The Flamebringer
Falling out of a building was painful. There's really no getting around that, even if it wasn't immediately lethal. Moreso if it was a direct result of being blown out of a building by a bomb that probably killed your boss.
Hayley's mood was not helped by the fact that the car she landed on just so happened to belong to some lawyer asshole from a block over and clearly it was her fault that the car was crushed and no concern was payed to the fact that she just fell out of a building.
Which made it all the funnier when he broke his wrist punching her. After some explanations to the police and a demonstration of how she was walking around after being thrown out of a hundred-story building, the man was arrested for being an all around jackass (and incidentally assault).
Which left the conundrum of her and her favorite detective, Angela Cortiz, staring up at the currently-on-fire top of Daedalus Industries' Novo Lucro branch.
Angela's first word was a succinct summation of what everyone present was thinking: "Fuck."
All are significantly abnormal in a normal world... All are significantly normal in an abnormal world.
That One Gal
The enraged shouts of Gloaming's riot overpowered any other sounds, so most of the gigantic crowd didn't know that something was amiss until it was too late.
Carving his way through the riot was DEVIN, the thin robotic vigilante of Novo Lucro. Not many people knew about him. At least, not before tonight. The crowd of rioters was thick, but DEVIN made his way past everyone by slicing down each and every person in his way, slashing throats and impaling guts with ease. He barely made a dent in the riot, all things considered, but the mass of people didn't deter him from his target: Gary Gloaming. So, DEVIN kept on hacking his way into the crowd, blood spraying and bodies falling one by one.
Stephenson Avenue
Where one sees an obstacle, another sees an opportunity. And the latter was what Laura's highest bidder, Medusa Corp, did when the anti-augmentation terrorist shows up at one of their storefronts. They and Laura agreed on a plan: wait for the already high tension protest escalate into an actual, full-scale riot and use it to their advantage\with looting the competitor's stores and destroying their assets. Except for Medusa's stores, of course, Laura's makeshift crew can 'rob' it as their payment but their main objective is to acquire as much of their assets as they can and put it back in their escape van and return them back to Medusa Corp. They don't care if they trashed the place, their rent was coming up and they think it's not worth the price anyways.
Right now, Laura, now in her Ojousama persona, and her crew were waiting inside the van in an alley nearby the street while their scout is in the crowd taking temperatures of the riot. Laura have been very anxious for the protest to reach its breaking point as she keeps pestering the scout via a disposable cellphone if there's violence starting already.
"Boss!" the scout answered but then Ojousama corrected him "It's Ojousama for you, plebs! Get your terms right!"
The scout rolled his eyes and complied "Fine, Ojousama. But don't worry, Bo...Ojousama, the protest getting rowdy, get ready to-What the hell is tha-"
Thats the last of what Ojousama heard before she heard the sound of a sword slicing through bones and the line terminated.
"Hello? Hello?" Ojousama was a bit apprehensive about what just happened but she just shrugged and assumed that the riot has officially been started, yelled at the rest of the crew "Alright, plebs, it's time for your paycheck!", kick the van door open and make a mad dash for the shopping center, her men followed suit.
"We won't bear it!" she yelled to the crowd with her Chicago Typewriter raised up in the air in order to blend in with the crowd.
http://www.last.fm/user/sgtpendulum Yo, check out what I'm listening, it'll be heat, brah :^)
In memory of flash games.
After a few months of attempting to fool police forces into thinking he moved to a different country, Robert came out of hiding at the mention of the phrase "ten million".
With all of his accounts frozen and in desperate need of money he quickly, and sloppily, contacted the contractor under a new alias of Blast Error (because anagrams and it fit the theme way too well), asking for any intel they had on the security.
Unfortunately he didn't cover his tracks well enough, practically broadcasting to the world that one of the most wanted men alive is currently in Novo Lucro.
Robert takes a good look at the building he's tasked with infiltrating and says the first words he's said since he left his hideout.
"Okay, I need a grappling hook, it'd solve so many of my problems."
It took until the sequels for Star Wars to have a zero gravity scene.
Bona-Fide Mastah
Armitage
R.E.M. may have been a new organization, but it wasn't above heists. Money was money, and money talks in Novo Lucro. Covered by her greatest hacker, the woman known only as Q submitted an acceptance to the offer. And if she got her hands on the AI...maybe she could use it for her own devices. Sentience is a powerful thing, knowledge even moreso. And if you wanted knowledge on some of the big players in the big city, where else to look than one of the city's oldest minds.
Hood pulled high, LE Ds dimmed, Q saunters up to the Museum. "Almost like it'll rain...should be an easy one..." she says, walking right past the city's most wanted man.
Breath of the Sun
Stephenson Avenue
Bootleg didn't think humans were particularly complicated, in the grand scheme of things. For all their capacity to reason, they still reacted instinctively: punch someone, and unless they were a Saint they'd probably punch you back. Be nice to someone, and unless they were the Devil, they'd be nice back. Not hard to follow. Find the people who are similar to you, for any given definition of 'similar', and band together.
That was probably what had inspired the protest below him. A group of people, united in a common cause. A cause he couldn't entirely disagree with. Low-quality cybernetics had meant he stayed on death's door for too many years as a child. Who knows what the future would have held if his dear old dad hadn't made a breakthrough.
So when a robot started slashing up the crowd, he felt it only right to step in. Not physically, of course, not if he could help it. So instead he took aim from the rooftop he was on, leveling his Thompson Contender and loading a cartridge.
"Let's see, how bout we try,,, oh... the eyes. Adjust a bit, and... bang."
A shot rang out, the bullet aimed aimed approximately at DEVIN's eyes.
What is so amusing about this? Why do you take lives? How can you forget?
Strongest In History
Stephenson Avenue
"Oh, what the hell is this? I run a place of business two blocks over, your noise is driving out customers-"
Dan Akibahara instinctively jumped back when the man behind the woman he was talking to got slashed by a robot, who had then promptly been shot betwix the eyes. He pushed his conversational partner into one of his security guards he got to come with him and gave the robot a menacing look.
"You know, a murder in the neighborhood is bad for business."
Dan put his hand on Baka's hilt, ready to pull it out and defend if needed.
"DIO is the ultimate being! The being of the future! Dare you not to rival me!"
Stephenson Avenue
It wasn't that Gloaming wasn't expecting violence, it's that he wasn't expecting it to pop the fuck off that quickly or with so little cause, and so violently directed at the crowd that was quickly surging away from the killer robot. Between the guns pointing out of the crowd and the sniper round flying at the machine from... somewhere, he felt good about it. In response to all these shenanigans, Gray jumped down off his soapbox and pulled a pair of ornate-looking pistols off his belt, complex tubes strung with wires and pipes that looked almost like a cross between a gun and a PC's cooling rig.
"SEE HOW THEY TREAT US THE MOMENT THEY SEE US CHAFE?" He declared, walking towards DEVIN. He stopped about five feet away and pointed both guns at him; the crowd parted to give them space. "YOU GET ONE CHANCE. RUN NOW AND MAYBE YOU'LL CATCH ME NEXT TIME NOT SURROUNDED BY A THOUSAND OF MY FANS."
Daedalus Industries, Novo Lucro Branch
"I assume you already have my card, officer Hayley MacTaggart." The Lawyer In Question was named Marion Jack Templeton, esq.—he went by M Jack or Mr. Templeton though. He was a very short man with a neckless head like a toe. He wore shitty rectangular sunglasses that barely covered his eyes and sat loose on a pale face. "If you have admitted fault in any way you may as well say so now to me directly so I don't have to file the paperwork to get a brainscan on whether or not you did before I arrived." He lit up a cigarillo, stuck it in his mouth, and only now actually looked up at the blaze all those stories above him. He'd only just managed to approach Hayley because Cyberbail took longer to get out of than he remembered. He spoke without a hint of irony. "Huh. Nice bonfire. Corporate function?"
Armitage Highrise
The "resistance" mentioned in the mission briefing made itself known: nothing serious for now, actually. Just a pair of cops sitting in a cruiser out front on the curb. One of them was very clearly scoping the two out front with a pair of cybernoculars, but hadn't taken action just yet.
edited 19th Mar '18 10:55:23 PM by Taco
That One Gal
Dan had fortunately halted DEVIN's slow murder spree just long enough for the sniper round to nail the robot. He stumbled backward, buckling under the force of the bullet, but stayed on his feet. The bullet had pierced right into DEVIN's visor, the surface cracking out from the point of contact. The bullet was lodged firmly in the goggles, giving DEVIN the appearance of having a single pupil - which turned silently to Dan. A bright line blinked to life on DEVIN's "mouth", resembling a frown.
Fortune favored Dan that day, as the robot's attention moved to the armor-clad man leading the riot. DEVIN stared at Gloaming for a long moment, his mechanical body still. Then he knelt. DEVIN got down on one knee and lowered his head in a gesture of surrender.
Of course, it was just a ploy.
Once Gloaming was lulled by the robot's apparent ceasefire, DEVIN sprang back up, pulling the body of his latest victim up in the same movement. He hurled the corpse at Gloaming, acting as a shield against the man's guns as DEVIN dashed closer, following close behind the body's arc through the air.
Stephenson Avenue
Ojousama, on the other hand, while she does have beef with the terrorist, rather not deal with him right now. He's more trouble than its worth. You cut off one head and many more will spawn and whatnot. She pushed Gloaming aside the get inside the center and immediately spray down the storefront windows. Meanwhile, her squadmates behind her threw molotovs into said store to lit up the merchandise. All through the chaos, Ojousama had make sure that she's heading towards the Medusa store, situated right in the middle of the center.
http://www.last.fm/user/sgtpendulum Yo, check out what I'm listening, it'll be heat, brah :^)
In memory of flash games.
Robert decides it's best to not risk them finding him, and sends the police on scene the first radio message he could find before attempting to enter the highrise.
It took until the sequels for Star Wars to have a zero gravity scene.
The Flamebringer
She sighed. "Now please fuck off and bug some gullible-ass git you can sue to merry hell and back for absolutely nothing so I can work on figuring out who just killed my boss and nearly killed me."
edited 20th Mar '18 12:29:52 AM by Izshta
All are significantly abnormal in a normal world... All are significantly normal in an abnormal world.
Breath of the Sun
Stephenson Avenue
Seeing that DEVIN was still standing, Bootleg whistled, impressed. "Tough sucker. Well, nothing for it, then." He flicked open his gun, popping out the spent cartridge in one motion and replacing it with a shotgun shell.
He was suddenly off, leaping off the rooftop he'd been positioned on, sliding down the side of a building and kicking off, moving faster than a human had any right to. A living blur, passing through the air at insane speed.
Bootleg landed atop the thrown corpse, stomping it into the ground and raising his gun at DEVIN again, this time much closer, smirking smugly. "Ciao!"
He fired, sending a spray of buckshot at the rogue AI.
edited 20th Mar '18 9:36:45 AM by kagescorpionakki
What is so amusing about this? Why do you take lives? How can you forget?
Strongest In History
"Hmm, so you're where the bullet came from? Mind if I help?"
Dand pulled out Baka, holding it in reverse style. He slashed at DEVIN's legs, hoping for a hit.
"DIO is the ultimate being! The being of the future! Dare you not to rival me!"
Bona-Fide Mastah
Armitage Highrise
Q blinks, her wrist pnging as the police signal goes out, Hope that wasn't a robbery in progress one she thought, continuing her walk toward the door, or more specifically the window flanking it. "Nothin' too fancy..." she mutters to herself, trying to get a peek of the inside to scope out interior security.
Stephenson Avenue
Gloaming didn't fall for the trick; he just stood there, processing what was happening. The tossed body was as a result still successful though, on top of Medeiros shoving him straight into it. It was sort of a mess; he fell forward and got nearly smashed by Bootleg, then staggered backwards to find a scrum on the robot. He turned to the crowd at large and hustled past them, trying to tend to the wounded.
"I OWE YOU ONE." He nodded once to DEVIN's attackers, rummaging through a pouch on his leg for some quick-spray aid. His hand flipped up to pop a button on his helmet, disabling the microphone briefly. "Gray Gloaming. Come find me once you're done there." The same motion, and Gray's voice boomed again, towards the crowd. "GO FORWARD MY FRIENDS! DO THIS FOR YOURSELVES. I'LL HELP TEND THE WOUNDED. I WON'T STEAL THE GLORY."
As the crowd surged forward with Ojousama's assault and started in on wrecking the place in earnest, Gray disappeared past them to help his people. Gibson had managed to finally muster a firm security force and were holding the crowd back in a rolling retreat down a wide lobby area that led off to offices in back and show floors in the sides (now rapidly burning up thanks to the molotovs). Security was overwhelmed, but they had the advantage on a crowd with no reach for now, as they were armed with long stun poles like pikes.
Daedalus Industries
M Jack frowned. "Sorry. I—oh, jesus!" He jumped as a small robot servitor scooted past him—an advance scout from Daedalus's security branch that resembled a roomba carrying an computer tablet on a long spindly arm extending out of a box coded with Daedalus's internal symbology for a forensics kit. The tablet itself had several readouts—the robot was going to follow Haley so it could record any notes she took as well as her report of the initial attack. It was encouraging her to exercise her best judgment on investigating the bomb site, since the internal fire brigade had gotten there before the forensics team. A Daedalus VTOL, presumably the one that dropped off the servitor, hosed down the burning office with a fire suppressant foam cannon attached where other models would have mounted weapons.
The pilot hailed Haley. "Officer MacTaggart! Wish we could meet under better circumstances! Hope you're alright! Structural analysis says the elevator's fine. By the time you get up here it should be all cleared up."
Armitage Highrise
Predictably, there was little to no security for the apartment lobby. All the nastier kit would be up higher, at the checkpoint floors. The police officers would have probably harassed Q as she got closer, but the phony signal got the cops off their stakeout for a brief moment to check their console and size up the situation. The two would-be thieves had an opportunity here.
Full-Conversion Cyborg
Daedalus Industries
Just then, the VTOL hovered lower toward the ground, and the pilot radioed once again, "Almost forgot, your bodyguard's here too!"
The side door swung upward, and a large robotic figure leaped out, landing heavily near Hayley as the craft rose again to take care of the remains of the fire.
Xarok rose, looking between Hayley, the detective, the lawyer, and the drone with his three primary optics. Though largely face-blind, to Xarok, Hayley's silver hair and extensive bionic prostheses meant there was no mistaking her.
"Greetings," the cyborg said flatly, his mechanical baritone
curt. "Daedalus Industries believes that this attack will not be the last attempt to sabotage their valuable assets, and have assigned me to preserve them. Namely: you, Hayley MacTaggart."
edited 21st Mar '18 8:07:09 PM by StygianEmperor
Flesh is a design flaw.
In memory of flash games.
Confident that he won't be noticed by the police or detected by the security checkpoints, Robert tried to stroll right in.
It took until the sequels for Star Wars to have a zero gravity scene.
Bona-Fide Mastah
Armitage Highrise
Q smirks. Nice she thought.
As Robert strolled up to the door, she steps right in front of him, first through the door. "Aw, ain't you sweet, holdin' the door for a lady?" and she strolls right in.
Stephenson Avenue
The good news was that Ojousama had succeeded in destroying most of the assets in the competitor's stores, most of them going up in flames, in seconds thanks to her cronies and the unsuspecting crowd. The bad news was that they're flocking to the Medusa store as well and Ojousama assumed that they're going to do the same thing.
Ojousama have to think fast; she can't exactly shoot them down directly or they'll throw down with her immediately but she can't exactly acquire the assets while they're here either. It would look weird for the anti-augment rioters to steal an augment when they're specifically railing against the very fundamentals of it.
Then she noticed that the security had come over with their electric poles and she have an idea.
"COME GET SOME, SECURITY PIIIIGS!" Laura yelled out as she sprayed half a drum worth of bullets against the officers, then she made a mad dash to the Medusa stores in hopes of them chasing her. In the meantime, she tried and do a sneaky, cheeky steal of the Medusa assets.
http://www.last.fm/user/sgtpendulum Yo, check out what I'm listening, it'll be heat, brah :^)
The Flamebringer
She waved Detective Cortiz and her apparent new bodyguard to follow, heading inside and into the executive elevator.
All are significantly abnormal in a normal world... All are significantly normal in an abnormal world.
That One Gal
DEVIN wasn't prepared for someone to come rocketing down out of the sky in the time it took to close the distance between him and Gloaming, so when Bootleg touched down between them, DEVIN nearly crashed right into the man.
As his processors audibly whirred, taking in all the information of what was happening around him, DEVIN rebounded quick - literally. Using the momentum of his cut-off dash, the robot sprung off Bootleg's stomach, soaring right over the head of Dan as the samurai swung low. As DEVIN passed over, he grabbed the back of Dan's collar, pulling the human up as gravity kicked in.
With a pull, DEVIN fell to his feet, similarly yanking Dan upwards, putting him right in the way of the buckshot.
edited 25th Mar '18 7:43:31 PM by TruthHurts22
Breath of the Sun
Stephenson Avenue
Cazzo. Bootleg cursed internally as the other cyborg bounced away from him. Another speed-type, then. Fun. To hell with it. Allegro.
The world seemed to slow, from his perspective at any rate, and he moved, dashing past his own buckshot and grabbing Dan out of the air with one hand, leaping in a perfect forward flip, landing behind DEVIN. His other hand loaded another shotgun shell, spinning his gun to reload in one smooth motion as he moved through the air.
Try dodging again, jackass. Still a blur, Bootleg dropped Dan unceremoniously on the ground, raised his Thompson, and fired, before dropping his Double Time.
All of this happened within the tenth of a second at most.
edited 25th Mar '18 7:53:05 PM by kagescorpionakki
What is so amusing about this? Why do you take lives? How can you forget?
Strongest In History
Stephenson Avenue
Dan rolled back, taking a hot second to process what just happened. His Analytics had no data on neither his ally or his... enemy, and he slowly filled in what he had experienced.
Dan dashes back into the fray, sliding behind DEVIN and slashing at the back multiple times.
"DIO is the ultimate being! The being of the future! Dare you not to rival me!"
The sun was going down in Novo Lucro. For a couple blessed hours, the whole city was painted in pinks and purples. It was cloudy that day, so the sun had a great canvas to work with. Some of the buildings crammed into the city even punched right through the cloud layer, but plenty hung low. People in Novo Lucro had respect for a wide sprawl in a way other places didn't in this day and age. It felt tense; the clouds hadn't come pouring rain in just yet, but it wouldn't be far off.
Mission ID 54597: Museum Heist
We are interested in obtaining the remains of KRUFT/BLUEJACK's former vessel. Please obtain it and upload it to the proper terminal, marked in the attachment. Please note you will encounter resistance both at the Armitage Cybermuseum and at the Mycenae Arcology the marked terminal is in.
KRUFT/BLUEJACK was the first truly sentient AI, but it died decades ago. The thing's nonstop awareness and ever-growing intellect were the reason AI received the brakes that made them into actual people, or at least decent approximations of people that didn't either kill themselves or kill other people indiscriminately or possibly just ascend to a new reality. It was unclear. The drive that held K/B just went silent one day, but was still in this museum. It was positioned at the top of the Armitage Highrise as a sort of perk to the penthouse folks who were otherwise stuck mostly looking at the other skyscrapers of Novo Lucro. It was actually on the smaller size at only thirty stories, but the place was made so much taller with the bullshit common with a lot of "mixed-class apartments." See, the building had a very popular tiered setup kind of like an old ziggurat, but moving from penthouse to apartment to coffin apartment required first passing through a security checkpoint floor to access a different elevator or staircase.
The marked terminal was in the lobby of the Armitage Highrise apartment complex. The digital coffin was a two-by-two-by-two cube sitting on a pillar in the middle of a museum at the top. The two needed united for a ten-million Novo Lucro Cryptodollar payout.
The silence of the halls of Armitage Highrise couldn't be a stronger contrast to The Gibson Center for Cybernetic Augmentation. Inside and outside the place was a riot of noise. And also outside it was a literal riot. Anti-augmentation activist/terrorist Gray Gloaming stood on a literal soapbox, riling up the crowd out front. The Center itself was a blocky building with a little overhang out front, a very short hospital that stretched out and back on its lot, less up, as was the trend in Novo Lucro.
"THE CHEAPEST ARM IN THE CENTER COSTS TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS." His voice boomed over the crowd, amplified by a spherical full-face gray helmet with a rebreather on the mouth. He had similarly hidden the rest of his body with a gleaming black shell of armor kind of like the carapace of a beetle.
"THEY SAY THEY WANT TO FIX US, BUT AT THE COST OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE IN DEBT!" He went on. "WE WON'T BEAR IT!"
The crowd yelled back. "WE WON'T BEAR IT!" There were easily a thousand people crammed up and down Stephenson Avenue, all directing their rage at the Gibson Center.