Legion of TV Heads

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

Meanwhile, on the other side of the quarantine, Miranda was meandering towards the sewers, cursing her luck, her loyalty to Casio, Arcadia's Gross Domestic Product and the fact that for all the damage her damn eyes were still receiving texts. A message from Callie-cat's antique of a Cellular Phone, asking for her to find her a way out of Ghajotia. A vicious part of her wanted to reply "Walk." but looking at some of the hardware the boys at the borders were carrying, it wasn't bloody likely. An inordinate amount of firearms for a response to a plane crash and chemical spill.
Ghajotia was an interesting place when it came to transportation, almost nobody owned their own Automobile and most of the roads were a bit too narrow and winding for two-way traffic. Hence most people either got around via a bike or a hoverscooter. At least while moving around the neighborhood itself. To get in or out? There was the Railway. Trouble was, operation had been seized. Not that they were shooting up anyone who was trying to Evacuate or anything like that. But ID's were being checked and people with a rap sheet were being pinched. Pretty peaceable, all things considered, but then faced with the choice of choking to death while your skin peeled off and spending a few hours in Lock up, it almost seemed reasonable. Unless you were a career criminal who'd be spending the rest of their natural life in Lock up. Ooor you had recently bombed a skinjob joint and were on the hit list of half of Delcos.
Either way. It wasn't an Option for her, or Callie. At least, not as Passengers.

Ok, I've got a way out but you're going to need a Tie, conductor Hat, White Business Shirt, black Cardigan and a willingness to bullshit a lot of scary men with very very big guns.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

- Miranda -

Alive? Work to be done. Shut down the sale, we don’t know who is watching. Noose is attempting to close on the Black Queen, she’s likely already gone underground. Those warehouses connect to the old tram systems. Too many corps are mobilizing for direct action. We need to restructure the board.

@ElRey814

Miranda sighed and swore. This is what she got for bothering C when he was wrist deep in some schlep's chest cavity. The man's view of the world was like no other's on the face of Mars, but one of the issues of that was he lost sight of little things like reputation or business, or how the hell they're supposed to pay for his many and sundry schemes. She couldn't blame him, he came from a world where Money was like dust. Always there, and blowing in and out with the wind. Didn't make walking away from a potential windfall any less agonizing though. But, while she might run some day to day aspects of their organization, C was still the boss.
Which merely left the question of how she was supposed to disappoint this large crowd of Gangsters, crooks and Corp gunsels. Simply turning off her phone for the night wasn't a option. Raising a fuss about an attempt to grab up the Info without paying wouldn't fly either, Mouth's Boy had been good about shocking anyone who tried, and letting the other bidders see the consequences on live feed.

It was about at this point, without warning Miranda crashed into a sign. Which sent her flying from her hornet and leaving her rolling and sprawling on the hard, unforgiving pavement. After a few minutes of wincing, twitching and staring balefully at the obstacle which left her in this state, and checked on the state of her contacts. Bidding war had disconnected, as far as anyone who was calling her could tell, she had crashed and died (this prompted her to heck her pulse, bit thready). No point in letting them think otherwise, she figured as she brushed herself off and gave her eyes a quick examine. Busted, she could still see in one eye, but the other one was static ridden. She could stil take calls, but there'd be garbling. All in all, a good a reason as any to call it a night. The lid and Po-Po would just have to take care of themselves.

-C-
Copy. Going to head back to home base. Eyes need some TLC.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

And 'Rora was on the move again. Miranda took a moment to thank god that her quarry had such an old Soul to still be using an Old World Asphault roller. Sure, it was faster than her Hornet, but it left nice, fresh tracks for her to follow on Ghajotia's mud caked roads. She checked in on the bidding war going on for Ms. Baines last known location. A lot of people had dropped out and it had gotten to the point where the boys started Nickeling and Dimeing each other, raising the minimum bid after every "Going once, Going twice", the tedious gunsels. But a part of Miranda welcomed it. It was almost like a routine day back when she and C first went into business, bidding on who got had the privilege of a ministration by the mysterious and secretive Florist.
Except, back then, bidders didn't suddenly disappear after a sudden earth Shattering Kaboom. Mouth's boy did a quick IP check on some of the bidders who went silent. It was ugly. Whatever hit down there was doing bad things to the locals.

This was getting too rich for her blood. Miranda had long prided herself on making the smartest play she could and tonight that would be to close the bidding, hand off the Info to the lucky winner, go home, take a nap, and pay respects to whoever the hell would be running the world when she woke up. How much could things possibly change? Lose a few clients, gain some more, listen to the bitching of whoever still survived. There was no sensible, profitable reason to keep on keeping on. Just like there was no profit in telling Po-Po about the kid. Miranda sighed, and sent a call out to Casio.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

@Legion of TV Heads<Snipped quote>

Calypso be like:

@Atrophy

It was originally something worse. But then I thought "Someone might actually google it." and edited it.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

With God as my witness, PEOPLE WILL POST!

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

One thing about having your phone stored in your eyes, it's really hard to glare at it when somebody who has no business not answering refuses to answer.
On an intellectual level she realized that it was probably for the best that Calypso didn't. And that it was her own damn fault for, of all things, attempting to choose protection for this coming fuckfest randomly. All of this she understood. This understanding didn't make her any less angry. She had half a mind to call up Mouth and have him Spam her phone with animal erotica videos for the rest of the damn month, suitability be damned!

Fortunately for Calypso and Mouth's eyes, it was at this moment that Miranda's phone blew up. Figuratively, that is.
A small torrent of phone calls, messages and spam from the warp, all transmitted itself right to Miranda's eyes. It was horrible. Why of all times was half the city calling h-

"Son of a Glitch." She muttered. Aurora. They were all asking about Aurora Baines. And being uniformly and transparently cagey about why. Her plan, had been pretty simple. Get to the disc before her mystery rival (apparently, 'Rora), snatch/grab, get it to the boss man, E-Z/P-Z-Praise-me-C. And now there were these losers. You had boys from the Consortium, Militiae, at least one Sculpter, a surprising amount of smalltime gangs that worked under the Brethren, numerous Freelancers and to top it off some of the most obvious Corp/COIN spooks and O-Sec Agents she'd seen since the Flying ElecVend Assassinations.
Some were calling in favors, others were offering money or raw materials, information, a few were even threatening to unmask the Florist (HAH!) and all of them, were doing it for the same piece of information. Information of Aurora Baines current location. Which, is to say, Miranda's current position, give or take a dank alleyway.
This presented a minor conundrum for our intrepid entrepreneur. On the one hand, she was currently in a seller's market, trouble was she was also a stone's throw away from where the fireworks would start. This put her in need of two things. One, a person who did not care about the Disc, and had the gumption and firearms to keep her alive, and time for said person to get here. This lead to basically..one person. Great. All she could do was pray he was vaguely sober, while working on that second part. Simple enough, though not easy.
But, first things first, she called up one of Mouth's boys and had him run System Ops, under the usual SoP, uninvited guests and people trying to hack her current location would be in for an ugly ass time. Next, she set up a virtual room, allowing all contacts, and set them all to mute while she said her piece.
"Okay folks, you know who I am, and I won't insult you by asking what you want, I see a lotta new faces in here, so lets go over the ground rules, First off, blackmailers and marker callers can take a hike, only thing that flies in this case is Cash, Crypto and Credits." A silent course of denial. "And Chemicals and Materials!" she amended. "Whatever you think you have on me, or whatever you believe I owe you, believe me, isn't worth half of what's up for sale here. Only one item up for sale, and if you want it you can go out, do your own legwork like I spent the last month doing, or stick around here..and start bidding." She tried to keep her knees from shaking as she sent a private message, over a secure channel to Po-po's little VC friend. The contents of the were pretty simple, as keeping up with the torrent of bids coming from the now un-muted customers threatened to overwhelm her. A picture of Dack, the kid, address of the building she was standing by and the message "He's here, hurry"

My Hider

@Fading Memory, @Sierra, @FoxFire, @cider,@Blubaron45,@Decadent,@MagratheanWhale

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

First post first serve for whoever wants to be the person Miranda calls!

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

As the ringing in Miranda's ears started to die down, she mentally went over a list of contacts. Her initial plan had been to come here and either pretend to be the courier for whoever Grendy was selling too, or outbid the other buyer. She was expecting some trouble, but not the exact moment the buyer met the damn seller. Why couldn't it have shown up in Goose's territory? Or even Lamby's? Goose was a bastard and Lamby was crazier than a bag of ferrets, but at least they understood basic bargaining techniques. Like not shooting the guy who just sold you the world.
Miranda sighed, looking down at the glowing list of names on her Simcard. Regardless of her feelings on the matter, this wasn't going to go peacefully, and she needed muscle. Preferably the kind that wouldn't raise a fuss about what everyone is killing each other over, or accept a "I'll explain later, just shoot!" She went over the list. C was right out, his place was in a Lab, not a burgeoning combat zone. Calypso? No, like Miranda, she was a more a lover than a fighter. And had enough on her plate without pissing off either the Brethren or someone dumb enough to shoot up a warehouse in their territory. Tobs? Hah! It'd serve the arrogant twit right if she brought him to a combat zone. She wouldn't call Mouth either, being that she distrusted the Salamanders something fierce. Which, regardless of Casio's constant ribbing was not out of jealousy. Miranda simply distrusted anyone who knew or met without her vetting them and hated seeing him rely on them despite the obvious risk to his Anonymity. Actually, okay that probably is jealousy, shut up. She couldn't pick anyone with the Brethren, Consortium or Sculpters, either because they would want the disc and because she didn't want to get within the same district as Lamya, repeat customer or not.
This left, a pretty short list of people who owed her a favor, or had some (generally positive) history with. Trouble was there wasn't much telling how'd they react if they found out about the disc.
It was probably a terrible idea, but she closed her eyes and clicked on a random name.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

For those wondering. A Hornet Scooter is basically pic related.

I have no idea whether it can fly very high off the ground or not, I'm not very sure how vehicles work here.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

There are rules, there are goddamned rules. Miranda thought as she briskly walked through the station, people milling about as she made her way to her destination, only stopping to lift a Hornet Scooter. The rules were very rudimentary, almost all based on a twisted honor code, but they were there. You don't deal where you don't have permission, you don't shoot other people's dealers, and you don't shake down Info Brokers that are gathering info on somebody else cred!
Miranda had been sniffing around Ghajotia for weeks, looking for the boy made of matchsticks who had done the impossible, gotten his fingers on the unfingerable. And now that she finally, finally got wind of him, the Databreaker was intercepted by some gunsel. The guy was described as some kind of wannabe MilCorp in black, but between the Militia, the Brethren, scruffier members of actual MilCorp and several freelancers with more firearms than fashion sense, that could describe half of town. And given what the Grendy's kid had, there was no way there were that few people involved.
All of this was running through Miranda's fuming mind as she picked up speed scooting towards where the kid was, a warehouse, with a roof that was nearly concave, just the sort of place a loser like Grendy would hold court. All wasn't lost yet, the situation was still salvageable, if nothing else she should at least be able to buy some ti-
Gunshots. First one. Then a lot. Then silence. Miranda winced, the gray-green images of her eyes flickering out and back onto the screen of her eyes, then leapt off the Bug and crept into the shadows. Disk or not disk, she wouldn't do C any good with a bullet in her dome.