Zaathun January 13 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. One in an unfamiliar town, rented under a fake SIN after being legally deceased. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 13 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. One in an unfamiliar town, rented under a fake SIN after being legally deceased. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 13 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. One in an unfamiliar town, rented under a fake SIN after being legally deceased. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 13 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. One in an unfamiliar town, rented under a fake SIN after being legally deceased. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 13 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. One in an unfamiliar town, rented under a fake SIN after being legally deceased. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 4 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. One in an unfamiliar town, rented under a fake SIN after being legally deceased. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 4 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
Zaathun January 3 Title The beeping of horns and the shouts of the neighbours across the alleyway echoed dimly through the cracked window. A wispy trail of blue tinged smoked raised from the thin Medicine Woman cigarette that lay forgotten in Barb's left hand. The right hand sat on a worn plywood table, half-busy holding a plastic glass of synth-bourbon, a sniff of petroleum still noticeable despite the heavy artificial flavouring. Two thin fingers, coated with chipped and worn polish, the dull beige colour half a decade out of fashion, swiped in the air at AR controls set to private. General Angela Colloton considered frontrunner for UCAS President. Open Y/N The fingers swiped the news away. UCAS loved a war hero, especially one that fixes the corpos' drek. She'd seen her once, in Boston, a chance chance at camera work at a public announcement, while Barb was there following something insignificant. Memories flushed into the scoop snoop's head.The Muldoon illegal toxic dumping grounds. Screamsheet front for a couple days, quarterly bonus, grease-faced District mayor sweating on camera. Still probably not welcome there, Barb thought, taking a drag from the cigarette and wincing after a sip from the bottom shelf swill. Manadyne expands its first Learning Center in Boston. Open Y/N Frowning a little, Barb flicked the AR window away. The new Matrix was fast, involved, and incredibly intuitive - too intuitive, at times, she thought, especially after the DNI link undoubtedly picked up her subconscious thoughts about Boston and updated the scroll. On second thought, Boston wasn't nearly that bad in her memories. Punks wearing their colours up and proud, corpos still figuring out how tight to squeeze. Magical shops opening on every corner, peddling all sorts of fake drek. Digging up frauds, corruption, and sticking it to the bullies had always been her calling, and she wouldn't change it for the world. The kitchen unit chose the time of reminiscence to cough, click and stop in silence. Barb's eyes turned to see a small puddle of murky, rancid water, scented of stale soy and acrid fake lemon, start forming on the ragged linoleum floor of the dilapidated studio. Okay, might have definitely slotted up a couple times, she acquiesced, taking another drag and moving to the couch to toss an old IIN sweatshirt on the puddle. Sitting back at the table, she noted that the screaming match seemed to be entering the third inning. The fingers darted in annoyance, reflexively reaching for her ears' volume key, before choosing to just focus somewhere else instead. Savouring the synthehol in her mouth for a misguided minute, her eyes glazed at the incoming feed. The lull got interrupted by a flashing red screen, accompanied with a sub-aural hum in her ears. -CAUTION: Temperature Exceeding Safe Limits. -Cosmetic Damage Sustained -Alert Medical Care Provider Y/N ( Function Unavailable, No Contract Found ) The sharp pain in her left hand's fingers and the smell of burning plastic hit her nostrils. "Drek-drek-drek-drek." With a panicked gesture, the cigarette dropped in the synth-bourbon, and the fingers flew right into her mouth as she leapt from the chair. The feeling dissipating a moment later, and the taste in her mouth fouler than even the drink, she took them out with another swear and inspected the damage. A crack was visible on her index fingernail, and the RealSkinn, chipped and matte on the best of days, had an accompaniment of two dark brown crescents. Rolling up the sleeve, past a badly-concealed entry-and-exit bullet wound showing the pistons and electronics inside, Barb plugged the datajack from her right wrist into the cyberarm. The NuYou Manuella firmware spun up, informing of no new damage to the long-list of outdated packets and cosmetic damage, but Barb's attention was already in Chicago. Bug City. The Containment Zone. Thinking only a drek-for-brains would believe the half-witted, half-baked Ares propaganda about a VITAS outbreak revealed that, in fact, the drek-for-brains were those who didn't. Burned out husks of buildings and cars with skeletons inside. Corpses on the streets, some charred husks piled haphazardly on the sidewalks. Some dragged on piles of entrails, half eaten by the bugs. '55 was a hell of a year. She'd smuggled herself in town, playing the heartstrings of a broad-shouldered Ares logistics boy about truth, justice, and all that other drek that still didn't matter, 67 or 2067 years later. Poking around one of the QZs, she'd found what she was looking for - and something she wasn't. The rummaging noises around the fetid garbage bins, a figure with one eye in brilliant multiple facets, the other a too-human green, above the mouth with leaking lips under the split mandibule. One razor sharp talon had impaled her left arm, with the nibbling and tearing of an internal mouth at the bone as she screamed and screamed into the alleyway. Only pure luck, the logistics boy's balls of steel, and an 12mm Super Warhawk Slug in the insect's forehead made sure she left Chicago. She shuddered at the memory, meat fingers running across the arm. You're chipping, he'd said. I got Pulitzer-grade footage, I replied. I think. He got the sack, of course, and she couldn't let him like that. Brought him back to New York, helped him on his feet. Well, on and off his feet. Put a ring on it too. Bobby'd hated the late nights, the over-UCAS assignments, the bruises, the sim hangovers and IC-brainbleeds and week-long drooling with the lights turned off. He'd bounced back, got a new job, and was patient for almost a decade. She'd never stopped, of course, and he never stopped helping, even a week ago. Turning up on his new doorstep, tracking mud and leaking blood on the carpet. Hadn't bothered to call, but it wasn't that the security, however fancy their new digs were, would stop her. She had principles, still, of course, and two apologies and an abdomen bandage later, she'd left, bag of baggy clothes, a credstick with five g's on it, and that same revolver on her hip. She'd always needed it more, Bobby said. She'd made an effort not to look at his fiance. The screaming out of the window had went into extra innings, alternating with outings, Barb noted grimly, as she reached to slam the window shut. She hesitated when she picked up the sound of a car door slamming right outside the place. Pushing the AR feed out of 'leisure' mode back into 'operations', she opened her fingers. Lists of the active icons in the area filled a bar on the left of her HUD. Antennaed trid-screens and audio systems, padlocked keypads and doors, and the personas running the PANs. The various blades, guns, and axes indicated seemed the ones she'd seen on the first glance, except for one flickering - a hidden icon. With a quick dash of the hand, she hacked the feed from the front door - only to see the trails of a figure clad in a long, black trenchcoat and heavy boots, fold in half to enter the building. As she rushed to the coathanger - one festooned with a once-truly gorgeous silver coat, her persona threw an antiquated press-pass at the pistol. The pass bounced up to the persona - a hulking troll with absurd anime eyes - tucking itself as if on a hatband. A magnifying glass darted into her arm, and the figure's commlink began transmitting their exact location. Which, of course, seemed to be heading up the stairs to the studio. The smartlink in Barb's eyes kicked in, providing a targeting solution. A moment of consideration later, a mental command spun the revolver's cylinder around, loading the sole tungsten shell. Judging by the footsteps' heft, the door would prove no problem for the person behind it - but even less so for the revolver. Aiming at the location as it shuffled towards the door, Barb took cover behind the table. There was a knock on the door, a surprisingly gentle one. "Uhm... Hel- Hoi? I'm looking for a... Silvie?" the voice on the other hand announced, the low rumbling filled with notes more of anxiety than gutterral threat. "I can see the light is on?", it added warily, yet unhelpfully. With a panicked realisation, Barb saw that the device she was looking had just placed three asterisks on the door's padlock, and aimed at the top of the door. The door slowly started creaking open "I hope you are decent! I got those MARKers from Ms. We- uh, the own- landlord, so I'll go inside and leave the scop?", the voice announced, as a plastic bag with the signature logo of Stuffer Shack began hovering roughly six feet off the ground, hanging off of a finger the size of a gourd, followed by a fingerless glove. As she started lowering the gun, the figure entered with his back towards the room, revealing a rather gaunt looking troll that muttered, "Oh, slick coa-", as he turned around and screamed, raising his hands at the sight of the revolver. The bag of supplies flew across the room, spilling soymilk everywhere, and the troll's head cracked in the ceiling, sending white dust all across the room. "Friendly! Ow- oh, noo.", the rapid words coming out of the troll's acne-covered face darted out as blood flushed away from his cheeks. The landlor- oh. Danika. The troll, now significantly less ominous in his bright blue t-shirt, emblazoned with five masked individuals in multicoloured spandex, kept his arms up. The sight of a wrist-holster for a KSAF marked commlink opened as the trenchcoat's sleeves rolled down. The look on his too-young face was on the verge of tears, as he asked meekly, "Please don't sh-shoot? I won't move. There's a g-" "Hands down, pal.", Barb eventually said, judging the newcomer to be harmless to everything but the building's integrity. "Dani sent you?" The troll nodded, dragging more plaster onto his now snow-covered black bowl cut as he scraped the ceiling. "Uhm, yeah. Said to stop for supplies as well in case you ran out. Oh dre-", he said, before rushing to the ground to begin fishing out the supplies from the bag. An Ares Light Fire 70 with its trigger guard removed, clattered onto the ground from the depths of the synthleather coat. He reached to grab it, stopping half-way as he raised his hands again. "Breathe, chummer, one thing at a time. Leave the iron.", Barb replied, leaving her own revolver on the table, and moving past the newcomer to get a mop and a bucket. "That all?", she quizzed as the figure huddled next to the leaking kitchen unit. "Don't spread the muck there." The troll moved around, before settling on the couch meekly as Barb cleaned the mess. "Uh, that. Oh! And a datachip! Actually it was mostly the datachip, then she told me to pass for supplies. Told me you were busy with something and not to ask about it. And to be careful on the door.", he added dutifully, reaching into the coat's inner pockets with two black-painted talons and placing a small chip on the table. "Wonder what's on it- drek.", he stopped himself as the mop got deposited back into the small toilet. "Nil persp. I ask questions too, chummer, that's why I'm here. You just need to cool it. As for the chip, if I knew what was on it, I wouldn't need you to bring it, right?" Seeing the visitor grow ever more anxious and the stress of the day carry on, Barb sighed, pulling out a credstick. "Thanks. That's for you, oughta cover the damage, and hey - if you keep it quiet on me, I'll keep it quiet on the impromptu renovations. Deal?" Extending a hand towards the troll, she shook it. Even if she was sure that the troll's clammy hand could crush hers, she barely felt any resistance as she moved the newcomer out of the small studio. Interns. The one sole renewable resource in the universe. Glancing down at the floor, she let out one last sigh of exasperation at the world, and opened the door to shout after the creaking hallway, "Hey, pal! You forgot your iron!"
