Play@YSDC

From the ground Eli shouts up, "Oh my God! The antidote! The moss or grass whatever
it's called! Barry! Barry! what its called!?" Your nan told us of an antidote!"

"The Tomtemoss isn't an antidote," says Jordan. "It would just let you see him."

"Nice work, Voodoo twins, and nobody's burning."

Skipper raised his camera, fascinated, and started shooting more photos of an unexpectedly ethereal Grimes as he apparently disappeared. "Don't lose track of him, this could still be an act."

"Oy, Barry! Watch yourself, get away from him. And can you make yourself useful like and make him reappear?"

Des watched aghast. ”Woz ‘appenin‘?!” she asked. ”Is ‘e disappearin’ or is ‘e disappearin’?!”

She drew a finger across her throat to indicate what she meant…

Hear Jordan's response Eli looks crestfallen. Looking up at Barry he pleads " Is there anything we can do to help him?!"

Like a rabbit in the headlights, Barry flounders for a second, but manages to rally.

"T-Tomtemoss! We keep some in the shed, so we can see each other when we race."

Taking his cue, one of the Speed Demons, scuttles into the building, nervously giving a gurgling and rapidly disappearing Grimsey a wide berth.

"I=it won't cure him - the magic in the flower is too strong for that - melts your brain - but you'll be able to see him and... I dunno, I'm not a doctor!"

For a brief moment, Izzy is horrified.

She did this.

For a moment. Before she rallies and realises that, at the end of the day, Grimes was threatening them all, not least Barry, with the same fate, and all she had done was use the most immediate method at her disposal to remove the threat. It wasn't her fault that Grimes had ended up firing the spray right at himself. Regardless of how it had happened. She had saved Skipper's life, and Barry's, and her own, and anyone else's that had been threatened by the psychopath's actions.

So why doesn't she feel positive about it?

Izzy quickly grabs the nozzle and pulls it away, where the spray can't catch on anything else and cause any more harm, as she calls out to Jordan, the resident medic.

"Is there anything you can do? At least try, maybe? Karl lasted at least long enough to get to the next room and he covered himself with the stuff, surely this small amount is treatable, right?"

She's not sure who she's pleading with more. Jordan, Barry, or any benevolent deity out there that might be willing to hear her prayers, atheist (save for the Genius Loci) as she is...

"Fortunately, I am a doctor," says Jordan to Barry. "I can't guarantee I can save him, but I'll try my best. But first I have to be able to see him, so I need to scarf down that moss. We'll also need to spray Grimesy with as much water as possible, to dilute the poison. Get me a hose."

"He's dead or dying from the quidditch version of an own goal. While trying to squirt me, I might add. And trying to first aid him seems dangerous. First rule of first aiding is don't endanger yourself."

"Can I just say oh dear, how sad, never mind."

Despite his words, Skipper started picking up and scattering dirt from the ground in the general presumed direction of Grimes, hoping it would outline his body as it landed on him. "So we don't trip over him."

Now on his feet Eli turns to any of the Speed Demons who may still be around. Quick! This is a farm! Where's the nearest hose!! Tell me NOW!!"

"Thanks, mate," Leo replied to Skipper. "Teamwork makes the dream...come true...however that saying goes."

Leo is now torn as he watches Grimesy writhing in pain and most certainly dying without someone to intervene quickly. Grimesy is someone who would gladly quote the bible verse about stoning people like Leo to his face. But he still wants the guy to live. If for no other reason, to save Izzy a lifetime of guilt (not to mention her career).

He steps over to Izzy, puts his hand on her shoulder, and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm so sorry, Izzy. I know you didn't mean for this to happen. You must feel awful right now."

"Don't you know Aqua? Could you splash some Aqua spells on him while we wait for a hose? That couldn't hurt..."

Watching with a look of shock on her face as Jordan calls for a hose, Izzy flinches a little when Leo puts his hand on her shoulder, before realising who it is and recognising the attempt to comfort her. She's still in disbelief, but stammers out a reply.

"I... I do... I can try. I'll give... give it a go."

She almost doesn't want to. Not because she wants Grimes to die - of course she doesn't, as vile a pathetic excuse for a man he may be. But she isn't certain that anything Jordan can do will work, and she doesn't see a point to piling on such indignity on someone already doomed.

Doomed because of her.

It takes a second or two, but Izzy knows deep down that Leo might be right. They don't necessarily have precious seconds to waste, if there is still anything that can be done. Maybe Grimes can survive, albeit with some minor brain damage? HTD isn't always immediately fatal, after all. It can just build up over time, until finally reaching a tipping point, and maybe Grimes hasn't reached that point from the juice yet.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, opens them once more... and casts the spell. Trying to wash away as much of the juice from Grimesy as possible, whilst they wait for a hose and for the Tomtemoss, using the dirt tossed by Skipper as a marker for where Grimes happens to be.

Magic roll for Aqua - 60%:

1d100

Oof, not good...

Watching Grimesy suffer wasn’t pleasant viewing but Des did think that Skipper had a point. ’Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, she thought. She wasn’t especially religious but her grandmother had dragged her to Sunday school often enough as a child so that it had been drummed into her at an early age.

"A-a hose? Yes! we use one to w-wash the cars down after a race!" one of the Speed Demons yammers.

He follows his compatriot into the barn and a few seconds later they both reappear, one carrying a tray of russet-red moss, the other unreeling a hose pipe.

"Eat the moss," instructs Barry. "It's bitter but harmless. It'll make you see the invisible."

Anyone following Barry's directions will indeed discover the bitter taste of the Tomtemoss. Furthermore, their vision will suddenly become somewhat... sparkly. Lying on the ground before them, is the convulsing form of Will Grimes.

The Speed Demon with the hose, having similarly munched on Tomtemoss, douses the fellow with water, until he can be seen by everyone.

"That's why we don't race when it's forecast rain," he says ruefully. "Do you think he's okay?"

Please can someone make a Medicine check?

"He doesn't look okay," says Jordan after he consumes the moss and can see his patient, "but if anyone can help him here, it's me." He slips on a pair of latex gloves and sets to work expertly, careful not to get any of the Demon Flower Juice on him.

Medicine roll (70% skill) examining Grimes:
d%

Jordan, if it wasn’t for the whole invisibility thing, all signs point to a sudden and debilitating stroke.

The man needs hospitalisation and fast!

Jordan pops the battery back into his phone and quickly calls 999 to summon an ambulance, perfectly aware of how arcane this would appear to someone from centuries ago. "It looks like he's had a stroke," he says, trying to keep him stable. "He needs to go to hospital, stat!"

Camera hanging around his neck, Skipper stalked over to have a look in the shed.

As he did, he called over his shoulder, "Oy, Barry, d'you ever own any triffids? Or any other giant carnivorous plants?"

Eating the moss, Eli as horrified as he is cannot take his eyes from the sight infront of him. He had heard various tales of magic both good and bad, but this....the tales did not prepare him for this.

A terrified Barry answers Skipper's question with a frantic shake of the head. Entering the barn - a structure of shiny new corrugated iron - you find three large plastic water bowsers. Even though you lack the magical training of Izzy and Leo, the vestigia of tropical flowers, bright sunlight and exotic insects is palpable. Clearly these do not hold water...

Jordan's call for an ambulance does not go unheeded and soon one arrives with Sgt. Dhillon in tow. Will Grimes' supine form is quickly loaded in, left to the tender mercy of the paramedics.

Seeing the horrific effects of the Demon Flower solution on the human body first-hand, the remaining Speed Demons surrender themselves meekly to Dhillon's team.

-------------------------------------------------------

Some time later...

Will Grimes never regains consciousness.

Perhaps it is just as well, for the documentation recovered from his farmhouse reveals close ties with a number of far-right groups (a number of whom have been arrested). He is also found to have been the prime mover behind a number of online hate groups, geared towards the harassment of people such as Loz Drivez. When the press find out about this, the man's reputation is in tatters.

The rest of the Speed Demons, their aggressive behaviour mollified by the results of their MRI scans, soon 'fess up, as Des might say. Hiring him as gardener, Grimes found in Barry Flowers a hero-worshiping lackey. Barry was all-too happy to regale him with tales of the Demon Flower and soon a plan to use the sap to make an invisibility potion was hatched.

With several speeding convictions under his belt, this discovery gave Grimes an opportunity to drive as fast as he liked, hidden from the prying eyes of traffic cops and speed cameras. Soon he, and a select number of friends, gathered to spray their cars with watered-down Demon Flower juice and hold illegal road races (eating Tomtemoss, also courtesy of Barry, to see what they’re doing). In short order this expanded into an exclusive racing club, with races held up and down the A3.

Of course, while Barry warned the racers against direct contact with the magical solution (only Karl Chichester refused to listen), no-one realised how dangerous indirect contact was. Driving vestigia-soaked cars, they were slowly absorbing the effects and growing more unstable by the day. If you had not intervened, road-rage would have undoubtably turned to murder.

Shortly after the confrontation at Down Lane, Barry Flowers is reunited with his grandmother with a clip 'round the ear and a fierce hug. Under Maud's direction, the Demon Flowers found growing in the polytunnels at Grimes' farm are destroyed and his horticultural operation dismantled.

Flowers Fields garden centre remains open and, as far as you can tell, does a thriving trade with no discernible clientele.

With no unsuspected invisible 'ghost cars' to mess with the sensors, there are no more 'camera faults' along the A3 and traffic flows smoothly through the Hindhead Tunnel. Any ghosts that might haunt the Devil's Punch Bowl can rest in relative peace.