because we were driving on rims, and we lost two thirds of that booze, in addition to getting a bit injured.  So we grab as much of it as we can, which knocks us down to one fifth of the total booze, and start hoofing it to the Motel 6 where the party is.  And of course we get nicked by the cops, so there goes ALL the booze.  So I spend Evil to drive the car from the back seat and have them crash into the pole of the big sign at the Motel, which gets us a little more injured, and we just leave the cops there and get out to go to the party.

I could feel things closing in on me.  Things were all right now, but the Consequences we built up from all that shit, man, I could feel them coming and it was terrifying.  And the cost vs. gain was definitely not advantageous.  Courtney spent 2 Evil in order to kill the bird, which earned her 2 Evil, and I think that was the best deal we got the whole time.  We totaled the car, committed a robbery, nearly killed a guy, crashed some cops into a pole, and what did we have to show for it?  Nothing but the inexorable doom that would catch up with us at some point.  When that doom came up, we would have to deal with it by spending Evil, then we'd have to kill animals to replenish that evil, which would just cause more problems, which we'd have to spend more Evil to deal with.  Just imagining the consequences was terrifying.

For Chavvo's part, what did he do?  What he fuckin' felt like doing.  Yeah, so some bullshit was gonna happen later, but right now he's goin' to the fuckin' party, so fuck you very much.  I mean, he had the goddam Chainsaw of Damocles dangling over his head, but it didn't phase him.  I mean, sure, he screamed like a girl when he was getting shot at and when they crashed the cars, but he scraped and strived and never really let shit stop him from doing what he wanted to do.

And, you know, as much of a total scab-picking, puppy killing, tropical fish chewing scumbag loser trashbitch he was, I kinda have to respect him for that.

Wow.

-Marshall

[lumpley]

This is a nice story. I like it.

-Vincent