Episode Twenty Two: Dia de la Panaderia - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

6 Moskva

Star invites Carbide up to her floor: “Can you come up here and talk to me?”

She was invited to lunch with Vanta Black, Bai Wen-Yi’s - personal assistant? via the bonsai, which is in fact a coded message.

“We have the potential to take jobs for Wen-Yi, also and here’s the reason I’m telling you first and not the entire team, when Wen-YI and Antoine signed off on Paragon’s parents being liquidated.”

“Hiring a team that includes the daughter of two of the staff he liquidated is some kind of power thing, or just transactional, or why does he think we would jump at this?”

“I think he’s gambling on the idea that when and if we tell Paragon she’s going to be real mad at Antoine for also signing off on this. I’m not sure we should tell her. But she’s the one with the noodle recipe and she’s the one that’s going to crack it. Wen-Yi said if we pursue that and hand it over, we should hand it to Netwatch and not Antoine b/c Hot Uncle might also liquidate us.”

“I’ve kind of been expecting him to turn out to be an asshole anyway. Put it this way, if we do decide to keep it from Paragon, that information cannot go on anything electronic anywhere in this building”

Star just stretches out and looks down.

“She’s not gonna hack into your brain because she’s your friend. Even if it weren’t cruel it’d be futile, and better she find out from us rather than some other way including we knew and didn’t tell her.”

“That’s what I was thinking but also -she’s just getting back with Stephane-Louis…”

“On the third hand, Paragon’s also the person who’s best able to verify whether Bai was fucking with you, because that’s a possibility.”

“I feel it’s probably pretty much a given on some level, b/c you don’t get to be half of the name of a corporation without that, but also, they guy gave me a 400 year old bonsai. IT’s beyond nice, it’s like he gave me his own kidney.”

“I mean, I could build you a kidney, but yeah, I see what you’re saying.”

“That tree is worth more to him than any family member he’s got.”

“It’s worth more to him than anything but his honor because it is his honor.”

“You have to be willing to screw over anything, including his own honor. It’s possible he considers it worth the sacrifice for whatever he’s planning at from inside his jail cell.”

“Using us is a particularly clear strike at Antoine, because we’re the people who put him where he is, basically.”

“I really want to know what’s in that noodle recipe, and in the moss. Do we got to tell Night?

“Yes, 100% yes, this is a full team briefing thing, and then we decide what we’re going to do about taking jobs from this asshole.”

“All right, I’ll order the good Thai kibble.”

“I think you should tell her privately before we brief the team: she shouldn’t have to react to it for the first time in front of the rest of us.”

“We’ll do dinner tomorrow, and I’ll talk to her in the afternoon. Here’s the recoding of lunch, by the way.”

“This file, this is why we have to tell Paragon because this file exists in our house.”

Carbide will tell Night and Vir they have shit to talk about over dinner tomorrow.

“How much time should I give Paragon so she doesn’t run off and stab Antoine before the rest of us talk? Couple hours?”

“You’ve been a girl that age a lot more recently than I have.”

“When were you a girl that age? Oh, I get it.”

“My gut reaction is to tell that asshole to go fuck himself, but we’ll see what the others say.”

“I mean, if half of what he says is true, it makes me kind of second guess going all in on Antoine”

“Oh for sure, yeah, we might need to tell him to go fuck himself too, but I’m comfortable with that.”

Next day, “Hey Paragon…”

She arranges a nest of pillows, Star comes down with a boba.

“You know the dinner tonight, the family meeting – fair warning, it’s gonna suck. I went to lunch with Wen-Yi’s, I don’t know what the hell she is. Lady who is acting as the hands while he is in prison. So she told me some stuff about what happened when they stopped all the senolytics research and who actually signed off on that.”

“According to Wen-Yi it was both himself and Antoine who made the agreement to stop a hostile takeover by liquidating the entire Senolytics department, excluding Antoine but including your parents. Also according to Wen-Yi, the noodle recipe is some kind of highly illegal drug that’s also an outcome of that agreement, and we’re kind of being played. So the family meeting is to tell everyone about that, but I wanted to tell you first.”

Paragon seems to be taking it all in stride. “I mean, Chairmen of the Board and CEOs don’t really do things independently, but we’ve got emails with Bai’s name on it and not Antoine’s. I don’t think I especially care, the corporation as an entity did the thing. Bai gave the actual message order, but I won’t agitate for my job back because I don’t want that job back. But that’s sort of the corporate playbook. If you’ve got to cut your hand off to keep the rest of you alive, you cut the hand off.

“But I wonder, why is Stephane-Louis in charge of a department that isn’t supposed to exist anymore?”

“According to Wen-yi there’s more to the clones than cheap work force.”

“Put your entire brain on a chip and put it into a healthy homeless person – “

“Or clones of yourself you’re constantly scooping the brains out of.”

Star tells her she’s got a recording of the lunch. No actual documentation: the nice Bai lady not going by Bai did not deign to hand over physical evidence against him. Oh also there’s something in the moss of my bonsai, a crypto thing. No, it’s not a deadly neurotoxin.

“Did you say jailbird wants to hire us for things? That’s weird. Is going to pay us? How is he going to pay us, his assests are frozen or should be.”

Paragon has no problem with conflict of interest jobs – it’s based on who you want to win!

“You guys are the big brains, I wanted to dump this on you big brains and ask what I should do about the guy we just put in jail who apparently thinks we’re interesting.”

“There isn’t anything I can do about my parents, and if you look at it my way, one of the two, Antoine or Wen-Yi, has helped us a lot, and the other tried to blow off Carbide’s face by proxy and has been an asshole to us.”

“That’s fair. I don’t necessarily believe everything she said, but I don’t not believe it.” She mentions the warning about Netwatch.

“That’s going to be a pain in the neck since they zeroed Hotdogwater.” Paragon talks up the joys of Kibble Surprise.

Star lays everything out at dinner. “Soooo, other than hurting my bonsai in any fashion is off the table, what do we want to do?”

Night says she appreciates the courtesy, and observes a balance of power is better than getting too deep in anyone’s pocket, but it’s their team.

Paragon has no idea where to begin with biodata. She wonders if it’s an access point. Carbide: “If they’re sitting on WiFi moss, they’re dumber than they look.”

Vir’s willing to take a crack at the moss: nobody wants to just wait for the keys.

Star asks if Paragon wants to go after the consortium. Don’t know who, but does know they have an off the books facility on Yamato Station. Star doesn’t need more revenge against Bai, Antoine seems legit sorry, so maybe we can take the fight to the real bad guys and make money.

Paragon notes that it’ll be real awkward to get rid of Antoine till the Netwatch thing is settled. Right now they’re on sufferance because Antoine vouched for them. Get rid of him, and the team is back in Netwatch’s crosshairs.

Vir says Bai is inordinately interested in Antoine’s dealings with Netwatch. Star says it all comes back to the noodle recipe.

Carbide’s unenthusiastically along, wants to find more out about the people who had Para’s parents killed. Just have to be careful: somebody’s gonna screw us over at some point. Vir says everybody’s going to try – Didn’t we swear off messing with mega-corps though?

Carbide says this is leading back into deep water, and they didn’t swim that well last time.

Star says they could all. just lop it all off and have a nice houseplant.

Carbide says right now they need more information, so find out about the moss, the noodle recipe, it might not be a bad idea to case the facility to see if they theoretically could pry some data out of it.

Star has a standing lunch date, so if there’s something we’re specifically interested in, we can go forward. Carbide’s willing to see what kind of jobs, Paragon what kind of pay. Carbide’s not super in a hurry to dive into mega-corp murder politics again.

Star says they should take a solid three weeks off. And figure out where the dude’s sisters went, a nice quiet corporate kidnapping. And figuring out how to destroy the Mouse from the inside for what they did to Twirly. Carbide adds, or figuring out how to buy out her contract as a prelude to burning them down.

Para asks if that’ just a money thing. Carbide says they’ve been overcharging her for her cyber tech. He’s pissed at that!

On the sixth, It’s Night’s block party to celebrate Chance’s academic prize + the grand opening of Panda Muerto. Wuxian’s hired Jade and a bunch of the local kids to roll dim sum carts around. There will of course not be bumper car races.

Carbide is fairly often sets up a “Back in 15” card to get more food, but has his tech booth up for appliance repair, cyberwear tuneup, all for free.

Star commandeered a stoop and is pulling out her guitar and singing a little. The guitar case is open but it’s not actively salted. It could be she just left the case sitting there.

Star plays Raspberry Beret for Nymphie, who asks if she can borrow the garden for a meeting with Nixietube and Stridev. No, not the garden with the illegal food, and there’s nowhere in the house that isn’t full of illegal stuff. And not the community warehouse full of anti-armor weaponry. Oh! Jade’s mom is just a nice normal lady with nothing weird or suspicious in her house. Star gets Jade to go fetch her mom, who thinks Star wants to use her house for a love motel.

They keep forcing Carbide to make more toys, like a weird hostage.

Chance’s sister, Tragic, shows up in a group with Friction and Sister Chromatid. Can she show Star her fashion portfolio? Of course! It’s…. not good. Really not. “So many pouches! So puritan chic!” Star gives Friction a dirty look, who shrugs an apology. She suggests drinks and dancing instead of a “cold and formal” business meeting. Star offers to hone her vision and refine it – a lot –

Jade’s taken over Star’s stage!

“Oh listen, Jade’s performing!!” Friction gives her a big “I’m Sorry” and leads Tragic off.

Jade is in fact killing it. She pockets a little less than Star’s take. Star drops NB15 into the case for her.

Paragon is a little edgy, worrying Antoine is setting Stephane-Louis up to be killed, but maybe putting a relative in charge of Senolytics who isn’t a scientist is a signal to the cabal that nothing’s happening. She’s actually convincing to him she’s no weirder than usual.

Mango is scrounging, and is cleaning up from the spillage from the kids’ dim sum carts.

Paragon introduces Stephane-Louis to Mango, with the catbarain on. “This my mate, he’s ok, I think he’s more than ok, but you don’t have to.” Mango thinks he’s okay and headbutts against his ankles. He smells nice. Mango wants to meet Stridev. Paragon picks her up – heavy! – and hands him off to Stephane-Louis. She tells Stephane-Louis they’re looking for a Vulcan who’s kinda sorta is a friend of the group. He’s Netwatch but shoosh on that one.

Stridev has one eyebrow potentially half raised. Para walks up hauling boyfriend and cat-tote. and introduces herself. The man is S Stephane-Louis, the cat is Mango.

He wonders how she knew the cat wanted to meet him. “I have a bond with cats, it’s almost like I can talk to them!”

He figures out there’s something cybernetic, and Paragon spills. “They mostly like to talk to each other, and let each other about threats. Without a tail or whiskers, there’s only so much I can understand.” She’s being coy about how much she knows, and it’s working.

“They like you, and if you wanted a catbrain, the cats would probably be able to explain anything they would want you to know. They don’t like me that much. I don’t know why.”

He tells her he can’ t have an onboard, for work, but would like an external. She suggests that Carbide could help, and leads him off to meet him.

She follows the sound of a Jade-Star duet. He’s 10 minutes into his “back in 15,” as an interesting-smelling cart went by.

Mango’s still on Stridev’s shoulder. Carbide returns. Paragon and Stephane-Louis disappear after a dim sum cart. Stridev introduces himself. “You told him about the catbrain?” “It’s fine, it seems like that’s okay.”

He’s asking not as an employee. Cat sociology. And he will of course provide remuneration.

Carbide would need to see the specs, but he can look into building one. “As long as I’m building cat toys too…”

Stridev thanks Star for the rescue, and she gives the credit to Chieko-chan. He apologizes for getting them caught up in Netwatch internal politics: he says they’re faction-ridden. Star says they let their emotional investment get the better of them.

Vir asks if he’s occupied at the moment. He is, with them. They blink, and invite him to the dim sum master’s booth, as they have a radish to gift him. He asks if the invitation includes Mango. It certainly does!

Star goes off to voice-coach Jade.

Stridev says Netwatch doesn’t care about radishes unless they become technologically sentient.

Vir says he’s more helpful than the person with the big ears. “How can I get in contact with Betazoids? “He says there’s a cultural attaché.

She bows and hands over the radish.

Stridev tries the dim sum and is impressed.

Vir stays they invited Mister Snuggles. He gets a call, and has to go. They tell him, “Please give Lady Satan my regards and tell her I’m doing my best.” He finds it an odd but not entirely inappropriate metaphor, missing the point entirely.

Star messages the team, “BTW, Nixie and Nymphie wanted to talk to him, I should probably go keep an eye on him, yeah?” She’ll go, since she knows the homeowner.

Mango wants to come along. Climbing up her doesn’t bother Star, who’s in the mom jeans but not the t-shirt.

Star’s just trying to get a read on what these people are talking to Stridev about since technically they’re his surveillance targets, but Dr. Desai suggested the meeting.

STAR TAKES AWAY THE BERET. “You cannot go into a meeting with Netwatch with obvious signs of revolution on your head.”

Stridev is TERRIBLE at reassurance. She was persuaded about the things he said badly. Star calls Desai, “WTF were you thinking? I’m transferring your call to Nymph. You’re going to play passenger, because I am not a therapist, I am screwed up.”

She explains the Rapture in Vir’s religion. It’s the Bad Place. Vir actually thinks we died and came back. He looks back and forth, between her and the traumatized Nymphie on the phone with her shrink… and then talks with Nixie about AI.

She interrupts after a bit: “The point of this meeting is to help Nymphie understand you have a working relationship with Nixie so that You’re the one overseeing what they’re doing, not Lady Satan, and unless you’re passing it on, she won’t be captured and murdered in the head. Don’t go too deep into the details. Don’t try to empathize.

She adds, “She’s my barista, metaphorically speaking. Can you convince her nothing we do can get her cacked?”

“No.”

Nymphie’s doing her breathing, rather spectacularly. They take 2 on the conversation, talk science, and it’s all good. Stridev's problem the first time was treating it as a social interaction rather than a nerd confab.

Star inserts questions about where they were going with their mutual research. She has a braindance recorder now…. she’s going to keep them talking. Nymphie knows they’re way behind the state of the art and she’s not giving them anything. They exchange glances.

Star promises to keep the beret safe for the revolution, and burns it when she gets back home. She tells the team, “Hey guys the hot Vulcan gave us a lead on a job, some kind of artifact recovery for a Vulcan.”

Carbide is psyched. “Oh, nothing to do with Netwatch or corporations – just striaghtfowrward crime. I’m really interested!“