Sometimes all you need is a second chance. Or third. Or fourth….

In a fairly typical mental institute somewhere in West Virginia, there are a few people who all have one element in common. Drew Vogel thinks her toenails are trying to kill her and has to be restrained to keep her from tearing off the last two. Charles York screams nonstop whenever he sees a dark corner. And a twenty year old girl named Alicia Grant does nothing but draw circles on paper, over and over. Whenever her papers or crayons are taken away, she tries to bite the thief. They usually let her keep the materials.

Compared to these three, the catatonic man in the wheelchair by the window seems almost normal. Truth be told, though, these four patients are the least normal people in the building. Drew, Charles, Alicia, and the catatonic Frederick Mason were all at one time players in the Occult Underground, dukes who made the mistake of poking the tiger and getting the Sleepers on their case. Careful use of Cliomancy, electroshock, and psychoactive drugs took them out of the picture… almost.

Drew and Charles may be a bit too far gone to use their magick (Cliomancy and Plutomancy, respectively), but there are still some dangerous bits of information rattling in their shattered brains. Alicia is even more dangerous, potentially; she’s both an Epideromancer and a Personamancer, and by extension, a madi or whirlpool. If she ever decided to stop drawing circles, the staff could be in for a rough time. But the most dangerous one of all is Fred, since he’s not home.

Literally.

Fred doesn’t like the institute. He hates it. To say he abhors it would be a cosmic understatement: When someone’s revulsion of a place causes their consciousness to vacate their body and form a new physical body somewhere else, they have shot right past abhoring something and into the realm of inventing new words for a feeling. Fred doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s happening to his real body because he’s miles away, in another body formed by his emotional aversion to his surroundings.

In other words, Fred is in two places at once. Furthermore, he doesn’t realize this on a conscious level. Somewhere down inside, he knows what’s going on, but his conscious mind represses it, and probably just as well since his mind is shaky enough as it is.

The Sleepers have noticed that Fred (or Rerun, as he calls himself now) is remarkably good at cheating death and getting out of tight spots. They probably had to, since the first thing Rerun did once he “escaped” for the first time was to hunt down the Sleeper who totalled his mind and got him committed: Psychiatrist Raymond Rosenberg.

To give Dr. Rosenberg Credit, he wasn’t caught off guard. There was a .38 revolver he kept in his desk drawer for just this kind of situation, and he was able to take Rerun down with only three shots. Complications arose when the corpse faded away, and then more complications when police arrived to investigate the firing of shots. Between talking to officials and trying to avoid legal difficulties, Raymond didn’t have enough time to tell his superiors the whole story before Rerun came back and ran the good doctor over with his own car.

The Sleepers sent somebody into the institute to watch “Fred” constantly, and they’ve decided that it can’t be him since he never moves. At the moment, they’re barking up the wrong tree and think it’s the work of some sort of variant Personamancer, but it won’t take them long to figure out the truth the way Rerun’s been behaving lately.

At the moment, Rerun’s goals are in a state of flux. He’s hitch-hiking aimlessly across the United States, but generally heading Westward. He knows vaguely that he wants to get back at the Sleepers, but no long term plans present themselves.

Personality: Fractured and usually dazed. When absorbed in a task, he approaches it single-mindedly and without a trace of humor, but most of the time he has all the mental cohesion of a stoner with a concussion.

Obssession: Rock Climbing. Long before he got into the occult scene, Fred was an avid fan of heights and reaching them. Since then he’s accumulated a lot of mystic and metaphorical information related to mountains.

Wound Points: 70

Rage Stimulus: Beaurocracy. Do this. Don’t do that. Sign here, here, and here. Drop dead, but first get a permit from the Health Department. And don’t even get him started on the Department of Motor Vehicles, or God help you, the IRS.

Fear Stimulus: (Violence) Airplane crashes. For someone who likes heights, Fred/Rerun is strangely reluctant to fly in anything except helicopters.

Noble Stimulus: Fred was always looking out for his little sister; as Rerun, this takes the form of a general concern for anyone of the opposite sex who is younger than he is.

Stats and Skills

Body 70 (Macho Macho Man)
Climbing (General Athletics) 50%, Struggle 50%, Wilderness Survival 35%

Speed 60 (Let’s Go Jogging)
Dodge 45%, Drive 20%, Initiative 55%

Mind 40 (Not All There)
General Education 30%, Notice 20%, Conceal 15%, Hotwire Cars 20%

Soul 70 (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
Charm 15%, Lie 45%, Escape From Reality 70%

Madness Meters

Violence: 4 Hardened, 3 Failed
Unnatural: 5 Hardened, 1 Failed
Helplessness: 2 Hardened, 4 Failed
Isolation: 1 Hardened, 3 Failed
Self: 2 Hardened, 5 Failed

Mental Disorder: Rerun will make an automatic stress check if he sees needles, as they remind him of drug injections. He will also automatically frenzy if anyone calls him crazy; it may be true but it still strikes too close to home.

Escape From Reality: This is Rerun’s key ability, allowing his thought structure, self image, and emotional energy to form a physical body elsewhere in the world. These physical bodies seem perfectly normal on the outside, but are usually not so on the inside; they have the consistency of a nonentity. If a body is damaged, it heals as normal; if destroyed or killed, it dissolves like an Unspeakable Servant. After twenty four hours, Rerun can try to form another body. If his real body, “Fred” in the institution, is killed, then Rerun experiences several stress checks (Violence 6, Self 6, Unnatural 8) and realizes the next time he dies, it’s for good. On the other hand, if Rerun is killed and then Fred is killed before another body can be made, there’s a 50% chance that another body will end up forming anyway. The last body will not fade away when killed and will appear perfectly normal if examined medically, alive or dead.

Possessions: Some old threadbare clothes and usually a stick of some kind. Sometimes he’ll have a pack of cigarettes (unfiltered).