Episode Twenty One: The Hi Score Job, Part 4 - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki
25 Genghis
The team descends on a lift from the zombie level, into a blindingly lit, hot, humid area full of dense trees. At the far end of the room is a giant sculpture of a Gorn, a waterfall cascading over it, and running off into a sizeable lake.
The platform lands with an echoing boom – and a cacophony of screams arises from the trees. The team catches sight of monkeys in the trees. Carbide scans: the critters are real, and they’ll need to get behind the waterfall, to the only detectable machinery on the level. The monkeys are probably cloned, but organic anyway.
Allspice is surprised: “OMG that’s so expensive!” She rolls out down the path and sings the highest note in her range, to draw their attention from the team on the lift platform. They haven’t actually attacked her yet, and they’re so expensive. And she wants to punch one.
To her surprise and everyone’s startled disgust, they don’t leap to attack: they reach behind themselves to grab and fling flaming poo!
Paragon wonders how the monkeys light up. Is it murder to kill monkeys? She isn’t armed, so it doesn’t actually matter.
Carbide gets a shot off and hits: it’s got a collapsed lung and is making adorable monkey wheezing sounds.
Allspice grabs a monkey shield. Paragon tries to grab one out of a tree but it wriggles away! It tries to bite! She dodges! Vir climbs a tree, getting off precise and deadly shots.
Another monkey attacks Allspice and gets a faceful of monkey-shield. An alligator is drawn by the commotion, and Allspice attacks, feeding it the monkey shield when it bites back.
(this is the nicest thing Star has ever done for Asenath)
First round gator rassling fails! Allspice is caught between the gator and poo-flinging monkeys: she has to roll into the lake to extinguish her burning skin. She’s nearly down.
Paragon whips her monkey with her bundle of computer cables. She slaps the monkey with flimsy plastic. It’s outraged, but not terribly hurt. It tries to bite back and almost slips out of the tree.
Vir faceplants jumping down from the tree to get to Allspcie. They meet up, and Vir slips her some Speedheal, keeping her in the fight.
One of the monkeys has just watched the gator devour the corpses of three of its friends. SCREAMING MONKEY VENGEANCE it leaps onto the gator, going for a headlock but not quite getting a grip. The gator tail-lashes itself in the head to hit back! Paragon gets flaming-poo’d, stops drops and rolls.
THE RAGE MONKEY SUCCEEDS, wrapped around the gator’s head and screaming madly! The gator crawls back into the lake, submerging, trying to drown the monkey.
Paragon scoots on her butt back away from her victorious monkey. She hides behind Carbide, who one-shots it.
Allspice shoots the gator as it struggles in the lake. The monkey leaps clear, screaming defiance from the shore!
They’ve cleared the opposition: the monkeys on the far shore haven’t crossed over, and Defiance Monkey has earned his victory and isn’t looking for further trouble. The team re-forms and heads across the floor to the giant Gorn statue. There’s an elevator behind the waterfall.
Allspice notices Vir’s looking green. She figures Vir’s zombie-ing. “I’m not going to cut your head off – unless I have to -I don’t want to.” Seeing the pus-seeping zombie bite on Vir’s neck, she puts two and two together. She Rapidetoxes Vir: it’s not a cure, but it should slow down the en-zombie-ing process.
They descend in the elevator, and as the doors open, they’e phasered unconscious again.
A few minutes later, they awaken. Vir’s standing before a pinball machine, and has no idea what it is. The voiceover announcer has to explain the process: their machine is connected to a giant-sized one on the floor below. To Vir’s right, their teammates are in transparent hamster balls. Vir will shoot them out onto the pinball table, and try to keep them in play. At 100,000 points, they’re free to drop clear of the level. But if they hit the electrified bumpers, they’ll be in for a nasty shock!
Vir launches Carbide onto the pinball table. He screams from inside his ball as it spins and bounces: “THIS IS BULLLLSHIIIT!”
Vir, despite the effects of the zombie bite, gets the hang of the game and quickly racks up 100,00 points for their team members – it’s easy for Allspice, as she’s got the dexterity and dancing skils to keep herself in play.
Carbide drops clear first, into a darkened room on the ground level. He starts cutting himself out of the hamster ball: “I am going to have to re sharpen my diamond saw finger after this!”
Allspice drops next. She decides to use herself as a cannonball to take out the door to the room – and it works! Carbide: “OK, not gonna have to pick the lock…”
A very motion-sick Paragon is just curled up around Dino. “NO NO NO YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME NO”
Vir drops through a trap door, landing hard. Carbide calls out, “Hey Vir, can you calm Paragon down, this is gonna take me a while to cut out of here –“
Allspice barrels through the door, and finds the kidnapped kids in the next room. “We’re here to rescue you!” from inside her hamster ball – somehow coming from a partially melted, poo-covered woman in a hamster ball, it’s not that reassuring to them…
Paragon finds the network was slagged six seconds ago, just as she cleared the pinball table.
Vir is sad they didn’t grab a mutant monkey.
Carbide cuts himself free and unlatches Pargon. “You wanna get out of here?”
Vir’s just laying on the floor going ow.
“Allspice are you happy in the hamster ball?”
“Oh hey kids, you wanna go home? Allspice, lemme know when you want out of there”
Vir gets up and looks over Dino, and ties a little bandage on him. Paragon hugs them gratefully.
Carbide’s doing better with the kids: at least one is willing to talk to him. She tells him the little man with the funny ears is in the other room.
“Oh yeah, the guy we’re here for…”
Paragon knocks on the door: “HEY EBIT YOU OWE ME!” He agrees, and warns them that he’s sitting on a bomb.
Carbide tells him, “Ebit, don’t move, and don’t talk either!” He unlocks the door and checks for traps in the room. Ebit’s sitting on a pressure-plate switch.
This is still being broadcast! Odds against Carbide are still high. Star drops a huge bet on Carbide.
Vir wants to herd all the kids into the far corner away from Carbide's bomb disarming project. (No offense, Uncle!) Allspice helps by smiling sweetly at the kids, totally oblivious to being covered in blood and shit.
Carbide defuses the pressure plate, but a countdown timer kicks in: 30 seconds, everybody down to the subway!
Paragon sends word the turrets and cameras are down.
They herd all the kids, but Ebit is sprinting for the sewer grate with no regard for any life but his own.
Allspice calls out, “Kids, daisy chain! hold onto two other people’s hands!” She takes point, Carbide rear. They make good tome back through the subway, coming up in the street outside Tentacle Temple. Carbide is not leaving the kids in the hands of the child grooming cult, no matter how reformed they are becoming. The kids are going straight to the Sailor Scouts. They call for pickup. Vir’s sister thinks they shouldn’t look that green! The Scouts don’t have advanced medical facilities, so Vir will be off to see the mentor.
Allspice needs a shower desperately. Asenath offers to help with that :) Star says no. She now has a very pouty murder lady with her. Allspice says showering together is more award than fun.
Ebit has scuttled off, trying to avoid payment, but Paragon has his entire network: she’ll just take NB5000, the same as she’s getting from Zhessa for recovering him. She will put it in his account books and properly expense it. In the secret real books too: “Saving your fucking life you cheapskate” but “Services rendered” in the public books.
Star has cleaned up from the betting, and cuts everyone in for an NB2,000 bonus. She checks what Allspice is making: NB1000 for a day’s escorting work.
Everybody thinks it’d be a great idea if Vir and their mentor could turn the zombie cocktail into a party drug. They’ll be working on that.