Session 3: PsPsPs - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

304 Rand 1 Sun

The group leaves The Qīng-huā: at the end of the path is their new driver/bodyguard, Jiefan Hsao.

As they get in the car, an alarm goes off on the dash. “Two of you are wearing trackers. Stand by and I’ll fry it.” Lane and Rina take some damage as the bugs on their clothes goes up in smoke. Rina’s borrowed sweatshirt catches fire, and she has to pat it out. Lane’s fancy armored outfit is fine. “You may want to run a bug detector over everything you own.” Lane and Rina wonder whether the rocket team went into the ruins of her apartment to tag Lane’s surviving clothes.

Rina gives directions to Nymphie’s place to Jiefan Hsao: “Wait, that’s in the Ruins.” Rina knowns there’s going to be a lot of crawling and climbing: there’s not exactly valet parking where they’re going.

They ask Jiefan to send her brother’s friends over to watch Ruin Island. Lane’s wardrobe has survived one blast, she doesn’t want to put it through another.

Rina’s directions lead to, well, wreckage. A lot of reconstruction money has gone into building out The Sprawl after the Breen attack: now, mostly, it is to the Shimizu arcology ruins as Koto City is to Old Dome. But the remains of the arcology itself are, well, a Wreck.

On leaving the car, the Colony is back in Rina’s head. Her ears twitch, and she sends out a quick message. She purrs back after getting their message, then taps out. “I got a message” and she pulls out her agent like she’s looking at it and reading it. “My family, we have a friend who’s missing and they want us to find him. It’s probably connected? Can we also do that? It’s probably not a fast thing, but anyway, we’re going to talk to my friend, a different friend, and she can probably help us. I can’t pay for you guys to do it but Nymphie can probably help if you need any upgrades or anything.” They’re all about the barter. Rina sends back to the Colony that they’re on board. She gets out of the car and scampers off, very comfortable in this wrecked situation.

Rina leads them through a maze of fallen walls, wiring, rebar, and general crap. About fifty meters in, the tunnel of wreckage opens up into a sort of hive town- pretty quiet at 6 AM. Up some ladders from level to level, and they arrive at an armored steel door, with no markings except =(^.^)= in pink – nail polish? And there’s an armored catflap – with a retinal scanner?

Rina scratches on the door next to the catflap, gets her eyes to the retinal scanner, and oozes through, then opens the door from the inside.

“You could have a great career as a cat burglar” – The Vole.

Rina races off through the apartment top speed, bouncing off walls and furniture. Rina bounces up on the stool next to Nymphie, who’s sitting with her arms wrapped around a giant mug of coffee, hugs her and rubs her cheek against her.

Nymphie is awake-ish, but she mostly keeps cat hours, so it’s ungodly early. She’s dressed and put together, if bleary.

Introductions are made. Rina is very proud to announce she has a Job. They’re trying to find – Digit Alice. She shows a picture of the dragonfly. Rina has meticulously crafted notes she zaps over to Nymphie’s agent, then starts reading them to her like Nymphie can’t read them herself. It’s a full rundown of everything from the past 24 hours, including the fate of two sweatshirts.

Nymphie has some scattered pieces to share:

• After some chaos with Netwatch in ’65, other than the usual grad students with cyberpsychosis, nothing really went on in the AI field before the War. The Soong brain in Starfleet seemed like a one-off, like so many other Turing-positive AI have been, so the field kind of dried up. And after the war, there’s been zero funding for projects that are both long-term-payoff and high risk. So for a full AI to emerge in the past couple years -super unlikely, at least from the usual sources. Could still be some crazy billionaire’s pet project, but you’d think you’d see more ripple effects if it were.

• Related, though - So about 15 years ago the catwork, when it was just forming, sensed something really disturbing on the edge of their hive mind, with a vague feeling like it was out in the Outback? Or deep underground? And then it went away, and the cats were kind of embarrassed about the fuss.

• The cats actually cooperated a bit with Netwatch, via Stridev: if Netwatch was busy looking elsewhere…

She asks if they think there really is an AI: Could this be a hoax or some sort of diversion? The group thinks not: there definitely was a Digit Alice on the Net, and the Triad is pretty convinced. Lane think it escaped, their client thinks it was stolen.

((Rina doesn’t have the Dragonfly – it’s back at the bar))

Rina discusses the Dragonfly. Nymphie says they need a first rate lab. New Shimizu doesn’t have one: they never got back in the advanced computer tech biz after the bombing: they couldn’t re-create anything that could compete with MIRU at Ishikawa U., so they just ceded the territory. Besides, no investment funds.

So you could totally use the MIRU lab, but that asshole Maddox Allers who runs it will never say yes to an outsider. You could totally break in, though. But, you know, he might be able to give you some info on who might be able to make something like the Dragonfly (just don’t show it to him) if you butter him up right.

Rina explains the cats want the group’s help in finding Stridev, and suggested Nymphie offer cyberwear or upgrades as payment. She agrees. The others will make a wish list of upgrades and will come back.

She hasn’t dealt directly with Stridev in years, that’s a cat-thing. But the roundup of Netwatch employees – including a bunch of deep-cover ones – happened fast after the announcement: teams of mercs plus FCA agents hit everywhere New Years Night. But if the cats think Stridev would have gotten a message out, then yeah. He lived in the Sprawl somewhere, the cats would know.

“But actually, ok, wait, this is weird. I was going to suggest Dr Moopsie as a go-between, but she came to me yesterday and asked who the best hacker on the planet was. I said the best hacker got gunned down last week, and there’s no runner-up. It seemed like she wanted to say more, but she just got real weird and neverminded out.

“Rina, you know where her surgery is. But if the bunch of you are going to be trapsing around The Wreck, you’ll need a guide and backup. I’ll call in Liv: you know nobody knows the Ruin like she does.”

Rina hugs her real hard and purrs so she can feel it. Nymphie skritches her between the years.

While they wait for Liv to come by, Nymphie offers hospitality: Rina goes for the kibble, the others take coffee.

Lane gets a news alert: A clash of titans between an erstwhile rising star and the most glamourous member of the former Continuing Committee! Miss Nguyen hasn’t shown much interest in BADI’s kinds of businesses, but isn’t one to waste an opportunity – or to let anyone else climb the ladder behind her to corporate stardom. Will there be blood in the streets, or just knives in the boardroom? Stay tuned!

She wonders if it might be worth contacting or allying with Tiffany against Zhukov. She does a library search to get up to speed on Nguyen Acquisitions: Nguyen came from nothing to a seat on the Continuing Committe in 15 years: all the other corps on the Committee were decades to centuries old. The institutional powers feared and hated her, but she has a decent reputation, relatively speaking, and is a darling of the press.

Lane thinks she might be able to connect with her on the fashion level. Lane gets stonewalled by her admin, but says, “Tell her I remember Zhukov from the old days.”

Liv arrives and gets briefed: she’ll keep them out of sight as they track down Dr Moopsie: looking like outsiders like they do, it wouldn’t go well for them to just stumble through the Wreck.

Nonetheless, stumbling happens. The Vole: “If I knew we were going on a hike, I wouldn’t have worn heels.” Rina thinks there’ s so much less climbing and squeezing through tight spaces going the people way. Transitioning over to Moopsie’s Colony, she gets a vibe from Moopsie of worry moving to panic. Rina takes off, everyone else follows as best they can.

They come out on a street to see Moopsie facing off with some tough looking Nomad gang leader, with backup on top of semi-wrecked cars. It looks like it’s going badly.

Rina calls out, “hey Doc, I brought you that thing!” One ganger tells them to fuck off. The fight begins! Rina gets up in the boss’s face, hissing, spitting, and scratching. “Leave my doctor alone! Get down and show your belly!”

The two sides are pretty evenly matched, but the team starts picking off the gangbangers. Rina and Moopsie are getting pretty badly hurt: the gang boss is doing some serious damage with his shotgun.

Kitty backup arrives! In short order the gang is finished off.

Rina collapses in a little ball: she’s pretty hurt. “Can we go inside?” The sweatshirt is a complete loss. Moopsie arranges for the healthy ones to carry Rina, and they head off to her surgery. Moopsie patches herself and Rina up.

Best player moments: Rina all the time! Her tenacity against the guy hurting her pediatrician! Lane boldly calling Tiffany Nguyen.

Things that worked: Murder mittens to the rescue! Fight was pretty well balanced.