Pre-Fundraiser: the strut-brace, the Frankenstein walk, and the gunslinger hush

texture · 20 Nov YDAU

• When: 20 November YDAU, the locker room immediately before the Fundraiser exhibition against the Quebec junior squads
• What: Loach et al. outfit Schacht with a complex knee-brace of jointed aluminum struts with a coin-sized ventilation hole over the kneecap, and Schacht lumbers between the stalls and lockers, arms straight out, weight on his heels, hamming it: the rebuilt man playing the rebuilt monster. His knee-wrap takes over ten minutes against Hal's four. Then, the book's closing note on him, he enters a stall and drives the latch home with the purposeful sound that stills the whole room — the standing trait (event 7) performed one last time, to a gunslinger-enters-saloon hush.