"August" "Midmonth" Rolls

MurderWeasel · #1

British Columbia, Canada

It had been a long, long trip. Kwong Lei had been rescued, not by the crews of the boats dispatched to the island, but rather by the group who had launched the attack on the terrorists' headquarters. The event itself was a blur of smoke and gunfire and faraway sounds, all lost in the haze of the drug stupor he had been kept in. He still couldn't figure out why they had kept him alive, unless perhaps they had planned to interrogate him as to the tangential role he had played in affairs.

But now, after two days of secret travel and furtive phone calls and a barrage of friendly yet pointed questions, Mr. Kwong's return to the surviving students had been arranged. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, a celebration, but for some reason he couldn't quite see it that way. There were so few of them left, and the majority of the names on the roster he had been shown were not ones that he knew. It felt petty and wrong to be upset that his favorites—his math stars and his debate team and the students he personally tutored—had, by and large, not been among those rescued. He felt that he should just be thankful that there were still students, that Bayview Secondary School still had something of a class of 2008. It defied the odds in an exceptional way.

The whole thing still felt very bitter sweet.

The boy who was escorting him now, through the halls of the hospital, seemed nice enough. He had been explaining things, the situation and their hopes and the condition of the students, which varied wildly. Mr. Kwong was only half listening, the part of his mind that focused on debate and rhetoric noting how studiously the boy avoided sharing any concrete information that would not be immediately obvious from a bit of observation. They all seemed wrapped up in their secrecy. He didn't care. After all they had done, anything was acceptable.

They turned a corner, and walked towards another door, at the end. A small wing of the hospital had been reserved for the rescued students, to isolate them from the other patients. While many of the students had recovered enough in the past day or so to at least move around some, some were still bed bound and in varying degrees of discomfort. Besides, that only touched on the physical harm they had received. Mr. Kwong suspected that many of them would still be in therapy years from now. For that matter, so would he.

He reached his hand out, ready to open the door, when footsteps, from behind, at the tempo of a light jog, caught his attention, as well as his guide's. The young man turned, slipping his hand into his pocket faux-casually, but instantly loosened up a bit when he saw that the person coming was one of his allies.

"Hey, Jax," the newcomer said, breathing a little hard and smiling a little too wide. "They seen him yet?"

"Not yet."

"Good. Can he wait a sec?"

"I can wait," Mr. Kwong said. He decided that he would not have liked this boy if not for his role in the rescue; he was far too willing to speak as though Mr. Kwong wasn't even there.

"Great. Jax, over here."

The two of them disappeared down a side hallway, leaving Mr. Kwong standing awkwardly, feeling out of place. He could hear murmurs, but couldn't make out the words. He hoped it was good news, but he doubted it. At this point, he wouldn't be at all surprised if things went wrong, if some hit squad was even now on its way to clean up loose ends. It would just make too much sense for the hope to have been in vain. He shuffled his feet a little, forced himself to straighten up and assume a better, more formal posture, like he was about to lecture his Calculus students again. Whatever was happening, he would face it with dignity. He examined the posters on the walls while he waited, reading and rereading medical trivia he had known for years, just to trick his system into not going into overdrive. SO far, it was working. He wasn't sweating too badly.

But when the men came back around the corner, they were both smiling, and the one who was called Jax said to him, "It looks like we won't just have one piece of good news today."

And from the tone, from the expressions, Mr. Kwong could just about believe, for the first time, that everything truly was going to be alright.

The Rolls:
1. Ilario Fiametta (faceinabook) - Erik Laurin (faceinabook, Swap Card used)
2. Ivan Kuznetsov (MK Kilmarnock) - Greg (Roll Null used)
3. Nick LeMonde (Ruggahissy)
4. Zach Jamis (Ciel)
5. Josee Trembley (Limisios)
6. Josie Vernon (zombiexcreame)
7. Saul Fetteralf (JamesRenard)
8. Raidon Naoko (Grim Wolf)

As always, three days for cards, seven more for deaths. I'm gone until Sunday, so there will not be a countdown for cards this time.

The rules stuff. This only applies to the final four (or whatever), and is intended to prevent V3-style slowdown while remaining fair:

Inactivity for endgame will be handled a little differently. Specifically, once it becomes your turn to post, you have six days to get a post up. If you fail to do so, your character gets yanked and inactive killed. It doesn't matter if you were supposed to win; inactivity will be enforced. Being Away is still allowed, but we're hoping to avoid huge delays caused by handlers being gone for months at a time.

If that describes you, if you have no interest in being in endgame, or if you do not feel that you can keep up with the posting regime, you can opt out by sending Help a PM stating that you are doing so. We'll count those characters as automatically rolled, then roll down to the final four (or five, or whatever we're doing this time) from whoever we have remaining.

Please note that six days is the absolute maximum. Really, it should take you much less than that. Bookkeeping is going to be very strict on this; you can and will get busted if you stray over 144 hours at all.