Episode 23:The Pint Size Job The Six Little Romulans Job, Part Two - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

9 Moskva

The afternoon of the 7th, you met with Svetlana, came back and briefed the team, and agreed to take both her job and the insurance job. On the 8th, you hacked Sekushina Meido, got Paragon mind-controlled, and formulated a plan to get a handprint and DNA from Boozer. Carbide finished the sampling glove.

It’s the 9th, since the evening of the 8th was spend trying to deal with Neko Maid Paragon. Your contacts reported nobody in the pubs.

The Team decides to wake Paragon up, since they know Boozer isn’t going to be at his office tonight. She’ll get into his system and plant the other half of the frame. Star reluctantly uses the code word on Paragon – her shoes are all in order! They debate turning her back on to get onto the job, and off once she’s inside, but decide that Star will coach her with the code words and responses for her conditioning, and keep her herself.

Carbide, Vir, and Star each pick one of the six possible pubs that Boozer will go to tonight, leaving the rest to pairs of Sailor Scouts to cover. Carbide takes the Tin Tabby, Star goes to the Violet Heart, Vir goes to the Ostrich and Rye.

They track down Boozer’s office location: out of his apartment in a medium-crappy neighborhood. Carbide is almost sorry for him, but, he’s dealing with ConBrands, so he’s going to get hit.

Paragon makes a package: a virus of just the executable to plant the forged emails, trash, receipts, invoices, artfully half-deleted files, bogus search history. The plan is to just dump it into his system, nothing fancy. She totally gets clocked coming and going from Boozer’s. But even if a neighbor mentions her description to Boozer, there’s no connection to the insurance people: if caught, will just make Boozer mad at Ebit that his sysadmin hit him.

Carbide mildly regrets picking that pub name blindly off the list: it’s a fairly raucous orgy. He tries to find a booth to scope out the main room and keep an eye on the door. A trio makes out on the other side of the booth. He nurses his beer and ignores them.

The Ostrich and Rye is a sedate worker’s bar. Vir orders something with rye? Same for Shan. Shan is way too cool for this place, an old people’s bar. Vir clutches Eely. Vir tells Shan of their plan to get out to Odaiba Island to talk to the Betazoids. Shan doesn’t care, and thinks it’s weird Vir wants to do that. Maybe she’ll go along for emotional support if Vir is determined to find out more about their father. WHO CARES ABOUT THAT JERK.

The Violet Heart is a busy goth bar. Star rolls on up to the bar and orders something not quite grain alcohol, but something that indicates no fear of death. Vika, the bartender, takes a liking to her right off, and asks why she’s here. Star offers the truth or a cool lie, she asks for the lie.

“I’m here for the guy who’s trying to shake you down.”

“Tell me you’ll come back and tell me the story, and drinks are on me tonight.”

Bobby Styles calls from the Coach and Loaf: everything’s fine tonight. K’sassisbus grabs the Agent and tells her they’re guarding Bobby.

Star talks Vika into doing a night for the Gorn: maybe a cute fairy goth event, as the Gorn’s cosplay runs really pink.

Sailor Uranus calls from the Ostrich and Rye: Boozer’s here! Mars almost went after him: she’s never going to be allowed free tequila again. Uranus restrained her, and they’re keeping watch.

Star heads over, and tries to drunkenly-seduce Boozer as he and his goons are bracing the bartender, Monte. He’s trying to warn her off of them, but she gets to him, and leads him out onto the dance floor. He leaves the bracing the bartender to his mooks. She gets lots of handholds in for impressions. Her jacket’s so shiny they can lift prints off that too. She Agents the team she’s got what they need, and come start a bar fight.

Hey Gorn buddies! They’ll be there in 15 minutes.

At the turn of the song she’ll insist he buy her a drink, full draped on him, so it’s awkward for him to be intimidating, since he’s got a 16 year old girl on him. Monte gives him an emergency hand signal, she signals back ok.

The Gorn arrive, and she signals them in Gorn Sign Language to start a distraction bar fight, and rough Boozer up but keep him mostly intact. The Twirly cosplayer picks Boozer up and uses him as a baseball bat to start a fight.

Star to Monte: “I’m really sorry but I promise it was worth it.” She drops NB300 on the bar.

Vir wraps the evening, meets Star and goes home with her. Shan was disgusted by the old-people bar and left on her own.

Star presents herself down in the basement. “Just swab pretty much anywhere” and then showers for a year.

Carbide and Paragon work on incorporating the bio-material and prints into the forgery. They don’t go with the thumbprint idea, but a bit of DNA and a tiny hair right along a seam.

They’ve got two days until the reception. Boozer will be battered but functional. He can’t go anywhere else, so this could be his heist planning and forging time. They mock up a selfie with one of the forgeries in a private file.

Svetlana checks back in. She’ll review the braindance with the team to make the heist plan. Vir still doesn’t trust her. Carbide: You can’t trust amateur criminals. Pros have reputations to protect and standards. Vir’s still not convinced.

They find an abandoned warehouse near Tentacle Temple to meet with Svetlana. “They’re the crime warehouses.” Vir talks to Svetlana about Betazoids. She’s known some engaged in “social engineering for alternative employment reasons.” She’s worked for Tia Kader before. Too bad about the middle kid, but after his trauma, maybe he’ll come back to the fold. Svetlana will hook her up with contacts. Vir just wants to hang out and ask around about people who were into cults.

Carbide doesn’t want to cross the streams to bring Tiffany in to negotiate with Svetlana. “Let’s not AGAIN bite off more than we can chew: the last time we went for the fun option we had to replace a perfectly good bakery.”

“Liz Jeckle” shows up by the Sekushina Meido van in the parking structure for orientation. She’s the only one who says “Ma’am,” because “her conditioning is so fresh.” She’s on the setup-takedown team, and will sit out the event in the van.

Using her internal agent, Paragon’s texting details about the layout. Her secondary objective is catching the access point. It’s in the monitor room. In the bathroom, she can detect the access, but needs to be in the room itself or directly outside: it’s insulated.

Physical security is doing fixed rounds. She tries to scope out the guards to exploit the gap. There’s flower arrangements at reception, part of their setup work. A couple times she’ll go into the bathroom to get water for the flowers, getting the guards used to her movement. She’s got a window of a couple minutes, and decides to make her run. Immediately as she enters the network, she’s spotted by a daemon, which triggers security responses. She jacks out.

The spider drones and micro-drone cloud converge on the server room. The guards evacuate the place and run a full search while the catering supervisor interrogates her team. Paragon doesn’t draw any suspicion.

Tiffany and Star arrive by limo. The parking structure holds the Sekushina Meido van, other limos of varying degrees of excessive opulence – and something else. If midnight were turned into a machine and made really, really sexy, that’d be the motorbike tucked inside the entry way.

Tiffany is in awe: “It’s a Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa 3rd Gen – but custom! “I hope whoever this belongs to has the enhancements to really cut loose with her – I couldn’t. You need full virtuality, and past 500 kph, bone lacing and an overclocked Neuralink – she can outpace human reaction times. You could maybe handle her – she’s beyond me.”

Star’s fingertips on Tiffany’s wrist. “I’ll figure out who owns it so you can buy it off of them.” She tells Tiffany she can’t handle the bike either: they put her back just the way she ways she was, as a normal 16 year old girl. Thinking of Twirly, she tells Tiffany she does know somebody who could handle it.

Carbide is cooing in group chat. Star interrupts: “Carbide! Shut your mouth ! Paragon! Tiffany wants it: figure out where it came from!” Paragon is bored in the van, so she starts looking for bike shops that can do custom work. She totally gets the one shop that does that level of custom work, but can’t get to a client list.

Star suggests social media posts. Carbide says the owner will make it low key but clear they’ve got the level of augmentations to handle it. Won’t be much overlap between high end guest list and that level of augmentation. Carbide tells her exactly what to look for in augmentations, down to brands and models.

Masane Tsukayama, their host, is around, but currently engrossed up on the balcony.

Inside, as Star and Tiffany wander through the crowd, Vanta Black calls out, without raising her voice, but in a tone that carries over all the conversation in the room, “Oshin Kazue, darling! You’re looking well! I can hardly wait until our next luncheon. And Wen-Yi sends his warmest regards, of course.”

Yes, everybody saw and heard that.

She glides over, takes Star’s hands, kisses both cheeks. She leans in to nuzzle her ear. “As a gesture of good faith, the twins over there in the glasses, you know as the Rackhams. They’re still working with Jie in her new identity.” She steps back.

“But I’m being so rude in distracting you from your lovely date! Do introduce us!”

“Miss Nguyen, of course! It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Tiffany: “By any chance, is that sexy beast in the parking lot yours?”

“My dear, any sexy beast I want is mine. Would you like me to take you for a ride sometime?”

And that’s Tiffany bluescreened. Star realizes Vanta just threw a flashbang to give her cover for dealing with the Rackhams.

She looks over and see Tsukayama talking to two quite identical looking rather beautiful, curvy women of mixed ethnicity. One has short gray hair, the other shoulder-length black hair. He’s quite thoroughly pissed, and saying something to them that’s got the long-haired one just cringing.

Tsukayama turns and walks off, in Star’s general direction, but hasn’t clocked her yet. The gray-haired woman has, though, and mouths at her,“Truce! Let’s talk!”

Star lays her hand on Tiff’any’s wrist again. “I’m going to step away, you two should chat” and withdraws.

She raises an eyebrow at them and head-gestures maybe. Then clearly immediately looks away, like doing the courtesy of not noticing and very respectful bow to Tsukuyama, and they chat amicably. He shows her the Romulan pieces. She’s very sincerely impressed by the things and encouraging him to tell her about them. She asks to see another few. 15 minutes with him, then quietly thanks him.

She drifts off to a corner where she’s not being approached. The twins come over, and she takes a glass from Da, but doesn’t drink.

Da offers a deal: they’re at BADI now, and the job has been good for Hua, who… needs it. Don’t tell any of their previous employers about the encounter, and they have information to trade. Star wants a promise of no action against the team. She gives it. Star says she they were never interested in ratting you out, you were doing your jobs. But she never wants to deal with them again.

Thinking she’s dealing with Viridia, not Taleisin, she asks “How is your brother?” He’s fine and safely undercover somewhere. She goes on: “An interesting thing about both of you – we didn’t’ find you because of your brother but because of the little girl you abandoned in the orphanage. She looked up to you and you vanished.”

Hua wilts completely.

Star extends her hand to shake. Da takes it. “For now, a truce. I would rather not see you again this evening.” Da agrees: “I have more important matters to attend to,” wraps an arm around Hua, and leads her off.

Star covers all the public areas thoroughly, building a comprehensive map in Braindance. Tiffany and Vanta disappeared, of course, but Star has a decent time working the crowd. She dies inside at a A-list star saying what an inspiration she was to them when they were a kid.

One of the security tells her, “Miss Nguyen said you’re welcome to take the limo home.” Star doesn’t: she noted that Da didn’t promise to call off any hostile action already under way. She asks around for gossip on their encounter with Tsukayama: apparently he’d invited a senior VP of BADI, but the invitation got dumped on their two most junior hires. Worse, they showed up in a new line of fashion armor that’s a direct competitor with the Mouse’s. He told them to take back a declaration of war.

Star passes on all this to the Team chat: it’s interesting that Vanta either set that up or tried to torpedo a former Bai. Carbide note Jie is a black mark on the family name at this point. Star thinks that Vanta was either setting them up to take down a former Bai, or using them as bait to lure Jie out. Carbide adds that having her head off the twins was an excellent move.

Star adds that they made an interesting promise, at least for right now. She notes they didn’t promise to stop anything in the works -and she’s not going to take Tiffany’s limo home, just to be on the safe side. She gets herself invited to somebody’s afterparty instead.