Shadowrock, Chapter 15 (the real one) (Patreon)

Right, so I realized after it was pointed out that I misnumbered last week's chapter, which caused me to skip a chapter. Here is the real Chapter 15.

Chapter 15: Banter and Plans

KittyKat’s Summoning Test (Spirit of Water, F3): 10d6 = 2 Hits, 2 Miss

Spirit’s Resistance: 3d6 = 0 Hits, 0 Miss (2 Net Hits)

KittyKat’s Drain Resistance (2S): 11d6 = 3 Hits, 1 Miss (No Drain)

No one wanted to go walking through ghoul blood, for obvious reasons. So, KittyKat decided the best play was to whistle up some help. A swirling vortex of water surged into being at her command. It was a Spirit of Water, obviously, and just Force 3, but that was enough for KittyKat’s purposes. She gave the order, and the spirit used its Elemental Attack ability to hose down the area, pushing the infected blood out of our path. One more reason why having even weak spirits around was a good idea.

That only cost KittyKat one of the two services she’d gained from the spirit. But hauling a vortex of water around was just a bit conspicuous, so KittyKat had the spirit shift back to the astral. It would follow her around in the astral until she either used that last service, or the sun rose. Either way, it would be free to go after that.

We loaded up in the vehicles while Lioness recovered the blimp drone. Thankfully, Cougar had been able to avoid getting any blood spray on her from her first attack, so we didn’t need to hose her down, as well. Even so, she patted her perfectly shaped D chest, and said that there were plenty of people who’d want to see her in a wet t-shirt contest, even knowing she was a ghoul, which got a laugh out of all of us.

While the others settled into the vehicles, I brought up the single-use comm code our Mr. Johnson had given us. He was terse, and not exactly forthcoming with praise for the quick delivery. Not entirely unexpected, but still left me with the impression that he was going to try something.

The meet was in a shopping center parking lot, out in Brandl Cove. Nondescript, and it would be almost completely empty, this time of night. Maybe, possibly, there might be a cop car doing a routine patrol. Probably not, though, which meant you were more likely to find gangers and drug dealers, if anyone. Just to be safe, Lioness redeployed her blimp drone, so we had eyes in the sky.

Pussycat: Place your bets. What are the odds that our Mr. Johnson decides to try and kill us instead of paying?

Lioness: Almost 100%. The guy didn’t want to even offer us basic rates, and you could see how angry he was that you talked him higher. No way he actually comes through with the credits.

TechKat: I’ve already backed up the video haul to an account where we can all access it. Copied the paydata to everyone’s links, so we have multiples, just in case. Won’t be too useful for us, but we can find someone to sell it to if the deal falls through.

Cougar: Well, we’re armed and dangerous, plus Lioness could always launch the blimp drone again, so we have eyes in the sky. That’ll give us some warning if cops or anyone else decide to come by.

Lioness: Good point. Launching now.

TechKat: Hey, those of you who had cybereyes running, or cameras recording, check back. I’m pretty sure all those ghouls had some cybereyes, which means the Fleshtearers, when they check on their crew, might get our faces.

Tigress: Or the APD, when they show up.

Pussycat: Part of the issue with playing rock stars. However, a ‘lookalike’ doesn’t mean the police will be able to do anything without some forensics to back it up. I’m the only one without the Erased quality, and I was not in immediate line of sight on the ghouls. However, I’m the one who can talk my way out of things the best.

KittyKat: Ah, yeah, you swapped the Erased quality so that you could get the full cat cybersuite at character creation.

Pussycat: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about saving up Karma to buy it at the base level. But that’d be 10 karma now. Only have 4 saved up since I didn’t spend any after last run.

KittyKat: I mean, what else would you be spending it on?

Pussycat: Well, increasing my Influence Skill Group to rating 4 would cost me 20 karma. And getting to Rating 6 on Blades or Automatics would be 12 karma.

TechKat: I get it, girl. I’ve got to save up 25 karma to bump my Cracking or Electronics skill groups up to Rating 5. And then it’ll be another 30 each to get them to 6. My karma is basically spoken for indefinitely.

Tigress: Ah, to have so few real options for my Karma. I need 35 karma to boost my Magic to 7 and get more options for my adept powers. I still have skills I need to boost, as well. And that’s not counting extra initiations, or the like.

Cougar: Lucky you. I still need to initiate, and then I’ll need to pay another 25 karma to get my magic to 5, since being a ghoul and getting augmentations set me back. And that’s before looking at my skills.

KittyKat: If we’re doing future plans with Karma, then I’ll remind you that I still need to find a magic group, then initiate, then spend another 30 karma to get my Magic to 6, then 35 to bump it to 7, and every spell I want to learn costs 5 karma. Not to mention the costs if I want to boost my CHA or WILL to help with my spellcasting. Oh, and then my actual skills, too.

Lioness: Heh. I’m more or less good on Karma. Can save up to boost Electronics group and my Electronic Warfare skill up, maybe hit R6 on Gunnery, but I’m thirsting for nucred more than Karma. Being a rigger is expensive work.

Pussycat: Yeah, nucred is spoken for with me, too.

TechKat: I know Lioness still needs to kit out her second van, but what are you looking at, Cat? Thinking of upgrading gear? Or ware?

Pussycat: Ware, mostly. I’m down under 1 Essence, so don’t exactly have much room to put more ware in me right now, unless I upgrade some things. I was thinking of either upgrading my R2 Alphaware Wired Reflexes to R2 Alphaware Move-By-Wires, which would include the ability to use skillsofts in with my current kit, or going the other way, and grabbing a set of R2 Alphaware Synaptic Booster and Alphaware Suprathyroid Gland, which would still give me another 0.85 Essence to play with before I lose any more.

Pussycat: Then I could upgrade my R2 Alphaware Dermal Sheath to R3 Alphaware Dermal Sheath, and the ‘hole’ drops to 0.42 Essence, which is just enough for the Reakt transgenic mod.

Pussycat: But the problem is by that point I’m looking at over half a million nucred. The Synaptic Booster would be 320k, on its own. Suprathyroid Gland would be 90k. Dermal Sheath would be 80k, and Reakt is 30k. So that’s 520k nucred, assuming I can’t get any kind of deal by selling on some of my old gear.

Lioness: Geezus. And I thought my nucred plans were insane.

Cougar: And none of that includes maintenance on gear, replacing ammo, any trips to street docs you might need to take, and so on. Or new gear you might need for whatever reason. Or grabbing a new fake SIN if the one you have gets burned.

TechKat: Also, before you go dropping half a million on new ware, you should upgrade your commlink. Both you, and KittyKat. The rest already have solid commlinks, but could use some IC to help with protection.

KittyKat: Even though we’re not heavy Matrix users?

TechKat: BECAUSE you’re not heavy Matrix users. If you all upgrade to something like the Singularity Battle Buddy Basic, and invest in System and Firewall to match the hardware, that will be R5 in all your matrix attributes, making you harder to hack. And then you should purchase some IC, even if it is just a basic alarm bot looking for intruders and crying out when it finds them. That’ll cost, but it is better than someone hacking your eyes while you’re in a firefight.

Tigress: I get it. Because we won’t always be in fights that are over as soon as they start. Sometimes people will get the drop on us, and it will take a bit to work our way through. Or, we get stuck trying to fight our way out of a corporate facility, and their spider gets clever.

Cougar: Ugh, I hate clever enemies. I much prefer when they are dumb enough to just serve themselves up to me as take-home dinners. Our last Mr. Johnson has been delicious.

Pussycat: I have to know, what is it like? You know, eating people?

Cougar: Well, it is a little disappointing that I can’t actually cook the flesh, since that limits any kind of preparation, but part of the change is how good the meat tastes raw. And some raw sausages help to keep me from getting hunger pains between feedings. So long as the sausage isn’t cooked, I can use it as basically a sandwich to keep me going.

TechKat: You know the label is organizing a tour around the NCSA for us, right? What are you going to do for food while we’re on the road, Cougar?

Cougar: Been chatting with Felix, the butcher with Tamanous. When we get tour dates, they can arrange deliveries to whatever hotels the company puts us up at, designed to look like a normal meal delivery service. I’m not the first ghoul to go on a road trip, it seems.

Tigress: That isn’t going to cost you too much, is it?

Cougar: Nothing I can’t afford. Actually, though, it might work for our benefit. If we’re willing to work on the road, some of our people who know people might have work for a crew that is going to be out of town quickly, which will take the heat off of the local players.

TechKat: Not all wetwork, I hope. That’ll be a different kind of ‘hype’ if we start getting rumors about people disappearing wherever we go touring. Even if nothing gets proven, it will change where and how we’re able to perform. Music and merch sales will probably skyrocket, though.

KittyKat: I’m sure we can find plenty of non-killing work. Even when you’re dealing with theft or arson gigs, simply having the team skip town after the deed is done can limit how much attention things get. Groups like Lone Star Security Services don’t exactly like to work with even other precincts in the same sprawl, much less working with teams in multiple sprawls on a fire story. And if they aren’t in the same company? Fat chance!

Lioness: She’s right. So long as there aren’t mass casualties amongst the SINners, or something that would call in federal-level scrutiny, a lot of the things we might be doing will struggle to follow us.

Pussycat: Right, so we’ve got a good idea on what the plans are for the tour, but that isn’t going to be starting until a couple weeks from now. We do have a gig on Friday to think about, and, oh yeah, a meet anytime now, to hand off paydata and hopefully get ourselves paid.

TechKat: Speaking of meeting our Mr. Johnson, I’m spotting movement on the street. Three vehicles. Two vans, and one sedan. All black. That’s not a ‘play nice’ kind of setup.

Pussycat: Lioness, your drone carrier is currently blocked from people entering at that end of the parking lot, I believe. Launch the ground drones, just in case, and have them hide behind the vehicles. And be ready with the long gun on your blimp.

Lioness: Launching now. Glad I had the blimp already deployed. There would be no hiding that launch.

Pussycat: All right. Look alive, people. Chances are we’re going to have to educate another Johnson on why it is cheaper to pay us than to try and screw us.