Session Seven: Continental Breakfast - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

304 Bezos 1 Fire

The Emerald Blossom Resort is under attack! Jiefan looks out the window in time to see an assault team setting up a mortar, aimed at their floor. She grabs Rook and gets her under cover in her bedroom.

Rook is awake, clutching a toothbrush and wondering why this is the start to her morning.

The mortar takes out the suite’s living room. Jiefan says that the assault force is likely to follow up with an attack up the stairs and into their suite: their only way out is up to the roof. She gets Rook boosted up safely, but when it’s Rook’s turn to haul Jiefan up, Jiefan’s grip slips! Rook tries an emergency grab but fails, and Jiefan falls 15 stories!

Rook sees a patrol helo overhead! She ducks into the poolhouse maintenance building! She calls Lane over the group feed: “Jiefan just fell off the roof and I think she’s dead!”

Lane makes sure Dr Madison is safe back in the water. Madison’s going to be no help in a land fight, but she can call TreeHouse security. She pulls Lane in for a hard kiss and backflips back into the water, and swims off.

Lane calls Eloise as she tries to sneak into the main building. Eloise tells her to lay low and wait for TreeHouse security. She also calls Rina to see what she’s up to.

Rina’s gotten the Ruin Island bit set up for Moopsie’s arrival. She’s in full cat mode. What comes over the headset is pure cat screeching, and it takes a moment for the universal translator to catch up. She’s terrified and hysterical at a level the team hasn’t seen. “Moopsie’s going to murder everybody! I’m coming back!” She has no idea what’s happening at the hotel and not tracking. Lane tells her not to come back. Rina’s off to find the Colony.

Lane needs to get up to Rook on the roof! She calls the concierge. “My people were targeted, I’ve got somebody stuck up on the roof, we’ve got these bad people after us – and after that I’ll need a good place to buy a dress for a ball. And I’m sure you have extra weapons I can use as well. I’m on my way in: what kind of help can you give us, and can you get somebody up to help Rook? She’s up in the pool equipment. I need her extracted and kept safe.

“What is your location at the moment, and are you safe?” Lane tells the concierge exactly where she is, and in moments, a squad of Zhukov troopers arrives and captures her.

Lane told the concierge where Rook was too, and moments later the door to the maintenance room is kicked in. Rook tries to play innocent, but the troops ID her and take her as well. “Damn, I should’ve shot them!”

Rina found the colony in their new building: it’s the first time she’s seen the building, as the Clowder bought it with their own funds. Hopefully Zhukov doesn’t have access to those accounts. She gets swarmed by the cats and gives them a breathless rundown of what’s going down.

She’s trying to keep an eye on the other agents and what they’re doing. Lane and Rook both had their feeds open. As soon as she hears them taken, she shuts down her feed and disconnects from the network, and then panics some more.

She calls TreeHouse, knowing Lane already reached out to them. She tells them the two at the hotel have been captured by Zhukov security and “you need to find the pretty one with the pink hair and make sure he’s safe!” Quanh tells her to get somewhere safe and prepare for evacuation. She helps the kits prepare to evacuate for somewhere else they won’t be murdered.

Kestrel’s at the pool now, but Rina’s offline and the other two are captured. He gets a call from TreeHouse: head around to the front of the hotel, keep an eye on Zhukov’s forces, and if possible, prevent them from leaving.

The Zhukov recon copter goes down fast against the TreeHouse assault gunship.

Rina assembles the kitties, gets them elsewhere, and calls Eloise with her location: she’s not sure she can trust Quanh.

The colony spent the past day prowling the city looking for places to live, so she’s going to talk to Kaito and follow his lead to the most secure place they found, even if it wasn’t the nicest. They’re going to engage in the proud behavior of their people, squatting. It’s a nice apartment building that’s apparently being rehabbed or caught up in a property dispute, so, there for the taking.

There’s a TreeHouse armored car parked at the bodega at the end of the block. Rina sends a message to Eloise to confirm. She leaves the kits there with orders to not engage and scatter if anything happens: “Do not be brave, we lost one colony today, Grandfather is going to be apoplectic, I’m going to have to live with humans the rest of my life!” She slips out the back and approaches the bodega from the other side.

There’s someone in the car, engines still running. Someone in TreeHouse security uniform is casually shopping inside.

Rina doesn’t have her hoodie! She’s NAAAKED! She approaches the driver’s side and raps on the window. The driver drops Eloise’s name. She just climbs in the window over him, taking the shotgun from the dash clamp along the way. Driver rolls down the passenger window. “Lina, you always get the chili lime anyway, c’mon!” Lina returns with three packets, but Rina doesn’t take one.

Tavish Nakada, the driver, briefs her. She just stares at him, clutching the shotgun. All three of them are in the front seat, Rina’s perched on the console. Lina asks if she wants to go to TreeHouse or to the hotel site. She doesn’t know. Lina asks if she wants to go towards the hostage negotiation or to safety. “I need to know what w have to bargain, I need a network.”

They’ll take her to the TreeHouse command center. Calder meets them at the HQ building and tentatively offers a hug. She arches her back at him! She darts off to find stimulants and a network node. Calder gets her a chair in the security command center. This helps! She’s hugging the interface a bit 😊

They’ve given her full access. She checks on status all around. She taps into the Ruin Island security: Moopsie is in the garage, on a patio chair, slamming back mojitos. There’s steel drum music on the audio feed.

She checks in with the Vole: they got her friend her own mojito machine. “We’re in a lot of shit here. Stay safe, Zhukov just blew up our entire hotel and he’s got Lane and Rook. Murder anybody who comes there, yeah. If Moopsie tries to leave, give her more mojitos.”

“I’m going to call a masseuse for her.”

“She’s metal.”

“It’s a simulation, but it’s especially for full body replacements. Don’t ask me how it works, but I know they like it.”

“You know how to reset the ceiling tiles?”

“You showed me twice and I wrote it down on a bar napkin.”

“You locked me out of my storeroom! That was real mean!” She cuts the comms mid-word.

Back at the hotel: TreeHouse has gotten the Zhukov troops bottled up: with their helo out and the road blocked, they’re trapped. With a couple hundred rich hostages, but trapped. The Zhukov commander wasn’t expecting this, so they’re in a holding pattern until an Amalgamated negotiator can arrive.

Rook and Lane have been taken to the hotel security office, zip tied wrists to ankles, and are largely being ignored. Rook’s freaking out about Jiefan falling off the roof, and this is the first Lane has heard about it. “Do we know for sure she’s dead? Did you see it?” “No, I had to run because of the helicopter.”

Lane’s been listening to the negotiations in the security office. She asks about Jiefan. “You left her laying on the street?! She’s former triad, people will be asking about her. If I were you, I would go find her, now.”

Red-eyes asks the security chief if they have cameras back there: he replies it’s a luxury resort, not a prison. Red-eyes tells him to send a team and a medic to search for Jiefan.

The team reports in: Jiefan’s alive, but in critical condition. They’re bringing her back to the lobby on a gurney.

Lane keeps pushing Red-eyes: “You know you need to get some medical help now, you know your boss won’t be happy if a corpse has been brought to him. You want to let those negotiators know what’s happening.” He agrees to admit a hospital paramedic team to evacuate Jiefan.

The orderlies roll in, pulling out shotguns. One of the Zhukov guards deflects the gun, the shot going into the ceiling. The other one gets his shot off, the EMP grenade taking out the helmets of two of the troops, leaving them deaf, blind, and mute.

In the security office, Scofield turns out the lights and releases fire retardant fog. He grabs a shotgun and shoots the Zhukov boss point blank, to no effect.

Lane and Rook try to get each other free. Rook cuts Lane free, and Lane gets the ties off of Rook.

Meanwhile, Rina is surfing the media and trying to figure out what other good corpo citizens are being held hostage. She builds a list and forwards it over to the TreeHouse people with a note to call all their heads of security to work together with them.

As it turns out, a senior VP of Suisse Minsheng is onsite. Rina watches as offers of support and threats of doom pour in. Cheerful Rodent Empire, who owns the resorts, is not pleased with the attack on one of its biggest profit centers.

She texts Eloise: “Do we have enough people that we can do reverse hostages for Zhukov’s shit? “And then you…eat them – in a corporate way. What do they call it, hostile takeovers of, uh, little baby businesses. And you rip off limbs. Like a bug.”

“Stand by, I’m going to escalate this matter.” And Rina does, eating some fish.

Firefight in the lobby: the effective medic gets a hand blown off. Schofield bumps right into the boss crawling out, but body checks him enough for the kill shot to go wide. He, Lane, and Rook get clear into the back of house. Schofield has a backup weapons locker back there: he rolls two EMP grenades into the office, taking out the helmets of the boss and his two minions.

Rook kisses him on the cheek: “Thanks for not being one of the bad guys!” Lane asks: “Where’s your fucking concierge, I want a piece of him!” Schofield explains they couldn’t possibly stand up to a full combat squad, especially after they killed the doormen as a show of force: they had to roll over and bide their time.

“OK, but he still owes me the name of a good dress shop for the ball!”

“I suspect she’ll comp your drinks as well.”

TreeHouse mops up the blind guys in the lobby, and with the leadership out, the rest of Zhukov’s forces surrender. Schofield retakes control of his hotel.

The TreeHouse forces pull out and return, and the team is reunited with Rina. They’re so worried about Jiefan. Hospital reports she’ll pull through, though it’s too soon to know how much will be organic or synthetic.

Lane pulls out the Triad marker. They call to make sure she gets the best medical care ever and a bodyguard there at all time. She considers siccing the Triad on Zhukov, but Rina thinks Eloise is even scarier to Zhukov. “We need to find Zhukov and pull off his actual legs like a bug.” Lane wants to recover the spaceplane for Tiffany: They get 25% of his assets – if that becomes her having control of the spaceplane fleet…..

They’re still in party clothes, except for Rina, who’s already in a giant corporate logo hoodie. Lane checks in with Dr Madison, who’s passionately glad to see Lane alive, and just glad she was able to help in some way with the rescue.

Rook’s lost all her weapons and Lane lost her pistol. Rina gave back the shotgun she was comfort snuggling. They can all gear up from Quan’s armory while they shower.

Lane showers with the mermaid 😊

They’ve got an hour till their meeting with Calder’s fixer contact, Umbral.