Session 1: Death and Taxes - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

304 Rand 2 Wood – Earth

Rina gets rowdy about 2 AM and runs around for a while, so she got back to the purchase orders, which run back about nine months. She builds presentation materials based on it, then falls asleep on top of the bar with her tablet in front of her.

Rina packs up the fish they got, for Moopsie to distribute to the greater kitty community. She called Moopsie: we did the thing and found Flamingo, and are bringing back her body.

Lane asks what Rina learned, and Rina gives her the tablet with the Powerpoint on it, and gives the background. Lane got another ping from the news:

Zhukov won the bidding war for Lavigne Exotic Mobilities by one vote, despite board furor over the raid on their subsidiary, Exanic Engineering. And in ENTIRELY UNRELATED NEWS, board member Rayna Quintan threw a family reunion party that evening, at which Zhukov was definitely not present.

She concludes that Zhukov kidnapped a family member of Quintan’s, then actually kept his word and released them after the vote. Researching Lavigne, she discovers that

As Jiefan drives down one of the access – “roads” – into the Wreck, there’s a tremendous crash behind the car, and a bullet pings off the bulletproof glass of the windshield, just scuffing it. That crash was from someone dropping an absolute fuckton of caltrops: backing up will definitely take out the tires.

There’s gangbangers and two snipers visible: Rina recognizes them as the Dogs of War, a scavenger gang that usually preys on rich disaster tourists and other outside scavengers, but also shoots cats.

Rina comms Moopsie to let her know they’ll be a little late: it’s the Mean Bad Puppies, and they’re going to shoot them. She also tells the kitty network. Rook was reading a Vulcan interior design magazine, and the gang interrupted!

The fight is tough, with Jiefan and Rook seriously injured. Liv comes zooming in on her bike, crashing into one of the snipers and shooting the other to death. She engages and defeats the other one just as the team takes out the last ground squads.

The murder kitties didn’t get a piece of the action! They got there just as the team took out the last of the Dogs. Rina asks if they can clean up the Bad Dogs, then she starts picking up the caltrops in the road. She gives them one of the coolers of fish as an apology for not letting them murder Dogs.

They head to Moopsie’s to get Jiefan and Rook patched up, and sends the team back to the car with a rolling stretcher for the body.

Moopsie is clearly just shattered. Rina walks over to her and headbutts her.

“Tell me you fucked up Netwatch.”

“The old Director tried to take Flamingo’s body, so we stuck her in hell.”

Rina hugs her, purring enough that she can feel it.

Moopsie says there’s only one thing to do. Maybe there’s still a ghost in the machine of Flamingo’s body. She calls Nymphie and tells her to prep for a brain transplant: she’ll tear out her brain and implant it in Flamingo’s body. Nymphie is onboard.

Moopsie says she’ll roll Flamingo’s body over by herself, as she prepares for the transplant.

Rina asks if she wants them to stay, and she says yes. Rina calls her family to let them know there’s fish, and to come over to purr at Moopsie to help her heal.

The whole collective shows up, ten or fifteen cats roaming around. The team knows her sister, the little white cat. There’s a slinky Russian blue she introduces as mom, and a similarly colored and much chonkier Russian Blue/Norwegian Forest Cat mix she introduces as her dad, and just waves at the rest, “My aunts and uncles and cousins.”

Mom asks why Rina didn’t try to stop Moopise, but Rina says she wanted to be with Flamingo. “It seems like running diagnostics would be a better idea, but she’s the doctor. And now she’ll be a robot cat!”

The cats swarm her on Moopsie’s return, Rina along with them. She is now a fur-covered robot. She just holds onto a raw fish that somebody dragged over to her.

It’s an extreme form of grieving, but nobody tried to talk her out of it.

Jiefan drives them back home.

Rook gets to work on repairing her, Jiefan’s, and Lane’s armor. It’ll be ready tomorrow night.

Rina starts designing the net architecture and security for the place, while Lane goes over the original documents from Deadman. Rina’s plans are batshit insane.

The next day Jiefan goes out to shop for sniper rifles, and Rook asks her to pick up some more grenades for her launcher. Rina keeps working on the defenses, and Lane keeps researching.

Jiefan drives Lane to her dinner. Last time she was at Chance’s condo building they were in a hurry, but it was pretty clearly a standard upper middle class luxury building. Now, well, there’s three different checkpoints to get through. They ask who you are and what your business is, and check you off against info on a tablet. They scan the car thoroughly.

What was a little plaza in front of the building has what looks like some kind of truck-mounted phaser cannon parked on it, surrounded by a mix of troops, Neo Tokyo and Ferengi. She’s escorted into the building and to the elevator by a pair of guards, one in front and one behind. She’s never seen security like this – but she’s never been anywhere near the apex of NeoTokyo society before either, not by a long shot.

Chance’s living room is set with floor cushions around a low Japanese-style table, with a beautifully laid out spread of sushi. Chance: “Tiff, I’m surprised you didn’t have Eloise come along to be the table.”

“You know she absolutely would – you’d have just needed to hint”

“Well, I don’t think everything we say tonight will be for her ears, but – next time”

While custom requires small talk over food, these two seem absolutely incapable of not talking shop.

Chance mentions that she’s tired and hungry – she spent the day talking the Ferengi Commerce Authority into startup funding for universal public education on NeoTokyo.

Tiffany bursts out laughing and demands to hear the story.

“Well, you know the underclass is a good 72% of the population – and that’s just those not holding any formal employment. So what’s the biggest return on investment for labor?

Education. Now by definition the underclass doesn’t have the resources to procure it, and nobody here’s wanted to provide it. But for an upfront investment of 1.2 trillion bars, they can get a return of 14.6 trillion within 12 years.”

“Taxes?” Tiffany asks.

“That’s a cultural step too far. The education and training corporation will just take a cut of their salary.”

“You’ve invented student loans!”

Chance grimaces. “Well, yes – but only for those who actually land a job, and it’ll be a percentage. But…” She gives Tiffany a careful once-over. “I control the curriculum.”

Tiffany bursts out laughing again. “Oh, and you’re going to fill their heads with socialist revolutionary propaganda while you’re training them for corpo jobs…” She pauses. “Oh my shit, YOU’RE GOING TO STEAL THE PLANET BACK! I want in!”

She looks delighted beyond words. “You’re going to need to put that contract out to bid – and I’m the only one on the planet who can deliver at that kind of scale - and let you get away with planetwide brainwashing.

“Oh! But you have a little problem, don’t you? Something that could break out into the kind of corpo slugfest we haven’t seen in generations, if Zhukov comes for me. And that would be messy, and it’d look like maybe you’re not in control.

So you need him taken out quietly - you don’t have a trustworthy dirty tricks squad, and neither do I. You can’t contract this out – it’d undercut you if it leaked. So you throw a job to somebody you know you can trust to keep quiet, she gets the resources to take down a corpo power player, and you and I both get him off our backs. Nice. And now you know my price.” She grins.

Finally Tiffany turns to you, Lane: “I’m intrigued. The planetary COO asks me to a private dinner in her own penthouse with some rando blogger, and implies that you did her a life-changing favor. So I sic Eloise on your backstory, and what do I find – Zhukov, Romulans, the Triad, Netwatch. You’ve made interesting friends and enemies.

“What’s your pitch for how to do this?”

Lane shows her the pitch document, and Tiffany makes grabby hands. She’s impressed: “I can back you with pretty much anything you need, up to a merc company. Any purchase over 50k, run it by Eloise, and I get to keep it afterward. Below that, whatever, as long as it gets the job done, but if you piss her off with stupid spending, heaven help you, you’re better off with Zhukov. So what’s your fee for the gig?”

Lane wants a piece of the action after taking out Zhukov: her team can continue to help Tiffany. Rina tells Lane she wants to demand stock options rather than cash upfront: “Tiffany makes a shit ton of money: everything she touches turns to gold: we want in!” The team gets a percentage of everything she takes from Zhukov, plus an ongoing relationship. Lane asks for half, and Tiffany bursts out laughing. They agree at 25%, shockingly!

Tiffany pops a last piece of sushi into her mouth. “OK, we have a deal. So the night is young and we’ve talked enough shop. Who wants to go dancing?” Chance begs off: she’s got an infinite amount of work. Lane agrees, but Tiffany has a price: she’s got to come along on her bike, the Event Horizon. She promises to keep it under 300kph for her!

Lane tells Jiefan, who’ll tail her and wait wherever they end up.

Tiffany takes her to Darkstar, atop the NyongHyup Financial Building, the tallest in NeoTokyo. She can see out to the fires still burning on The Wreck of Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, on the far side of the bay. From the other direction, the night burns with the holographic Spire projecting up from Old Dome. The view is phenomenal.

The clientele is hyper-elite: Lane recognizes a couple fashion models and media stars. This crowd is more talent than money, but even not counting Tiffany the net worth here is in the tens of billions. Tiffany introduces her around, then takes her out on the dance floor. They’re both only okay dancers: clearly neither gets out much.

Lane makes a pass, and Tiffany accepts. It’s back on the bike – but she turns down some sort of access street for big buildings. An armored garage door raises silently, and she turns in, parking the bike. The garage is full of ultra-high end vehicles: no other bikes, though. She leads Lane to an elevator, all rich, polished wood, no buttons. It ascends, opening onto a small hallway, with three doors visible. On one, the lock panel is glowing green. Tiffany palms it, and they enter.

It’s a luxury hotel suite -apparently you’re at the Belgrave, which she actually hasn’t heard of. There’s a bucket of champagne on ice and a silver- yeah, real silver – tray of fresh pastries. A small sitting area, and the bedroom. If there were like a top of the line surgical suite, but for high-end fucking, this is what it would look like.

And Tiffany’s in phenomenal shape: her implants for handling that bike leave her incredibly strong and flexible. The energy, well, that seems to be all her own.

She gets up just before six, ruffles Lane’s hair and tells her she’s a hotel guest till 3 – go wild. And she’s gone.

Lane calls home and lets them know she’ll be a couple more hours. She takes a bubble bath while the hotel sends up some fruit and cheese. She feels a bit bad that she’s the only one enjoying this. She does have to go back and tell them they’ve got a murder contract: she lounges in the bath and plots how to tell them.