Contract #1: Big Man, Japan!

Post by **GM Nick** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:39 pm

The inside of the Yakuza data center is deafening. Upon entering, the foursome quickly begin to shiver uncontrollably. Val's biomonitor alerts him that the ambient temperature is -6º celsius.

Three rows of three polished black data-cores line the room. Each unit is pitch black and impossibly sleek, seeming to bend light away from it. Their mind-bending appearances are a testament to the cleanliness of the moisture-free, dust-free environment.

Post by **GM Nick** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:41 pm

Kato, hugging his arms to his chest and chattering his teeth, motions at the data-cores with his chin.

"This personnel information for the family. My file somewhere in there. Think you can remove it without any trace, bit-boy?"

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:11 pm

Val nods. "I'll try."

Val shivers and makes his way to what he hopes is a defensible position in relation to the door.

"Watch me, 'manos. I'll take care of these 'cores, but if I trip a wire, you can bet we'll have company. I'll do my best to avoid that, but we'd freeze to death before I could set up an ideally subtle takeover. Comm me if drek gets fragged. This won't take long either way."

Back to the wall, teeth chattering against the cold, Val slips into hot-sim VR, running his Armor, Firewall, and Stealth programs. He detects the node controlling the data-cores, and attempts to gain access.

Conway · Post by **Conway** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:01 pm

[Pachinko Parlor, Office]

Sinjin opens the door and quickly gestures to enter. Sticking his head out, he sneaks a quick peek down the hallway looking for restroom signage or a manual fire alarm along the walls and corridor before closing the door.

Strolling amiably about the room, Sinjin begins his narrative of events.

"Right, so here's what I was thinking. Goon #1 and Goon #2 here are in an argument when things start to escalate and get physical. #2 rushes #1, pinning him against his desk and begins choking him out. This is pretty much the scene as it was when I arrived," Sinjin says as he lays across the desk in pantomime.

"Realizing he's in danger and at the edge of consciousness or worse, #2 makes a grab for this wakizashi here," he continues, knocking the rack of weapons to the floor, "But in his coke fueled panic manages only to push it out of reach. Witnessing this scene from the doorway, our closet junkie dish-washing friend here is inspired by a moment of greed and opportunity and makes a play for the boss man's stash to feed his animal."

Reaching into his coat, Sinjin pulls a hefty pinch of novacoke from the bag in his pocket and holds it out to the worker. "Here, sniff this."

"Entering the room from behind, he picks up the discarded weapon and with a surge of adrenaline he strikes heavily at this man here, nearly severing his head," Sinjin points to the body of the dead gangster. He watches with equal parts fascination and horror as his borrowed puppet stoops to grab the wakizashi and cleaves mightily into the dead Yakuza, the sharpened blade of the ceremonial weapon thoroughly disfiguring the mans neckline.

He grimaces and asks aloud, "Frak, will he really do anything I ask without question?" Looking at the man mischievously he commands airily, "Dance, fool.", and chuckles as the dishwasher begins gyrating and hopping about, eyes vacant and staring into nothing. "This magic of yours is pretty frakked up, Tyros. Remind me not to piss you off. You are in here by the way, aren't you?" Sinjin asks, eyes scanning randomly about the room.

"Anyways, by this time the second Yak is on his knees, begging for his life," Sinjin narrates, holding the unconscious man up off the ground. "But, fueled by greed and his hatred for these men who worked him like a dog for drek pay and a lifetime of overlooked promotion, our little friend here unleashes a furious vengeance on his former boss." The wakizashi's blade flashes repeatedly, stabbing viciously in and out of the gangster's torso. Sinjin braces as the Yak's body stiffens in his arms, a spurt of blood ejecting with a short gasp that emanates from the man's throat. Sagging, a froth of blood and bubbles wheeze from the man's chest as his final breath escapes his punctured lungs. Sinjin lays the body in a convincing position and stands.

"After that our hero......Man, thats disturbing," Sinjin remarks, eyebrow raised at the blood soaked dishwasher now continuing to dance a macabre macarena. "Knock that off." The man ceases his gesticulations immediately. "Actually, can you turn him off for a minute, Ty? I dont want him running out for this part. After that, our hero makes of with the booty," Sinjin taps the packet of drugs and money in his jacket pointedly, "pulls the fire alarm, and makes his escape in the ensuing chaos."

With a bow and flourish, Sinjin concludes his story telling. "So, whaddya think?"

John · Post by **John** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:31 pm

(( Lock this thread now. It's only downhill from here. Fucking bravo. ))

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:31 pm

(( Excellent post, Tom! Some bonus karma heading your way... ))

Stat1C5hade flits towards the blinding array of data-cores, his avatar's feet hovering a few centimeters above a golden, glowing grid. A small army of loading bars hover about his digital frame as his various programs load.

Matrix Stealth Test

Matrix Armor Test

The man-shaped silhouette flickers and dims until it's a specter, floating through the void. A mesh of protective light pulses outward, forming a protective bubble.

Matrix Scan (Hidden Node)

A monolith of light and energy materializes in Val's peripheral vision as his expert skill reveals its location.

Elliott · Post by **Elliott** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:16 pm

Tyros nods, satisfied the Ninja's ruse should convince any future crime scene investigation. Looking the blood soaked dishwasher up and down and noting his rapid breathing as the drugs kick in, "Excellent work, that should do nicely. Hand our pal here your grenade and that bag of novacoke and we should be good to go. I think you can head out the way you came in now. I'll walk our murderer/sabotagist to the fire alarm and then the bathroom and have him flush the grenade. As soon as it goes boom, I'll alter his memory and go out the way I came in. His fate will be his own after that...make sense?"

Conway · Post by **Conway** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:44 pm

[Pachinko Parlor, Office]

Nodding curtly, Sinjin pulls an envelope from the office desk and adds a bit of the novacoke to it before sealing and stashing it away in his breast pocket.

Turning sheepishly, he remarks "...its for analysis."

Resealing the plastic bag of drugs, he plants it on the kitchen workers person along with a few Ameribucks. "Possession is 9/10's of the law, my unlucky chum." Unhooking a High Explosive grenade from his waist band, he places it lovingly in their scapegoats hand.

Grabbing the cyberdeck from atop the desk, Sinjin cinches it tight to his chest with the rope he'd left coiled by the chair. Satisfied it wouldn't fall free, he gives it a final pat before heading to the ventilation duct and his escape.

"See you on the outside, mate."

Elliott · Post by **Elliott** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:59 pm

"Indeed."

Tyros orders the dishwasher out of the office and to the fire alarm nearest the bathroom. With a quick mental impulse, the dishwasher reaches out and pulls the alarm. Not wasting any time, the Yak kitchen slave runs into the bathroom, followed closely by true invisible troll.

Tyros does a quick scan of the bathroom to make sure they are alone.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:16 pm

Stat1C5hade frowns inwardly and restarts his Stealth program, knowing that he could very well blow this entire mission if he's detected by the node's firewall. Once done, he takes a deep virtual breath and attempts to create an account for himself on the data-core node.

<"On your toes boys. I'm going in. Oh, and Kato, did we ever nail down the criteria for success here? Can I simply lay some ruin on these cores or do we need to raze the building?">

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:19 pm

[ Pachinko Parlor ]

Katsuhiro's ankles are wet. He looks down and is alarmed to find that he is standing in a flooded bathroom. The porcelain skeleton of an exploded toilet is nearby, through the center of which now issues forth a majestic torrent of sewage and water. He stifles the urge to retch and wades to the exit.

Customers are screaming and fleeing the building. Apparently the boss's nephew (whom they'd hired to do the building on the cheap) wasn't such a great plumber after all. The pipes must have burst, because more water was now coming from the walls. A handful of pachinko machines lay face down in the sludge, the little ball bearings used to play glitter like pearls beneath the oily surface of the water.

Being a neo-buddhist, Katsuhiro is convinced that this is his karma. He tries desperately to recollect a heinous act for which this could be punishment, but his brain hurts. There are vague images of... something... Blood. A struggle. It certainly couldn't have involved him, he decides. He feels too removed from the act.

Splish-splash, splish-splash. Katsuhiro watches with numb, detached interest as though invisible feet were running through the water past him. If it wasn't so ridiculous, he would swear he heard a deep chuckle as well. Allowing himself a drawn out sigh, the diminutive dishwasher sloshes through the crud to the front entrance, where the guests seem to be congregating.

"Did you see it?" asks a man in frantic Japanese. "I was taking a piss and all of the sudden--" the man slams his fist into his palm. "Blammo!"

"Blammo?" asks a soaked joy-girl.

"Blammo," repeats the salaryman.

"This place is finished," mutters one of the guests. He turns and stamps wetly across the street.

What a strange day, thinks Katsuhiro. Unbeknownst to him, it's about to get a lot stranger.

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:28 pm

Matrix Stealth Test

Val's avatar spreads his arms and a stream of light connects him with the node. Binary, moving at speeds beyond comprehension, shimmers within the data tunnel.

Hacking on the Fly Test (5)

Tendrils of code penetrate the node's firewall, utilizing generally-benign service ports. Once inside, Val attempts to quickly construct a logic statement that will occupy the data-core's processors and slow down intrusion prevention.

User Trace (5)

An icon of a massive eye materializes next to Stat1C5hade and begins scanning him, attempting to decrypt his masking code.

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:29 pm

Kato's voice seems a million miles away.

"Try to delete without trace, buddy. If they don't know there's detection, they won't try to find out what's missing."

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:31 pm

Silently cursing the necessary lack of tact while breaching the firewall, Stat1C5hade quickly runs his Spoof program and tries desperately to buy himself some time by redirecting the node's trace attempt.

Drew Buddy · Post by **Drew Buddy** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:34 pm

Doc leans on the wall, eyes darting between the door, and Val's comatose form.

"Val brings up a good question, Kato. What's the acceptable level of mayhem here? It seems like this data center is housing a lot more than just the Yak hardware. Would wiping the data be good enough, or do we need to raze the joint?"

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:54 pm

Hacking on The Fly Test (1)

The exploit executes before Val can fully load his spoof program. The formerly impenetrable wall fades out of existence and the node is his. He quickly deactivates the firewall software and floats on to the datastores--large, iridescent cubes containing uncanny amounts of photos, trideo footage, and text.

John · Post by **John** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:55 pm

Max stands in the room, keeping watch and on edge. The Deus hallucination has him shaken. Max may lose his drek from time to time and he may need a bump at inopportune moments, but he never hallucinates. A fix. That's all he needs. Max thumbs the bottle of pills in his pocket, removes the cap, and scoops one tab from his pocket to his mouth by faking a suppressed cough.

Elliott · Post by **Elliott** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:05 pm

Watching the confused dishwasher from the doorway to the kitchen as the Pachinko Parlors patron flee, Tyros moves his invisible hands in a circular pattern (centering) and gently massages his way into the hapless Yak's mind one more time (alter memory, f6, building a firm memory of his committing the murder to feed his novacoke habit, pulling the alarm and blowing the bathroom, and wiping any reference of the thought control or ninja; I'll use my edge point for an automatic success too).

Satisfied that the memory has been crafted to perfection, Tyros leaves the diminutive, soon to bed executed, dishwasher to slowly remember events on his own as the troll flees the building and retreats to his motorcycle.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:10 pm

Momentarily relieved, Val peers around the node's sculpted cubes of data, taken aback by the sheer volume of it all. Knowing that he's got no time to waste with his meat back in the proverbial locker, he executes a data search. As he sets to work, Val smirks wanly at a mildly ironic thought. Kato himself might never be lost in a crowd, but the man's file was something else entirely.

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:15 pm

Alter Memory (f6)

Tyros feels a subtle vibration, confirming his memory implantation was successful.

Post by **GM Nick** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:26 pm

Data Search Test

Val's avatar grasps one of the data cubes on opposing sides and pulls his arms apart. The cube explodes, revealing a thousand layers of animated film and flat trideo previews. His fingertips brush against the micrometer thin edges, as though one might flip through the pages of a book. Meta-words and identifiers appear above his hand and nearly all of the layers disappear at once. With a quick gesture, the avatar flicks the remaining images into empty space and examines them. At a quick glance, they all appear to be personnel files of Yakuza members.

Matrix Perception

...but something isn't right. Val's meat frowns--a subconscious gesture not extended to his digital representation. Stat1c5hade extends an index finger and traces an outline in an apparently empty quadrant. A new personnel file promptly materializes. A hidden file!

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:49 pm

Thinking quickly, Stat1c5hade gathers any personnel files tagged as Seattle data center employees and sets them aside. With an arcing whip of his arm, he casts the remainder of the Yakuza personnel files back into the data cube, sending a luminous torrent of data streaking away from his workspace. He rifles through the personnel files until he finds what he's looking for: the file of a data center security tech. After determining that the file itself hides no direct threats, he rips open the wafer-thin sheet and an impossibly large explosion of words, pictures, and trid footage sprays forth. In the blazing constellation of images and artifacts, Stat1c5hade reaches forth and finds what he's looking for: the security tech's Access ID.

After returning the rest of the files to the data cube, Val attempts to edit the access log to remove his current session from the record completely. Next, he withdraws from the firewall briefly and attempts to log on with security-level clearance while Spoofing the soon-to-be-unfortunate security tech's Access ID.

John · Post by **John** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:38 am

The moment the pill hits Max's stomach he begins to feel better. It's impossible that the chemicals have actually had any effect on him at this point, but that he knows the high is coming is enough to start its play on his nervous system early. His pain receptors dull and the lights in the clean room glow a little fuzzier, like the world has just had its RGB saturation cranked up. His head doesn't go swimmy-- Max fires down far too much bliss for one pill to properly alter him in the way most would think of the term. One just takes the edge off-- turns the volume down from ten to nine. Max can handle nine. Nine may actually be the number with which he works best. Nine is intense but anticipatory. Nine is in the drek, but nine can get worse. Nine allows for actions to be taken to keep it from rolling over to ten. Yeah. Nine is where Max works best.

Elliott · Post by **Elliott** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:03 pm

Tyros sprints out the back door of the rapidly flooding, feces saturated Pachinko Parlor. He grins to himself as he makes his way back to his motorcycle and Sinjin, feeling particularly satisfied that despite having to change the plan, the Yaks will not have that place up and running again anytime soon. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, after all. The grin slips into a frowns as his thoughts turn back to feeling a little disjointed with the flows of magic, which seemed to be somewhat out of control tonight. They felt resistant to his will somehow: slippery, as if he was trying to do embroidery with a greased needle. He makes a note to do some research and mental exercises once the night is done. Fortunately, his magic ended up getting the job done though, and that's ultimately all that counts.

Arriving back at this bike, Tyros fades into view and settles himself in the seat. Looking around into the shadows, trying to spot his illusive friend, "You here Sinjin? Mission accomplished, jump on and lets roll."

<"Gentlemen, we have completed our objective. The Pachinko parlor is a foot deep of shit water and Kato's boss is twice dead. All pinned on a sad little dishwasher who actually believes he is responsible for it all. How are you doing? We are going to make our way to the next objective. Meet you out front.">

Conway · Post by **Conway** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 1:26 pm

Stepping from the shadows, Sinjin boards the motorbike and the pair of 'runners escape into the night with a rumble.

Post by **GM Nick** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:59 pm

(( You'll need to spoof a security login in order to grab the hidden file. ))

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:36 pm

((Edited last post to accommodate the need to spoof a security login.))

Post by **GM Nick** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:00 pm

Spoof Test

Stat1c5hade plucks the technician's file and slides his hands apart, generating a secondary file. Holding the file up, the avatar absorbs segments of code--credentials, VR coordinate address, and pilfered pass-codes.

The data-core rotates, and an orb appears just in front of him as his permissions on the node are elevated to security user.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:41 am

The maelstroms of code which constitute his avatar's indigo eyes narrow as Val examines the orb closely, reaching all the while with a translucent limb and palming the hazy outline of the hidden file. He needs to be sure this is what he's here for, and he analyzes it as well.

Post by **GM Nick** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:51 am

A particularly surly Kato appears and rotates above the orb, flanked by several pages of text. This can only be Kato's personnel file.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:14 pm

In a testament to his nature as a decker, Static5hade can't help but spend a few seconds rifling through Kato's file in search of anything interesting. His curiosity satisfied, he extends his hands, gripping opposing sides of the orb, and fires up his Corrupt program. The coherence of the orb's contents atrophies as Val dumps bit after bit of virulent black and green data from his persona into the orb. Once satisfied that the orb is completely unidentifiable and contains nothing more than a jumble of meaningless data, he withdraws his hands and nods his avatar's faceless head once in approval, but his task is not quite complete. He must destroy any backups as well.

Exploiting his new security credentials, Val rapidly writes a script which overrides the node's automated task schedule and locks it into an endless loop of backup cycles. The time has come to make some noise, and Val intends to make a lot of it. Abandoning the ruined orb of pulsing green and black data, Val's avatar streaks through the node in search of the quarantine sector.

Post by **GM Nick** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:11 am

Matrix Corrupt Test

Violet rays envelope the personnel files as Val initiates a bogus backup sequence. The images flicker and duplicate, then merge again, then flicker. Strange artifacts begin appearing in the VR construct.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:32 am

Without slowing, Val's avatar flicks to an immediate halt as he locates the node's quarantine. In an appropriate abundance of caution, Val examines the quarantine and its surroundings for critical objects. Keeping a virtual eye out for spiders and IC, he floats slowly between row upon row of imprisoned viruses, worms, and other nasty malware constructs. Hoping to find a few suitably potent constructs, Val begins Analyzing the digital monstrosities as a general might appraise his troops.

Post by **GM Nick** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:16 pm

Val's AR dims and shudders as his meat begins to succumb to exposure.

Likewise, in the real world, Max, Doc and Kato are beginning to shut down.

John · Post by **John** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:19 pm

(( REJOICE! ))

Max pats Val on the back of the head and asks,

"We done here? I don't know how much more of this cold I can take..."

Contract #1: Big Man, Japan!

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