Vanessa's Thread

[Silver Priest]

OOC:   For fun, I would ask HoneyDog not to read this until his character is introduced.

Vanessa wakes to the sound of a cell door slamming shut somewhere off in the distance.

She's currently laying down on a small cot. It's hard and lumpy, and a quick look around indicates that she's been locked in a cell. Her clothes too have been replaced with an orange jumpsuit. There's not much else here; a small squat toilet is about it, but at least she can see out of the cell doors. Out there though is more of the same. Thee are dozens of cells,each containing one or more women dressed in the same outfit. A few of them meet her gaze and jeer.

[Mr. Handy]

Vanessa searches her cell thoroughly, looking for the inevitable listening device.

OOC,Search roll (54% skill) searching the cell: [dice]0[/dice]

[Silver Priest]

Vanessa tears every inch of the cell apart, though in truth, there's not many places any bugs could be. She checks the bed and inside the toilet. If she likes, she can even reach her hand down into the bowl, which rewards her with nothing but lukewarm water. By the end, she's confident that there are no bugs. The only thing of note she finds is a book by her favorite author. It's bookmarked roughly halfway through.

"What are you doing, inmate!" A voice barks out. Looking back around, Vanessa now sees a broad shouldered and powerfully built woman looking in the cell at her. Her features are affixed in a fierce scowl. "You want to go in the hole again? You cut that nonsense out right now."

[Mr. Handy]

"Sorry, ma'am," says Vanessa. "It won't happen again." She certainly hasn't been in the hole before, as she's just arrived. She isn't quite sure what happened, but the best she can figure out is that she's been swapped for an inmate that looks enough like her to fool the guard.

[Silver Priest]

"It had better not. Not if you want to see your lawyer later today. We don't need you making a mess.."

An alarm rings, and Vanessa's door opens,a long with all the other cells on the floor. Inmates file out and get into line, watched over carefully by several eagle eyed guards. There's no conversation,and the inmates are walked down to a communal area that holds several dozen lockers, showers, and inmates to use them. There's some left open for Vanessa if she wants to get cleaned up, though needless to say, their is no privacy.

The same guard that yelled at her earlier watches over the prisoners with a stern expression on her face. She swings a baton in her hand idly and seems on the lookout for trouble. Another exit on the other side of the showers is similarly guarded.

[Mr. Handy]

Vanessa cleans herself off and bides her time, figuring that her best chance is to talk to this lawyer, which is her only means of communication with the outside world.

[Silver Priest]

Vanessa showers in silence and quiet discomfort.

It's not long before she senses the presence of another person. Turning around, she notices the inmate showering next to her watching her. She's a big woman, youngish and with ebony skin and a scar just under her left breast.

The woman looks ahead and continues to shower, but asks Vanessa a question.

"So. Did you do it?"

[Mr. Handy]

"Did I do what?" asks Vanessa.

[Silver Priest]

The woman snorts as she continues to soap herself up.

"Don't play dumb with me, honey. You're our very own celebrity. Butchering that entire family. From what I heard a few of the new girls say, the networks covered it 24/7 for a few weeks. I just wanna know why you did it. Guy an ex that you had bad blood with, or something?."

[Mr. Handy]

"No," says Vanessa. "I didn't do it."

[Silver Priest]

OOC:   If Vanessa cares at all if this woman believes her, she can roll persuade.

[Mr. Handy]

Vanessa's sincerity comes across. It's worth it to her to convince this woman. She needs all the friends she can get in this place.

OOC,Persuade roll (71% skill) to convince the woman she's innocent: [dice]0[/dice]

[Silver Priest]

The woman's state softens.

"You know, I've been in here awhile now. You're the first gal I believe when she says she's innocent. So you're either a damn good liar or telling the truth.

"Name's Cynthia. I run with a crew here, I'll talk to a few of them, get you some protection. And before you ask; unlike you, I did do it. And I'd do it again. Bastard deserved it."

"Hey! That's enough!" The same guard from earlier yells. "Finish cleaning up."

Cynthia goes quiet, and finishes her shower in silence.

***

After their showers, the women are taken to a cafeteria and served breakfast. It's as dreadful as Vanessa is probably expecting. Women here seem to form into cliques, but Cynthia seems to take Vanessa under her wing, and no one bothers them.

ooc,If you want to interact more with Cynthia, feel free, but I assume now you're just going to go through the motions.

After breakfast it's back to their cells. Vanessa spends a few hours sitting and reading, before another guard appears.

"You've got a visitor. Come along."

[Mr. Handy]

At breakfast, Vanessa asks Cynthia what she's heard about her case. The, when the guard comes to announce a visitor, Vanessa rises and goes with her.

[Silver Priest]

"Not much, to be honest," Cynthia says. "Your case just attracted some attention. They say you broke into a house and murdered an entire family, down to the kids. Given how brutal and uncommon that is for a woman to do, people started to talk around here.." She knows nothing else, but is happy to give Vanessa some points on prison life, who to avoid, who ran the black market, that sort of thing.

The guard leads the FBI agent to a visor's center. Bullet proof glass lines a divider separating two chairs from one another.

"Ten minutes," comes the guard's disinterested voice, as she gestures to a chair. When Vanessa sits down, she sees who is on the other side of the glass.

Lucas Marchand. Her younger brother. He picks up the phone and waits for Vanessa to do the same.

ooc,I think this is a good time to call for a san roll for helplessness,0/1d4. note that Vanessa is currently at 61 san, and her breaking point is 60. If she hits it, she'll gain a mental disorder, so you may want to project onto a bond if you suffer san loss. Alternatively, you could of course just endure the disorder if you feel it more in character.

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,Sanity roll (current level 61) for being falsely imprisoned: [dice]0[/dice] Sanity loss: [dice]1[/dice] If I project it onto a bond, does it still count toward becoming adapted to helplessness?

[Silver Priest]

ooc,Had to look this up, but I'm pretty sure it only counts if you loss san. So if you had lost 4 san, you projected onto a bond and only rolled a 3, you'd still be eligible for the tick on the adaption chart. Here, though whatever you roll will cover the san loss and you'd be fine. Though given you only rolled a 1 on san loss, if you project it onto a bond you face losing up to 4 points from a bond in projecting that loss. Normally I'd say it would not be worth it, but you might decide it is to prevent you from being haunted by a disorder. Also worth noting that the disorder itself may not manifest until some time in the future, so you may not immediately freak out. Look forward to seeing what option you chose!

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,If I take the loss myself, do I still get that third tick, or does it have to be three ticks without hitting the Breaking Point? If I hit the Breaking Point, then would that erase the two ticks I already have?

[Silver Priest]

ooc,Sadly no. You need to lose san from helplessness or violence three times in a row without either going insane or hitting your breaking point. However, next time you lose any san at all you're going to hit your breaking point, unless we hit a downtime scene and you work to restore some of it. It does look though that if you lose the san from either violence or unnatural and hit your breaking point that way, you CAN keep whatever checks you have right now at helplessness. So you could project here, wait until you encounter another sort of san loss and take the hit from that, and reset your breaking point so that you can take another hit from helplessness later and become adapted to it. Hope this makes sense.

[Mr. Handy]

Vanessa picks up the phone. "Hi, Lucas," she says. "Thank you for coming to visit me. I hope you know more about what's going on than I do."

OOC,In that case, I'll project onto [b]Rex[/b]. I won't be losing Sanity from violence any more, because I'm adapted to that already, but the unnatural is always there. Besides, I may be getting some Sanity back from downtime. Bond damage: [dice]0[/dice]