Hunter: the Vigil - I Left My Soul in San Francisco - Luke Chen - Prelude [Restart]

NOTE: The first post will be the "recovered" content from before the Big Crash.

RG Thread
OOC Thread
[sblock=Other Prelude Threads]Renata Hodges
Ryan Smith[/sblock]

POST 1 - INSIGHT

***

PRELUDE - LUKE CHEN
This is the prelude thread for the Luke Chen character in the Hunter: the Vigil game, "I Left My Soul in San Francisco".

***

Apr 2015 - San Francisco, California


This was going to be the last job Luke would do for the Triad. He took a risk - earning enough money from this delivery to pay off the rest of his debt to the Triad as well as the debts of his errant cousins, Alex and Sam. Taking on a job like this, one that paid the kind of money Luke wanted to make, wasn't going to be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever was.

Luke arrived at a nondescript office building on Lake Street. The building overlooked the Presidio. It was rather late at night, but there were still people driving and riding their bikes. Luke received a package, a small, brown-paper wrapped box of some kind. The man who gave Luke the package didn't seem like the sort who would answer questions, so Luke didn't ask any.

The instructions Luke was given were to take the package to the Stow Lake Boathouse, which was located smack dab in the middle of Golden Gate Park. It was 7 blocks from the Presidio to Golden Gate Park and then another 5 to 10 minutes once inside the park to get to the Boathouse. This gig didn't seem particularly dangerous, so why the big money? Surely, there must be more to this delivery.

The last instruction was to give the package to a Chinese woman dressed in black with a tiger-striped scarf. She would give her name as Lola. If anyone else was present, Luke was not to deliver the package and instead take it to Room 686 of the Hilton San Francisco, in the Financial District. There, a big Chinese man named Lu Wong, whom Luke had met before, would receive the package and arrange for Luke to be paid.

Luke arrived at the Stow Lake Boathouse right on time. There was no one around. Luke figured that maybe he was early. Or maybe Lola wasn't going to show. It started to make Luke nervous. The yellow light, coming from some 20 ft away from the Boathouse, did not illuminate the area very well. Of course, the Boathouse wasn't used at night. The place was deserted. That's probably why the Triad wanted to use this place for the delivery.

There was a curious gurgling noise. It stabbed at Luke like a knife, cutting through the dense night air. Then came the sound of dragging. These noises were coming from the other side of the Boathouse. Luke could not resist the temptation to see what was going on. He quickly and quietly rounded the Boathouse to see a woman, dressed in black, being dragged into the foliage. Luke could not make out what was dragging her or whether she was alive. She and her assailant vanished into the bushes and the noise stopped dead.

"Hold it right there," a deep voice said from behind Luke. "You're not Lola."

There were three guns pointed at Luke. In the cold silence, he had half a second to decide what to do next.

***

POST 2 - JAGO

~ Hands up. Slow, but fast enough to show he wasn't a threat. In one hand, he still held the small, brown box that was apparently important enough to kill for.

It was a practiced maneuver, one he had replicated a thousand times before. He hated it, hated that sudden submissiveness he threw himself into, but he hated the idea of being shot even more. Better to cower now and live tomorrow, as he had been ever since he had gotten that first call from Alex.

" I have a package for her," Luke Chen informed his captors, banking on that if they knew Lola's name, they at least had an interest in his delivery. May have not been the right person to deliver to, but he'd rather walk away and figure that part out later.

He kept the fear out of his voice with the ease that could only come from being in this situation before. It wasn't easy, though: he was shaking on the inside, but he refused to let the gunmen see him sweat. But then, should he be sweating? What about that woman that had been dragged off? Was that Lola? Did these men do that to her? How did they know her name, know she would be here? Too many questions. Too much to process. For now, he just needed to survive.

" Just a deliveryman is all." Luke breathed out slowly, measuredly.

" Was waiting for Lola myself. Just need to get this box to her, that's all. Just a box, gents." ~

This is the "catch up" post. After this post, we will continue with the prelude.

***

Luke recognized one of the men as Wo Yeh, a member of the Triad who has been notorious for his actions to try to build his own gang inside of the Triad and possibly break away from the Triad itself.

Luke and Wo Yeh (and his gang) had a bit of a standoff. Then, more noises in the bushes next to the Boathouse. Wo Yeh sent his men around the Boathouse to see what was going on. Luke and Wo Yeh approached the bushes. Luke spotted SOMETHING moving in the bushes. It looked like a person, sort of, anyway. This thing/person had someone, possibly Lola, in his grasp.



The thing/person spotted Luke coming and took off running. Luke and Wo Yeh chased the thing. It moved with superhuman speed and agility. Luke was a bit faster than Wo Yeh and was able to keep up, somewhat, with the thing carrying the woman. The thing ran across Golden Gate Park, from the Boathouse east to the Japanese Tea Garden, to the Academy of Sciences building, and across the ball fields. It was there that Luke lost sight of the thing.

Eventually, Wo Yeh caught up with Luke. They are now standing just outside the Academy of Sciences building.

~ Luke was huffing and puffing from the sprint, doubled over and trying to catch his breath. Whoever that was, they were Olympian fast. Possibly even quicker. The elder Chen considered himself in somewhat decent shape, but this impossible.

" Goddamn," he wheezed, finally standing himself up straight and looking at the doors of the Academy. The building was far creepier at night than he remembered, causing him to forsake it for Wo Yeh instead.

" What in the Nine-fold Hells was THAT?" Luke asked with incredulity, still unable to comprehend what had just happened. He finally realized he was still gripping his revolver, stuffing it back into his jacket with sloppy haste; no sense in someone walking by and seeing two armed men in the dead of night.

" Where could they be heading ... And you," Luke regarded Yeh with a raised brow, " I need some answers. I was supposed to meet Lola here alone: what were you doing here? The girl is gone, you've no sense in hiding anything now, āam?"

[sblock=Persuasion Roll]Manipulation 3 + Persuasion 3:
6d10o10h8: 1 Success [4, 4, 3, 3, [10, 5], 3][/sblock]

Jago said:

" Where could they be heading ... And you," Luke regarded Yeh with a raised brow, " I need some answers. I was supposed to meet Lola here alone: what were you doing here? The girl is gone, you've no sense in hiding anything now, āam?"

Click to expand...

Wo Yeh is likewise out of breath. He stands and stares, with incredulity, at the quickly fading image of the man disappearing into the shadows.

"I have no idea," he says between catching breaths. "Who that guy was or why he took Lola."

Wo Yeh goes to a nearby park bench and leans his arm against it. "As for me," he says, "I need that package you have. Lola didn't have nothing to do with it, but she knows something. She knows something that I need quieted down."

~ Suspicion went into full-blown Paranoia. Luke did not come any closer to Wo Yeh, and now eyed him as he did so many other Triads before when he wasn't sure if they would shoot or not.

" ... How did you know about the package."

This entire thing had been secretive. Every part of it. Lola, his backu-His Backup!

Should he run for it? Try and reach Lu Wong at the Hilton?

... Would Yeh kill him if he ran? He was pretty sure he could outpace the man, but Luke knew he couldn't beat a bullet in a race. More than the money, he needed to stay alive. For Vivian, for himself. However, his curiosity was on fire by this point, and he still couldn't stand the idea of Lola going missing. More than anything, he was quickly growing afraid of what Yeh might have known: staying here was not an option.

Not where there were no witnesses.

" I'm going after her," Luke said firmly, " There's only so many things in the direction he was headed, neh? You can either come or stay, I don't care. But Lola needs help."

Thusly declared, Luke turned from the Triad and began a soft jog after the kidnapper. His legs were burning and he still had not fully caught his breath, but he wasn't going to let something bad happen to the girl, bullets be damned. ~

Wo Yeh doesn't appear to be of a mind to argue. He lets Luke go. "There is much you don't know," he says as Luke jogs off. "Maybe, in time, you will learn the truth."

Luke runs into the darkness of Golden Gate Park. He jogs across the baseball fields and into the trees. This is the direction he saw the man take Lola.

OOC: Make a Perception check to see if Luke can determine direction from this point.

It looks like the guy continued to the east. Luke can see some trash cans knocked down and some trampled grass.

There should not be anyone else in the park. The fact that Luke doesn't hear footsteps or any noise is significant.

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

~ " Well this is a great night ..."

Sighing in resignation, Luke forced his legs to move again, trundling after the tracks to try and hunt down this kidnapper. He wasn't quite sure what drove him forward, what made him want to help Lola above just calling this a bust, taking the package, and heading to the Hilton.

And then there was Wo Yeh ...

Much I don't know? It's the goddamn Triads, of course I don't know half of what's going on ..!

But there was more than just gang politics in the way Yeh had said that. More than just a threat or a warning. And he knew about the package.

Luke could still feel it, tucked into his jacket. Maybe ... Maybe if he checked it. Made sure it was sa-
No.

No, this night was already bad enough. He didn't want to bring that down on his head, not on top of having to chase after the damn girl he was supposed to bring this to in the first place. The park was creepy as all hell, the silence was as loud as a scream, and all Luke wanted to do was go home. Go home, polish off the whisky he had in the kitchen, and forget this ever happened.

" Easy job, my ass," he grumbled, pushing his body to run through the grass and try and catch up. ~

"Psst," a soft voice says from somewhere nearby. Luke looks to the trees and sees Lola, scratched and a little bloody, mostly hidden behind an oak. Lola must have escaped the man who took her. But how? And where did he go?