You take a deep breath, steady yourself, and think. Hands cuffed to your feet, stuck in the back of a car. Don't know where you're going, can't see out of the car, can't see inside the trunk, don't know how long the ride will last or what will happen when it's over.
Reasonably, you can't do much of anything while in the cuffs. You've never picked a lock before, and you've never been cuffed before. But you have, on one memorable occasion, gotten your finger stuck in the hole where a doorknob should be – you have no excuse, save that you thought it was a good idea at the time. After a good deal of laughing, your 'tutors' applied copious amounts of margarine, and you managed to get free. The same principle should – could – apply to handcuffs. You don't have access to margarine, butter, or oil of any kind.
So you have to think outside the box. When you have a tight shoe, how do you fit your foot in, assuming it doesn't have laces? Leverage, and also – socks. Your socks aren't particularly fancy, they're not marketed as 'frictionless', but they do make it easier to slip into tight shoes.
It takes some wiggling, and you elbow yourself in the gut, but you eventually manage to get a shoe off, and then pull your sock off. It takes some more wiggling to get the sock onto your right hand, and then you slip it under the cuffs. (Automatically successful, roll for how easy it is, dexterity:
5+1=6, 19+1=20). It takes some pulling, and it's made more awkward because both your hands are cuffed, but eventually your dominant hand is free, although it does ache a bit. You've heard of some people dislocating their thumbs to get free of cuffs, though, so this is infinitely preferable. Getting your left hand free is easy – you've done it before, and you already have one hand free.
You still have cuffs on your feet, but there's little that you can do about that for now, and they won't stop you from running if you have to. After replacing your sock and shoe – because you might have to run – you look for lines. Some are thicker, some thinner – more force, less force. You notice that there's symmetry – exactly the same distribution of lines at either end of the trunk. You give the one on the left a light kick experimentally, and then give it a heavier one. You kick at it a few more times, hurting your leg in the process, but eventually (First kick -
2+5=7, second kick
1+5=6 okay maybe we are cursed) you hurt your leg even more. Youch.
Instead, you follow another line, the line is relatively thick – it'd be possible to break whatever's there, but difficult. You reach out with your hand, and feel – a handle. Ideally, this is an emergency release for the trunk. You're not sure what else it could be. But you do know that if you pull this handle, there will be no alternative – you'll have to get to safety, or deal with the consequences. You pull the handle, and (DC: 7, result:
2+5 = 7) the trunk creaks open.
You allow yourself a quick look before booking it, and you see: (roll is a few posts up) a police car. You make eye contact with the shocked-looking officer behind the wheel. (How do they react: 1d20 +10(training, experience)=
4+10=14) The driver keeps his siren off, his partner operates the radio and motions for you to stay put for now. You note that the officer behind the wheel has a mutation – an ant-eater's nose – and decide that as they're not working with your assailants, and that you don't want to deal with jumping out of a moving vehicle, you'll stay put for now.
(Luck roll, DC:15 – roll:
welp) Luckily, despite driving with an open trunk and being tailed by the police, the Creature Rejection Clansmen don't notice anything wrong, and dutifully stop at a red light. You exit the car, and then you
[] go into the police car – the officers within are gesturing at you frantically.
[] start running. You're in a town, no skyscrapers so not a city, and not a town you recognize, but it's better than a stretch of open road.
[] Write-in (subject to veto)
AN:
I keep expecting an update to be long, and then it ends up being short... The cuffs - left hand was cuffed to right foot, right hand cuffed to left foot.
To clear up something about the rolls - I rolled 100d20s on orokos
and I got over 1000, which is fairly balanced, so that + the Lucky d20 means that I'll stick with orokos
for now. Kicking out the tail light – most modern cars can't have the tail light kicked out like that, sadly. Getting 2 high rolls would have made it, but. Yeah. However: by law, in America at least, all new cars have to have an emergency release built into the trunk. Now, this is Japan, but it's Japan ~200 years in the future, with a rebuilt society partially based on the post-Quirk system first used in, I believe, Rhode Island. Definitely somewhere in the US. So in Japan 200 years in the future, with a large American influence? They have the in-built release. There was a dice roll for it, but the only failure scenario was a nat 1. Which almost happened, and is why I then tested orokos with 100d20s. Figuring out whether or not something was wrong with orokos took more time than actually writing the update lmao.
Voting -- if you want to go legit, now's quite possible the best time. Going with the police is guaranteed safety, and you absolutely haven't committed a big enough crime/accrued a large enough villainous rep to be treated with anything other than kiddie gloves. If chosen there'll be more votes in the next update. How much to disclose, etc. There's a chance of failure if you try to run, but it's not guaranteed. If you succeed at running away, there will be a search out for you no matter what.
