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

24 Genghis

Sue sent over Allspice’s original contract: it’s between RS Contracting, a subsidiary of Cheerful Rodent Empire, and – Twirly’s real name. It’s dated about seven months after the bombing. Star reads that and has a little breakdown. She tells Paragon to just throw a couture dress at her at the end of the day so she’ll be ready for tonight. Paragon gets the idea to get her into jeans and a t-shirt this evening instead: mom jeans and a t-shirt with a gun and rainbow and the slogan “YOUR MOM IS A CLASSY LADY.”

Later in the morning Paragon gets a ping on Ebit’s system: somebody’s trying a manual password hack, and the office cameras have been bypassed. She decides to head over and see what’s going on, and sends a text to the team inviting them to come along. Vir and Carbide agree, but Star is super out of it:

“Have you read this?! I can’t believe it’s really her…”

“OK Star’s not coming you guys.”

“I’m going to tear them all down.”

Paragon says “I believe in you” and forgets she exists, considering her options for countering the hack.

They arrive near Ebit’s office: Paragon just walks up to within range of the network and logs on as admin. Carbide watches her from a nearby rooftop. Vir walks by casually, peers in the window, sees somebody as they pass, texts the others and keeps on walking. Carbide tells Paragon not to go in the front door but grab the access point from outside.

Whoever’s in there has made 23 password attempts. Paragon enters a command to reject all logins, and causes the word SERIOUSLY? to appear on the screen in front of the “hacker” then in smaller print “there’s a key logger I’ll know if you’re answering me.”

“who is this”

“the sysadmin dumbass”

“oh u helped ebit before right”

“helped might be a bit of a stretch but I do work for him now and frankly could have just left you for 100 years or so and been fine, he could have just hired a solo to come shoot you in the head in a day or two. Step away from the keyboard and step outside the office and I won’t have to regretfully ask a colleague to shoot out your kneecaps.”

“maybe u can help?”

Carbide shifts position to grab a view of the person, and Vir turns around to cruise back.

“help you break into the system I’m being paid not to? I think not.”

“ebit’s missing, I could hire you to find him”

“and you care?”

“….. I have a contract”

“if he’s missing I don’t get paid either, wait no I’ve got auto debit, lets’ talk”

“coming out pls don’t shoot”

Vir texts the team, “apparently my boss is missing even though I still get paid. We might care, I haven’t completely decided yet.” Vir is willing to care.

The “hacker” exits the building with her hands up. It’s an Orion woman. Paragon approaches, and the woman introduces herself as Zhessa, explaining that she’s got a “personal services” contract with Ebit, and he missed a date last night. Paragon explains her contractual relationship: “I get paid to do nothing.” Zhessa replies, “You and me both, sister!” She offers coffee. Paragon texts: FREE COFFEE AT LEAST.

Zhessa takes them to “Brewed Awakening:” it’s good replicated stuff, and she picks up the tab. She offers the team NB500 for a look-see through Ebit’s files, if that’s sufficient to track him down, and 5K if it’s actual work.

Vir gives a thumbs up and wanders off to buy muffins for everybody. They all troop back to Ebit’s office to do the file search. Carbide carefully sniffs his muffin to make sure it doesn't smell like it was baked using real flour.

Pargon finds four things that look like leads:

• he’s been on Big Bruno’s Bounty Board (“4Bs”) looking to hire arsonists to enable him to collect on insurance on some pubs he’s been lending to.

• he’s recently organized a meeting between Yoshi of Crazy Yoshi’s World of Bargains and someone from the Orion Syndicate.

• he’s been sending increasingly obsequious correspondence to a gaming-machine firm, Arcade Systems Unlimited, and seemed particularly interested in working with the entrepreneur, Halifax Quintan, but has only been getting brushed off by his admin.

• he’s been dating Isabel of Nook Inc (“ISABEL NO!”), and it seems serious.

Para is appalled by the arsonists on 4Bs. “the amateurs all wanna have sex with the actual fire, never hire an arsonist.” Pro arsonists are that, but pretending not to be. Ebit got roasted on the discussion thread, mostly by crazy arsonists, but he got a professional takedown by someone claiming to be in in the insurance industry. Paragon’s able to ID the poster as Elyssa Castiglione, insurance investigator for LovingHands – who held Stridev’s life insurance policy, when the team rescued him, preventing a payout to the kittyborg beneficiaries.

Zhessa questions the Isabel thing. “Hey, we know her and she even likes us!” “We can talk to her about her taste in men after we secure him” “But not if he’s there because that would be awkward, but it’d be easier, because you could just POINT AT HIM!”

Paragon calls Isabel, and is actually somewhat reassuring. Isabel tells her that no, he’s not with her right now: she didn’t hear from him yesterday, which is unusual. He’s been really happy lately, expecting a big score. He’s superstitious about talking about deals before they close, so she doesn’t know any details. She’ll call right away if she hears from him.

Paragon tells Zhessa and the team, “He’s not there and I might have given her a heart attack, but he didn’t text yesterday, so whatever happened did then.” She vents about Ebit writing in code on his own calendar, and starts trying to decipher it.

She finds he met with Crazy Yoshi late afternoon day before yesterday. She calls the business, navigating the IVR and then mashing zero and screaming “REPRESENTATIVE!” She finally gets someone: “My name is Olivia and I work for a fellow who had a meetings scheduled…and he’s kind of – he’s not the best at following his schedule, so I’mtracking him down today.” She gets passed up the chain to Yoshi’s executive assistant, who confirms the meeting happened, but can’t provide details on the other parties or the outcome. Paragon asks to be sent details if there are any future meetings booked with Ebit, and gets contact info for the assistant.

Paragon then turns to a brute force data search for purchase orders or invoices from Arcade Systems Unlimited, but finds nothing. Carbide suggests seeing if he racked up any new gaming achievements (match-3 porn games, like a dating sim but with challenges). Yes. And he has investments in bars that have arcade games.

He’s got no new debts, and his finances in good shape: apparently he wasn’t bluffing Isabel that things are going well.

Paragon knocks the arcades to the bottom of the list. They briefly discuss the economics and logistics of selling off a fresh alien corpse. She deduces the pubs were behind on payments. “And somehow he thought arson was the best way to go, weirdo.” LovingHands is the named insurer on 5 under-performing pubs. Paragon muses on the strategy of getting the pubs burned down to get his loans paid off, but Carbide interrupts: the bar owners he knows wouldn’t take kindly to that sort of thing. He’s assuming one of the pub owners has Ebit tied up in the walk-in. Paragon likes the theory, so “PUB CRAWL! Let’s get Star for this one!”

Zhessa asks if Ebit’s dumping her for that plush hussy. “I don’t think the plush comes off.” Paragon tries to diplomatically ask her if she’s got any contact with the Syndicate. Zhessa laughs – who do you think owns the “exotic” escort business? She can ask around to find out who Ebit and Yoshi met with and why. Paragon tells Zhessa about the Klingon Blood Fleas, and she dies laughing: she likes these people!

“In our defense, we didn’t expect it to blow up this hard – we needed a deep discount.” Zhessa asks if they can rob Ebit blind – they could do so much more with his biz than he is. She wants to work with them if he’s dead. Once this is settled, she’d love to do some more business with the team. Paragon tells her she’ll message Zhessa first if he’s dead, and then message Isabel with a sadface emoji – she can be sensitive!

They head for the pub that’s the most behind on payments, the Coach & Loaf. Star meets them, in skintight pants and a top with ALL THE SEQUINS. She asks the barkeep for the most alcoholic shot he’s got. She downs it, sets the glass down and makes the “keep it coming” gesture. Paragon orders a virgin cuba libre, diet – a diet coke. The bartender gets it and laughs. Carbide orders a beer and sips.

Star heads over to the jukebox. Carbide: “You’re not allowed to put on 7 plays of ‘What’s New Pussycat!” But she puts on Twirly’s favorite song, “All the Stars are Sunshine.” Carbide: “Half the problem with this song is its’s such a damn earworm, I’m going to be humming this for the next week and a half.”

Star notices the bar is weirdly empty and calls the bartender over. She dumps her story on the bartender. He introduces himself as Bobby Styles and he tells her his tale of woe.

There’s a guy, Derek Blackford, goes by “Boozer.” He’s trying to turn himself into a corp, buying up local pubs and looking to flip a chain business to ConBrands. He’s an idiot, but he’s got some cash and muscle, and he’s leaning hard on pubs that won’t sell out to him. Styles is holding out, and got in debt to Ebit for operating funds to cover his loss of customers. Now Ebit’s squeezing him from one end and Boozer from the other.

Star isn’t totally tracking, so she asks Paragon if she heard what the bartender said. “All I can hear is that song, Star” “Don’t say anything about that song, it’s a good song, no, it’s a terrible song, Twirly cant’ write, but she’s a good girl.”

“A good girl, a decent, drummer, with a kick that can decapitate people.”

“That part’s new.”

Star texts the Gorn, tells them to come hang out at this guy’s pub, he’s a good dude and likes Twirly’s song. “The Gorn can put it away, Carbide says, and Paragon adds that people will come to see them and buy drinks.

Star isn’t coherent enough to tell Paragon not to hack Styles’ system. But Carbide caught that part of the conversation and quietly texted Para that there might be a new culprit, and don’t get crazy.

Paragon goes the other direction: she sends him copies of a bunch of defense programs and instructions on how to install them. She casually updates his system. She figures that if Boozer is trying to make himself into a corp, at some points the holdouts are going to inspire him to spend money – get a netrunner to dick with the systems. So she’s fortifying him against that. If he’s paying attention to this guy, he’s not paying attention to us.

Star tips Styles egregiously. He asks what Gorn eat. Frozen mice and crickets. And pretzels. And baby targ, but good luck getting that with the blood flea outbreak.

Star’s a little confused about not singing tonight even though she’s going to a show. “You’d show up the performers,” Paragon tells her. “That’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.” On their way out, Styles waves Carbide over and asks him to look after Star.

Star uses the Rapidetox breath spray Vir made for her, a little spray bottle with a handwritten label “Star Detox.”

Star has to change before the show. So they go home. Para says the t-shirt and jeans will remind her she’s not going to sing. Star is baffled: why does she have the shirt? is it from when Paragon was homeless? And baggy mom jeans. Comfy!

They head to the Sailor Scouts’ complex: there’s a rope line outside the Hi-Score club, with a couple Scouts working the door. “Let’s just go in as if we were normal people” – Vir. “We are normal people for these purposes, right?”

As they enter, the weapons check girl sees Vir. It’s Shan! She screams! Vir screams!