Episode Seventeen: The Battle of Tentacle Temple, Part One - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

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It’s 6:30 AM. Antoine’s sending a Princess, Tiana, out on a supply run: Paragon wants two copies of DeckKRASH and a baseball bat. Vir wants a new assault rifle. Carbide wants a standard assault rifle, 2 flashbangs. Star wants a couple news drones – from Carbide’s friend Birdseye.

Carbide has plans for when the drones get there in 4 hours. He’ll nap until then unless people want to plan. Star finishes updating the show plans with her new song, and hands it off to Paragon for on-site upload that evening. Star was strongly considering doing a bunch of meth and continuing to stay awake, but somehow decides to nap as well. The Princesses take a room and all puppy-pile.

About 10:30 Paragon’s awakened by Antoine: there’s been a package for her delivered to his super-secret safehouse condo. There’s a note: “Heard you got called in. Impressed and grateful. Consider this a first installment of thanks. More to come after your party. Good luck, Killswitch.” Paragon burns the note, running the ashes down ALL THE SINKS. Some of it goes into a glass, and she drinks it.

Only after the note’s been destroyed and distributed does she open the box: It’s a deck, smaller than hers, a glossy cherry red. A hologram logo on the face says it’s a Zetatech R-4200x. The R-series are frontline corporate cyberwarfare decks. The 3000-series has been the staple her whole conscious life. Zetatech has announced the launch of the 4000 later in the year, on the First of Yamato. If this is what it says it is, it’s a prototype scheduled for release in about three years.

The deck has the same loadout as hers, but in place of her two Swords, there are two versions of something called LIGHTSABER (Sword but +3 to ATK). It’s also got a Backup Drive and Hardened Circuitry. The Net icons have yellow lightsabers, because Killswitch knows who he’s dealing with.

Paragon is staring at Carbide, perched on the nightstand till he wakes up. “Oh shit!” “Make these things one thing, I got a present, it needs to go in Dino’s belly.” “Holy shit somebody likes you!” “It’s because I said fuck you to Netwatch I assume.”

“Youuu have so much more processing, yes you doooo”

“Oh god I wanna take it apart!”

The new deck is smaller than the old one, leaving Dino a little under-stuffed. Carbide offers to gut one of Antoine’s pillows, but Paragon thinks that’d make them bad guests. “I could get a little extra padding and put in a pocket for blank data chips, but we can do that later.”

Star wakes up and is unimpressed with Dino: “Your dinosaur needs a tummy tuck, he’s all floppy after the lipo. How come everybody here’s losing weight but me?!”

“Don’t body shame my dinosaur!”

Carbide sends the drones out for recon of the warehouse/temple at 1pm. As he’s watching, armored cars arrive. Star sniffs: she’d have been set up and doing a sound check already. They identify a lot of Blue 12 corporate light enforcers; their old adversary Yandarian Karpaev heading two small squads, one of solos and one of heavy mercs, and Bai Jie onsite with her security deputy and a bodyguard, and two young execs. Antoine identifies them as Ishikawa Noriko, his traitorous former assistant, and Ishikawa Katsu, the new Assistant Vice President of Strategic Planning, who’s been inseparable from Jie the past month.

Paragon wants to do a publicity blast about the show, but Antoine questions whether they want to invite civilians to a firefight. Star will do it as password-protected streaming show.

Antoine calls the Team together: he’d spent the morning negotiating with Thieu Linvaa of Netwatch, and is considerably the worse for wear. He’s got a deal, which they can accept or reject, but rejection means surrendering Paragon to Netwatch tomorrow.

The Director personally wanted some information he has, outside the scope of Netwatch’s operational concerns, so they did a deal. Netwatch cracked the noodles: it’s information for producing a pharmaceutical that’s so classified by the Federation that the Director couldn’t even find out what kind of thing it is – and was dying of curiosity.

Antoine will be tasked with investigating the nanites as a consultant to Netwatch. Paragon’s status is on hold so long as she’s in his employ on the nanite contract. If it’s successfully completed, she’ll be green for anything done prior to today. This means that if he dies or is captured, she’s forfeit. It also means that if she or the Team violate Netwatch policies, he’s forfeit. He’ll be their go-between: they will not deal with Netwatch directly under any circumstances. If they need to talk to a Netwatch agent, he’ll broker it, and he or his reps will be present.

He’ll pay her per diem, but she shouldn’t work on the Netwatch contract full time: they’re not paying enough to make a living. He’ll cover subcontractor expenses, of course. (NB1000 per day for the Team) She can call on the Princesses as needed. Snow will continue to liase.

They take Antoine’s deal.

He adds, “Oh, and the Director said they got Olivia’s information by other means.”

Carbide goes pale. “OK, I’ve got a project now, never mind.”

The Team presses him. “OK, so, remember when they transported us out of our place, the way that has to work is they break down our matter into an energy stream and reconstitute it. They would have to have a detailed record of what they were reconstituting into, down to the atomic level, otherwise what they got out wouldn’t’ be us. If they’ve got enough memory, nothing to say they couldn’t spit out a duplicate – and interrogate that.”

“If it was still me,” Paragon says, “I was probably a real bitch to them, and they had to squeeze my brain to get information that was useless.”

Star interrupts: “EXCUSE ME I AM REGISTERED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY! THAT IS INFRINGEMENT!”

Discussion of caselaw ensues, and the specific caselaw on transporter buffers. Carbide notes she’d have to sue in Federation court, and probably wouldn’t get monetary damages out of them.

They discuss post-scarcity generally: Carbide is enthusiastic and hopeful, Star is baffled and appalled. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, that’s the only economic principle I ever grasped!” “In the Federation, all lunches are free.” The tech arm of the 4I is trying to bring replicator/transporter tech open in NeoTokyo, because the cost of all goods is equivalent of recycling mass, and that’s the entire economy down the shitter. “I’ve had dreams about putting a replicator on every streetcorner and watching the corporations panic.”

Carbide’s going to figure out how to keep Netwatch from yanking them whenever they want.

Star works on refining the story for the evening: Lady Chaos is obviously the mean girl coming in to harass the younger, more talented, under-appreciated, heroine. Carbide: are you actually younger? Star: I don’t know, we all take puberty inhibitors.

Star explains the theme of the show she’s trying to run: and it is all a show for her. The battle is within a Wrestlemania style plotline. Heel v Face v Jie as Donald Trump, coming in with the Vince McMahon walk. They’ve got the true leader of the franchise in Antoine. It’ll be the Battle of Bai vs St-Pierre to reverse the naming, or does Bai lose out altogether? and Jie will be off to “spend time with her family” and “work on herself” It’s a sabbatical, and we all hope for the very best for her. “Lady Chaos You Ignorant Slut” is the centerpiece song, Stephane-Louis the prince in peril.

Carbide reviews their assets and devises a tactical plan for the battle. He’ll put the TFS heavy squad and the Princesses against Yandarian Karpaev’s corporate hitters with backup from the princesses, amphibiously. Asenath and the Gorn vs. the gangbangers, coming in from the waterfront street. That’ll draw the attention of the roof people for the Night Witches and Kenji to get them from the roof of of the building on the far side of the block, clearing Paragon and Carbide go through the roof to get to the upper floor tech cave. Vir will go in on the floor with Star, to have medical support on hand for Stephane-Louis.

Ariel will have a boat in 37 minutes  Eric will drive a boat suicidally.

At 2:30 PM K’sasisbus the Gorn reports that Star’s manager’s network is restored. Shots were fired after a netrunner duel. Miss Cross is a solo, technically, and handled herself well in the firefight. Paragon thinks the enemy netrunner might be using BSP style, which she knows.

The Gorn sends over a photo of the recently departed: Hayabusa, Paragon’s trainer at BSP. “Oh yeah she was a bongo” – on the internal boards there’s a b-word that gets auto-replaced. “The Mouse uses Minnie” [hence, Minnie Boss, Snow’s boss]

Vir hands Paragon a bunch of meds: “You really need these yellow pills. If you need painkillers, take all of them. Here are these black pills. DO NOT take the black pills unless the world is gonna end, if you’re in super bad pain. But don’t take the black pills.” Paragon finds a baggie and a sharpie and rights DO NOT EAT DO NOT SWALLOW DO NOT SNORT. Star suggests she put them in Dino’s liposuction pocket. “So if I take the black pills I am going to be in therapy FOREVER. That sounds super bad.”

They deploy, and the fight begins. The Blue 12 are rolled up easily. Foxwell and the Princesses with Gorn backup barely beat BADI, with both sides taking heavy casualties. The snipers succeed, wounded in return fire.

Carbide and Paragon make it to the roof, unlock the door, and are in. Carbide opens the door carefully, avoiding a hail of bullets. His hand-scanner detects Lady Chaos’s netrunner Bizzgal with an assault rifle. Paragon moves across the roof to reach the access point and will try to jack her out. If she succeeds, she’ll be out of it for a few seconds. She’ll signal Carbide.

Netrunner duel! She’s tripped 2 of 4 Poison Flatlines. Black ICE derezzed. Paragon derezzes her with DeckKRASH, signals Carbide, he runs through and tackles her. She’s restrained and gagged. He takes her deck and gun away, disabling the deck. Paragon enters, sets Bizzgal on the couch so she’s sitting on her tied up hands. “You need to get better at this and also maybe don’t hack systems when you can be pretty sure the sysadmin is going to show up.” She boops her nose and gets back into the system.

Carbide takes position where he can see the locked door to the office and the floor. The control room is one-way glass, after Star got ahold of it, because Star doesn’t want anybody watching the control room instead of her. It’s tacky to see the techies, as she always says.

Shift is somewhere safe, we do not risk Shift because their brain makes us money. They’re on comms though. They’re stage-managing and connect directly to Paragon’s internal agent, to run the stuff directly.

It’s 5:30 PM. They have internal camera access, holo-cams, and the turret. Paragon picks apart Bizzgal’s virus and reviews her black ICE. All the programs are dinosaurs. The Kraken is Gadora.

On the floor, Stephane-Louis is hogtied and tossed in a corner. The band is doing sound checks. Paragons’s zooming cameras in to monitor his breathing. Carbide’s worried about her moving the turret, which would give the game away.

Bai Jie’s still in her command post outside.

Star and Vir are still back at Antoine’s. Vir’s cover is hype person: they’ll have a boom box so they’re bringing the music with them. They’re in a full suit with tie and sunglasses, hair slicked back. Para will pick up the music speaker by speaker as they move across the outside of the building and enter.

There’s 6.5 hours till showtime.