Episode Seventeen: The Battle of Tentacle Temple Part 2, Part 2 - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

25-26 Minsky

As Star’s preparing to leave for the venue, she gets a call from Shima Tanzo of Odaiba Securities. He’s seen the goings-on in the media, and has some less-than-certain intel to pass on. His agents suspect, but don’t have proof, that the Ishikawas are the Rackhams: Taleisin met with Bai Jie about a month ago, and she swore she’d turned down his offer of a collaboration: but Katsu turned up in Strategic Planning and Noriko in Antoine’s office shortly thereafter.

He can’t contribute assets in time, but if the Ishikawas are the Rackhams, he’ll pay out a 10k bounty on each. Star tells him she can get evidence from the BSP offices, and will call him in the morning. She sends him an e-ticket to the show, comping him. She messages Antoine to ID them tomorrow, they might be an old problem of hers – and adds that they blew out the last building they worked in. This bumps them up his to-do list  “Their last severance package included quite a bit of C4.”

Carbide re-tasks a drone and searches social media and news streamers streaming news for angles on the command post. They’re all gone. He sends all the remaining drones in with the media drones on a search path, and searches media footage to track the group. The vehicle left without the principals. Running facial recognition algorithms on the crowd, he’s able to track Bai and Katsu’s departure. The security and Noriko are probably onsite but can’t be found.

Star suggests Paragon to open the doors early, to disrupt Chaos’s plan, but Carbide vetoes that as blowing their cover. Paragon reformatted Bizzgal’s deck after she got what she wanted loaded into Dino.

Carbide retasks the drones to keep running facial recognition, but focusing on entrances to the building, and will be running security check on the internal cameras.

Stephane-Louis is dragged onstage, Chaos gives the cue to open the doors. A huge crowd pushes through, people getting knifed, etc.

Star’s approach keeps her off-camera until the cue, her crew is pumping out the music, and feeding it into the outside speakers. Outside media picks it up before Chaos knows she’s there: the outside people get Star’s stuff first, then a transition to inside, replacing Chaos’s stuff entirely.

She walks on in with her bodyguards. They cut the lights completely aside from a spot on Chaos, then all over the place to refocus on Star. The music switches from Star’s instrumentals to her vocals.

Chaos just cuts loose with an un-amplified WHAT THE FUCK. Paragon samples that and mixes it into the percussion line. Star wins the Faceoff. Chaos is speechless. Star turns her back on her once onstage, and goes straight into her planned first number.

In the control booth, Carbide is still keeping the security cameras on Chaos. The bodyguards are there with her around the stage. Chaos swears at Bizzgal through her Agent, getting no reply. She sends a band member up to the control booth to find out what’s going on: they’re greeted with assault rifles at the door. Carbide successfully intimidates them into surrendering.

Vir is sending crazy texts to people.

Star works her way around to Stephane-Louis on stage. Chaos tries to join Star in a duet. “Just like back at the Mouse.” She lets her. Chaos is sounding pretty decent on a song they both know. Paragon asks what Star wants her to do with the sound. Star replies, “We do have to give these people a show, just put feedback in her own earpiece so she doesn’t know what she sounds like.”

When the song ends, she warms up the crowd with a welcome. Her fans are getting more vociferous, which is pissing off the Chaos fans. The audience is 60% Star fans, 30% Chaos, 10% church. 200 people inside, 500+ outside. Star does the Church messaging, and gets Stephane-Louis to stand up while she’s doing it. The messaging keeps the crazy crowd aboard, and the rest are okay/neutral with it.

Star calls for a security update. Carbide pings a 70% hit off the three in the crowd, with one camera in the array always on them, but which one is switching. He sends a still to everybody.

Star sends back, “Please do not let me get shot in the head, I’m trusting you to keep my head intact.” She starts untying Stephane-Louis as she pitches the new church: the lifeblood of this planet is money, I’m powerful because I have fame and money. It’s the planned show.

The power goes out. An EMP grenade goes off above the stage.

Exploding things near Star’s head is not good, but her Will is strong. She grabs Stephane-Louis and drops, like a puppet collapsing without its strings. “Nobody else knows Star is fat:” she’s immune to the EMP.

The breaker box is near the net architecture, off a secure passageway on the ground floor. Carbide tells Vir to cover Star with the rifle while he tries to get the power back on.

Di Rossi takes an aimed shot – and hits Lady Chaos.

Carbide checks the breaker box. It seems fine.

Star turns on her hologram. She puts her hologram getting to its feet from the other side of the stage, glowing slightly, but just the way it would if she’d lit up her hair and skin – it’s programmed in for the show. HoloStar tells everyone to be calm and evacuate while they fix the technical difficulty, walking around the stage. She’s successful in keeping them even. She calls on staff to help people to the exits, directing a couple specifically to the trio, at Carbide’s suggestion.

RealStar drags Stephane-Louis off. Cherry’s doing a solid job looking for the trio, but no luck.

Carbide figures out power’s off at the mains – under Dome Ops control. He calls Hot Uncle: can he do anything about that. Star shoots over her contact’s details.

Vir goes downstairs with the backup singer to check on Lady Chaos. They tell Carbide, who doesn’t want to leave Para alone in the couch. He heads back up while they’re heading down. But Vir is not making headway through the crowd: they’re not used to shoving through a rowdy NeoTokyo concert crowd. They ask Star for help. Once they’re close enough to have been noticed without a call on her internal Agent, she calls out that there’s injured on stage, let the TraumaTeam through, you’ve all been to concerts before, if you don’t the performance stops.

Vir stabilizes Lady Chaos.

Cherry loses the trio.

RealStar engages paparazzi mode, flat hair color and darker skin, and tries to sneak off through the crowd with Stephane-Louis in tow.

Vir texts Armitage. He is not even in town. He values his skin.

Vir places Chaos up on the altar.

Word from Dome Ops: security reported a substation break-in. They’ve dispatched a team.

HoloStar changes songs. Now it’s the “Lady Chaos you are smelly and ugly and do not deserve your fame” song. She’s on the slab as a sacrifice. Money and power are her sacrifices, so she sacrifices all of Chaos’s power and fame.

Paragon kisses Dino on the head in case he’s scared of the dark. Carbide brings the remaining drones inside and starts running facial recognition. No luck, it’s a rough environment, in an evacuating crowd in the dark.

Dome Ops ID’d the burglar: Daz. Who they can tie to the Rackhams, so if they can make the connection to the Ishikawas, bam. Which Carbide suggests: the physical evidence is now super important.

RealStar grabs a fan and whistles All The Stars Are Sunshine, as only the True Fans know as code and says help me. They SQUEAL! They are VERY LARGE and icebreaking their way through the crowd for her. They redirect to the catwalk and help her upstairs and into the office.

The power’s back on!

HoloStar ritualistically removes Lady Chaos’s ability to be known.

RealStar is planning to jump from the catwalk back down to the stage – once they can ensure her she’s not going to get shot. Carbide scans and confirms the three have bugged out. Vir stays onstage prepared to shoot.

Back to the planned show. HoloStar is amazingly able to persuade the faithful. The believers are passing out in fits of religious ecstasy. The smoke machine was out of EMP range, so it’s still up. Time for the goddess ritual. The suggestivity-fog rolls out over the audience.

RealStar hooks up to her wirework, as HoloStar lowers her hand over Chaos’s face, and pulls a glowing light from Chaos’s mouth, and then vanishes. ReakStar drops from the ceiling with a black cloth over her. “This woman no longer exists. Welcome to my church.”

Lights down.

The crowd goes wild.

The team opens the doors to the outside. There’s more show outside on the big screens, so people start filing out.

Back in the office on the catwalk, the team turns to Bizzgal trying to convince her it’s time to change careers: she was Lady Chaos’s netrunner and business manager both, and Paragon took all her files. Carbide tells Bizzgal to find a new line of work. The couch tells her she’s not very good at netrunning. Bizzgal is just bonkers mad at this point.

Paragon has all of Chaos’s logins and account numbers. She’s going to drain her accounts, close her social media, change all her passwords, and release a virus to scrub all mention of her from the net. She creates an alternate identity for Chaos, and Star wants to create an alternate Lady Chaos to Mandela Effect her.

Star goes over to the band menbers and holds out her hands in blessing. “Will you join me? I can make of you great things.” They drop to the floor in a bow. She puts a hand on their heads. “And now you are mine.” She has ducklings. She’ll need to interrogate them alter about anything Chaos said she got from Bai, etc.

She’s basically waiting for the room to be clear enough to evacuate Chaos.

Vir: “Dear Armi: you missed the party. WTAF.”

Stephane-Louis is a noodle. Not injured, just tranqed and suggestible. Vir Rapideoxes him. He pukes. Vir pats him on the back and says the couch wants to talk to him when he’s through puking. Carbide moves Bizzgal to the floor, and Paragon exits the couch.

Stephane-Louis apologizes to her: he was under orders from Antoine to play dumb and obedient, but still. She apologizes for not having gotten word to him when she ran after her parents’ death. She was supposed to be in the house with them, but she was late, and everybody else died, and she knew it’s cheaper to put bounty hunters on the survivor. He thinks he’s going to understand when he settles down: he’s still processing what it’s like to fear for your life and be on the run. He asks about Antoine.

Paragon briefs him. Harb outranks him???!!!! “Oh and my friend Starscream is a goddess.”

RealStar zips back up the wires with Chaos and hands her off to the fan still up there.

Paragon explains to Stephane-Louis that the crazy lady who was going to kill him onstage has been sacrificed, but only metaphorically. “Her name is Abigail now, she has a medical history of getting pinkeye from all her cats.”

He’s really hungry!

“It’s a pity the bakery’s still closed – the nanite pastries tasted really good”

“We should go to the space station and have ramen” – Star.

Carbide doesn’t think he can go: he’s a known criminal. “Some of us have records, Star.”

They’re going to go to the restaurant in University Heights. No, they should go back to Hot Uncle’s and get takeout.

Paragon shows Stephane-Louis that Dino survived, though he’s still looking a little saggy. “Don’t body shame my dinosaur!” “I’m just making suggestions!” Stephane-Louis is surprised that Paragon’s gotten a smaller deck, but she explains it’s smaller because it’s super advanced. “Holy shit, how long was I out?!”No, some jackass decided she’s smart and did something nice.

They snap a group selfie for Antoine as proof of life for Stephane-Louis.

Star has a chat with Bizzgal. “Your client no longer has a legal identity, so what my gruff friend said about finding a new line of work, not so much a suggestion. And the couch is right, you’re not a very good netrunner.” She emails her manager to expect Bizzgal as an intern, and informs her she now owns two backup bandmates. At the mention of much better parties – with a good Rollerball team – Bizzgal comes around a bit.

They’re going to take Chaos and dump him on Hot Uncle now. They get to turn the actual mop-up to people with resources.

Star’s fan, who’s been holding Chaos for ages now – will get an actual physically signed photo delivered by courier. He tears up when she blows a kiss as he drops Chaos into their limo.

Paragon is clinging to Stephane-Louis, who’s in need of clinging. “Are you purring?” She should get a cat voicebox!!! Mister Snuggles will more than happily do the surgery for that. What kind of cat does she want to sound like?

Party time at the safepenthouse!

Star sits in the corner counting her money: numbers on the pay per view were insane. The new “Lady Chaos” song will need a rewrite, though.