Episode Twenty One: The Hi Score Job, Part 3 - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

25 Genghis

Star’s back in the Tentacle Temple, doing something nice for her church followers, letting them watch her friends get murdered on pay-per-view. She’s bet on the team!

Meanwhile, Allspice, Carbide, Paragon, and Vir are slogging through the sewers, where Paragon’s injured from something toxic dripping down onto her. They carry on until they’re near the warehouse Carbide’s drones scouted. There are two grated exits from the sewers: one on the street and one in the warehouse itself.

Carbide scouts the street exit first, doing a visual check around the grate, and a tech scan. He detects a camera and turret, and successfully loops the camera and blinds the turret. The team decides there’s not much use in coming out in the street, so they head back to check out the exit in the warehouse.

Carbide’s successful in looping the camera, but fails to override the turret he’s detected. It’s too dark to see much of anything. Allspice offers to go in, but would rather not get blown up – repairs take forever! The team lets her go up. She can see some crates, and an interior wall with mirrored windows. Carbide calls up an image of a standard turret on his agent and shows it to her. Nope, didn’t see any of those. Carbide comes out too. Vir and Paragon stay down in the sewer.

The warehouse lights come on! Allspice and Carbide see a flash, and drop, unconscious, stunned by an overhead phaser turret.

Paragon and Vir wait a few minutes down below. The lights are on and there wasn’t any screaming, so it must be fine. Paragon comes out. Vir tries to talk her out of it, but no luck. There was no tapestry of curse words, so it’s clearly safe!

Vir expects space spiders, or Lady Satan. Paragon says there’s no such thing as space spiders, and the Director of Netwatch would probably take being called Lady Satan as a compliment .

Paragon gets zapped, one foot over grate. Vir reaches up to grab her to pull her down, and is zapped as well.

The team comes to on a raised platform on an upper floor of the warehouse. They hear a collective moaning: “BRAAAAAAAAIIINSSSSS!” What look like ordinary people, except grayish-green, bloodied, rotting, begin to shamble towards them.

They see what looks like a small freight elevator platform not far away, and an electrical junction box on the far side of the floor. Allspice jumps down and draws her sword.

(Twirly has definitely done low-budget slasher movies. Star did at least one movie musical zombie project; CAMP ZOMBIE. This is familiar territory.)

“They’re in the hell of the wrongful dead,” Vir diagnoses.

“Is that makeup or are they really rotting?” Carbide asks.

“Do I care?” – Allspice. “Any of you who don’t want to die, don’t eat my brain! DO you feel better now, Carbide?”

“Little bit.”

Carbide scans and tells Vir he doesn’t know if they’re drugged or not, but they’re not controlled by cyberwear. Dunno if they can be saved.

Vir suggests using 2 smoke grenades to give Paragon a clear path past where Allspice is tanking all the zombies, but they’d have to know exactly where to go. They think the zombies are victims too, but they’re choosing us if them or us. They pass one of their grenades to Carbide.

He was hoping they had neuralware, but no.

Allspice takes one down and grabs another as human shield.

Back in Tentacle Central, Asenath is drawing hearts around Allspice's image on the screen.

Allspice asks Carbide where the cameras are. He scans: “Pick an angle, it’s probably a camera angle.” She’s aware she’s being filmed, and is trying to look fancy, and slices behind her to take out another zombie.

Paragon tries to kick a nearly-done zombie and misses horribly, almost going over the edge. Star is somewhat regretting the NB500 she bet on her. Vir throws their arm out to keep Paragon from falling off.

Sword in one hand, and now that her other hand is free of zom-shields, Allspice draws her pistol to finish them off, shooting them in the face. That’s the last of the group who’d been drawn to her. Carbide okays her request to go tank the group at the far end of the floor, by the junction box.

The group jumps down from the platform. Carbide asks Vir to check the bodies and see if they’re people. Yep, and she’s poisoned from touching them. From doing her repairs, Carbide remembers Allspice has a full sensor kit in her tongue. He calls out to her, “We’re gonna need a chemical analysis on the zombies, and for the rest of us, I’m not going to say how!”

Paragon’s reached the lift. Unsurprisingly, the power’s out. They’re going to need to go for the junction box.

Allspice grabs a zombie by the lapels of his classic motorcycle jacket and hauls him in, kissing him full on with tongue. And then stabs him.

(Asenath is definitely going to ask permission form Star to propose marriage)

She gets a full chemical breakdown on the zombie drugs, and passes the information on to Vir.

Paragon grabs some thin PVC pipes and makes a cat o nine tails. She’s “guarding the exit.” Carbide makes it to the junction box and restores the power, noticing there was an option to electrify the floor they were on.

Allspice is being cinematic as she finishes off the zoms -maybe she’ll get invited back!

They reunite at the lift and push the button. The lift descends into a hot, humid floor, blindingly lit, full of dense trees. The team hears a deafening sound of rushing water from a giant statue of a Gorn holding a sword, at the far side of the floor. The water runs down a channel into a large pond in the middle of the floor.

Allspice is drenched in blood, and quite chipper. Vir says this is the hell of trees made of knives.