Opposition

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk Thriller)

Xiaolan Dagon — The Artist of War

Xiaolan Dagon, “The Artist of War”

//YOUR SELF

Name: Xiaolan Dagon

Age: 25

Gender: Female

Affiliation:
Having mostly fallen out of grace, Xiaolan has far more enemies than she does allies, but she continues to have a considerable amount of influence among a small circle of independent smugglers, pirates, and guerillas that operate unofficially as cooperative individuals and cells going by the name “Hekatoncheires”.

Appearance:
Xiaolan’s persona, while it may not quite fit the harrowing description often provided by her enemies, is no less magnanimous and distinct. Most often seen in between an array of bright, multi-layer outfits, Xiaolan also has a habit of wearing colorful scarves and masks, to appear as fashionable as possible. Very rarely is Xiaolan seen without her heart-shaped sunglasses, which only add to her exquisite poker-face. She also has a tendency to wear a traditional conical hat, as it makes her feel just a bit like an ancient general.

Of Burmese and Japanese descent, Xiaolan has medium length brown hair, often jostled and kept slightly unkempt by wind and action sequences. Her arms, while they appear the same tone as her flesh, have difficult-to-detect lines running along them, giving away the fact that they are ceramic to the close observer.

//YOUR SOUL

PERSONAL GOAL:
With a majority of her assets and close friends lost in the attack at sea, Xiaolan is currently in a state of reacquiring assets that can return her to her former state of glory, mobility, and comfort. Being basically homeless and rather poor save for her strange horde of possessions, Xiaolan has a long way to go. To do so, she intends to act as an independent operator for whatever war—large or small—that interests her in the moment and provides an outlet for her art. As she builds herself, she also seeks greater connections and adversaries that she would consider ‘on her level’. Xiaolan has a rather secret, underlying interest in finding and connecting with her father as well.

LIKES:

➟Puzzles
➟Competition
➟Gambling
➟Weapons
➟Old E-Books
➟Warfare

DISLIKES:

➟Losing
➟Bad Manners
➟Sharks
➟The Unambitious

REPUTE:
Xiaolan’s reputation is very complex around New Malacca, as the city represents to her an expansive network of enemies and allies, though heavy on the enemies. Known for her prowess in tactics and strategy, crossing her isn’t taken lightly, but most who are familiar with Xiaolan still regard her with an air of mystery. Her motivations are enigmatic, and her network is constantly breaking apart and reassembling. Any outsider or observer who wasn’t careful to observe her might make the mistake to assume she has no network, nothing more than a derelict, but entitled operator who escaped the dangerous life. What remains the most important aspect of Xiaolan Dagon is that she can be a resourceful and helpful ally or a devious and undermining foe.

Xiaolan, among close associates, is known as one of the effective operators that works in close relation to the Hekatoncheires ring. As their power is heavily reliant on the individuals involved, their network is not well documented or accounted for. Among larger factions in New Malacca, Xiaolan’s reputation becomes more dodgy. She’s had more than a few run-ins with Tzu Peace Solutions, who resent her as a nuisance for involvement in undermining piracy and weapons smuggling operations. The Poppy, who her crew once pushed product to, have a subtle animosity for her but maintain a business relationship as long as she has something to offer. The Ambassadors may be aware of Xiaolan as an independent variable and competing operator, but she courteously hasn’t gotten into any trouble with them. Where the mixups start to occur is with Black Yangtze, whose cells were long time family enemies of Dachen Tet Zin, Xiaolan’s father. She, thus, can only consider they have it out for her and prepare accordingly.

HEEL: A Portrait of the Artist as a Surrealist
Above perhaps all her other desires, Xiaolan can’t escape the elation that arises when she sees the art in warfare. She revels in conflict, strife, and difficult circumstances, particularly when those circumstances are built on her own pure invention to create unique predicaments. Xiaolan sees herself worshipping aestheticism almost as much as she does warfare itself, and will never miss a chance to turn her conflicts into art pieces built around complex surreal imagery and symbolism that border on absurdity. This arises most often with how she chooses to deal with any problems that arise in her plans. Difficult, spectacular, and eye-catching plans are a favorite of hers, and she’ll forego simplicity at the drop of a hat in favor of glamor and magnanimity, as though Xiaolan is manufacturing her own insanity based on a goalless narrative she’s inventing on the spot out of thin air.

CODE: Artist of War
Obsessed with the sport involved in tactical strategy, Xiaolan drives herself through life hellbent on laying elaborate plans that challenge her capacity for warfare. This causes her own allegiances to shift rather rapidly as necessary. She relies on honorable warfare and conflict to define herself. To keep up with her interests, she frequently lends her services to other causes, as her own is a more spiritual one, that exists in perpetuity, relying on the chaos of the world around to find any order. While Xiaolan is quite crafty at times, she always respects this game, and never tries to fool anyone into thinking she’s not playing it.

QUIRKS:

➟Xiaolan has a habit of talking in lines of poetry whenever she is struck with a moment of intense passion. In other situations, it’s not uncommon for her to provide a sort of “noir”-style narration of the events going on both around her and in her head.

➟As a great advocate for the arts across all disciplines, Xiaolan often leaves a trail of art where she goes to the best of her abilities. Whether this takes the form of AR murals left hovering in city streets or graffiti spray-painted on old brickwork, her depictions are a sure sign of her trail.

//YOUR PAST

Xiaolan Dagon seemed misplaced from the start of her life, seeing her destiny could only be to realign her circumstances herself and become a weaver of her own fate. She was born on the Japanese mainland of Honshu and cared for by her native mother. Her father was a Burmese sailor that went on to captain a mutinous crew that turned their cargo barge into a veritable war machine for piracy. His time in Japan was not long, as the true profits lay in the South China Sea. Xiaolan, on the other hand, was raised on the eroding edges of the Pacific megalopolis. Upon the Ryukyu Islands, Xiaolan found it harder and harder to assimilate with Japanese corporate society in a meaningful way, but soon found that the underground youth cultures that raced street bikes on the still under-construction megabridges that were meant to link Okinawa with the mainland.

The action-oriented nature and deeply honorable code of her gang life did not last, however, as Xiaolan’s enthusiasm for the conflicts of such a lifestyle would only compound until harm inevitably came her way. Keen on organizing smaller outfits of her fellow street racers to launch skirmishes along the megabridges against Japanese law enforcement and zaibatsu PMCs, Xiaolan supported the violence in strangely devious and logistical ways. She would provide organizational support, tend to injured gangers, and ensure all combatants were outfitted for any attacks. Their enemies, who tolerated no such gang violence, soon apprehended her crew, which was split up and many of its members were deported despite any claims of residency.

Xiaolan, as one of the ‘deportees’, was sent on a barge as far from her old enemies as they could manage, and she ended up with a number of other criminals in a ‘free zone’ that functioned more as a labor camp within one of Burma’s growing E-Wastelands. Back in her ethnic homeland, Xiaolan’s will was not perturbed. She got in with crews in the scrap fields and resumed her plotting post-haste. When she and her newfound colleagues had sufficiently gathered enough clandestine resources gutted from old machines, Xiaolan helped structure an attack against the free zone’s enforcers and she and a contingent of fellow exiles escaped into the Andaman sea on a hijacked vessel.

With the whole world finally at their behest (at least that’s how Xiaolan felt), she and her new crew—taking up a faceless and individualistic operation calling themselves ‘Hekatoncheires’ took up running ‘shipments’ around the SESE FTZ to push onto low level associates of the Poppy. Xiaolan’s insatiable appetite returned, however, at the first sign of prosperity, and their outfit started to gain attention for pushing into New Malacca’s gun running market as well as some ‘incidents of piracy’ as the official records allege. Despite how invincible Xiaolan may have felt, her crew’s mounting list of enemies amongst Tzu Peace Solutions and the Black Yangtze caught up with them. She never saw their attackers’ affiliation, but their small vessel was no match for the war machine that hunted them down. As Xiaolan watched most of her crew slaughtered or toasted by short-range missiles, she was given the fate deserving of any who hoist the black flag.

Thrown into the sea by the unidentified operatives that destroyed her vessel, Xiaolan was condemned to drown. She had lost the art of warfare in her own pursuit of profit and chaos alike, or so she thought. Having given herself to the darkness of the depths as her lungs filled with brine, Xiaolan thought herself dead until she woke up in a daze state in what she could only presume was a submersible, rescued by a diver and salvager who soon became an associate.

With little left to trade, Xiaolan offered her savior access to the only thing she had: her services in the Art of War and her local involvement in the smuggling game. Given a second chance, she has taken to New Malacca to rise once again and pursue her arts, find those who have wronged her, and show them the extent of their failure in warfare.

//YOUR PERSON

ATTRIBUTES:

➟ Tactician’s Eye
Xiaolan’s keen sense for planning—particularly coming up with ludicrously complex and unpredictable plans—is almost unmatched. She’s spent her free time study military strategy, intelligence operation, and war philosophy stretching back centuries, and does everything in her power to incorporate those principles to every problem she encounters.

➟ Frankenmachinist
Between her time with street racers in Okinawa and E-waste scrappers in Myanmar, Xiaolan has learned the ins-and-outs of the human body and how it connects to machines. While she fancies herself “the sole practitioner of battlefield-open-heart-surgery”, she’s certainly not the most skilled or qualified to be moving around machine parts or flesh parts in a human body, but she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and come up with quick solutions by jamming circuit boards inside her victims’ patients’ cybernetics or stapling up any unnecessary wounds with steel wire.

➟ Rhetorician’s Dance
Maintaining at least some degree of elegance, as the old warriors would have hoped of their descendants, Xiaolan is quite adept at the art of smooth talk. With a certain air of charisma and her impeccable fashion sense, she fancies herself hard to deny. Xiaolan considers conversation as much a war as knifing people up on the battlefield, and using manipulation and devious negotiation tactics are not above her.

BODY MODS:

➟ Executor’s Manipulator Kit
Housed in two cybernetic arms, the Executor Kit is considered a larger ‘borg’ conversion, as they come as a set. Both of her sleek metallic arms have a clandestine ceramic skin cover that can break apart at the user's command to reveal a number of telescoping tendrils that emerge from the forearms. On the ends of each of these manipulator ‘tendrils’, the user can graft tools and small tech. Having inherited her Executor Kit from the last thing that her camp in the Burmese E-Wastelands had to a ripper, Xiaolan became the next best at the job. As such, her tendrils are mounted mostly with surgical tools as well as small power tools for basic cybernetic maintenance.

➟ “Weaver Wires”
Fancying herself the ‘architect of her own fate’, Xiaolan’s personal masterpiece augmentation is the replacement she created in the E-Wastelands for each of her hands. On her command, small harpoons housed in the fingers can fire forth based on pulses of CO2. Strong enough to embed themselves in concrete at shorter ranges, the projectiles are attached to larger coils of retractable titanium wire that can be used to ‘weave’ complex shapes of weight-bearing wire. Xiaolan has used the wire for innumerable purposes, but it functions well as an emergency suture, tripwire, and grappling device when the wires are compounded. “Who can’t think of a thousand uses for some simple wire?”

➟ Cardiovascular Regulation Unit X — “CRUX Autosanguinator”
To help provide her some counters to the debilitating effects of her heavy augmentation, which took heavy tolls on her heart, Xiaolan installed the CRUX Autosanguinator. Implanted next to her heart is its main unit, allowing her own heart to remain beating and her cardiovascular system to continue operating in times of extreme duress. While her original heart continues to keep the system pumping, the CRUX insures her bloodstream, removing contaminants, excess viral agents, and other toxins while regulating circulation speed and internal intravenous injections to a certain degree. These minute functions are all done via a liquid metal produced and distributed by the CRUX called NanoSanguine.

NanoSanguine volume in the bloodstream can be dangerous if concentrated too highly in one part of her circulatory system. While NanoSanguine doesn’t travel as fast as thinner blood, this can be beneficial in certain circumstances, such as when a heart stops or begins beating at abnormal rates. As the NanoSanguine moves, it can push blood throughout the body or artificially clot it to an extent (though dangerous). This early model of the CRUX can’t regulate the body independently forever, as it relies on the beating heart to keep it functioning for longer periods.

EQUIPMENT:

➟ “The War Purse”
When preparing for any remotely dangerous operation, Xiaolan is sure to load up her satchel with handfuls of scrap metals, broken electronic components, and chemical compounds to ensure she’s prepared to do her ‘war doctoring’. These are used for improvisational fixes for broken cybernetics or to put together basic devices for operations that require special solutions.

➟ “Heads-Up, Hearts-Up” Sunglasses
Xiaolan’s retro, heart-shaped sunglasses serve as more than just an ultimate fashion accessory. They also have basic AR connectivity that allows Xiaolan a basic heads-up display, real-time measurements, and the ability to infect small instances of the Deep to leave graffiti’d AR signatures in unused space.

➟ Clandestine Rebreather
Beneath her usual inconspicuous—but conspicuously fashionable—patterned maks, Xiaolan sometimes wears a lightweight rebreather that can cycle her breath for a few hours before she begins to suffocate.

➟Armaments
While Xiaolan often prefers to switch up her tools of war depending on the operation, she has a small cache that she likes to go back to. Among her favorites are a classic Burmese Dah sword that isn’t as imposing as it seems, though does well to pass detection since it isn’t ‘souped up’; and her ‘cyber-nunchaku' that electrify at each end with activation. Xiaolan has recently lost her gun, ‘The Big Shooter’ after a night on heavy stims and is still looking for it.

➟ “The Whip”
Feeling naked without a street bike in her possession, Xiaolan hastily ‘repossessed’ a powerful street racing rig from a Tzu Peace Solutions operative who angered her at the bar one night. Xiaolan’s done her best to rig up The Whip with as much modification as she can afford without any money to be worthy of ‘carving it up in these streets’.

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk Thriller)

If you want more detailed feedback on why your sheet didn't or did get accepted, please PM me in private. Otherwise, thank you to all of those who submitted character sheets. Your interest and enthusiasm is appreciated, even if you didn't ultimately make it into the final roster. If an empty space pops up in the future, don't be afraid to message me about whether or not you can join!

On a side note, the IC will be up by most likely next week. I'm half-way done with the initial post.

@Bork Lazer

I require detailed evaluation of each subtle joke in the sheet and whether it did or did not hit.

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk Thriller)

I've come to stack countless style-kills on Bork's NPCs and eat nutrient paste, and I'm all out of nutrient paste...

Xiaolan Dagon, “The Artist of War”

//YOUR SELF

Name: Xiaolan Dagon

Age: 25

Gender: Female

Affiliation:
Having mostly fallen out of grace, Xiaolan has far more enemies than she does allies, but she continues to have a considerable amount of influence among a small circle of independent smugglers, pirates, and guerillas that operate unofficially as cooperative individuals and cells going by the name “Hekatoncheires”.

Appearance:
Xiaolan’s persona, while it may not quite fit the harrowing description often provided by her enemies, is no less magnanimous and distinct. Most often seen in between an array of bright, multi-layer outfits, Xiaolan also has a habit of wearing colorful scarves and masks, to appear as fashionable as possible. Very rarely is Xiaolan seen without her heart-shaped sunglasses, which only add to her exquisite poker-face. She also has a tendency to wear a traditional conical hat, as it makes her feel just a bit like an ancient general.

Of Burmese and Japanese descent, Xiaolan has medium length brown hair, often jostled and kept slightly unkempt by wind and action sequences. Her arms, while they appear the same tone as her flesh, have difficult-to-detect lines running along them, giving away the fact that they are ceramic to the close observer.

//YOUR SOUL

PERSONAL GOAL:
With a majority of her assets and close friends lost in the attack at sea, Xiaolan is currently in a state of reacquiring assets that can return her to her former state of glory, mobility, and comfort. Being basically homeless and rather poor save for her strange horde of possessions, Xiaolan has a long way to go. To do so, she intends to act as an independent operator for whatever war—large or small—that interests her in the moment and provides an outlet for her art. As she builds herself, she also seeks greater connections and adversaries that she would consider ‘on her level’. Xiaolan has a rather secret, underlying interest in finding and connecting with her father as well.

LIKES:

➟Puzzles
➟Competition
➟Gambling
➟Weapons
➟Old E-Books
➟Warfare

DISLIKES:

➟Losing
➟Bad Manners
➟Sharks
➟The Unambitious

REPUTE:
Xiaolan’s reputation is very complex around New Malacca, as the city represents to her an expansive network of enemies and allies, though heavy on the enemies. Known for her prowess in tactics and strategy, crossing her isn’t taken lightly, but most who are familiar with Xiaolan still regard her with an air of mystery. Her motivations are enigmatic, and her network is constantly breaking apart and reassembling. Any outsider or observer who wasn’t careful to observe her might make the mistake to assume she has no network, nothing more than a derelict, but entitled operator who escaped the dangerous life. What remains the most important aspect of Xiaolan Dagon is that she can be a resourceful and helpful ally or a devious and undermining foe.

Xiaolan, among close associates, is known as one of the effective operators that works in close relation to the Hekatoncheires ring. As their power is heavily reliant on the individuals involved, their network is not well documented or accounted for. Among larger factions in New Malacca, Xiaolan’s reputation becomes more dodgy. She’s had more than a few run-ins with Tzu Peace Solutions, who resent her as a nuisance for involvement in undermining piracy and weapons smuggling operations. The Poppy, who her crew once pushed product to, have a subtle animosity for her but maintain a business relationship as long as she has something to offer. The Ambassadors may be aware of Xiaolan as an independent variable and competing operator, but she courteously hasn’t gotten into any trouble with them. Where the mixups start to occur is with Black Yangtze, whose cells were long time family enemies of Dachen Tet Zin, Xiaolan’s father. She, thus, can only consider they have it out for her and prepare accordingly.

HEEL: A Portrait of the Artist as a Surrealist
Above perhaps all her other desires, Xiaolan can’t escape the elation that arises when she sees the art in warfare. She revels in conflict, strife, and difficult circumstances, particularly when those circumstances are built on her own pure invention to create unique predicaments. Xiaolan sees herself worshipping aestheticism almost as much as she does warfare itself, and will never miss a chance to turn her conflicts into art pieces built around complex surreal imagery and symbolism that border on absurdity. This arises most often with how she chooses to deal with any problems that arise in her plans. Difficult, spectacular, and eye-catching plans are a favorite of hers, and she’ll forego simplicity at the drop of a hat in favor of glamor and magnanimity, as though Xiaolan is manufacturing her own insanity based on a goalless narrative she’s inventing on the spot out of thin air.

CODE: Artist of War
Obsessed with the sport involved in tactical strategy, Xiaolan drives herself through life hellbent on laying elaborate plans that challenge her capacity for warfare. This causes her own allegiances to shift rather rapidly as necessary. She relies on honorable warfare and conflict to define herself. To keep up with her interests, she frequently lends her services to other causes, as her own is a more spiritual one, that exists in perpetuity, relying on the chaos of the world around to find any order. While Xiaolan is quite crafty at times, she always respects this game, and never tries to fool anyone into thinking she’s not playing it.

QUIRKS:

➟Xiaolan has a habit of talking in lines of poetry whenever she is struck with a moment of intense passion. In other situations, it’s not uncommon for her to provide a sort of “noir”-style narration of the events going on both around her and in her head.

➟As a great advocate for the arts across all disciplines, Xiaolan often leaves a trail of art where she goes to the best of her abilities. Whether this takes the form of AR murals left hovering in city streets or graffiti spray-painted on old brickwork, her depictions are a sure sign of her trail.

//YOUR PAST

Xiaolan Dagon seemed misplaced from the start of her life, seeing her destiny could only be to realign her circumstances herself and become a weaver of her own fate. She was born on the Japanese mainland of Honshu and cared for by her native mother. Her father was a Burmese sailor that went on to captain a mutinous crew that turned their cargo barge into a veritable war machine for piracy. His time in Japan was not long, as the true profits lay in the South China Sea. Xiaolan, on the other hand, was raised on the eroding edges of the Pacific megalopolis. Upon the Ryukyu Islands, Xiaolan found it harder and harder to assimilate with Japanese corporate society in a meaningful way, but soon found that the underground youth cultures that raced street bikes on the still under-construction megabridges that were meant to link Okinawa with the mainland.

The action-oriented nature and deeply honorable code of her gang life did not last, however, as Xiaolan’s enthusiasm for the conflicts of such a lifestyle would only compound until harm inevitably came her way. Keen on organizing smaller outfits of her fellow street racers to launch skirmishes along the megabridges against Japanese law enforcement and zaibatsu PMCs, Xiaolan supported the violence in strangely devious and logistical ways. She would provide organizational support, tend to injured gangers, and ensure all combatants were outfitted for any attacks. Their enemies, who tolerated no such gang violence, soon apprehended her crew, which was split up and many of its members were deported despite any claims of residency.

Xiaolan, as one of the ‘deportees’, was sent on a barge as far from her old enemies as they could manage, and she ended up with a number of other criminals in a ‘free zone’ that functioned more as a labor camp within one of Burma’s growing E-Wastelands. Back in her ethnic homeland, Xiaolan’s will was not perturbed. She got in with crews in the scrap fields and resumed her plotting post-haste. When she and her newfound colleagues had sufficiently gathered enough clandestine resources gutted from old machines, Xiaolan helped structure an attack against the free zone’s enforcers and she and a contingent of fellow exiles escaped into the Andaman sea on a hijacked vessel.

With the whole world finally at their behest (at least that’s how Xiaolan felt), she and her new crew—taking up a faceless and individualistic operation calling themselves ‘Hekatoncheires’ took up running ‘shipments’ around the SESE FTZ to push onto low level associates of the Poppy. Xiaolan’s insatiable appetite returned, however, at the first sign of prosperity, and their outfit started to gain attention for pushing into New Malacca’s gun running market as well as some ‘incidents of piracy’ as the official records allege. Despite how invincible Xiaolan may have felt, her crew’s mounting list of enemies amongst Tzu Peace Solutions and the Black Yangtze caught up with them. She never saw their attackers’ affiliation, but their small vessel was no match for the war machine that hunted them down. As Xiaolan watched most of her crew slaughtered or toasted by short-range missiles, she was given the fate deserving of any who hoist the black flag.

Thrown into the sea by the unidentified operatives that destroyed her vessel, Xiaolan was condemned to drown. She had lost the art of warfare in her own pursuit of profit and chaos alike, or so she thought. Having given herself to the darkness of the depths as her lungs filled with brine, Xiaolan thought herself dead until she woke up in a daze state in what she could only presume was a submersible, rescued by a diver and salvager who soon became an associate.

With little left to trade, Xiaolan offered her savior access to the only thing she had: her services in the Art of War and her local involvement in the smuggling game. Given a second chance, she has taken to New Malacca to rise once again and pursue her arts, find those who have wronged her, and show them the extent of their failure in warfare.

//YOUR PERSON

ATTRIBUTES:

➟ Tactician’s Eye
Xiaolan’s keen sense for planning—particularly coming up with ludicrously complex and unpredictable plans—is almost unmatched. She’s spent her free time study military strategy, intelligence operation, and war philosophy stretching back centuries, and does everything in her power to incorporate those principles to every problem she encounters.

➟ Frankenmachinist
Between her time with street racers in Okinawa and E-waste scrappers in Myanmar, Xiaolan has learned the ins-and-outs of the human body and how it connects to machines. While she fancies herself “the sole practitioner of battlefield-open-heart-surgery”, she’s certainly not the most skilled or qualified to be moving around machine parts or flesh parts in a human body, but she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and come up with quick solutions by jamming circuit boards inside her victims’ patients’ cybernetics or stapling up any unnecessary wounds with steel wire.

➟ Rhetorician’s Dance
Maintaining at least some degree of elegance, as the old warriors would have hoped of their descendants, Xiaolan is quite adept at the art of smooth talk. With a certain air of charisma and her impeccable fashion sense, she fancies herself hard to deny. Xiaolan considers conversation as much a war as knifing people up on the battlefield, and using manipulation and devious negotiation tactics are not above her.

BODY MODS:

➟ Executor’s Manipulator Kit
Housed in two cybernetic arms, the Executor Kit is considered a larger ‘borg’ conversion, as they come as a set. Both of her sleek metallic arms have a clandestine ceramic skin cover that can break apart at the user's command to reveal a number of telescoping tendrils that emerge from the forearms. On the ends of each of these manipulator ‘tendrils’, the user can graft tools and small tech. Having inherited her Executor Kit from the last thing that her camp in the Burmese E-Wastelands had to a ripper, Xiaolan became the next best at the job. As such, her tendrils are mounted mostly with surgical tools as well as small power tools for basic cybernetic maintenance.

➟ “Weaver Wires”
Fancying herself the ‘architect of her own fate’, Xiaolan’s personal masterpiece augmentation is the replacement she created in the E-Wastelands for each of her hands. On her command, small harpoons housed in the fingers can fire forth based on pulses of CO2. Strong enough to embed themselves in concrete at shorter ranges, the projectiles are attached to larger coils of retractable titanium wire that can be used to ‘weave’ complex shapes of weight-bearing wire. Xiaolan has used the wire for innumerable purposes, but it functions well as an emergency suture, tripwire, and grappling device when the wires are compounded. “Who can’t think of a thousand uses for some simple wire?”

➟ Cardiovascular Regulation Unit X — “CRUX Autosanguinator”
To help provide her some counters to the debilitating effects of her heavy augmentation, which took heavy tolls on her heart, Xiaolan installed the CRUX Autosanguinator. Implanted next to her heart is its main unit, allowing her own heart to remain beating and her cardiovascular system to continue operating in times of extreme duress. While her original heart continues to keep the system pumping, the CRUX insures her bloodstream, removing contaminants, excess viral agents, and other toxins while regulating circulation speed and internal intravenous injections to a certain degree. These minute functions are all done via a liquid metal produced and distributed by the CRUX called NanoSanguine.

NanoSanguine volume in the bloodstream can be dangerous if concentrated too highly in one part of her circulatory system. While NanoSanguine doesn’t travel as fast as thinner blood, this can be beneficial in certain circumstances, such as when a heart stops or begins beating at abnormal rates. As the NanoSanguine moves, it can push blood throughout the body or artificially clot it to an extent (though dangerous). This early model of the CRUX can’t regulate the body independently forever, as it relies on the beating heart to keep it functioning for longer periods.

EQUIPMENT:

➟ “The War Purse”
When preparing for any remotely dangerous operation, Xiaolan is sure to load up her satchel with handfuls of scrap metals, broken electronic components, and chemical compounds to ensure she’s prepared to do her ‘war doctoring’. These are used for improvisational fixes for broken cybernetics or to put together basic devices for operations that require special solutions.

➟ “Heads-Up, Hearts-Up” Sunglasses
Xiaolan’s retro, heart-shaped sunglasses serve as more than just an ultimate fashion accessory. They also have basic AR connectivity that allows Xiaolan a basic heads-up display, real-time measurements, and the ability to infect small instances of the Deep to leave graffiti’d AR signatures in unused space.

➟ Clandestine Rebreather
Beneath her usual inconspicuous—but conspicuously fashionable—patterned maks, Xiaolan sometimes wears a lightweight rebreather that can cycle her breath for a few hours before she begins to suffocate.

➟Armaments
While Xiaolan often prefers to switch up her tools of war depending on the operation, she has a small cache that she likes to go back to. Among her favorites are a classic Burmese Dah sword that isn’t as imposing as it seems, though does well to pass detection since it isn’t ‘souped up’; and her ‘cyber-nunchaku' that electrify at each end with activation. Xiaolan has recently lost her gun, ‘The Big Shooter’ after a night on heavy stims and is still looking for it.

➟ “The Whip”
Feeling naked without a street bike in her possession, Xiaolan hastily ‘repossessed’ a powerful street racing rig from a Tzu Peace Solutions operative who angered her at the bar one night. Xiaolan’s done her best to rig up The Whip with as much modification as she can afford without any money to be worthy of ‘carving it up in these streets’.

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk Thriller)

Might go full high seas CPAF Burmese pirate on this one, not gonna lie.

Straits of Steel (A South East Asian Cyberpunk RP)

cyberpunk ®

@Bork Lazer

Unique setting.

Interested, though I should probably update your Futility scene before I commit to making a character.

Let's Gush!

@Opposition Without a doubt, the GM of the best cyberpunk RP on the Guild without a doubt. I was going to make a congratulatory post when Futility reaches 50 posts but I was never one for organisation. Your verve and drive towards pushing the envelope of roleplaying as well as creating interesting settings never ceases to amaze. I’d also like to thank you for putting up with my autophile tendencies.

@Bork Lazer

Good to hear you're enjoying the Cyberpunk. I'm glad to have a writer like you aboard the project, and I always enjoy talking with you. We've still got a look more CPAF content to go. Bombs away.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

Hello Futility,

Another post out. Thanks for sticking with us through this lengthy and often slow journey. We're marching on.

For those of you who may be spectating or curious about Futility, I am considering opening ~1-3 new player slots after the three scenes currently taking place finish up. I estimate that may take a month or two, but keep it in mind.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

Enter Baolei

“One of the abbot’s monks came to me days after my first public appearance. Learned about the platform, and what I thought of the Reclaim. Made introductions, asked his questions, and left quick. That was their Way. ‘Look not for the solution, but for the center of everything’…”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Another series of Neurosynth shipments headed from the Phoenetek distribution center HQ in the Twin City Sprawl has ‘vanished’ en route to major corporate suppliers and clinics around the sprawl. Phoenetek has yet to comment on the delay, and corporate voices on the other end of the supply chain are thus far silent. Where is the Neurosynth for the people of America’s west coast?”

“Speculations have been made that the shortage is part of a much larger espionage campaign between the incorporated giants of the west, but so far we have no news on the disappearance. Stay strong South City. Hart Media signing off...”

---

---

𝔹𝕒𝕠𝕝𝕖𝕚 ℂ𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕔

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕄𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕊𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕜] 𝕀𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘...

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...
>>> 𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔽𝕝𝕦𝕩 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟!
>>> 𝔼𝕧𝕖𝕟 𝕟𝕠𝕨, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕤𝕖𝕖 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕞𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥…
>>> 𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖, 𝕒𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕖𝕣'𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕕 𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕖—𝕓𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕚𝕫𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖…
>>> 𝔸𝕟 𝕒𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕒𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕠𝕟𝕖 ℍ𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕤' 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕤…
>>> 𝔹𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕤𝕞𝕠𝕜𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕖𝕕𝕘𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕦𝕝𝕒𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕓𝕪𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕙...
>>> 𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕒 𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕣 𝕒 𝕘𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕤 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜...

>>> 𝔹𝕦𝕥 𝕚𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟 𝕨𝕙𝕠 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕕𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕...
>>> ...
>>> ...

This time too.
She could have sworn that just beyond her gaze another of those Matrix hitman creatures reached and reached and reached its claw her way.

But she turned her tragic glasses on no such strike…

“Miss? Your friend is in a dire condition. He may need treatment now.”

Delilah looked towards the monk in 𝕣𝕖𝕕 and Shade in 𝕓𝕝𝕦𝕖 luminescence. The intermittent flashes back to the forced server crash at the Knights’ Labyrinth node wouldn’t go away, and with their persistence remained a persistent headache; but it didn’t quite stay contained in her head. Both brain hemispheres, flashed back and forth in red and blue dimensions. Or could it really be that simple? She felt her body and the Earth and the air sway in haphazard patterns.

“The Shade can handle himself. The man I knew would take care of unfinished business before tending to his wounds.”

The monk’s hand twitched but Delilah missed it. In just a fraction of a second he let his fingers curl and uncurl, never quite reaching a fully-formed fist. He opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t have to. Someone across the mats spoke for him, but the abbot hardly used any words.

“Novice,” called the abbot before raising a serene open palm. His subordinate needed no words to relinquish his task to Dao. The young monk was directed towards the door, as though his master knew what perils lied beyond. Delilah turned, and she could have sworn she prompted a fist to swing Shade’s way. No response. Just stillness, then—

>>>ℙ𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣 𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟…

The issue with artificial clarity is that it emerges from an abnatural connection to the mind. Proctor could feel it through every aching bone and bit of metal, but the flesh cried only for relief from that very same torment. A figure approached almost silhouetted, though radiant glare reflected from the temple’s lanterns unto her own silver limbs as they reached out through the crowd—through the fog—towards the cyborg. She looked into Proctor’s eyes but she wasn’t paying attention to him. It didn’t seem like it at least. The monk focused only on the machine within.

Proctor had his own mat amongst the sea of man-mixing-with-machine, but other lost souls and broken borgs were no more than an outstretched arm’s reach away. The whole front room of the clinic had been transformed for inpatient care. Even in the bustle, he didn’t have to wait long in the fog. The monk that had guided him in was quick in working her way between the busted bodies and bolts.

“You’ve seen combat, haven’t you?” She didn’t quite expect an answer. That, or she wasn’t too keen to hear one, as she yanked on Proctor’s leg. As soon as she had the limb flat, an industrial drill nearly pinned him to the floor. “Or something else took your mind. You’re a vagabond maybe?”

The drill whirred again and phantom jolts of pain climbed up any remaining nerve endings that escaped their replacement with plates and gears. She had to almost shout over its mechanical cries. The outer armor of Proctor’s prosthesis was off in seconds, and the monk leered that empty gaze at its inner workings, as though she were doing more listening to the cybernetics than looking. Her hands were gentle against the unfeeling metal, at least for a moment. Proctor felt the whirr of the drill again, then a heavy yank accompanied a small firework show contained within parts of the vagabond that he’d likely never planned on seeing.

“Not always, though. You did something much bigger than wandering, probably for someone built more of gold than steel. We don’t see too much Strider class Furytech stuff in the Reclaim. It’s a bit out of fashion, but still pricey for any older aug operations.”

Her silver hand flexed like it had a mind of its own, ripped a piston away still steaming within its grasp. The monk tossed the defunct apparatus behind her before going for one of her own machinations amongst the tools spread out on her mat. She went back to tinkering away, and the installation of a fresh gas piston brought with it the relief of a tightness that seemed to linger with Proctor for years—the cause of which may or may not have even been remembered. Just like that, lifted away.

“So what is it, mister? Who are you?”

>>>𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟, ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕖...
>>>𝔻𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕡𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕒𝕨𝕒𝕪...
>>>𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕚𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕠 𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 𝕚𝕥...

Again. Another time, the Shaman found herself at the center—lost in an omnipresent mess of wires and signals.
She could sense it. This time she wasn’t the only major player.

>>>𝔸𝕨𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕟...

The monks were blank but eager faces, statues in a Matrix, surrounding their two brothers at the room’s dead center. One red and one blue, opposed not only in their respective tints but also in combat. The duel between them almost appeared more a graceful—but unrelenting—kata than a fight. Heavy cybernetics grinded against one another and smashed bolts loose with clouds of sparks. Those watching gave quiet commentary at key moments. Yet, after every bout, the monks recovered, drew back, acknowledged one another, and began another respectful round. The whole display felt hypnotic, like Delilah was back in the Labyrinth. She tried to shift back, but didn’t manage, and wondered if some foreign substance had muddled her blood once again.

“You’re mesmerized.”

The chaser of the matrix snapped back into bodily sensation. Like a rubber band, Delilah could feel her brain awaiting the ℙℍ𝔸𝕊𝔼 𝕊ℍ𝕀𝔽𝕋.

“I—” she cut herself off, thoughts swarming like eidolons from just beyond sight. Back to the 𝕃𝕒𝕓𝕪𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕙. Then, back to reality. “This is what the monks are doing behind the scenes? It’s just fighting. Like in Koena Dome.” Delilah grimaced. There was a cutting edge to her tone.

“Look closer,” the Monk offered, redirecting Delilah before she too closely inspected his silhouette in the dim dojo. “Where upon their faces do you see the festering anger that brought you here today, netrunner?”

“Are they not calm and aware? This is the Way of the Machine.”

“If they’re not careful, I’ll step in and show them what it really means to be hit by a machine.”

“Is that how you’ve confronted your problems? Perhaps not uncommon for the Reclaim’s netrunning sort, but does it work is the real question. What really causes your anger? Did you really come to the dojo in search of your credits?”

“What?” Delilah wrinkled her brow. The interest, intent and focused upon her, threw Delilah off. How long had it been since she’d had the ear of someone who dared to question her method while still listening in? “I need to find someone who’s tagging the Labyrinth. An artist… There’s information everywhere, and something dangerous is entangled in it all.”

“Consider, my friend, that the Way of the Machine may offer you what you seek if you render yourself unto its Way, as you’re afflicted just like the others—by your own machines. That is why each face you see is here. That is why your friend is here—”

Shade?

It looked like him—at least, his depiction. An image? Just across the tatami mats. Just beyond the battling men and machines. It couldn’t have been. She, the Shaman, was well acquainted with the nature of figments. Delilah could have sworn the monk’s hand reached for her. She didn’t feel it physically. It was just another ectoplasmic claw crawling forth from the beyond, but nonetheless, she let her body fervently twist to escape its grasp from the shadows just beyond her vision. She stumbled forward across the dojo.

>>>ℙ𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣 𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟…

The robed figure greeting those at the door of the clinic waved S’venia inside the moment she offered praise unto the operation. Before turning back to the journalist, he wrapped his hand around the shoulder of a colleague. With one whisper, the young monk was sent scurrying across the clinic’s floor to secure another.

“Of course,” he said. “All are welcome to gaze upon the operation, take part in our practice, and lend aid to the destitute of the Reclaim Zone. Allow me to introduce you to someone who may be able to better direct your inquiries, miss…” He trailed off in search of a name.

>>> …

“Dharma,” the young boy tugged at her sleeve, ignorant to her interest in Proctor. A quick exchange left her eyeing the journalist just across the room. The monk that provided her with the message soon settled next to her toolkit, inspecting it and beginning to tidy those tools that weren’t already rolled back up in the mat.

“It seems I’m needed elsewhere,” Dharma tapped the fixed plate of steel over Proctor’s prosthesis. “You can rest here. Stay for more treatment if you’d like… Of course, no one’s stopping you from leaving if you’ve got other business to take care of.” She laughed.

>>> …

“Press…” She didn’t approach the doorway or the reporter directly. Tracing her silent step across the clinic would create more of an arc lacking any sharp angle. She didn’t check S’venia’s press chip. The young monk hadn’t either. “Welcome to Baolei Clinic, Reclaim outpost of the Mekanedo Monastic Order.”

Almost as soon as Dharma had reached S’venia, her steps reversed and she began to reenter the doorway without looking away from her new subject of interest. “You’re welcome to examine our operation yourself, and while the other monks may be busy taking care of those in need, I believe I could answer any questions you might have.”

>>> …
>>> …
>>> …

The Machine clinic’s operation was a thousand moving pieces. The once disturbed bearers of the discrete litter carried their heavy cache into another back room, off into a further passage, and Dao soon disappeared after them. While the floor was covered in writhing patrons who still battled off the agony of a Machine?, others conversed with as much heart as they could offer, bolstered by the brews of their monk caretakers. Each monk conferred and greeted the others in passing, present for small moments before bustling tasks called to them. Even beyond the temple, the Reclaim streets buzzed with inhabitants—drones, worker bees, wasps...

The Enforcers scarcely appeared outside their carapaces—that telltale black body armor, full helmets with eyes alight in the night. That was how they alerted the world to their presence, and how it worked. So often, the denizens of the Reclaim could feel them coming from blocks away. Streets could clear when the armed brigades marched, but never quick enough. The Reclaim’s people were never quite able to recognize the earliest signs. Simplistic kevlar weaves poking out beneath white collars; belts on a little bit too straight, a little bit too tight; no obvious weapon bulging from the lining of a jacket, but instead improvised electronics embedded in sleeve linings or holstered on the ankle.

There were two or three such bugs working their way throughout the crowd. Eyes gleaned as much as they could from glances at the temple, but their gazes never lingered too long. Entering incognito gave not a perfect camouflage, but instead a lack of clear motive. They were vagabonds, like the rest of the crowd, but even the most derelict denizens of the Reclaim reflexively gave them an arm’s length of distance. The hidden wasps merely watched, but the Reclaim watched back. The Machine watched back.

The Last Embers (Dark Steampunk/Fantasy)

On the Frontier—Through the Ice
Tatiana Leviatan

---

Her movements had changed. Something about the way her arms twisted and her body shifted. Maybe she wasn’t as snappy as she used to be. These days, there was a malefic grace to the way Tatiana flicked her rifle between her hands. She smiled at its worn state. The firearm had seen plenty of battles, but most of the scratches and warps in the wood were certainly from misuse and regular drops from her idle hands. Every so often, Tatiana leaned forward on the stairs and peered around the Sword of Dawn. The ship—she had to contain laughter upon learning it was their choice scouting vessel—ran more smoothly than she thought. She remembered the snap it made,

And she thought about the Terviclops.

What did it mean? When could you say an inquisitor had fallen? Her warband had to know by now. Some of them had already drawn the line. The Black Shepherd was sure. Tatiana climbed her way up the stairwell to the upper deck and approached the racer’s side. Its lengthy viewport was already scarred by hoarfrost. She scratched at the foggy condensation over the window and peered down. An airy chuckle escaped her lips as she saw the warped metal socket. There had been an antenna there once. Strangely, no one seemed to notice its absence. Perhaps the racer missed any major inspections since it was Ilya’s personal vessel. Tatiana turned away before she distracted any chance onlookers.

Just a glance towards the racer’s pilot was all it took. It was almost as if Tatiana could still see her next to Mother Superior aboard the Karamzina, but she didn’t glare, or bare her teeth, or leap into some capran charge. No. Despite the differences, those blank eyes could conceal anything, always looking inward. Tatiana had plenty of things to worry about in the days prior to her warband’s casting into an icy exile—would it be forever?—but she wasn’t ignorant to the discord of their once autonomous union of condemned Seminary souls. She would have to adapt, she figured.

As Ragnar snapped at Galahad, Tatiana could only smile. Why? While both her warband brothers danced in dialogue, their listener leaned forward, engrossed. To see Ragnar’s frustration almost made her forget that she and Galahad were locked in some sort of game of evasion. One or the other was always on-duty, busy, or uninterested. Now, though, Tatiana was ready to parley again. Or, at least she had to prove that she could appear that way.

“I can keep this up and fight…”

“Everyone needs someone to protect them…”

“No singular piece can defeat an opponent’s king… Usually. It’s an effort of coordination,” Tatiana said, though she was quiet. “Except for the knight, of course. Smothered mate—the knight utilizes the enemy pieces to corner and overwhelm the enemy regardless of allied structures…” Rather than the usual attempt to jump herself into the conversation, the Black Shepherd was comfortable in her position on the periphery. Another twist of her wrist sent her rifle in another circle. She caught its center, around a length of white tape wound around a cracked forestock. Her smile remained, but Tatiana was careful to let her eyes linger on the floor so as to allow the two boys to continue.

Galahad’s words, however, were all it took to bring the Black Shepherd to attention.

“Squad Leader... ”

“Revelations...”

“Great Danger….”

“Protect Them All...”

“The thing…” Tatiana started, speaking not exactly to either of her comrades, but almost aloud to herself, “about that game is that the players often welcome gambits of both pawn and queen. That’s often all it takes to gain the positional advantage.” She jammed the rifle against the wall, its bayonet scraping the Sword of Dawn’s floor in the process.

“An army can coordinate their sacrifices and make their positional plays to corner the enemy king.”

"But only one piece delivers the checkmate."

Tatiana grimaced, and turned away to conceal her face. She was content to gaze unto the unending ice. She pressed a claw to the glass viewport, and wondered what it might take to escape to the other side.

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖 - Cyberpunk Political Intrigue Roleplay

𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒t 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖

Interwoven Meta Plot Quadra-Helix Maneuver A La Carte

“Every operator in the Reclaim ends up in their fair share of bouts against the GCZ. It’s like everyone’s got a hustle and that’s where they keep it—out of the sightlines and away from prying eyes.”

“Now that’s a place where the 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖’𝕤 players are made.”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Shit. Back up.”
“Is the camera off?”
“Does Valentine know we’re here? Does somebody know?”

“He sent us. Had to be for a reason. And he said not to turn it off.”

“Something’s not right.”

“They’re coming.”

“Turn it off!”

---

---

𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 “ℕ𝟘 𝕄𝔸ℕ'𝕊 𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻”

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] 𝕀𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘...

“Calm down. Everybody just calm down. Calm down. We’ve all got to calm down.” Gatch was already calm, but he figured if he said it over and over again the bombardment of questions might stop. “Can somebody get me connected to APEX Twin City proper? You know what? No. Just… Someone connect and ask for Turkish. He’ll know what to do, or something.”

Gatch’s withering, bloodshot eyes never left the wall of displays. As his advisor marched out of the room, he collapsed back onto a couch that was worth more than monthly wages for anyone below the sixth floor. The crowd was too amorphous for him to really follow the man behind the megaphone. He didn’t have the attention span anyways. Lott stole it away. She did that a lot, but still she was one of the shills who did it the least. Busy with her own anxieties, the candidate figured.

“This is already the worst. I am the worst. APEX is the worst.” He clicked a switch on the side of the couch and its cupholder rose to meet his bronze hand. The sight caught him for a second. He still wasn’t used to the new color. Used to be slick silver, until—

So maybe the whole ordeal wasn’t THE worst.

“Schizophrenic woman? What? Did that actually— you know what I don’t care. We can pretend like it didn’t or someone can find her and—... Okay questions, yeah, shoot.”

For a moment, Lott continued to just stare at the interrupted camera feed. Her eyes were an unresponsive blue screen of death that reflected a black screen of death to come. Gatch’s proclamation that he was the worst had sent her mind spiraling. Lott had always assumed, regardless of who surrounded her, that she held the title for being the worst. It had been a comforting thought for the woman. She liked knowing exactly where she stood, even if that was at the bottom. However, if her boss—well, one of her bosses—said that he was the worst then she would still somehow manage to be beneath him. Yet what was worse than the worst?

Lott didn’t know, but she imagined hypotheticals would fall somewhere in that abyss of awfulness. She snapped herself out of the downward spiral, jerking her focus back up to reality that she almost gave her brain whiplash. The worst mayor had told the even worse publicist to start asking questions, and regardless of how embarrassingly terrible Lott was at playing her part the game still required her piece to be moved. She moved to the chair in front of him and sat down stiffly with crossed legs, her PDA balanced carefully on her knee.

“As Mayor of the Reclaim Zone, you have been credited by multiple corporations for bolstering what had once been a fragile, risky market into one that is now considered a smart investment. However, many critics in the labor force claim that unemployment has grown despite the rampant relocation of many businesses to the Reclaim, and that the freedom given to corporations have only ratcheted up tensions back to the state that they were thirty years ago,” said Lott in a droning monotone, her eyes flicking up on occasion as she read from the prepared questions. “Is there anything you’d like to say to address these concerns? Likewise, would electing you for Councilman see the corporate deregulations practiced in the Reclaim Zone spread to the rest of the Twin City Sprawl?”

“Wait—are you actually asking me? Did somebody not write answers or something?” Gatch sighed and nearly collapsed back into the couch. There was a knock at the situation room door and the voice on the other side spoke without acknowledgement.

“Gatch, I got Turkish. He’s not in the GCZ…”

“…”

“I’ll get him here…”

Gatch shook himself and looked back to Lott, finally willing himself to play the Game. “The unemployment gauges utilized by journalists and fringe politicians don’t even scratch the surface of what the people in the Reclaim do to get by. There’s a way for everyone if they find it. That’s how things are in this zone. That’s how they’ve always been and that’s what the people want—to find their own way regardless of a dead man walking around with an inspector’s clipboard allocating jobs and funds and...”

“The deregulation of the Reclaim Zone just brought more of what the people were craving, and now whether you notice or not, we’re all thriving just as much as we planned to. Whether it’s me, or the Reavers, or factory workers slowly dismantling machines for their own benefit. Everyone—”

Gatch sat up and stared into the static beneath the TV’s LEDs. It was like Lott had evaporated from the room. Had he actually been talking for once?

“Everyone takes.”

---

“Come in members of the round table. I’m considering shooting a harpoon zipline into the R&D building and dangling precariously over the crowd for advanced reconnaissance.” The sound of the classic “old school” radio static played over Knights Enterprises satellite communicators as he finished. The crunch of static appeared again only a moment later, preemptively striking its opponents (other radios) before he came back in. “Advise.”

Another artificially added chunk of static.

Salt flicked the grappling gun in between his hands, inspecting the Knights’ newest piece while his digital display of infrared lasers traced over the crowd. The commando’s visor caught one face that didn’t belong in the crowd. A second glance would have been impossible as the radiating fires overloaded the goggles.

The molotovs had done their jobs, though the puddles of still flaring gasoline acted in part as a wall that APEX’s doormen could shield themselves behind. Olex could see the invisible lines drawn between its masses. Through the thickening smoke, certain parties exchanged glances and others maintained distance. The dangerous ones were more coordinated. Firebombs, though they tried to appear sporadic, could be tracked to a coordinating cluster of rioters that dispersed amongst the crowd to throw and then retreat soon after. The major attacks on the corp’s hired killers weren’t sustained. There were other plans, or the concealed crowd hadn’t brought enough firepower.

---

“An excellent motto, but I think the company would prefer if we go with a more marketable slogan for this election. Everyone Gives? I will workshop ideas with my team later,” said Lott, her focus more on the screen in her hand than the other person in the room as she made notes. She was thankful that the Mayor didn’t ask further as to why there weren’t already written answers for the questions. Lott still felt uncertain when it came to being a publicist, just like she felt uncertain when it came to being herself, but she imagined crafting answers would fall under her responsibility.

A notification blipped on her PDA, but Lott was able to hide the concern on her face like she was able to hide the fact that she’d been slipping in her duties. Lott shifted her legs and continued playing the moderator, “While the Bay has enjoyed a continual stability, South City and, more specifically, the Reclaim have endured more tumultuous times. Why, it was only yesterday that your offices were besieged by rioters. How do you plan to protect the Bay and stabilize South City when you cannot keep your own home office safe?”

Two men wrestled one another back and forth in the crowd out front until chance had it that they came too close to one of the mercs. The camera picked up a spray of blood that must have traveled 10 feet from the man’s skull. Gatch hardly reacted. “Looks safe to me,” he said. “But uhhh—...”

He paused, watched some more of the live action. The crowd had become a pot with a tight lid—98 degrees celsius. “APEX won’t fall. There’s plenty of Reclaim goons looking for jobs. Half of ‘em are even dumb enough to freelance gang work with a corporate name attached. Just give ‘em guns. It’s not the safety they want. Fiends. They want the violence. Watch...” The doormen barked orders that were amplified by their exosuits. The crowd yelled expletives that were amplified by the alcohol. Two opposing forces like a sliding fault line, but nothing came of it.

---

Stella was already catching onto the hustle. Each different gang and group in the crowd dealt with the strange, out-of-place, independent variable differently. Some avoided her, sent her looks. Others hassled her, but fielding them was as easy as fielding a Limbo’d patron into a pneum transport to their station quarters. The megaphoning had stopped alongside the greater assault. As the vial emerged from Stella’s console, she smiled, as her Clairvoyance Optics gave it the best scan they could without a live sample.

Analyzed. Fine.
But with too many missing variables.
Could that even happen?
A sliver of glass.

Half-full.
Half-absent.

Not empty, but unscanned.

The Ultrabartender flickered back to the club. Back there, frozen in time, the Mixologists were taught to embrace the confounding factors. Suspended in space that way, you knew they were there for a reason—pre-placed.

They were made.

By Agents.

Sh ado w d e mon s.

Chaos’s invocations.

The Mixologist’s right arm split apart in slivers of artificial flesh and metal to reveal a chamber whose hypodermic fed into the cyberware’s greater interworkings. Stella slipped the vial into place, punctured it, and just as quickly as it had opened up, the autonomous machinery sealed away, spewing new readouts were fed to the Ultrabartender’s optical implants.

It was hard not to get jostled in the crowd, but Olex hadn’t been bothered too much. In that sort of land, where violence ruled for those who so chose it, everyone else had other concerns. Just like the courier, each piece had their own intentions to disseminate among the masses. One such subject did collide with Olex, though the assailant hardly recognized the hefty shoulder check. He looked towards Olex from behind dark glasses. His face was that of a ghost—pale, gaunt, and forgettable. The dark-red and unkempt hair, however, were quite the sight.

“Excuse me,” he said before slipping by, careful not to knock his briefcase into any other passers by. Another wave of molotovs kept the flames fed. He disappeared into the smoke.

>>>𝟡𝟡 𝔻𝕖𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕤...

“Holy shit.” This time, the sound of static was overlaid with the sound of Salt stumbling back upright. “The infrared actually picked up one of the Reavers.” He leaned over the lip of the roof from the burnt out building where he was posted. The grappling gun, for better or worse, no longer stole away his attention.

“Class one operator, ‘Salt’, reporting to Reclaim Command. My team has spotted one of the Reavers… Older guy with a rough beard. Kind of looks homeless and definitely doesn’t look like he’s here to kill someone.” Salt paused and surveyed the thug’s proudly displayed jacket. He had all the marks of one of the Reavers, and by the looks of it he had little to fear in the heat and haze.

“One of their elder members?”

Is it possible that there’s essence to the emptiness?
Is my scanner blemished? Missing something? Seeing darkly?

That explained why the megaphone coordination had gone silent. The master of the masses draped in his green rags was fixing for a drink. He didn’t come alone though—had a whole entourage with him. They stayed in a tight circle. Not their first riot, it seemed.

Sell your soul to the Shadow Demons for a pair of Optics so fine that you look down and the countertop reshapes into 88 ivory keys with a looper pedal to add effect. You have everything you need. Play to your heart’s content. Let the dazed, hazy state determine the decisions to make.

When Stella looked back up, the drink was in her hand. She swirled the glass along the table. No ice. Not this time. The glass looked halfway like a test tube with metal columns reinforcing its sides. Stella had never seen such a vessel for her art. The B - A - R was even stocked with a spare few. Stella slid the drink across the bartop, but she didn’t release her hand from its brim. A thick hypodermic still extended from the base of her palm into the liquid. She stirred. The man in rags just stared her down. His associates had formed a tight semi-circle around the B - A - R and one of them held out a velvet sack for her. She took it in her offhand.

Fizzing.
A touch of green bioluminescence.
It was perfect for him.

“A custom cocktail for the consumption of the coordinator.” She lifted her hand from the drink and her Clairvoyance Optics swarmed the bag to devour and digest its stimuli. “A man very down to Earth. All-natural. He who cultivates. On the come up...”

The man in rags pulled something from beneath his cloak. He screwed it onto the cocktail like a lid. Stella rarely did to-go orders. The Limbo was part of the experience. But the Limbo was everywhere. It was ubiquitous—floated through the air on unseen currents.

He screwed the lid on top. Looked like a sort of spray bottle. Then he addressed Stella: “Put it on.”

She spent a long moment just admiring the device’s clean hardware and design. The man in rags and his associates had already distributed and put on their own masks. It comfortably sealed against her face, and when she took her first breath through the rebreather, she could feel it whirring to life with its own internal machinery. The man in rags and his goons turned on heel and stamped off to their own designated spots. He must have done a lot to make them all feel like important pieces fielded.

Nothing bested pure oxygen to settle and focus the mind.

The Knights operatives had cycled on and off the radios about Reavers sighted, but Salt stayed on the older not-so-gentle man. Even locked in their sights, though, the Reavers couldn’t be stopped. Knights Enterprises had no men on the ground, so when it happened, it spanned only fractions of seconds. A ghost, obscured with dark sunglasses and a thick trench coat, stepped from the crowd with a timed step. He carried a briefcase. The elder Reaver was looking the other way when the ghost closed the distance. Half of the Knights Enterprises onlookers may not have even been able to see their encounter before the comm-line was filled with noise.

“He’s been—”

“Who is that guy?”

“Target’s down. Repeat. The target’s been…” Salt let his words trail off as he squinted into the infrared. It was one quick move. Behind his briefcase, the ghost had pulled a serrated blade that carved into the Reaver on a twisting chain. The elder fell to his knees.

“The target’s insides have become outsides.” The Reaver’s flesh still caught on the blade as the ghost started back into the crowd like nothing happened. Few of the rioting groups even reacted to his presence. They were all preoccupied, but those who felt the splatters of blood couldn’t ignore the sight.

“Keep eyes on the assailant. I—” Salt cut out abruptly. Just static. Then, silence.

---

Lott struck like a cobra, snatching her precious tablet from Gatch’s hands as it wobbled and pressing it against her chest like it was a crying child whose callus father had unintentionally hurt it, and then became a statue once again. The mayor seemed distracted, as if he’d never seen someone disemboweled before. If it interested him so much perhaps she should invite him out the next time the Koena Dome had a Saws & Dolls match. Then again, a subordinate inviting a superior out to anything would be unprofessional.

“Good,” said Lott. She actually smiled. It was discomforting. If it ended up being necessary, Turkish would also be gone soon—the blame for the security fiasco at the Swathe Street Commons pinned solely on his shoulders. A little explosion here and a bit of police brutality there was hardly something that raised an eyebrow in the Reclaim. However, if a minor fabrication happened to imply that his ineptitude wasn’t actually ineptitude but intentional malfeasance to create negative press for the Central Party then all the better for her. Her superiors would have someone to point the finger at, and she’d have a momentary relief from the stress that was turning her insides into one giant ulcer.

“There is one more thing we should prepare for,” she said, studying the Mayor. He seemed nervous. She figured that meant she should also be nervous, but she didn’t feel much aside from the chair below her and the nice breeze coming from the climate controlled vent shaft. Could someone who couldn’t manage a life-threatening riot raging just several dozen stories down below manage the day-to-day stresses of being a council member? Lott didn’t know the answer. Despite being infatuated with watching old vids of political assassinations, she never even considered that there could be any dangers in being a politician.

Maybe she would consider sticking with politics after the election.

“Joshua,” she said. Using her boss’s first name was a big deal, and maybe a risky step, but Lott figured it would have the head-turning impact akin to an angry mother using their child’s full name. “Did you knowingly use votes of the deceased to win the mayorship over the Reclaim Zone?”

For once, there was a sign of life in the way Lott glared at her boss. It wasn’t a question that would be asked by a moderator at the debate, nor was it something that APEX had tasked her with finding out. She asked simply because she had to know the truth. It kept her up at night, at least until the sleeping pills and vodka shots did their magic. If she was going to keep playing the Great Game honorably, Lott needed to know if the player her piece was supporting had cheated.

>>>When a pot boils over, you can see the signs early on bubbling up, but the physical change takes place in an instant. Ninety-nine to one-hundred.

It was almost undetectable. The untrained laymen would surely have seen Gatch in just another zombified moment, but Lott saw him when he froze. The mental calculations dissipated as a new problem perplexed his brain, right when she said his name. He sat up a bit and spent a long moment staring straight forward. Then, in an instant, he looked into Lott’s eyes for perhaps the very first time—really meeting her gaze, which transposed into its biting glare.

He let a touch of perplexion waver his expression as if he was searching for a name. Gatch felt it was only justified to play the 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖, use its tricks when Lott thought it was time to question him. He’d bet his money on how easy it was to get to her. “Yes…”

Gatch stood up and moved to the table at the center of the conference room. Embedded at its head was a console, and with a few somatic commands, the array of display screens lurched backwards in time. A few of the displays combined and zoomed into the smoke.

“Look at those people—‘at us’ if you prefer. The constituents, the people, you and I...”

The ghost flashed across the screens. One panel to the next. The cycling chain on his blade met the Reaver’s stomach again. Time, in the digital depiction, slowed.

“What do they all want? Your next job is to tally up all their votes. To really make change, we can find all their problems, come up with a holistic solution. The monks, that’s what they’re telling you. They’re going to be the guys that invade the lower bureaucracy, thinking they can change the whole Game from the ground up. Should we do that too?”

“You can see the people on the screens, Ramana. They can only see themselves from inside the smoke. Don’t waste the blessing. Use the information available...”

The displays evaporated back into static. The live feed of the building’s surroundings started to play, looping between side alleys and central coverage of the riot.

“What do they want? What do they really want?”

“That’s the thing. None of those people throwing stones want a unified system where votes get tallied up. They want to spill each other’s blood and get away with it. They want to deface and destroy a corporate faction because it makes them feel powerful. They live all their lives—like us—giving into desires. The desires are just different.”

“And what happens to the desires of a dead man? His influence remains in the Reclaim in the stones he’s kicked and bricks he’s lifted, but his opinion evaporates? If there were someone—by pure chance—that could go through the system and allow the Reclaim to live on, and its chaos to reign. Sometimes we focus too much on changing the Constant, that we can’t change a thing.”

“Who dares to tell the man whose guts were shredded that he’s no longer a part of any of this when his signature is imprinted on the asphalt of the Reclaim?”

“Is it you?”

---

For the first time since his speech, the man in rags dared to enter the crowd rather than lurk at its edges. Stella caught him in glimpses, weaving in between a hive-like beast of a thousand different misaligned goals. Each arm of any anarchic hecatoncheires was marred by its own mental shadow demons. He flowed through them like he was sympathetic, the bottle in his hand.

Surely, one could conjure up allusions to holy water.
Dusting denizens and derelicts and devotees and dead-men-walking like they were all part of one unified Gaia in the biosphere.
Everyone, after all, is equal in their carbon components.

In the heat of the moment—there, up close to the flames, in the frying pan—those passing by could hardly notice what the man in rags was doing. He kept the bottle close to his waist, loosely flicking and flittering it back and forth in his hand in time with his hurried pace. But occasionally, it would rise. He would depress the trigger, nozzle facing out towards someone caught in the action, distracted, but maybe catching just a sliver of the rags tinted like shadowed grass as he disappeared back into the madness.

---

“Who, then, speaks for the dead men who lived in the chaos? Who can speak for the Constant?”

---

“Outpost three. There’s signs my perimeter’s been breached…” The Knights Satellite line cut off.

“. . .”

“Outpost three?”

The upheaval came quick, and this time, there were no more molotovs. It started with one or two cases, looking like the riot was no different as shoving matches began and fists were thrown. Soon the doormen braced themselves to confront what lay beyond the dying flames, and it did come. Two men charged through the dying flames. It couldn’t have been more than 15 feet from the courier caught in the crowd; one of the Reavers lurking in the smoke grabbed the collar of the nearest protestor and crossed his hands, locking the leather around his victim’s throat. From behind, the shrill cries of a young man cracked through the air. The bottle fell from his hand and flame enveloped him.

Frenzy in Death.
Assimilation or Rejection.

Left and right, front and back, one after another more vicious combats broke out among groups. Some of the protestors battled back their own. A ganger fell back into the flames. A journalist’s ribcage crunched against the pavement. At the gates of APEX’s stronghold, the tense men raised their weapons with fingers hovering over triggers, and lashed out with metallic boots. The ghost was gone. The man in rags was gone.

“Outpost One to Command Post. Three of my operatives at their outposts are reporting unknown parties have entered the abandoned complexes surrounding the APEX facility. One Knights operative not responding...” Salt had already packed up all his gear strewn about the rooftop. The zipline gun, it seemed, would have to wait for another day. He honed his infrared headset in on the only other outpost in his sightline. Another block of protestors flooded its entrance and began fanning out on lower floors.

“Outpost two. Come in, Glory. You’re getting swarmed. Stay on guard—uh...” Salt paused, slapping his hand hard against a busted coolant unit. He surveyed his gear once again. “Units reroute. Pull out if necessary. Mobilize towards those that need extraction, and find out what the hell they’re doing in there...” For the first time in many weeks, all the play melted away from the Operator’s tone.

The uproar had been more than enough to distract most of the chaotic crowd from the abrupt arrival of two open-top armored trucks that drifted into stops only meters from the APEX facility. The closest civilian rioter that stepped towards the vehicles lost the mounted plasma-laser lottery and the upper-half of his head began to liquefy. An old man appeared from the passenger side and nodded towards his companion manning the turret. Unlike the others, he wore no more armor than a muscle shirt that exposed his arm’s interworked machinery and old cargo pants. He puffed a cigar and stared directly into the nearest security camera.

“Someone get after Gatch,” he said whilst waving his arms to get as much attention as he could from the inanimate building. He raised his voice, so the thick Irish accent would pick up over the raucous crowd. “Cleaning crew’s here, isn’t it?”

In the street, Olex could see the people of the Reclaim as the newly arrived variables divided them from one another, from their own plans, from any order that had emerged. Those who stood against the paramilitary metal titans lost eyes or broke bones. Those who sank back into the crowd found other rioters, gangers, and civilians turning on them. Even still, as smoke gave way to stampedes obscuring vision, the APEX megalith came alive with light. The old man coordinating the GCZ shock squad strolled through a lifting garage door that opened into the east alley along the compound’s block.

As if moving harmoniously, one superorganism, the west side of the crowd also split away. At the head of the tight cluster of rioters, the man in rags arrived just in time after a dose of thermite pulsed with heat and light from within an abandoned husk adjacent to the west alley. When the man in rags was ushered inside, some of his collective fragmented off to watch the alleyway.

---

“Bossman.” Gatch’s advisor flung both doors to the meeting room open and the facility manager followed. The candidate flashed Lott a final look, before fixing up his posture. “You’ve got a video call from HQ—and you’re gonna want to take this one.”

“The integrated security field alerted us to a breach in the east and west alleys of this column.” The facility manager stepped in before the situation room’s occupants could respond. “It must be—”

“Turkish. Yes. We called. He likely wants more info about what’s happening, and a drink or something.” By the time he looked back towards Lott, Gatch was already letting the double doors careen shut behind him with his advisor leading the way. “Publicist. This is the perfect time for you to get acquainted. He’s probably still down on the factory level. Take over while I answer HQ. Ask your questions or—...”

“You know.” Gatch shrugged his shoulders and the doors swung shut.

The facility manager remained squinting at the array of screens. With her mouth agape, she fervently interacted with the switchboard on the table. “There was another breach, too. I’m sure of it. West end of this column…” The displays zoomed in on the west alley. There was nothing but smoke. Dark shapes.

---

Is conscious absence possible?
Or are we just oft caught up—
Lost in the chaos.

The Mixologist really couldn’t resist. As the world tore open its chest with wicked claws of shadow and bared its fleshy core, she was gifted the position of dousing dangers in drink. The B - A - R was beyond stocked. Ingredients, reagents, tinctures, and toxins of the sort Stella hadn’t seen since she admired the wide selection of Limbo’s storage. She was inspecting a variety of the glass reagent containers, idly tossing them into the air, when a nondescript, unmarked drone dove through the crowd and halted to hover just in front of the B - A - R. The Mixologist stared into its singular camera eye. It stared back. She hardly noticed the violence—rising—too enraptured by the captivating gaze of the black-glass scanner. She wondered how it saw her.

Did the scanner, then, see clearly into her mind murked by dancing shadows.
Did it see beyond motivations to mix and make merry?
Or did it see darkly?

Stella raised a glass to her lips and felt its cool contents spill over her, warded off by the oxygen mask.