Snakes and Ladders
| Snakes and Ladders | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Issue no.2 | |||||
| Mission date | 10 April 2081 | ||||
| Publication date | 03/17/2024 3:02 PM | ||||
| Members | Laddergirl General Hiss The Merchant Agent 69 Arthur Quinn Chance Benjamin Dover-Cao | ||||
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Snakes and Ladders is the second issue in PENTANARCHY line. Our starlets investigate the life of a missing member of Sam Aurelius’s old mob, The Clovers, to find traces of the missing vigilante Spades, who they’ve been asked to kidnap and return to base. Their investigation leads them to a bank being robbed by The Clovers, with the leader of the heist, Crybaby, almost drowning them and the civilians, who they manage to free. Spades shows up as the missing Clovers member in an attempt to stop the heist, and is captured by the starlets, who teleport out by storming through a public art gallery with the kidnapped Spades until they can find a space dark enough for Maram’s powers to activate.
Synopsis
Starlets Laddergirl, Agent 69, Arthur Quinn, Benjamin “Benji” Dover-Cao, Chance, General Hiss, and The Merchant arrive at the bridge. They’re instructed on the two mission objectives: Get Spades back on to Project Perihelion, and (preferably) Do not engage with Apopkan police.
Spades was recruited to Project Perihelion, but fled to continue his vigilante work. His mark, Me Myself and I, means he literally is his mark, and can move around and attempt to inhabit any body he can get his mark on. To prevent this, starlets with exposed skin draw on themselves with sharpies, as this blocks him.
After some deliberation and general cross-team bickering, Maram teleports the team to Spades’ last known whereabouts: the Apopkan apartment of a man he seems to have possessed.
As the capes explore the rundown apartment, they discover a few things: it seems to belong to a goon working for The Clovers, an Apopkan mob formerly run by non-missiongoing starlet Sam “Midas” Aurelius—though it’s recently changed management. The goon, named Mike, seems like he was supposed to be involved in a soon-to-occur bank robbery taking place that day, but the starlets can’t tell what bank, given they can’t get access to Mike’s laptop. Mike also seems to have frequented a place called Sonny’s Diner, and had possible romantic involvements with a woman named Amanda.
In their search, Agent 69 discovers a plastic bag with $3000 in Mike’s toilet tank. Hiss steals it from him, and Arthur steals it from him—and though Hiss steals it back, Arthur starts paying attention to it for the rest of the mission.
The cops, alerted by Spades’ previous body who woke up here, begin to close in on his apartment. The team uses the fire escape to exit onto the roof, narrowly avoiding a run-in with the police—Agent 69 nearly falls in the chaos, but Laddergirl saves him. While on the roof, Benji attempts to use his mark, Heart of The Cards, to guess Mike’s laptop password and fails, seeming physically pained afterwards. They’re locked out of Mike’s laptop for the next hour. To continue their search, the starlets head to Sonny’s Diner.
At the diner, the starlets discover the waitress Amanda, as well as a gruff older woman working the bar. General Hiss uses his mark, Serpent Tongued, to control and pry information out of both of them—though the process seems to start wearing him down. Agent 69 aids Hiss to prevent Amanda from calling the police. They’re able to find out when the robbery will take place, and some details about where it might be. Unfortunately, Hiss’s chaotic behavior causes a dinergoing family to leave and call the police anyway.
Benji manages to figure out Mike’s laptop password, but they can’t put it in yet given the whole “locked out” situation, and the cops start catching up to them, so they instead move to a bowling alley where Mike and his criminal friends frequented.
Benji inputs Mike’s password, discovering a list of possible banks The Clovers might be attempting to rob. Using information they gathered at the diner and the apartment, the team manages to figure out which bank to go to.
The team enters the bank of Apopka — only to discover the robbery is already going on! There’s hostages cowering on the floor and trained gunmen focusing on the starlets, with Mike nowhere to be found. A fight breaks out, with the gunmen shooting the starlets, Hiss commandeering a goon with his mark, Agent 69 appearing to use his mark, [CLASSIFIED], to make another goon drop dead, The Merchant valiantly saving civilians from the shootout, Laddergirl KO’ing people with ladders, and Arthur fucking off to go into the vault and get shot, among other things. Multiple starlets get shot.
Eventually, Spades as Mike shows up to attempt to stop the robbery, forcing the starlets to split their attention between capturing him and fighting the goons. Then another unexpected guest arrives: Crybaby, seemingly the leader of this heist, with the mark Crocodile Tears, letting her summon and control water. She starts flooding the bank, causing problems for everyone. Laddergirl and The Merchant work together to open the bank doors and free the civilians.
Agent 69 takes down Crybaby, and Arthur manages to apprehend Spades in the process, but they can’t get anywhere dark enough for Maram to teleport them back to base. Eventually, the team flees out of a hole in the back of the bank with a furious Spades and Hiss’s unconscious goon in tow, carrying them through a crowded art gallery to get to a broom closet.
They’re ready to go in and turn the lights off, but Arthur refuses to cooperate, demanding that Hiss gave him the $3000 and using Spades as leverage. He gets the money but Laddergirl punches him in the face in the chaos, and Hiss manages to slip $500 out for himself, giving it to the unconscious goon along with a note suggesting he find a new job working for SNAKE. In the broom closet, Agent 69 makes a scary and vague phone call. Unfortunately, Maram is unwilling to bring the goon back to base, but once the lights in the broom closet are off, the team, and Spades, are teleported home safely.
Appearing In 'Snakes and Ladders'
Featured Characters
Supporting Characters
Antagonists
- Spades
- The Clovers
- Mike
Other Characters
- Midas (mentioned)
Locations
Trivia
- Glass dumpsters do not exist in Apopka Lights.
- This is false. Apopka Lights actually invented glass dumpsters, and there are numerous of them around town.
- Well, no.
- This is false. Apopka Lights actually invented glass dumpsters, and there are numerous of them around town.