EHB Issue #31 Hope You Guess My Name (serialized)

The cable on my external hard drive wiggles loose during recording and leaves me with a corrupted audio file of the game session. Madness I say. Madness because I keep on trying to use the same set up and pretending everything will all turn out right. The stupid, stupid thing is I have a nice 30G thumb drive sitting in my desk which would make a nice "temporary" folder for audio output of the live game session. Fuck it sucks being such an ignoramous on a daily basis.

But the last session did happen and it did occur with the new player in the group, Mr. ZoZo, leading the way into macabre adventures into the mystical.

The session started off normal enough for the superheroes in Capitol City. Mettle and SAIC Sharp traded barbs on the phone over morning coffee and Bug pulled a typical Bug move and vanished from the scene. He did leave a note explaining what the next phase if his "career" was to look like. It meant renouncing his super powers and effecting positive change in the world without using them. And he was taking the jet.

This was going to piss off Bisbee Sharp to no end. Problem now facing Mettle was who would be a partner in her war against crime in Capitol City. Ultra-Rosa was out of the question. That vigilante has some problems. The least of which is the body count she accumulates when she is in action. 

Mettle's reverie on the rough looking shape  of the future  was broken by Floyd, a  regular at the St. Baltimore Food Bank. The food bank was another of Bug's pet projects. It is where Bug left his note for Mettle. 

"Some guy is asking around for Bronson." Jacob Bronson was one of numerous shifty greaseballs which made up the Balty's clients. He was a regular at the food bank, loading up on as much canned goods as he could get away with. Everyone new he would go hustle them later on the street. He was a thief and what friends he had were fellow drug addicts who would fight on his lawn in front of his house. Loser that he was, Mettle found the idea of someone snooping around the St. Baltimore irritating. Floyd pointed him out and Mettle went over to the young man in the wrinkled rain jacked and tie. 

"I understand you are looking for one of our clients?" Mettle addressed him in her natural disarming manner. 

"Not exactly. More like who he was seen with recently. Anyone he might have been fighting with? Have a problem with?"

"Why"

"Well, he died two days ago. Looks suspicious. I'm hoping someone here might know who he was associating with right before he died."

"He's not, well, he was not well like.  There are plenty of people in the neighborhood who wouldn't. I don't know. You are going to have a bunch of suspects." 

"Anyone  capable of casting hexes?"

"Excuse me?" Mettle heard what the guy had said, but she used the moment to do a quick scan of the stranger. He wasn't carrying a gun. He appeared relatively stable, could use a shave, but didn't look like he lived on the street.

"Curses. Did he have problems with anyone who thought they could cast spells and curse people?

Mettle's eyebrows arched and she smirked. "I don't think so?"

"Look," and the guy fished out a piece of paper from his rain jacket. "This note was found next to his body in his house." He handed it to Mettle. "And this is a picture of what he looked like when they found him."

He held up a print out of a color photo. The picture was of a dried cadaver on a carpeted floor.  Dead skin stretched tight over its skull. It looked of someone who had been dead for some time.

"No way." Mettle's eyes widened. "Floyd, when was the last time you saw Jacob?" She called in to the kitchen. The shade over the counter was pulled up and Floyd was there chopping produce.

"Three days ago. He was hassling everyone for a ride. He wanted to go to some store outside of town. He looked real bad too. I don't think he got a ride though. He stomped out of here all mad."

"Do you know where he wanted to go?" Mettle asked. Floyd looked at some older folk at one of the dining room tables. 

"Mabel, he tell you where he wanted to go?" Mabel had a plastic kerchief over her hair from the morning rain. 

"Huntsville Village. Wanted a ride to some new-age-y book store. He was sick and he was going to get some homeopathic bullshit. I said, no way.  I didn't want the covid. Told him to go home, wear a mask you dumb shit."

Mettle asked the guy, "Are you a cop?"

"No". The guy laughs a bit, shakes his head. "I just have an interest in suspicious deaths like this. I have a friend in the force, though. He passed it on to me. He knows the local will go with the corner's report, natural causes, and its done."

"And you think this is murder?"

"Well, read the note, what do you think?"

(continued here)