[UA] Sunshine Cab Company Recap: Heartattack and Vine Pt. 2

[Michael Athey]

Heartattack and Vine, Part the Second

Only moments have passed since the cabbies escaped the Aztek ambush, and the Dispatcher wants to talk to them. So, in various states of disarray, they go back to the garage. A large crowd of cabbies, including the day shift, has gathered there. Pushpinder is speaking with them about the events of the night, but the Dispatcher's in his office talking to a strange, homeless-looking drunk guy who looks something like Lee Marvin in "Cat Ballou". The cabbies walk into this room and start demanding answers. A quick introduction is made via the Dispatcher for Quincy Dalton, the drunk guy who is an apparent old army buddy of Burt's. Quincy mumbles various things and seems to be barely conscious of what's going on, save for his desire to avenge Burt's brutal killing. The cabbies are more interested in getting some straight answers from the Dispatcher about what this all means and what he thinks he's doing sending them into perilous situations. 

The Dispatcher responds to these questions by taking out a street map from one of the office cabinets. He rolls it out on the table and lets the cabbies take a look. They see that its partially recognizable as the City, but the name is wrong (and weirdly illegible) and neighborhoods are shuffled around or missing. The Dispatcher states that this was how the City looked five years ago, before he and his friend Peter Reed tried out a ritual. The premise of the ritual was based on the Dispatcher's own experiences in the House of Renunciation, a room of which (the Room of Despairing Dreams) the cabbies had visited at 9th and Hennepin some time earlier. The Room of Second Chances had been the one the Dispatcher had been in, a room where you got to make some different decisions and change the course of your whole life. Having seen how the City, then named <CENSORED>, was headed, he and Pete wanted to try and give it all a Second Chance. Things had not worked out as planned.

Pete was somehow trapped in a limbo between choices, splitting into himself and the one he was to be. The one he was to be turned into the Thing In The Cellar which killed the "real" Pete and later took Ray's skin to become Ray Not Raymond. Meanwhile, the City lost its name, and so did the Dispatcher. The whole purpose of the cab company, according to the Dispatcher, was to try and correct the foul-up of the ritual. Each cab and cabbie was a means to this end, travelling around the city and picking up charges for the Dispatcher so he could try and fix things. The cabbies he had been sending on particularly special missions were all people he claimed had special resonance with the ritual, and therefore were ideal agents. The Dispatcher then warned the PCs that there were people out there who wanted to make sure he didn't get to do the Ritual of Second Chances again and revise the revision. Aside from Ray Not Raymond's own sick schemes, there were some people called the Sleepe!
 rs, a
 conspiracy that sought to keep magick from being used on such a blatant scale. He told them that he now believed Cletus Crowe was an agent of that secret group, and he feared they would now try and act against him and the rest of the cab company. 

After some consideration about this new information and the current situation, it was decided that the cabbies would try to find Ray Not Raymond and resolve the Carnival problem Burt and Marvin had died trying to stop. Then, perhaps, they could call Cletus Crowe in and let the Sleepers take care of Ray for them. With any luck, maybe Cletus would get offed in the venture, too. The cabbies then headed home to sleep off the pains of the night and try and spend the next morning figuring out which subway station the meeting Burt had mentioned was to take place in the following night. Sleep was impossible for Sherry, who spent the night reliving Marvin's gory demise in front of her eyes. Raymond spent the night at the garage with Quincy and Kid Cobalt, where he had a dream - or nightmare - of the burning billiards hall, finding himself reliving his other self's last moments before the Thing In The Cellar got him. Trevor likewise had disturbing dreams. Only Tala truly had a restful!
  night,
 in no small part thanks to the mysteriously timely arrival of a cute puppy in her apartment. She adopted said puppy and named him Spot. 

The next morning, Trevor decided to try and look at some maps to puzzle out where the Hell Ray Not Raymond was and if any other truths revealed themselves. Unfortunately for him, they did. Thinking back on his month's fares, he realized that his combined route spelled out something in the streets. G. I. M..."Gimme another chance". Trevor decided to get good and sloshed shortly after this revelation. Meanwhile, Sherry was trying to figure out if Marvin Dougal had any friends or family to contact about his death. Depressingly, she discovered that this was not the case. She decided to go to his apartment and see what he lived like. This was even more depressing. Realizing her own apartment was probably being watched now, she decided suddenly to take the apartment for her own. Later on, the cabbies came together and were told by Trevor of his freaky little discovery. Sherry scoffed at first, but then realized to her horror that her own routes spelled out "Life is not fair". Raym!
 ond was
 next to figure out a special secret decoder message, his being the all too accurate "I'm losing myself". Tala's attempt to do it spelled out "Chicken" for some reason. Quincy figured it was a game and was spared any understanding of the occultic weirdness going on. 

About this time, Sherry was told by Pushpinder that she had a phone call on line three. It was Monica Banberry, mysterious McDonald's worker whom had recently disappeared. In a breathy whisper, she told Sherry that Ray Not Raymond was at the subway station on Heartattack and Vine. She also said that she would try and meet her there, but had to lay low because "they" were after her. This would be believed to refer to Cletus and the Sleepers, and now Sherry realized that calling in Cletus was probably a bad idea. Sherry turned to tell the rest the news and soon the Night Shift, accompanied by a suspiciously well-armed Quincy, headed to Raymond's cab. 

A split second after departing the garage ramp, Raymond saw Cletus Crowe's patrol car come screaming out of a street and begin pursuing his vehicle. As "Janie Jones" by the Clash played, we had a short but amusing car chase in which Sherry swapped places with Raymond, narrowly missing a bunch of schoolkids leaving an evening concert. Quincy offered to help them by blowing a pothole in the street behind them. He did this by tossing a live grenade, much to the surprise of everyone, including Cletus. Cletus's car wrecked, and the cabbies had a safe passages to the red light district where Heartattack and Vine lay. Not seeing Monica anywhere, they spotted the entrance to the subway station and a service entrance further up the sidewalk. Well-armed by their own preparation and Quincy's duffel bag full of military-grade arms, they pried up the grate to the service entrance and slunk down an oily-ladder into the subway tunnel's darksome interior. Trevor, meanwhile, stayed back to w!
 atch out
 for trouble. 

Inside the subway tunnel, the cabbies who descended the ladder saw that Ray Not Raymond was giving some kind of spiel about his new drug to a bunch of suspiciously well-dressed men of Asian and Italian descent. As he bragged about the wounderful addiction rate of Carnival, a black man dressed like a 70's pimp entered and began to contradict his statements. Identitifed as "Philly Joe", the fellow pusher told the mob and triad goons that Ray Not Raymond was neglecting to tell them that the Projects had already had exposure to the "wonder drug" and that it was all bad news. It just made crazy people, not realiable customers. Ray Not Raymond responded by shooting Philly Joe in the throat. Then, after the man gurgled on the ground, both kneecaps. Telling his minion Shorty to drag the dying man from view, Ray Not Raymond tried to continue where he had left off to the startled mobsters. They were further startled when yet another gunshot rang out from the shadows where Shorty had t!
 aken
 Philly Joe. 

Philly Joe, the cabbies saw, had pulled a pistol from an ankle holster and managed to gut-shoot Shorty. Giving Philly Joe aid, Sherry and Raymond discovered he was an undercover cop. Quincy meanwhile stirred things up further by tossing yet another grenade toward the platform. He missed by quite a feet few, and the explosion was enough to convince the mobsters to get up and start to panic. Ray Not Raymond, likewise, decided to get the Hell out of there. Monica and Trevor appeared shortly after the explosion, the former brandishing her Glock 17 and shouting for the mobsters to kindly drop their weapons and give up (only in more colorful terms). Realizing they weren't their quarry, Monica and Trevor let the would be Carnival distributors flee the scene, leaving them to smash up the vials of Carnival. Trevor noted that he cut his finger on a vial, but he ignored it until the drug started to kick in. He began to see multiple visions at the same time, each related somehow to the !
 possible,
 impossible, likely, and unlikely choices he would make. In addition to making him a little loopy, Carnival ironically told him where Ray Not Raymond was and the likely outcome of various actions. 

As this was going on, Sherry and Tala had gotten Philly Joe stable and out of the subway tunnel, calling 911 to let them know there was an officer down. Raymond and Quincy pursued Ray Not Raymond into the black tunnels, the doppleganger of Raymond taunting him. Eventually, all five of the PCs and Monica cornered Ray Not Raymond, who injected himself with some Narco-Alchemist concoction that made him seemingly invincable. After trying to use Monica as a human shield, he got peppered by Quncy's AK-47 and Sherry's .38. Seemingly incapable of feeling pain, the final shot came from Raymond's gun, appropriately enough. As his Carnival-laced visions told Trevor would happen, Raymond slumped to the ground after Ray Not Raymond died. As Raymond fell down, he felt himself returning to Cherry's billiard's hall. This time, though, it wasn't on fire and was in fact full of patrons, including the cabbies from Sunshine Cab. He found himself standing up from an apparent fall from a barstool!
 , the
 events with the Cab Company like a weird dream he had while unconscious. The bartender was revealed to be Pete Reed, and the two shared a moment of deja vu...

Back in the real world, the cabbies had been waiting for Raymond to come out of his coma, all gathered at the hospital (yet again). As they expected news, a shocked looking nurse came out of his room and told them he was "gone". When asked what that meant, she said he simply disappeared after mumbling something about getting a beer. Saying she would now seek some sedatives for herself, the stunned nurse walked off, leaving the cabbies similarly perplexed. 

As Heartattack and Vine played over the end credits, we saw the cabbies preparing in their own ways for Marvin and Burt's funerals. Trevor dropped some cards onto Marvin's casket, Tala played some with Spot, Sherry sat mournfully at Marvin's spotless typewriter and read an acceptance letter for a story he'd sent to the New York Times, and Quincy "borrowed" a wreath from Marvin's grave to put on Burt's lonelier one. We then saw Raymond get up from the bar and leave the door from Cherry's to the time he'd been snatched from, having now been granted five years to catch up with the Cab Company...



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