Buck’s Friday evening odd encounter(Buck)
Date: 2025-08-08 18:44
(Buck’s Friday evening odd encounter(Buck):Buck)
[Fri Aug 8 2025]
At Valley View Cemetery/span
It is afternoon, about 78F(25C) degrees, and there are clear skies. Ankle high mist flows through the area. The mist is heaviest At Autumn and Franklin/span
Sophie looks around, “Cute cemetery.”
“Yeah but we’re kinda standing in dead body soup right now,” Kai points out to Sophie as he lifts his foot and lets his sneaker drop down on the floodwaters, “Yeach…”
Sophie winces, “Don’t put it that way.”
“All right, now that we’re out of that, here’s what’s happening.” Buck says as he checks his revolver and looks to Sophie and Kai, “Bobbie did a bad thing and she’s been going crazy. She thinks that there’s scuba vampires here in Aurora Heights and she got a bunch of faelings, vampires, and arcanists together to open the gate to the Other and a bunch of flesh eating snakes came through.” he says as he kicks one of them in the floody waters as it attacks him. “We gotta take care of these fuckin’ snakes before everyone gets a bunch of poison wounds out here.”
Sophie wrinkles her nose, eyes flicking between the writhing water and Buck. “Scuba vampires? Really? Next time she wants to play monster mash, maybe she can leave the giant venomous snakes out of it.” She pulls her weapon free, scanning the water. “All right, let’s clean this up before it turns into a mass funeral.”
Snakes slither all around them in the water, some coming up to nip at their heels, shoes, and the bottoms of their pants as luckily all of them have worn pants today and are at least protected from some levels of biting snakes slitering around in the dirty muck.
“That’s hilarious,” Kai says with a laugh, grinning a little until one of the little bastards bites him, he yelps, “Oh my fuck!” and startles into Sophie’s side, “Ow fuck my cunt!” he rubs at another bite he gets, “Bastards.”
Sophie sloshes forward as another snake darts past her leg. “These things didn’t just pop up for fun,” She calls over the chaos, scanning the waterline. “If we find where all this filthy water’s coming from, we can cut it off?? Maybe slow the snakes down.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure the civic authority has the ability to turn off the floodgates and put up some levees. Maybe we could sandbag a bit to prevent the flow from going off to Elysia and contain it here.” Buck says as he looks around the memorial grounds. Once we get the water turned off, I think the Animal Control may be able to round up all of the snakes a lot easier.”
Kai scowls at the snakes and throws up his magic shield in an effort to keep them away from him temporarily, he nods at Buck, “Yeah, fuck the sandbags right now, let’s end the inflow or whatever and then hopefully that will either fix it or make it easier to keep fixing,” he agrees and slashes out at a snake, missing entirely, “Oooo you fuck,” he yells after a slithering away serpent.
Sophie smirks at Kai’s near miss but doesn’t slow her pace toward the shed. “Fine, kill the tap first. But if that water keeps coming, were just bailing a sinking boat with our hands.” She moves past a floating wreath, eyes on the current. “There’s gotta be a maintenance shed with supplies I might be able to raid if needed.”
The waters are about waist deep across much of the borough, but at the edges where they’ve entered, it’s pretty shallow. The snakes continue to slither and bite at their legs as the three think about how to fix the issue. The magic shield helps to prevent some of the damage as the snake that Kai slashed out peeks it’s head out of the water, hissing at him angrily.
On an electrical box nearby is a half-worn sticker with the phone number of the Civic Authority, and an address deeper into Aurora Heights where they can find the Snow Plows and other equipment.
Kai hmmms as he looks between Sophie and Buck, “So like… we just call them up and they’ll do it? Or are we going to have to go there and mind control them into it?” he asks, “I don’t know anyone in the Civic Authority, myself.”
Sophie shakes her head, “Let’s see if we can get it open. If there’s some buttons in there we can push em?” She offers.
“I think we may have to wade over there as the phone lines may be down due to the flood.” Buck says as he motions over at the phone number, partially scratched off. “Unless you can figure out the last 3 of that phone number, I think we’re off wading across Aurora Heights to the Providence Tool Company where they keep all of the tools, and the Forest of Dreams is where the water is coming from.”
Kai nods a few times at Buck, “Okay, let’s do that,” he agrees and looks aside to Sophie, “I also like the idea of pushing buttons randomly,” he grins at her a little, waggling his brows at her.
True to luck, the phone number is partially scratched off as it says: “Civic Authority Maintenance Shed: Corner of Birch and Sidney, Stop 32. Phone: 710-8 ‘” the numbers having been scratched or rubbed off.
Sophie curses at a snake and then pulls out her knife, just incase the box needs to be pried open. If it has a lock, thankfully she has bobby pins for that too. She winks at Kai, “Long as it’s not a button that says, don’t push.”
Prying the box open easily, there’s a bunch of wires in there, some of them sparking in the wetness of the entire borough. It seems as though it can be hotwired to make a connection to the emergency services line if required.
“You got this Sophie,” Kai tells Sophie helpfully, taking a few wading steps backward from the box, grinning just a little.
Keeping an eye out, Buck is stabbing snakes left and right as they come up to the group. Using his shoes to kick a few as they slither by and attempt to bite. “Probably should have worn some waders.” he notes.
Sophie wades over, giving the hissing snake a sharp kick away before crouching by the box. “Great, wet electrics. Just what I wanted today.” She peers at the mess of sparking wires, lips pressing thin. “I can rig this to call emergency services, but one wrong move and we’ll all light up like a holiday display.” She glances between Buck and Kai, “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” Kai calls to Sophie in encouragement, grinning at her a little, he leans to one side to try to see what she’s doing while she works, though he stays a bit back to avoid any sudden explosions or arcs of electricity.
It’s a bit dicey to get in there, but Sophie’s hacking skills save the day. A few wrong connections spark but her fast reflexes helps her to get her fingers out of the way as this isn’t a simple box to rewire from the burnt out connections. A bit of static fizzles over the speaker when she gets it right and they all hear a *fzztt…Hello?****Civic Maintenance here, who is out there? Jerry? You got Dispatch.” *fzzzt* *crackle*
It’s a bit dicey to get in there, but Sophie’s hacking skills save the day. A few wrong connections spark but her fast reflexes helps her to get her fingers out of the way as this isn’t a simple box to rewire from the burnt out connections. A bit of static fizzles over the speaker when she gets it right and they all hear a “*fzztt…Hello?****Civic Maintenance here, who is out there? Jerry? You got Dispatch.” *fzzzt* *crackle* (fix)
Sophie looks at Kai, “Alright loud one, you talk.”
Meanwhile, Buck is kicking and stabbing snakes to try and clear some room. He reaches down and grabs one by the tail to fling it over some cemetary headstones.
Kai wades in over to the box and calls into the box, “Hey there, Jerry here. We got a real sitchiation out here. Whole borough’s flooded, gonna need you to work the floodgate and put up some levees, it’s a whole lotta soup out here right now, lots of nasty infestations here too. Over.”
The Crackle of the Phone speaker hisses as they can hear the Dispatch on the other end shuffling some things around as he says, “Yeah, Jerry? We got a real issue down here. All the remote systems are down as something’s chewed through the cables in the sewers. If you can go into the Forest of Dreams and manually turn the sewer bypass on, it’ll drain the whole borough into the ocean by opening up the floodgates. That or if you can swim down into the sewers and hotwire that line, we can do it from here.”
“We got boats on rescues running around the northside, but anything past Autumn and Lake, over by stop 46 is full of damn snakes. High side of Heights we’ve got most of them killed, but we’re clearning it slowly.”
“Roger that there. Left the scuba tank at home, I’ll head over to hit that bypass. Over and out,” Kai tells the box and steps away from the box, waggling his brows at Sophie and Buck as he heads away from it.
Sophie winces at the snips, but looks between the boys, “Not bad.”
“Well, that was masterfully done. I would expect no less from the King of Bullshit.” Buck jokes as he gives Kai a wry smile and points up the street. We’re here on Thornberry, we just have to go north on Woodcrest to hit the Forest of Dreams. Careful though, there’s the mists out here. If we take a car we’ll have to abandon it about a block or two up when the water gets high.”
“Well, that was masterfully done. I would expect no less from the King of Bullshit.” Buck jokes as he gives Kai a wry smile and points up the street. “We’re here on Thornberry, we just have to go north on Woodcrest to hit the Forest of Dreams. Careful though, there’s the mists out here. If we take a car we’ll have to abandon it about a block or two up when the water gets high.”
Sophie snickers, “C’mon. We can make it work or..is there a boat?”
“There’s a Whaling Equipment factory up on Woodcrest on the way, so we can probably check inside there.” Buck says as he looks over his phone.
“Well, let’s go I guess,” Kai sighs at Buck and Sophie and readies himself to follow the pair.
As they trio slosh through the wet muck, kicking and beating off the snakes, they have to route through some pretty deep waters in the up and down hills of the Heights. Taking their time, it’s easy enough to get up the street the 2 blocks to Hawthorne and Woodcrest, where the edge of the Forest of Dreams lies, as well as the Whaling Equipment Factory. Standing on the corner of Hawthorn and Woodcrest, they’ve found a mostly submerged FedEx delivery van that has been stuck here to stand on, giving them a good view of the surrounding area.
Buck climbs atop the delivery van as he reaches out to help the other two up, saying, “Right across the street here to the northeast is the factory, northwest is the forest. Looks like the water’s pretty deep in there, so we definitely want to get a boat.”
Kai swim-wade-walks to the fedex van, climbing up with Buck’s help, he looks around and sighs, “We need a door for Sophie to not let us onto,” he tells Buck, peering around himself, shaking out his jeans.
Sophie sighs, “A boat. Make a raft. Whatever we need to.” She runs a wet hand through her hair. She looks around, “The whaling one, doesn’t it have an old boat outside as a decoration?”
“Oh, that may be a good call. We’ll see if it’s still there.” Buck says.
Would someone like to put together a try roll for perception?
Kai nods to Sophie, “Such a smarty pants,” he tells her and hops off the van, offering a hand to Sophie to let her come down.
did that wrong, it was the other way around, roll again XD
Both Kai and Sophie spot the boat half capsized and stuck on a part of the building where it used to be anchored as a display out front. It seems as though the boat is -littered- with snakes slithering around inside of it’s capsized hull.
Sophie curses, “Shit.”
“Hmmmm…. gross,” Kai points out the boat and snakes to Buck, he sighs and starts to wade in its direction, his lips pressed together in thought. Once he’s a bit closer he lifts his hand and sends a gust of wind from his hand in the direction of the boat. Maybe he can send them flying or maybe it’ll annoy them enough to scatter. Maybe neither. We’ll see.
“Kai, I think you and I can get the boat. Do you want to wade in and try and push it over? Looks like we can dump out all the snakes in it and then tip the boat back over and bail out the water, yeah?” Buck asks as he also starts to wade into the water after Kai and get the boat.
Kai nods at Buck, “Yeah we could try that,” he agrees with the fellow.
Swirling up wind rocks the boat a bit, but it’s full of water and the snakes get agitated further, all of them hissing angrily as their nice warm sunning spot is disturbed, now the folks will have to deal with a bunch of -angry- snakes instead of just calm, sunning ones.
“Ah, shit. Hey, you got anything you can poke that boat with? Maybe drag it across to the van where we can tip all these snakes out of it safely?” Buck asks.
“Ahem,” Kai glances sheepishly at Buck and blows out a long breath, ending in a raspberry, “Nope,” he says, “I mean I have knives and a sword but we need something longer… maybe,” he looks around for a likely bit of debris or maybe a long enough broken off branch.
Sophie asks, “The boat…” She hums, “I could try head up the water but..might burn the boat.”
Kai in his position in the water isn’t able to see much of anything, but Sophie in her elevated position sees a whaling pole, just the kind of thing to move around a boat and yeet a bunch of snakes out of it, caught on a telephone pole with just it’s hook sticking out. Kai can’t see it from his angle and neither can Buck as it’s beyond some piles of debrit from them.
Sophie relays the information and looks to those taller than her.
“Oh, a whaling pole?” Buck says as he sees where she’s motioning. “Hey Kai, I think you can get that pole, it’s around this debris right next to us and I can wade over and jostle the boat free as you hook it and pull, sound good?”
“For sure,” Kai nods at Sophie and Buck, he wades around the debris and looks around until he finds the pole, takes it up and heads toward the boat, trying to hook the pole into the lip of the boat.
“Okay, on three, you’re gonna Yeet.” Buck says as he swats a few angry snakes trying to bite him. Pulling out an umbrella, Buck opens it up to smash it in the snake’s faces, keeping them off of him as he pushes the boat with his other hand, putting a shoulder into it.
“One…Two…Three…YEET!” Buck says as he pushes the boat with his shoulder, hissing, angry snakes falling all around him as Kai pulls with the whaling hook, trying to dislodge the display boat from it’s lodgings. Between the two of them, they are able to dislodge the boat as Kai pulls it over towards the van, the snakes hissing and crawling everywhere like a writhing mass as Buck batters them away with the umbrella, wading back across to high ground to try and crawl on top of it. “Fuck! Fuck fuck! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!…I mean…boat!”
Now the issue to solve is how to get the rest of the angry snakes out of the boat?
Sophie laughs and helps where she can but now what, “Anything a pyro can do? I don’t think they’ll follow a flashlight.”
“Maybe if you light something on fire like a branch or something they’ll get away from it?” Buck says as he points to a nearby tree. “I can climb that tree over there and break off a branch for you.”
Kai frowns at the boat and its serpenty inhabitants, he crawls up onto the Fed Ex van and starts to try to hook and toss snakes from the safety of th van, “Man this is going to be slow, I’m open to other ideas,” he tells Sophie and Buck.
“Ooo what if you heat up the end of my pole, I’ll singe them with it?” Kai asks Sophie after Buck’s idea.
“Oh, that’s actually a really great idea.” Buck says as he motions to Kai’s pole and Sophie.
With Pyromancy, Sophie is easily able to eat the metal to a red hot, sizzling heat, as Kai takes that searing hot metal and puts it close to the snakes. In unison the first snake he burns slithers away from the biting, glowing red hot pole as the rest of the snakes disperse in the quickest fashion they can. There’s still a bit of water in the bottom of the boat, but it’s easy to bail it out with their hands or any sort of container they have on them.
Kai hops into the boat and sets down the pole within the boat – who knows, could come in handy, he offers a hand to each Sophie and Buck, “C’mon, let’s go get to that fucking bypass, this mist is… getting scary,” he grins a little.
Sophie taking the hand offered she nods, “Let’s get this finished.”
As all of them get into the boat, Kai is going to have to use the pole to push them off of things to move around as they don’t have any oars and no motor to get them anywhere. This is a ramshackle display lifeboat that floats well enough, and they’ll have to find the source of the water, most likely at the deepest parts of the Forest of Dreams.
Gets in as well, using his umbrella to help push off of things to navigate, as he opens it up to scoop some water and try to use it as a terrible oar, before he goes back to trying to use it as a makeshift pole to help move them along. The Forest of dreams has plenty of trees where they can grab onto with hands and poles to move them along through the water.
“Keep an eye out for wood or something,” Kai tells the group and pushes off from the van, he doesn’t try to row with the pole, but he does press the base of the pole to the street below and basically tries to push them using the pole, grunting with effort, “Brooo this fucking sucks,” he complains to no one in particular.
Kai can also assist with looking for things
It’s only about 30 feet across the intersection until they get to the forest, as all of them keep an eye out for the Sewer Release Valve that will open the floodgates and drain all of the water down to the ocean. It takes them a little bit of navigating, but the trees help a lot to speed them along, and the flow of the water is clear enough to see where the snakes get pushed away from the flowering water. In the center of the Forest of Dreams, there’s a portal which is wide open with plenty of snakes flowing out of it and a lot of water. A large metal grate is off to the side to start to plug the whole and below it there is another grate that is blocked off. If someone swims down in the snake infested waters, they can twist the wheel and close the portal grate while opening the floodgate and start to drain the entire borough.
“Uuuuugh,” Kai bitches and kisses Sophie quickly on the lips, stands up and jumps into the water, he swims for the wheel and once he’s closer, he sucks in a deep breath and dunks himself, heading for the wheel that he tries to turn.
The wheel is just too big and underwater, Kai can’t get enough leverage to twist it. “Ah shit, let me jump in and help with it.” Buck says as he also jumps in the water and swims down to help with the big wheel.
Sophie anxious watches the water, leaning over to keep an eye on them. Her breath held.
Sophie anxiously watches the water, leaning over to keep an eye on them. Her breath held. -fix
The big wheel groans as it turns, the sound of iron on iron as a loud clicking sound is heard, large chains dragging across other wheels as the large grate comes to roll across the portal, slowing the flow of the water as the other massive hole in the ground rolls two large slabs of concrete out of the way and into their housings as a whirlpool forms over it, sucking down all of the water, including Buck, Kai, and Sophie in the boat. The boat starts to be a bit unstable as the rushing water rocks it back and forth, and Buck and Kai are going to have to grab onto something or swim fast enough to escape the whirlpool of thousands of gallons of rushing water flowing past them.
Kai looks around as the water starts to drain, he winces and decides to just try to hop up and loop his arms and legs into the spokes of the big wheel they just turned, ideally to use it as an anchor before he gets sucked out to seat.
Sophie is mostly helpless but she’s going to do all she can to help and not fall out of the boat!
Buck manages to grab a tree branch before he is sucked away out to sea, his muscles straining as his body turns sideways from the thousands of gallons of water rushing into the whirlpool. Kai, likewise, grabs the wheel and is able to hold himself wrapped around it until the water subsides enough to knee height. Sophie is barely able to keep the boat from capsizing, balancing herself this way and that way as she rides the rapids a bit through the torrential few minutes of rushing water.
After a bit of time, most of the water has been sent out to the ocean and the only thing left to do is pick up thousands and thousands of snakes that are littering every surface of the entire Borough.
Squeezing out his tie, Buck says, “Well, I guess we should talk to that guy at dispatch and let him know that there’s a lot of snakes needing to be picked up.”
Sophie laughs and looks around, “I wonder if the snakes are grateful.”
Kai sighs and shakes his head, he looks around, “Okay… where… oh wait, just the old box huh?” he tries to orient himself correctly and jogs for the box to try to get a hold of dispatch, “Eyyy dere the water’s been drained, this is Jerry, go on and get pest control out here to get rid of these snakes,” he says into the box.
“*sshshhhhhhttt*” the static comes back as Dispatch suffles around and they hear some muffled talking on the other end, “Uh yeah, Jerry. We’re gonna get the snow plows out and try and get Animal Control on the situation. We’ll get the citizens to get their snow shovels out to clear them off.”
“Good work, Jerry. I’ll put you up for a raise with Civic Authority. They’re going to be real happy you got this done without having to pay a bunch of overtime.”
Sophie smirks, “Yeah. Good job Jerry.”
“Well, I guess that’s that.” Buck says as he pulls off his hat and wrings it out. “I’m going to figure out how to unsoak my clothes and dry them out. You all got anything you’re doing now?”
“Looks like Dovie has an event going on soon.” Buck notes.
Sophie nods, “Think she’ll mind some wet attendees?”
Buck says “Shit, this place is wrethed in mists.“