#spray and pray

[novelnewscap]

Key Art

Thank you to the fantastic @gh0ulunatic for their contribution to the soon to be coming (and totally free!) game Spray and Pray: Recorps Corp.

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[forensicated]

Smiffina Episodes: Gun Runner Part 4 -Spray And Pray (4/5)

Max and Terry are in place to watch the workshop where Smithy will be recommissioning the guns as part of his undercover job. However they have to set up the cameras first. One appears to be faulty but they don't have much time as Cutler and Smithy are on the way back.

Just in time the expert manages to make the sound and vision clear and he and Max. It's very tight and they can't drive away without being seen, so Max has to cover and pretend to be a security camera salesman. "We're in the area today offering top of the range security monitoring." Mwahaha. He gets away with it and leaves.

Neil and Heaton update/remind us uniform on what Smithy has found out so far. Cutler has gotten his hands on pistols and Mach 10's and wants to sell them to the street gangs. As long as he gets his money he doesn't care whose hands they fall into.

Wallace arrives with Tommy Rose, an enforcer for the SE1 Gang, to the workshop.Rose is returning a gun he leased - £200 to rent it. £500 if it's been fired. Wallace suggests he's heard that "Jay" got shot. Rose threatens Wallace who seems intimidated. Smithy has to tell Wallace to stop playing with the gun and takes it to look it over. On inspection, Smithy agrees that it's been fired. Rose tries to make out it hasn't and Smithy squares up to him as Cutler arrives and tells them to calm down. Faced with Smithy and Cutler, Rose stumps up the full £500 and then takes Cutler for a private chat about meeting up with a Bob Gatting, the SE1 Boss. Smithy counts the money and hands it to Wallace, asking him to try find out when the guns might be arriving. With Wallace putting the money in the safe, Smithy shows the gun Rose brought back to the CCTV. Terry and Max mutter about it having to come in for forensics as they watch.

Neil asks Kezia to trawl MET records for gun crimes in the last 24 hours and to get search CRIMINT for anyone called Jay or similar who could have dealings with the SE1 gang. Cutler is splitting the risk to himself, using the SE1's funds and muscle in the deal.

Stevie attends the workshop to meet up with Smithy and to get the gun. She kisses his cheek in greeting but he tells her no one is around. Smithy says she can have the gun but they have to get it back sharpish. The door starts rattling Stevie grabs Smithy and kisses him as cover when Wallace appears. Wallace makes a cheeky search of Stevie and she complies to show she has nothing to hide. Stevie is cheeky and forward, teasing Wallace on his soft touch. Smithy joins in to help the banter distract him and stop him checking her bag (seriously - you'd think he'd check the bag more than Stevie!) and discovering the gun and envelope the cash arrived in from Rose. He winds him up about not having a girlfriend. "See you later, darlin'." she calls back as she leaves. "And you, Smithy."

Callum tells Neil that they've found a possible scene of the shooting with blood, 2 case shells, a bullet and drag and tyre marks at a building site on Barton St's patch. A neighbour reported hearing two bangs at 2.15am too but thought it was kids and firework.

Cutler arrives and pays Smithy for his time and tells him to take the afternoon off. Smithy mentions taking Stevie away that weekend as a way of trying to find more information out about deliveries and Cutler tells him he can't as they're in the middle of a deal. Smithy says he's only doing bits and pieces at the moment and it's not worth waiting round - unless the shooters are arriving that weekend. Cutler admits he's not sure. Smithy uses that to question him about who is really running the show. He admits that they're using SE1 as insurance. Cutler threatens Smithy's life if he 'has to terminate his employment' and tells him he'll give him a time and place when he's ready and that the guns are in London and there's a meeting that night about it.

There's no one in London hospitals with a bullet wound that fits and noone has been linked to be 'Jay' through the police intelligence at the moment. Eventually the blood comes back to a Sean Seaton. They tell his wife they're searching for him, she gives them the numbers of likely friends who might know where he is. The phone is still moving - or someone else has his phone. Jo rings it when it stops and they track it to the back of a skip lorry. Jo has a look inside and teases Roger over a plunger... and then finds Seaton's body.

Stevie tells Smithy that Max is pressing to find out the time of the delivery. He tells her he's been trying but Cutler won't talk. The gun isn't back from forensics yet. Smithy asks her to arrange a meeting with Max. At the Workshop, Cutler's supplier "Demitri" turns up. He's ready to do the deal whenever they are. Max tells Smithy this when they meet and that the gun still isn't back as it's been linked to a likely murder and they'll just have to hope it's not asked for. Smithy is NOT happy - understandably!

Smithy meets up with Cutler, Bob Gatting and Tommy Rose at The Boat Inn. Gatting asks Smithy what brought him into being an armourer. "I used to be in the army." Cutler reassures him Smithy is trustworthy and explains he got him out without being caught by the police the other week (at the football game). They toast to the job.

Now Seaton's body has been found, forensics are holding the gun as key evidence in a murder trial. Poor Smithy! The driver picked the skip up from the building site and had no idea about the body. There's a mobile message from a man who calls himself Jay. It says 'they need to sit down and sort things'. Jay is George Jacobs and Sean took the wrap for him fencing goods for the SE1 crew. He's shocked Seaton has died but isn't surprised. He claims Sean had a habit of finding trouble and was in a state when he last saw him 2 days ago because 'someone was squeezing him for money'. He admits leaving a message that morning and says he hasn't seen Julie - Sean's wife - for months. He agrees to come down to the station but goes to phone his lawyer first. As he does, Kezia tells Neil that Sean's wife said she didn't know anyone called Jay.

Wallace helps Smithy cleaning out gun barrels. As they chat, Smithy tells Wallace he was in the army for 5 years and did a couple of tours in Northern Ireland after being in Sunday Cadets as a kid. Wallace says he wanted to join the army and was in the cadets too. He admits Cutler is his uncle and he offered him more money to work for him than the army would pay. Cutler appears and sends Wallace off to clean his windscreen again so he can talk about the guns with Smithy. They're meeting the next day and Demitri will be bringing a sample of the mach 10's so Smithy is needed to check it before they pay. Cutler doesn't know when so sends Smithy home to rest.

Forensics have found fingerprints inside the gun and matched them to George Jacobs. However if they reveal this to Jacob's solicitor then they'll know they have the gun and put Smithy at risk. They also can't give it back to Smithy incase Cutler destroys it. Kezia has found pictures on Sean's phone of his wife with Jacobs. Jacob's alibi is that he was at a club at the time of the murder but the keyholder of the club is proving impossible to get hold of. Neil suggests he brings up the potential affair to show his lie and use that to keep and question him instead. Jacob's insists he isn't having an affair with Sean's wife and that he'll be on the CCTV of the club when the murder was supposed to have happened. He spots Julie when he's being returned to his cell and they lock eyes but neither say a word.

Smithy worries if word gets out Jacob's has been arrested for murder, Cutler will want the gun destroyed. Stevie suggests subbing it for a different gun but Smithy says it won't work because it's too distinctive and besides, Max promised him he was getting it sorted. He leaves to meet Cutler and Gatting with a warning to tell Max to get it sorted or he is stuffed.

Heaton says he's going to pull Smithy out and keep the gun for the murder case. Max worries that they're so close to seizing a huge amount of arms and suggests returning the gun but reclaiming it in a stop and search if Smithy can plant the gun. Gina thinks it's risky and worries for Smithy but says Callum can manage it. If it works they'll keep Smithy in but if not they'll have to pull Smithy out.

Smithy's concerns come home to roost as Cutler finds out that Jay has been arrested. He and Bob want the gun to disappear. Smithy goes to the loo and tells Max they have minutes to get the gun in place or it's all over. Max tells him Stevie is already at the workshop and is putting the gun back. All he has to do is plant it with Wallace and disappear whilst Callum and Roger pull him over. Stevie struggles opening the safe. A few minutes later, Smithy opens it with Wallace right behind him, praying the entire time that it's in there.

Smithy causes a delay by dropping a box of bullets and asking Wallace to pick them up and box 50 for him to deliver. The camera pans to reveal Stevie crouched behind some boxes. Smithy goes outside and hides the gun in the glovebox of Wallace's car and then smashes the brake light. Smithy goes to fake a delivery whilst Callum and Roger stop Wallace and question him about the broken brake light. They do an index check and Roger asks him if he has any documents. Wallace doesn't know and Roger goes to look - 'finding' the gun in the glovebox. He tries to run away but Callum rugby tackles him and brings him down, arresting him.

Julie's reaction to finding out her husband has died is not very believable. It seems he left the club at 1.15am and was dead within the next hour. Now Kieran Wallace has been arrested, the gun is brought into the interview where he's told his fingerprints are on it. Neil says he has enough to charge him but the solicitor produces the CCTV they'd been struggling to obtain showing Jay at the club as he'd said. They check the neighbour again to see if she is really sure that the time was 2.15am. They haven't questioned Julie about lying about knowing Jay because 'she was too upset about Sean'. She admits she and Jay were having an affair and claims things were over with her husband. Her husband however wouldn't accept it. Neil tells her that there are Jay's fingerprints on the gun and she stammers that it's her fault. Kezia tells her that Sean mistreating her and making her fall in love with another man doesn't make his death her fault. She misses the fact that it DOES make it her fault if she's the one who shot him though! And yep. She is. She shot him in self defence when he tried to kill her. Jay came and put the body int he skip before taking her home again. Neil arrests her for the murder as she admits that she took the gun with the idea of using it.

Max and Terry watch Smithy and Cutler rowing about Wallace getting arrested on the CCTV. Smithy tells him he doesn't know why he was arrested - he just came out of the pub to see him with police. "You left the gun with Wallace? That muppet?!*" He growls at Smithy. He then tells him has to square the gun getting found with Gatting because Jay is part of the SE1 crew. Smithy scoffs and says he doesn't, after all he's the one putting it on the line as Cutler's suppliers could be 'rip and run merchants' who dump him in a ditch somewhere. Cutler pulls a gun on Smithy and warns him to toe the line, not question him and that he warned him already people do not walk away from him - especially not when involved in something as dangerous as this. "So what? You're going to shoot me. So? Shoot me." He growls back. THIS FUCKING MAN! I wish they'd stop doing that 😂 Cutler eventually lowers the gun and walks off. Smithy shouts that he's sick of getting half the story and turns and walks out, telling him to ring him when he's ready to deal properly.

Max finally releases a breath and tells Terry to arrange a meeting with Smithy because they're too close for it to explode now. Smithy arrives to meet Stevie and Max soon after and he admits he doesn't know if he can hack it any longer because he can feel his entire life running down the back of his neck when he's with Cutler. Stevie and Max offer him the chance to walk away if it's become too much. Max reassures him that he's playing a blinder and that they're a team. He reminds him that he's doing it for the Carly Samuel's of the world and tells him that he - Max - is doing it because in CO19 one of his colleagues was murdered by a mach10 held by a kid. Smithy assures them both he's still in - whatever it takes. He pulls his hood up, gets out the car and walks off.

*This is a strong area where they were let down by having lots of different writers on multipart stories, This episodes Wallace is quite likeable, sympathetic and behaves like a teenage boy who loves his mum (he was going to be heading to his mums birthday party after the gun drop off) lead astray from the path of good - the army - by his big bad uncle who treats him like a loser. He's repeatedly (sometimes the same task several times in the same day) made to do menial tasks like washing his car windscreen just to get rid of him so the real men can talk. He's easily intimidated - like he was by Rose earlier and easily embarrassed - Smithy saying to Stevie that the closest Kieran'd gotten to sex was having his pocket picked when he was searching her to distract him and make him want to get Stevie away quicker so he didn't check her handbag. He's nothing like this big feared gangster with a bad history that he was made out to be in the first set up!

[princessheatherblossom]

Harley missed you...but her aim is getting better! :D

[sugas6thtooth]

[vaguely-concerned]

why did my brain just substitute 'head over heels' with 'tits over pussy (in love with someone)'. living in here is a nightmare

[screamingay]

despaired for a minute that i didn't have toffee bits to make cookies with but then i remembered that i literally have a candy thermometer. and toffee is just sugar and butter. so guess who made toffee!!!!!!

[gwyoi]

guys there’s so many ants in my apartment I didn’t even realize. spiders and pedes I KNOW you bitches are here and the only reason I tolerate it is because you eat the other ones. DO YOUR JOB!!!!!

[intern-seraph]

WIP choice awards

got tagged by @opaleyedprince so it's time to v-v-v-vote!!

RULES: make a 24-hour poll with (the names of) your wips, let it run, then write one sentence for every vote the winner received! here are your options (but only ONE can be my next top wip)

most of these are ones i've shown extensive wips for on here and others i may have only mentioned on my twts but all of them are eligible to become THE NEXT! TOP! WIP!

ok time for the part of tag games i'm the worst at (tagging)

TAG! YOU'RE IT!

@twstjam @nemothesurvivor @elfyourmother @jenovahh @saint-garden

and anyone who wants 2 do this as well! (if u do not write. may i suggest doing sth like adding a line or filling in a color or w/e applies 2 ur work i think it'd be funny)

[deepest-chambers-of-the-heart]

it's always crazy that my first thought about the end of the world or escaping or having to flee is: god i hope i die

does that make me a coward? i don't see myself living through fleeing if an earthquake collapses our house or something just please end it

being told everything is weird and unprecedented and that they're preparing for something just please i don't want to live through another global catastrophic event just let me die man

with my health problems already it's a struggle enough to get up and live i can't imagine bejng in a real crisis if my body is already taking this as a sign im going tk die

do i like how reactive i feel when ppl talk about the possible catastrophe of earthquakes or eclipses or preparing for some unknown something to happen? no. i don't like the fear and the immediate "i need to kill myself or ill suffer unknown tragedies" maybe ive read too much apocalypse fiction where the world ends and factions split and people run rampid

because i know im not built to survive it. im not and i cant. i don't want to live in fear again by the powers over me I don't want to be subject to cruelty and horror

[novelnewscap]

What IS Recorps Corp

Well it's a soon-to-be free game that I don't have the energy to be professional about, nor the budget to pay someone to be professional about. Here's a summary, though.

(image transcription:)

The Spray and Pray: Recorps Corp Roleplaying Game is a means of telling exciting stories cooperatively. This game is not about noble souls helping protect their shining kingdom, it’s not about sleuthing for treasures in a long-lost tomb. There is no glory in what these characters will take part of, but there is pride to be taken in an honest day’s work. The characters in this game are not nice people. They may have strong personal friendships, especially among each other, but that does not change the fact. It is clear to many people that your line of work is, at best, stooges for the powerful industrial forces in your city, and more often a bunch of underregulated cowboys, cowgirls and cowthems who put everyone in danger with their reckless abandon and penchant for destruction. Much of the training media the characters have consumed emphasizes that there is nothing to be ashamed of, a key sign that there is something to be ashamed of. The Spray and Pray: Recorps Corp Roleplaying Game encourages players to indulge in the kinds of fantasies and simulated violences against supernatural fauna which would make their grandmother clutch their pearls. Player characters will gouge the eyes out of struggling Naga, tear the bastard’s ribs apart while crushing a dancing pixie underfoot. The pay is great, the thrills are high, and nothing enhances the rush like knowing nobody does it better. How can it be wrong when it feels so right to do?)

[randomnameless]

Thoughts on the Eastern church?

Well...

thanks to a certain paralogue, we know what some people of the Alliance think mercenaries are used for :

Lorenz here is describing the job Knights should have (at least the knights from Faerghus and the Church do), but says mercenaries were hired for that job.

So, in the Alliance, at least for Nopes, it's perfectly acceptable for a noble to rely on hired swords, aka people who are in for the money, than to rely on a permanent force of knights.

And it's the same thing with the Eastern Church, they have no knights - and pride themselves on not having any permanent "military" force - and rely on a local noble (Nilsson? I forgot)'s troops to protect them when things are going wrong...

Except when that local nobles doesn't send them his knights, so they have to cry at the Central Church to please send the Knights of Seiros to help them protect their cities/people.

Bar their hypocrisy, there is also the... lack of presence in everyday/general Alliance/Federation life, like, in Nopes, apparently, no one in the Federation gives a fuck that their King wants to slaughter the Archbishop for "reasons" and no one seems to have any attachment to the Central Church or the Church in general, FE16 Lorenz reminds Billy that in the Alliance, Nobles only pay lip service to the Church.

So... what is their role? They're not spreading the faith or even making sure the randoms who parrot it get the right "version" of said faith, they do not protect their people/the faithful, and no one apparently gives a fuck about the Church of Seiros in the Alliance (if siding with the Empire and killing its Archbishop is any indication)...

At least they didn't try to kill the Archbishop and aren't as xenophobic as the Western Church members, so they won on that level.

Bar that, they're a pretty much souless organisation - even with Fodlan's standards that doesn't bother giving a fig about its own worldbuilding or lore/world elements : but I think we get a pretty picture in GW, when apparently the Bishop of the Eastern Church wanted to, uh, celebrate Clout's coronation to "ease the people" - who are later revealed not to give a fuck about the CoS - so what was even the point?

Is he representing his entire Church Branch, doing something useless, rather, pretending to have some importance when he has none? And banking on said "pretend importance" to have a sway on the new leader of the country? IDK.

The Eastern Church doesn't have anything meaningful to write about - bar, again, their hypocrisy - but imo, and maybe it's more hc than canon at that point, the Eastern Church is a church branch that forgot why it exists or what is its purpose (spread the faith or at least make sure it's not deliberatly misinterpreted/used by people who dgaf about it, provide relief/support/help to people, etc).

[overdevelopedglasses]

Love it when doctors tell you that you have something that you had known for your whole life.

Yes, doc, I do in fact have severe allergies, but thanks for letting me know!

[tye-wig-music]

oh okay so the game is just completely different to how I’ve been playing it, cool

[gravityflops]

update i bought two heads for faceup & wigmaking practice

[oddphotos362]

[curionightshade]

my basil plant got infested with spider mites fuck my stupid yuri life