The PCs:
- Julianne, a computer whiz who fell on hard times and had to take a “temporary” job at All-Mart over a year ago.
- CC, an obnoxiously upbeat new-agey internet personality and crystal collector. She has recently begun to question her worldview.
- Darian, a full-time computer science student on top of his All-Mart job, also with a curiosity about the occult.
- Star, a washed-up, self-aggrandizing grifter.
In the midst of mapping out the secret passages of the store, Julianne overhears people nearby. She sneaks closer and finds the stockboys in the stockroom with Rex, the regional manager, as well as Darian and Star, who have their arms bound and mouths gagged with duct tape after being captured last session. A few of the stockboys have improvised weapons, and they're looking to Rex for instructions, but he remains uncertain, making a call on a flip phone instead. Seeing they don't appear to be in imminent danger, Julianne sneaks off in search of implements to help rescue her coworkers.
Elsewhere, CC emerges from her communion with Hamzah and finds that John is now alone in the break room; the party has ended. He's agitated and preparing for something, gun drawn. He insists CC draw her own blood with a plastic knife to prove she's not a shapeshifter, and after continuously arguing with her about it, he eventually elevates from threatening to shoot her to popping a cap in her gut.
CC tries to struggle with John for the gun, but he maintains control of it. Seeing her (copiously spilled) blood appears human, he tries to get her to come with him for an unspecified purpose, but when she insists on calling an ambulance he eventually leaves her alone in the breakroom, frustrated.
CC tries to bandage her wound, then goes out front of the store to wait for the ambulance, intentionally setting off the fire alarm on the way. She livestreams this whole process. John passes her on his way back inside with his copy of My Name is Dirk A. under his arm, along with what looked like the laptop Star stole from him. He loses a couple pages of the printed-out book, one of which CC tries to read, but it's pretty incoherent on its own. Based on my description and John’s known libertarianism, one of the players likened it to Ayn Rand’s books, which I felt was pretty apt, although from what CC could glean, the page in question didn’t have to do with politics. When CC tries to get her stream audience to identify My Name is Dirk A., it's abruptly taken down by Twitch mods.
Julianne comes back to the edge of the stockroom with a boxcutter
and a ratchet strap, remaining undetected under the noise of the fire alarm.
She swings the strap around a big shelf and yanks it over as a distraction,
then in the tumult ran in and cut Darian free. In her absence, Star tried
to struggle free and is now pinned on both sides by stockboys, although they seem
uncomfortable doing this, though whether it's the violence of the act or the proximity to Star is unclear. For whatever reason, the stockboys (who had previously seemed almost inhuman) now talk just like anyone else, and the PCs notice features by which they could now be told apart.
Once the fire alarm started, Rex went out back of the store with one of the stockboys to continue his phone call, leaving a total of six in the stockroom, half of whom are armed. Once Julianne gets moving, Darian extricates Star from one of them, and Julianne threatens the other one on Star with her boxcutter, causing him to loosen his grip rather than fight back.
Darian, Star, and Julianne flee the stockroom, pursued by stockboys. Julianne manages to cut Star’s arms free while running (somehow not lacerating her in the process), and the PCs that had been captured tear the tape from their mouths. They overturn a shelf to slow the stockboys and then split up, with Julianne heading to the front of the store while Darian follows Star to the hunting section for weaponry.
Simultaneously, paramedics arrive and tend (fairly ineffectually) to CC’s gunshot wound. One of them is familiar to CC; he's often sent to the All-Mart at night to deal with injuries relating to the heroin addicts that often hang around the area, and is often drunk on the job.
When the paramedics load CC into the ambulance and try to drive away, the vehicle won't move, and they initially can’t discern why. CC, now doped up on pain meds as well as freaked out, issues them cryptic warnings about the inescapable clutches of All-Mart. She tries and fails to coerce the oft-drunk paramedic (whose current degree of sobriety is unclear) to carry her away lest she get him cancelled, but he's unfortunately too out of touch to take the threat seriously.
The paramedics soon realize they had somehow missed a gash in the ambulance’s fuel tank that had drained by the time they pulled up to the store. As they lack the equipment they need to repair the damage and siphon gas from another car, CC hobbles back into the store despite their suggestion to stay put.
CC runs into Julianne, who has moved up to the registers, and they fill each other in on what's been going on. When Julianne asks CC to send John her way if she saw him, CC responds that she would prefer to “send him to hell”. As the paramedics had promised CC upon hearing about John's behavior, a policeman enters the store and approachs CC and Julianne. He's slight, middle-aged, and has a strong Russian accent. Initially he agrees to wait with the PCs for his partner to come and root John out, but then two other cops walk in, and it's immediately obvious that they don’t recognize this guy.
The imposter cop acts quickly, taking CC hostage. As the two real cops try to navigate the situation, Marie (Vince’s brutish colleague and Julianne’s blackmailer) sneaks up from behind with a shotgun and a shoddier police disguise. Julianne sees her and warns the cops, prompting Marie to duck behind a shelf of potato chips. As the cops approach Marie, Julianne moves to try and topple the shelf on her. However, as Julianne pushes the shelf, Marie shoots one of the police officers, transforming much of his face into gore. He drops but remains conscious.
The other cop has to move as the Russian guy lays down suppressing fire, but Julianne successfully pins Marie under the shelf, injuring her, though it's unclear how badly. CC accuses the Russian of being in league with Julianne’s blackmailers, which prompts the Russian guy to drag her behind a register and inject her with something which knocks her out within 30 seconds. CC’s last utterance is an attempt to call for Hamzah.
Meanwhile, Star grabs a hunting rifle and tries ineffectually to load it; Darian picks up a combat knife. When they hear the gunfire at the front of the store, they begin approaching cautiously, only to stumble upon a stockboy that John is shoving in front of him as a human shield. John fixes Star’s gun for her and the four of them draw near the ongoing firefight.
By this time, Julianne has recovered Marie’s shotgun after crushing her under the shelf, but Marie has drawn a hidden handgun in the intervening seconds and she headshots the other cop as he's radioing for backup and seeking a hiding place. Julianne, untrained with guns, still manages to inflict a decent wound on Marie, who apparently reloaded the shotgun just before the shelf knocked it out of her hands. It's still hard to tell how bad she is now; it seems significant, but not debilitating.
The others arrive, and John pushes the stockboy into harm’s way first. Marie kills him with a single shot, and John (following a successful Self check for sacrificing another person to protect himself) tries to shoot Marie, but accidentally hits the falling corpse of the stockboy and falls underneath it. Julianne tries to disarm Marie with a kick, but Marie catches her by the ankle and drags her to the floor, knocking the back of Julianne’s head hard on the tiles.
Star gets within range to shoot and hesitates for a moment, weighing whether to shoot John or Marie. She opts for the latter and, with another fluke of beginner’s luck, hits Marie’s upper arm. At this time, the Russian guy, who hasn’t been seen for a while, comes running toward the gunfire with an expression of absolute fear and disgust on his face. John shoots him just above the knee, then he and Star subdued the Russian.
From there, John watches over the downed imposter as Star goes for zipties. Marie manages to half-crawl further into the store to wherever she came from (having evidently not entered through the front doors), dissuading Julianne from pursuit with her handgun. A backup quartet of police arrive and find signs that someone has recently opened the ceiling near where CC was last seen, though it seems unlikely she could have gotten up there from the store floor. As paramedics come in to tend to Star’s broken nose, Darian’s shoulder, and Julianne’s head wound, two of the police follow the trail of Marie’s blood. Three shots resound from that direction, followed by silence.
Though this session lasted less than an in-game hour, it was by far the most traumatic for the PCs’ bodies and minds. What will be the fallout of this showdown? How will our protagonists cope? Will Star and John have a bond now that she saved his life? How do the blackmailers, shooters, stockboys, Rex, and John all fit together? And what the hell happened to CC?
We’ll get answers to at least some of these questions in the next session of Escape from All-Mart!
Objective progress: 34% -> 60% (both identifying Rex’s connection to the stockboys and the greater conspiracy, and contributing to the unnamed Russian fake cop’s arrest, as well as Marie’s wounding at minimum were minor milestones)
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