Origin pg1

New York, New York.

Nathan

Fred Chambers catches Nathan as he comes in to the office. "Hey kid, don't get too comfortable. Problem at the Jefferson site, and I want your opinion." After a month on the job, Nathan knows that actually means "I want you to get coffee," but the old guy knows his stuff, so his moderate hazing is worth putting up with.

The Jefferson site is an up-scale shopping mall with two nightclubs and boutiques, and a four star restaurant. Or it will be if things stop going wrong with it. Right now, it's some half-demolished warehouses and factories.

Nathan manages not to sigh before he hits the door. It wasn't that he minded grabbing the coffee but the old man only drank turkish and that meant a rather unpleasant trip to the Arabian Sights coffee bar. He didn't know why that particular place had become a hipster mecca, but if he had deal with one more of the smug baristas asking if he wanted a Large, Grande, or Vente he was going to take someone's noise ring.

Fortunately, when he hit the door the place was mostly deserted and Angie, a pleasant English major with hopes of journalistic integrity rather than some aspiration as poet and was quite attractive in a Lois Lane gone punk kind of way. They talk pleasantly for a bit and he leaves with coffee.

His day starting out relatively pleasantly and he makes his way back to the office. They were meeting the new demolition firm, the old one having been plagued by mismanagement and having had one accident too many to be allowed to stay on. (Chambers had gone on for days about the missing case of C4, even after it turned out to be a computer error in the manifest. Some things you just don't get to mess up.)

They had most of the materials and the plans for the sight once the demolitions were done but they weren't permitted for the kind of demolitions that would be needed to take out a couple of the factories. He'd been tempted to just go to town with his abilities but unexplained building collapses were not the sort of thing that engineers just ignored.

Hopefully this crew would know what they were doing.

Nathan gets to the build site to find the usual bustle of inactivity. Frank went off to argue with a city inspector and sent Nathan to deal with the work crews. For all his annoying faults, Frank was bright enough to know that Nathan had better rapport with the construction workers than he did.

Rico, the foreman, collared someone to show him around for a status report. "Barney will take care of you," he says as he makes introductions. Barney is a big, thick-set guy who's seen the wrong side of 40, and turns out to have worked with Nathan's dad on a couple jobs. There are no fires to put out (metaphorical or otherwise), but they've found some interesting things in the past day or so.

"Ran off another pack of squatters this morning," Barney says. "Looks like they'd made themselves comfortable." He points out the makeshift dwelling complete with an illegal power tap. Most of the furniture has been dragged off to the side. There's a vermin-gnawed sofa and a park bench missing the legs on one side. The little area where the squatters were sleeping still has garbage on the floor, and graffiti on the walls. It's not the usual gang signs, but a kind of tribal style mural.

For just a moment, Nathan thinks he makes out words in the swirling designs: "Find The Others" appears in shimmering colors. But then he blinks and the message is gone. Nathan took a moment to examine the dwelling, appearing to be looking for any obstacles or things that might complicate the demolition.

"All the more reason to get rid of this thing. This whole place isn't remotely up to code and it isn't doing anyone all that much good in any case. With any luck, they'll get the message and move on to more hospitable places before this whole things collapses either by our action or if this continues to drag on, by the natural forces of decay. "

Rico laughed and said "Yeah, and at this rate, my money's on decay."

The day picked up from there, though. This demo crew was expensive, but worth it. And the owner had friends in city government who were likely to help out with the permits. He was also open to some suggestions Nathan had made earlier that the old crew had dismissed as too much hassle.

He and Chambers were at the site till nearly noon, then headed back to lunch by way of Sabrro's.

The rest of the day passed fairly quietly until three when he got an email

From: Ninjagirl (at) gmail.com
To: whatever Nathan's address is
Subject: Girl's Night Out

hey my kind and understanding and brilliant beau, trisha's asshole boyfriend dumped her by twitter this morning. the girls and i are taking her out to have a good time and get utterly hammered. Sensei Ortega has offered to take my classes tomorrow, so if you can get the day off, i'll totally make it up to you.

or throw up all over you because i have a hangover. one of those.

xoxoxo
sai

Nathan made a few quick calculations and realized that if he headed back to the site right now, he could finish the rest of the inspections that he was supposed to do tomorrow and then take the day off. Sai wasn't often one for hangovers and he would play those odds. He got out his head lamp and a few of the papers, and pulled the keys for the site.

Maybe he'd be able to warn the vagrants this time too. Best if they started thinking about where they are going to live now, and get their stuff moved. They didn't have much and if would be a shame to destroy that little. And maybe get in a little bit of practice as well.

Nathan let himself in and starts his inspections. The site is eerie at night. The sounds of the city are muted by the barriers. Even though he doesn't have much need to go there, Nathan can't help but drift over to the burned out building surrounded by police tape. And when he does, he notices someone moving around inside! There are two of them, but in the dark that's all Nathan can tell from this distance.

Flipping off his flashlight, Nathan is moving calmly towards the people with his light kept off. Now is as good a time as any for an experiment. He tries to concentrate as he is moving towards the building. He focuses on this odd ability that he had discovered and gathering in the ambient light to allow him to see clearly despite the hour. The city was never completely dark.

He sees a pair of college kids, by the look of them, wearing dark clothes and hooded sweat shirts, but the effect is spoiled by one kid's reflective athletic shoes. A flare of light brighter than staring into the sun makes Nathan recoil and hiss until he recovers and adjusts his vision for the fact that one of the kids turned on a flashlight.

They're clearly looking for something.

Sliding up behind them and with a far better reason for being on private property than they, Nathan decided a direct approach is called for and rather than waiting for them to swing the flashlight in his direction, he figures that he can in fact preempt that entirely and put them on the defensive. Flipping on his own flashlight, which was pointed away from his now much more sensitive eyes, he ramped up the light source to spot light levels.

"So what do the two of you think you are doing?"

The kids look up into the glare, startled like deer in headlights. "Oh crap!" one of them yells. They're both boxed in and blinded by the light.

The other one says "We weren't going to hurt anything. Please, we'll just go."

Before he can respond, Nathan feels something shift behind him. All around him, really. But it takes him a minute to figure out what it is. All over the city, lights are going out. Nathan feels it through his power more than seeing it. Massive sections of the power grid are shutting down, and as one fails, others fail under the increased load.

The two kids are looking at each other, or trying to. The first one says "They really did it."

And we'll be moving to page 2. Nathan will have a tag there

---

Jose

It's a typical day at City College. Crowded hallrooms, people getting settled in, people leaving. Jose is with some friends on the way to class... Calculus is always fun, especially so when most of the books you have to check out from the library happen to be on long loan. Oh, well, I guess I'll just... ...when his progress is halted by a collision.

"Oh, I'm sorry." The girl in the shapeless hoodie who bumped into him bent over to pick up scattered books and papers.

"Don't be. Those books you have there, I can use them. Statistics, Algebra... math major, eh?"

"Um... yeah," she says, still gathering fallen papers. "I find probabilities and chaos theory really interesting." She picks up a last piece of paper and hands it to Jose, looking at him for the first time. Her eyes swirl with rainbow colors. "I think this one is yours," she says. "Thanks for the help."

The girl quickly gets up and goes on her way. A gaggle of other students emerge from the lecture hall, cutting off Jose's line of sight, and when they clear, she's nowhere to be seen. He's left holding what turns out to be a flier with just two things on it: "Change" in large block letters, and smaller, beneath that, a web address.

"No problem... aaand she's gone." Looks at paper. "Methinks a little further investigation is in order, methinks" And damn, those... eyes? Hmmm. Greenish? Hazel?

"Think fast, Jose" A football hit him hard. "What's the matter, Mr. Can't catch a football?" His next-door roommate Sean, being his usual self, and his ongoing crash course in American Culture.

"I'll have you know sir, I'm quite proficient with balls like this." That came out wrong "We just don't throw it forward. It is Rugby, not football."

"Yeah, yeah. Now, we run or we won't get there in time".

Running through halls proved undignified and difficult. But they just made it to Introduction to Probability and Statistics. Schwinger's realm. All silent and boring-y. ''But wait. Isn't that...?' Hoodie girl?'

"Enough with the lovin´, Romeo. I'm not walking you through this again just because you are on a note-taking break." Sean said.

It wasn't the girl in the hoodie. It was a different girl in a different hoodie, but she caught Jose looking and smiled a little. Her hoodie had graphics printed on the back: the word Ragdoll in a script that looked like scraps of cloth sewn to the fabric, and a creepy looking doll figure with black button eyes.

Class went on, and Jose mostly managed to pay attention, but his mind wandered back to the flyer, and to the girl three rows down. The professor went off on one of his tangents, something about a philosopher named Meyershon that actually sounded pretty interesting. The diversion lasted for twenty minutes, at which point class was over.

"Oh... um... we'll cover the rest of the chapter on Monday, so those of you who haven't read it will have the weekend to get caught up."

Many of the students who hadn't done the reading were already out the door by the dependent clause. Hoodie Girl 2 was not among them. She was content to let the crowd thin before trying to leave herself.

Jose turned to his friends and said "You guys go ahead. I might have business here." while walking towards Hoodie Girl 2.

"OK" he heard as he approached HG. Smiling, he looked at her and said "Did we bump into each other earlier today?". As he finished saying that, he thought. The eyes-- they're different. Oh crap. "If not, I think we should. Hang out, I mean. I'm Jose." Blushing quickly, nearly only the two of them were still in the room.

She wasn't the same girl. This one was a little thinner under the baggy clothes, and sported an eyebrow ring. Her eyes weren't swirling with phantasmagoric color, either, but they were a nice shade of pale blue. She cocked her head, regarding Jose, and said "I do believe that was intended as something other than a cheap pickup line. I'm Anna." She extended a hand and gave Jose an impish grin. "And I will tentatively accept your provisional invitation to coffee or something, on a day I'm not quite so insanely busy."

"Anna. That's Quenya for gift. Egg-cellent!" Egg-cellent? What's wrong with me today? Got her to grin, at least. Can I walk you to your... dorm? I was thinking of going for a drink, but I should get some reading done. Gotta check that website. Yeah. Grabbing his books as if they were going to fall apart, Jose stood before her more than a little puzzled. "I'll stop talking now. Your move, Anna.", winking as he said it. An odd, nervous wink. Then the football struck him again. Hard.

As Jose stumbled under the pigskin assault, Anna gave a quirky laugh. "You're such a geek," she said, smiling. "It's kind of endearing. So I tell you what I'm going to do." She pulled something out of her bag and handed it to Jose. "You're now 'plus one.' Show up at the Hard Rock about six tonight and show this to the doorman. I'll let you buy me half-price drinks and an ice cream sundae. But right now, I've got to run."

She didn't wait for a response before heading off to wherever enigmatic goth girls go. Jose looked at the piece of paper she'd passed him. It was a print-out of an "admit one" to the Hard Rock Cafe for a concert tonight.

Sean came up to retrieve his football. "Dude, did you just get her number? There's no justice in this world."

Sean kept complaining about the injust universe all the way to the dorms. Jose lost his commentator swiftly and headed up to his room to try the web address.

---

Camilo

St. Mary's hospital is finally calming down after a wild weekend. Two gang shootings, a tenement fire, and a subway train (thankfully mostly empty in the predawn hours) with patients exposed to smoke kept things lively all weekend. Camilo is near the end of his shift and has time to make final rounds of the day.

Wow. Those were two rough days. There were a couple of times there I could swear I was back in the Congo, Camilo thought as he savored the last few drops of his coffee. Most of the doctors liked their java black and straight, but Camilo was a sucker for coffee and milk — plus sugar. He found it relaxing and he never did get that famous caffeine kick everybody complained about. The Brazilian finished his drink, crushed the styrofoam cup with a dramatic gesture, as if he was crushing something far more resilient, and threw it into the nearest garbage bin.

Grabbing the files on the counter, he studied them for any alterations in the recently-admitted patients'conditions. Camilo headed for pneumology, the last stop on his round. Even though he was assigned to the ER, he liked to know what was going on with people he treated. As soon as he stepped inside, he was greeted by Dr. Mehta, or Devangi, as he liked to call her.

"Oh, of course, here you are. You don't trust us 'city doctors' to look over your babies," Devangi said, a fake wound in her voice. Then, she smiled.

"Got keep you on your toes, doctor," he replied with a smile of his own.

"You did a nice job, Cam. I'm surprised some of these people are still alive. Like Mr. Sanford over there. According to the paramedics, he inhaled a lot of smoke before they could get to him. In his age, that's almost a death sentence," Devangi observed.

"What can I say? Miracles do happen," Camilo offered, raising his shoulders and splaying his hands. There was a miracle involved, but not exactly this one.

They exchanged a few more details about the patients, some pleasantries and then said good-bye. Camilo went to the lockers to change his clothes and leave. His shift had ended and he needed to think about a lot of things.

In the locker room, Dr. Wilson was talking with a resident he didn't recognize. By her age, she was not long out of med school.

"... I wouldn't have known at all, but a band I really like is opening," she was saying. "Ragdoll. Have you heard of them?"

Dr. Wilson, nearly fifty years old and renowned for his taste in music (both kinds, country and western) laughed and said no.

"Well you should totally go anyway," she said. "You'll love them. You too, Dr. de Sa'." She turned to face Camilo and said "The Hard Rock, tonight. Seether is playing a gig with like no notice. Don't miss it."

When Camilo met her eyes, he saw them swirl with the same colors as the Nexus for just a second, then return to normal.

Camilo was dumbstruck for a few seconds, which made the resident look at him funny. Crap, he thought.

"Err... Seether? I don't think I have heard about them. Then again, I don't really follow the indide rock scene,"he said, trying to look normal.

"Yeah, you're from Brazil, right? You probably like samba. And lambada!" she exclaimed a little too loud. "I saw it on YouTube? the other night. Veeeery sensual", she added, winking at Camilo.

"Noooo, I'm not a samba-and-lambada guy. I'll let you know we have rock down there", he answered in a humorous tone while taking off his lab coat. "Well, I do miss going to a show. It seems I never take time off. Say, err, will you be going?" Camilo asked, trying desperately not to sound like he was coming on to the resident

"Yes," she beamed. "Going with some friends. You should totally go. After everything I heard about in ER, I bet you could use a break." She shouldered her bag and bid the doctors good-bye.

Doctor Wilson waited a moment and said "makes me wish I was twenty years younger and there was no fraternization policy. Heck, I'd take ten years and get another job." His wry grin indicated that he was joking. Mostly.

Camilo smiled. "I hear you, doctor," he replied. Then he said goodbye and went home. After showering and eating, Camilo sat down to read his e-mail and Skype with his parents and sister. He channel-surfed a bit — Must See TV my ass, he thought --, but found himself with nothing to do. That's when the image of the smiling resident and her Nexus-colored eyes appeared again in his mind. I guess it wouldn't hurt to check it out. Camilo grabbed his jacket and webt to the Hard Rock.

The crowd was insane at the Hard Rock cafe. Camilo had tried to arrive early, but still ended up in a long line full of twenty-somethings in concert shirts and jeans. Nobody was too unruley, but Camilo was still a little on edge. Maybe it was the weather. Despite the weatherman's predictions, the cold front from the east didn't skirt around the city. It blew through, dropping the temperature from "nicely cool" to "a little too cold," and the sky smelled heavy with rain. The lights of the city painted the clouds with light hints of red and purple.

From where Camilo stood in line, he could see a news van pull up. A small crew got out, including a woman he thought he recognized from TV, maybe. While the crew set up, she looked over the crowd. She might not have realized just how much her voice carried, because Camilo could hear her talking to herself.

"Why am I here? I wanted to be covering hard news. I graduated from Harvard cum laude. While I was there, I covered the point fixing scandal. My story got picked up by the news wires. Why am I doing man on the street interviews for a freaking rock concert?"

"Because you called the evening anchor a sanctimonious blowhard while a camera was running, and it ended up on the intranet," said the camera man.

---

Andy

Andy was too late. By the time he reached the building, emergency services was already there, but the building had been a loss long before. Fortunately, the only victims in the condemned tenement were whatever homeless were squatting there, and the tweakers in the meth lab that started the fire.

Now he stands near the ruins, which still give off some heat and smoke. There was a school across the street, which has now been evacuated as a precaution.

There's an old woman in shapeless clothes coming down the street, crying "This is the end times! Satan's hand is on this place! His eye is on this city!" She's trying to pass out pamphlets to the few people on the street, but they move to avoid her. As she passes in front of a bodega, her reflection in the glass swirls for just a second with the myriad colors of the Nexus in Andy's dream.

"Damn, I really need to get a new frequency scanner. I could have stopped this."

Slipping down an alley Andy shrugs off his turnout coat and tosses it into the back of a pickup truck. He slips out of the boots and nomex pants and tosses them into the bed as well. Then he locks the bed cover and pulls out a cell phone as it rings.

"Watson? No... No, We're gonna lose the building.... Nah, Meth Lab... Doubt it was arson.... Still at the station?... Blacksails?... Yeah I know it. Be there soon. Andy pulls out his keys and climbs into the car.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER

Andy walks down the stairs into the pirate themed bar that was Sara Watson's current obsession. Andy nods to the attractive redhead sitting at a corner booth "Lt. Watson. What's the word?"

"Inspector isn't done yet," Sara says, "But he's going to come back with 'fire caused by explosion in illegal drug laboratory, exacerbated by old wood construction and faulty wiring. Lot of people hurt, but only five dead, and they were all in the basement lab, so the unofficial position of the NYPD is 'no great loss.'" She reached across the table for Andy's hand. "You're not beating yourself up over this, are you? You can't be everywhere. You don't have a bat signal, and the bad guys don't always do stuff right where you happen to be."

Andy felt his fingers interlock slightly with Sara's and shivered before very gently slipping his hand away. He meets Sara's eyes for a moment and gives a sheepish grin before they both look away.

"Inspector isn't done yet? Jesus, Who replaced me? Higgins?"

Sara's stared at him for a second before nodding, "Don't be mad, I asked for him."

"WHAT? WHY?"

"You did train him Andy, if I can't have you I can at least have your protégé."

"Anyway, I concur with his eventual findings. Let me ask you a question, Why shouldn't I beat myself up? Its a fire. I sure as hell do have a bat signal. Emergency band scanners, there's one in the truck and on the nightstand."

"I remember..." Sara says quietly before giving Andy a sheepish grin of her own.

Andy frowns. "Why do I feel more powerless now?" He puts his forehead on the cool table of the booth and leaves it there. "I need a drink. Wave over a wench."

"Why do you insist on calling them that?" Sara says with a laugh.

Andy jerks his head up for a second and fixes her with a blank stare. "Pirate. Bar."

A wench appeared to take their orders. It actually said "wench" on her name tag under "Stacia." She flirted a little with Andy, tried to suggestive sell a fried onion thing, and left with their drink orders. As she was going, Sara's phone beeped.

The lieutenant pulled out the black plastic herald of doom and pushed some buttons, reading a message. "Hey, this is weird. ME just ID'd one of the bodies, kid named Charles Everret from City College. Double major in chemical and mechanical engineering. Real genius type. Not the usual kind for a tweaker."

Andy stares of into the distance for a minute before his eyes widen, "You know it could have been arson still. Think about it. Chem and Mechanical engineering, wouldn't take a super genius with that skill set to make something look like it wasn't arson. Shit. And wasn't Ted Kaczynski some kind of genius too."

The wench arrives with two tall pewter tankards and sets them down. And looks up at her and pulls out a twenty and a few fives. "Thanks Stacia, but I really have to run. Give my friend here one for the road." He glances at Sara, "Top shelf. Then you can keep the change."

The bewildered serving wench wanders away and and Andy squeezes Sara's hand briefly.

"I'm gonna go down to city college and have a look around. Call you later?" Without waiting for an answer he runs back outside.

AN HOUR LATER

Andy walks into the dorm building and up to the security desk. He glances at the sleepy looking officer's name tag and smiles. "Chuck? Fancy meeting you here. Long time no see. Do you think you could help me out?" Andy laughs and starts waving his hands animatedly as he makes up an explanation, "My aunt just heard from my mom that I was living in the city and she told my mom that my cousin was going to City College now. I haven't seen them since the last family reunion. Good times. Anyway, I was hoping maybe I could surprise him. I know his room number. Think I could go in without him coming down to sign me in?"

"Uh... yeah, sure." Chuck looks up from his sudoku and buzzes the door open.

The residence hall reminds Andy of his own college experienced, and uncomfortably of his own current apartment. Worn, slightly dingy but comfortable furniture sits on institutional biege carpet in front of eggshell walls. The public areas are only decorated with school posters, notices, and the occasional fast-food container that someone didn't throw away. A couple of students sitting in the lobby/lounge barely spare Andy a glance as he takes the stairs up to Charles Everret's room.

One student passed him in the hall, again not paying much attention, and then he had the hall to himself, at least for the moment.

Looking around quickly Andy pulls out his zippo and lights it. Pointing his finger at the flame he reshapes it into a tiny superhot point which he directs into the lock on the door to burn out the tumblers

Acrid smoke curled up from the lock, and the door handle stopped resisting Andy's hand. It was probably also hot enough to burn most people, but Andy didn't mind.

He opened the door just as someone else was coming onto this floor.

Jose gets up to his floor and sees a well-built man opening the door to Chaz Everrett's room. What's more, the man has an aura of swirling color. Jose is certain he's seen the same aura in his dream of the Nexus!

Andy saw a buddy of Sean as he was leaving for the Hard Rock. "Hey, Chaz!" Wait. That's not Chaz. And the colors again. I'm going loco--- What the hell is going on? Pacing quickly, Jose formed a small waterball in his hand and approached the man quietly. "Who are you?"

Andy flicks a glance over his shoulder and sees the young college student. As he opens his mouth he notices the faint halo of swirling color above his head. Shit. I didn't need this right now. And what the hell is with those colors? 2d6 = 6 I guess Andy doesn't recognize that Jose is an Amp Wielder.
"Fire Inspector, Ya smell that? That's burned out aluminum. The whole door reeks of it. I need to investigate." Come on kid, buy it.

Jose heard words in his mind in the same "voice" as the man in the hall saying Come on kid, buy it.

"Oh, I see. Nobody got hurt, I hope? But, I'm sorry, I'm wasting your time." Jose spoke hurriedly and left, leaving a watery trail as the ball in his hand leaked slowly. Did I hear... WEIRD. Anyway, gotta get to the Hard Rock. Hopefully, the kids are out there with the car.

---

Andy

Again alone in the hall, there was nothing to stop Andy from entering Charles Everrett's room.

He gets out of the hall before any other encounters, and finds himself in a typical college kid's dorm. Or at least it looks like that at first. There is the usual garbage on the floor, stacks of books on every horizontal surface, and a laptop docking station hooked to a monitor. Rock band posters share space on the walls with pictures of scantily attired women. But there are also sheets of closely-spaced mathematical notations, and Andy's training lets him immediately recognize that a few of them are chemical formulas, and mostly explosive.

There are also electrical diagrams that also looked familiar, but Andy isn't quite sure what they are, possibly because Charles Everrett had really awful handwriting. Studying the diagrams more closely Andy starts to trace them with a finger attempting to find common symbols like switches and power sources.

It takes Andy only a few minutes to decipher Charles' notations and figure out that the plans span several sheets of paper that weren't all tacked up in the same place. Then he realizes he's looking at a New York City power substation, or at least something pretty close to it, as if someone had looked at one from the outside and back-engineered what it'd be made of. Together with the explosives, Charles' wall art makes a very scary picture.

Andy's eyes go wide... "JESUS CHRIST!" he exclaims before taking a deep breath and pulling out his phone. To Andy the phone seems to ring forever.

"Pickuppickuppic- Sara! No time. Got a problem here. I think that building was a test run. Kid fucked up and got himself burnt but I don't know if he was working with anyone else. He's got explosive formulas and a reverse engineered set of plans for an NYC power substation. Yeah, One of those things. Exactly. Like where they set off the EMP in the sequel. Dunno, could be the distro level version which could mean localized blackouts or the big one next to the plant which could be really really dangerous, plus regional blackouts. Call it in, I'm gonna go talk to some kids. Call me back."

Andy shuts the door behind him after copying down the dangerous formulas so he can look into them further later. He goes down a floor and stops a kid in the hallway. "Hi there I'm with the fire department I'm trying to interview students. I just ran into someone that was interested but I must have misplaced his name and contact info, Latino kid, sorta frenetic, All smiles? Know him? Or maybe where he might have been headed? He was in a rush but he didn't have any books with him."

Some of the students just look confused, but one of them says "Oh, Jose. He was going to a show or something. Seether, I think."

"Thanks a lot." Andy heads out to the parking deck and suits up in his turnout gear, strapping his fire irons to the quick release rig he had picked up from an army surplus store. He walks two blocks before ducking down an alley and scaling a fire escape to the roof of a small commercial building. Taking a running leap between the rooftops, 2d6+4 = 13 Athletics (I'm guessing TN of 7 or 9 for this) Andy quickly focuses on the spotlights marking the club that Seether is preforming at. 2d6+4 = 11 Again Athletics Landing roughly, Andy crouches in the shadow of a smokestack watching the club from the row home next door.

Moving on to page 2 now

---

Jose

As Jose made it outside, the kids were there. Carless. Turns out it's not a long walk. But the line to get in may be long so they hurried. And the line was long. Really. Really. Long.

He stands in line for a while. A little bit ahead, there's a reporter doing interviews for one of the local stations. She doesn't get quite as far down as where Jose is waiting before the line starts moving. The security guys are really efficient, and in less than half an hour, Jose is inside with a packed house.

Then there's the interminable wait before the show actually starts, but finally...

More to see on Page 2

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