RE: Quick Dirty Bastards: Drug-Riddled Hotcake Peas
07-12-2013, 08:17 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-15-2013, 03:21 AM by Pharmacy.)
SESSION 3 SUMMARY
Part 1: BOATQUEST:
Part 2: It's just like one of my video games!
Part 3: JJ, you cray cray
Part 4: Shake your Moneymaker
Part 1: BOATQUEST:
Show Content
Spoiler
THE QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS STRIKE ONCE AGAIN with yet another mission from Magus Margery. Mission: to track a convoy three cars – one which may or may not contain a plot device. Needless to say, all three are going to Aztech, Which Is Bad (but only for Margery).
Of course, it's up to the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS and of course, everyone bails in. Because they are bastards. And some more. Pete November because of buckaroos. Harvestine because of magicks. Peter Marshall because rent (and has no friends). Inspector Damien because someone told him so. Guy Peterson because come on, he's Guy. Shodan comes along because someone has to play babysitter and Damien sure as hell can't.
ANYWAY, they go to the Bridge and proceed to set up perimeters. And then they proceed to set up fold-out chairs to set up some STRATEGY. Despite everything, they make halfway decent plans; most of them ending up in massive property damage and broken lives. Pete finds everyone else's plan to be lacking in the spirit of Quick Dirty Bastardry and brings up HIS plan. Which is essentially having Damien ramp off a skyscaper (and some hobos) on Harvestine's moped, hopefully smashing into the vans. Of course, there might be a possibility of a messy and painful death but come on, that is so AWESOME.
Everyone else balks at this kamikrazy stunt, especially Damien and especially Harvestine. Pete attempts to ply with a Leadership check and succeeds magnificently. Unfortunately, the two cruxes of this plan decided they had better ideas. Peter teams up with Harvestine because Harvestine is his apprentice and Peter has the constitution of tissue paper. Damien buys Guy's loyalty with ice cream. Pete is annoyed-confused, why no one wants to help him on this bodacious plan. Shodan is either in a coma or confused.
So Pete decides he might as well execute the plan himself even if he become eventually becomes Pete Pancake. He hops into his Rad Van and drives right into alleyway, where he was enmassed by window-cleaning hobos. Pete attempts to bribe the said hobos with some job-internship-whatever proposal, which didn't work out too well so Pete offered Reese's Pieces instead because Yay! Candy! Six were won over and each got a free bag from Cyber-Walmart. The rest presumably festered in candy-jealousy. Pete with the hobo team comes back to the group and asks Peter bring everything to the top.
Peter looks at him like, “okay, I suppose this is your funeral.”
Pete looks at him like, “well if I die, I'll become a ghost and haunt the SHIT OUT OF YOU.”
Peter rolls his eyes and levitates Pete, the hobos, and Harvestine's moped to the closest death spire he could find (which is fortunately the closest one to the bridge). Once eighty stories above sea level, Pete turns to the hobos and tells them to fall asleep “for synergy reasons” and if that reason wasn't bullshit enough, he also sings a lullaby – just in case. The six hobos are like “okie dokie!” and proceed to rest their gullible hobo-heads on the (relatively) ground. It helped helped that one of the hobos was a professional napper. Yeah, the job market got super-niche in 2072, but hey, Pete can't complain.
Meanwhile, TEAM MAGICKS (Harvestine and Peter) head to the docks to buy a boat. Both with the same goal but both with differing means. Harvestine wants to mug for it. Peter wants to get it by less violent means. Both strategies involve touching hands with the sailors but Harvestine ain't touching nobody! She spits into an spittoon to prove her point. The container rings and gives her SO MANY POINTS. HIGH SCORE WOOOO. A display flickers above the pot, Harvestine enters her initials (HARV) into the table, immortalizing her as a truly strong and truly independent ork lady. Her prowess had attracted a league of mighty impressed sailors. Being Harvestine, the first thing she says “I want a harpoon.” One of sailor wiggles his eyebrows. “For what,” he said huskily. “To spear things,” she says, oblivious to the fact that another sailor decided to grab at his own crotch.
Peter may be super high but he is super-perceptive. There was something particularly strange about the sailors. Their chest hairs were unnaturally permed, some were shaved into sea serpents, missiles and other phallic-looking thalassic imagery. They smelled like cologne and salt – but not just ocean salt. Pockets stuffed with handkerchiefs of every shade and rainbow. They wore a bit too much jewelry for an average sea-dog. Their boat-hats were wore in a way that would be deemed coy. They wore too tight pants. Too tight shirts. All ripped in strategically exposed places. Peter swore some of them were wearing garter belts. Some were even wearing eyeshadow and lipstick...
“Oh shit,” Peter wished he had took more red mescaline.
“Oh yes,” Fisherman (Prostitute) Steve grinned. He also slowly licked his lips. Peter threw up a little in his mouth.
A nearby burly courtesan flexes his arm, flashing off his tattoo reading “THE THUG LIFE CHOSE--” the rest was bitten off by an unusually large Devil Shark. But what was it? What did the thug life choose? Why is this question so important to him? Why Peter can't stop thinking about it.
We are in a brothel. Peter screamed externally, except internally. A goddamn brothel.
THE QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS STRIKE ONCE AGAIN with yet another mission from Magus Margery. Mission: to track a convoy three cars – one which may or may not contain a plot device. Needless to say, all three are going to Aztech, Which Is Bad (but only for Margery).
Of course, it's up to the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS and of course, everyone bails in. Because they are bastards. And some more. Pete November because of buckaroos. Harvestine because of magicks. Peter Marshall because rent (and has no friends). Inspector Damien because someone told him so. Guy Peterson because come on, he's Guy. Shodan comes along because someone has to play babysitter and Damien sure as hell can't.
ANYWAY, they go to the Bridge and proceed to set up perimeters. And then they proceed to set up fold-out chairs to set up some STRATEGY. Despite everything, they make halfway decent plans; most of them ending up in massive property damage and broken lives. Pete finds everyone else's plan to be lacking in the spirit of Quick Dirty Bastardry and brings up HIS plan. Which is essentially having Damien ramp off a skyscaper (and some hobos) on Harvestine's moped, hopefully smashing into the vans. Of course, there might be a possibility of a messy and painful death but come on, that is so AWESOME.
Everyone else balks at this kamikrazy stunt, especially Damien and especially Harvestine. Pete attempts to ply with a Leadership check and succeeds magnificently. Unfortunately, the two cruxes of this plan decided they had better ideas. Peter teams up with Harvestine because Harvestine is his apprentice and Peter has the constitution of tissue paper. Damien buys Guy's loyalty with ice cream. Pete is annoyed-confused, why no one wants to help him on this bodacious plan. Shodan is either in a coma or confused.
So Pete decides he might as well execute the plan himself even if he become eventually becomes Pete Pancake. He hops into his Rad Van and drives right into alleyway, where he was enmassed by window-cleaning hobos. Pete attempts to bribe the said hobos with some job-internship-whatever proposal, which didn't work out too well so Pete offered Reese's Pieces instead because Yay! Candy! Six were won over and each got a free bag from Cyber-Walmart. The rest presumably festered in candy-jealousy. Pete with the hobo team comes back to the group and asks Peter bring everything to the top.
Peter looks at him like, “okay, I suppose this is your funeral.”
Pete looks at him like, “well if I die, I'll become a ghost and haunt the SHIT OUT OF YOU.”
Peter rolls his eyes and levitates Pete, the hobos, and Harvestine's moped to the closest death spire he could find (which is fortunately the closest one to the bridge). Once eighty stories above sea level, Pete turns to the hobos and tells them to fall asleep “for synergy reasons” and if that reason wasn't bullshit enough, he also sings a lullaby – just in case. The six hobos are like “okie dokie!” and proceed to rest their gullible hobo-heads on the (relatively) ground. It helped helped that one of the hobos was a professional napper. Yeah, the job market got super-niche in 2072, but hey, Pete can't complain.
Meanwhile, TEAM MAGICKS (Harvestine and Peter) head to the docks to buy a boat. Both with the same goal but both with differing means. Harvestine wants to mug for it. Peter wants to get it by less violent means. Both strategies involve touching hands with the sailors but Harvestine ain't touching nobody! She spits into an spittoon to prove her point. The container rings and gives her SO MANY POINTS. HIGH SCORE WOOOO. A display flickers above the pot, Harvestine enters her initials (HARV) into the table, immortalizing her as a truly strong and truly independent ork lady. Her prowess had attracted a league of mighty impressed sailors. Being Harvestine, the first thing she says “I want a harpoon.” One of sailor wiggles his eyebrows. “For what,” he said huskily. “To spear things,” she says, oblivious to the fact that another sailor decided to grab at his own crotch.
Peter may be super high but he is super-perceptive. There was something particularly strange about the sailors. Their chest hairs were unnaturally permed, some were shaved into sea serpents, missiles and other phallic-looking thalassic imagery. They smelled like cologne and salt – but not just ocean salt. Pockets stuffed with handkerchiefs of every shade and rainbow. They wore a bit too much jewelry for an average sea-dog. Their boat-hats were wore in a way that would be deemed coy. They wore too tight pants. Too tight shirts. All ripped in strategically exposed places. Peter swore some of them were wearing garter belts. Some were even wearing eyeshadow and lipstick...
“Oh shit,” Peter wished he had took more red mescaline.
“Oh yes,” Fisherman (Prostitute) Steve grinned. He also slowly licked his lips. Peter threw up a little in his mouth.
A nearby burly courtesan flexes his arm, flashing off his tattoo reading “THE THUG LIFE CHOSE--” the rest was bitten off by an unusually large Devil Shark. But what was it? What did the thug life choose? Why is this question so important to him? Why Peter can't stop thinking about it.
We are in a brothel. Peter screamed externally, except internally. A goddamn brothel.
Part 2: It's just like one of my video games!
Show Content
Spoiler
SOMEWHERE IN SEATTLE, TEAM SCIENCE – Damien (cookie dough), Guy (rainbow sherbert), Shodan (I. DIDN'T. HAD. ANY. ICE. CREAM. YOU. FUCKERS.) – waltz to the bridge. Teamwork reveals that the bridge is easily hackable and is guarded by security guards. The security guards are poor numbered, poorly trained, and poorly experienced – so basically Guy with less bladder control. Guy finds the narrator's comparison to be insulting. ANYWAY, the bridge goes up. The convoy is hella-confused.
Damien goes on the bridge, I don't know how but I bet there was crazy Kamen Rider shit. He manages to picks out the three vans, despite the Quick Dirty Bastards having no prior knowledge of what the goddamn vehicles looks like. Regardless, there is Van A, Van B, and Van C. Damien decides C is his favorite letter today and loots the shit out of it except BAM. NINJA. Needless to say, the Bastardly adept found himself in a rather unsuccessful but incredibly anime fist fight with a fast little fuck. In a van. Somewhere in Not-Seattle, Robot Hideo Kojima is writing this idea down for his next game. Nearby, Shodan zones out. Guy plays Tetris, inadvertently causes a traffic jam in the middle lane as the pieces correlated to real cars and Guy really sucks at Tetris. Guy tries to reverse the damage and fails astoundingly in his Data Check. The screen pops up with porn.
Van porn.
Small vans. Large vans. Medium vans. Lusty, lusty vans. Volkswagens for the cheap. Mercedes Benz for the more discerning tastes. From black to brown, white to flaming decals. Wide vans. Skinny vans. Minivans. Megavans. Van Mans. Megamans. Vans of every shape and color and model and fetish. This isn't just sex in a van. No, it is sex with a van. Human. Elf. Dwarf. Ork. Midget. One metahuman often accompanied the van, engaging in pursuits that were explicit and definitely not driving at all. A vast majority of them were middle-aged males. A vast majority of penises. Penises in thrusters, exhaust pipes. Windshield wipers. Penises. Hyperrealistic. Hyperelastic. Hypereverywhere. Penises. Penises. Penises. Guy proceeded to get ill and vomit his stomach's contents. The resulting rainbow-puddle turned into a dick-shape because reality hates him.
Back at TEAM MAGICKS, Harvestine catches wind of Peter's realization and immediately laughs at his expense. Peter throws up a little out of spite and tries to ply for the boat. He fucks up his entire persuasion because hey, you can't have spell Quick Dirty Bastards without mistakes. Apparently, “renting the boat” was sailor-lingo for “sexytimes.” So was “buying the boat” and “I can still have your harpoon, right.” Peter starts to sweat, because the sailors were the sharks, and he was their dinner, and they were totally going to eat him out if he didn't pull something fast.
“It's only two-fifty,” Fisherman Steve purred. His sultry baritone was like two whales making out.
“I...” Peter was trying not to get acid reflux again. “I have a confession to make.”
Steve pulls a clove cigarette from behind his left ear and lit it up. “Go on.”
“I like boats.”
“We all do, darling.”
“No, I mean. I really love boats.”
Peter proceeds to march to decorative boat sculpture that embellished the centre of the brothel. He scales around the watercraft because he did not have enough maritime knowledge to know which end is which. After finding the right end (the behind end), he proceeds to make apathetic humping gestures towards it. He glances at Steve sheepishly.
“I fucking love boats.”
Fisherman Steve rolls his eyes because he ain't fishing for dicks tonight and for some goddamn reason, his boat gets more tail than him. Still, money was money and apparently, vechicular porn was the haute couture of fetishes in 2072. He pouts (seductively) and sighs.
“That'll be one-fifty.”
So Peter gets the boat on the assumption he will fuck it up. Harvestine joins along on the presumption she gets boat-boners from Peter boning (although in reality, she wanted to laugh at him some more). Steve drives the boat sorrowfully because he getting no love tonight. Harvestine was then like OH SHIT, WE FORGOT THE HARPOON and then she found one.
“Yay! Harpoon!” Harvestine held it up all Lion King-style. Peter did his best to ignore her.
They sailed off unimpeded by buxom sirens and stripper sharks – though Harvestine kept on making awful sex-boat puns much to the chagrin of Peter. They arrive at the bridge, which was currently suspended thanks to TEAM SCIENCE. Peter is like hmm, what should we do. Harvestine is like HARPOOOOOOOOOOON and then she fires it off.
The pointy end sticks onto the bottom of the bridge – which was intentional. However, the cable of the harpoon wrapped around Harvestine's leg – which was unintentional. She flies through three hundred kilometers into the air and some more because this is the FUTURE, thus this is a FUTURE HARPOON so it goes FUTURE FAR. Anyway, the ork finds herself suspended from the bridge – which was embarrassing, but also kind of awesome.
As Peter was on drugs, he swore Harvestine was kidnapped by snakes. Damn snakes.
She does not go noticed as Guy is like OH NOES, WE NEED TO HELP HER because aiding Damien through hacked car controls was getting kind of boring and we all know he's at least ten years behind maturity-wise. Shodan was like, yeah, whatever. They go to Hover-stine and suddenly realize Guy has a strength of one. Shodan has a strength of two. A combined strength of three wasn't enough to lift up Harvestine's fat ork butt. This is why you shouldn't optimize your characters, guys. Fortunately, they logic out they just need to free-fall the bridge. So Guy just does that.
“I'M HELPING!” Guy squees.
“RWARRRRGGHHHHHWARGH,” Harvestine garbled. It was hard to words when you are falling.
Harvestine makes angry vulgar hand gestures to spite Guy. Guy wasn't paying too much attention because he was trying to high-five himself except he only had one hand, so he high-fived his face instead. Shodan actually helps because she has common sense and also because she caught Harvestine's hand in time. She lifts up Harvestine with the Peter's aid. Peter flips a fingers at gravity and joins them via levitation. They gave each other high-fives in victory and presumably had a barbeque over the remaining trash bags.
The bridge also crushes their escape boat – much to the chagrin of Fisherman Steve. Steve spews a couple of salty swears as the bridge goes back to its original position and some more. Because Guy sucks at video games.
“So we have me. Shodan. Peter. Petest,” Harvestine counts. “Damien, I guess.”
“WHERES. PETE.” Shodan asks.
Guy and Harvestine's electronic-text-thingys go bee-a-deep.
“hi guys. see the moped?” the message reads. “look up.”
“Pete has a moped?” Guy asks.
Harvestine realizes that it was her moped in question. “Why that son of a bi--”
Enter the Pete. Text messager in one hand. Devil horns gesture in the other. Dramatically appropriate light behind him and casting his disco suit (two-sizes too big) – a shade of blinding white. His expression on his face was of disappointment he wasn't naked when he decided to spit in the face of death and kick his nads for good measure. He was also disappointed that Shodan forced him to wear a suit a gunpoint during the beginning of the campaign. His stunt did not go unnoticed by the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS. Peter magic-braces for impact because he realizes Pete was stupid. Guy was awed. Shodan gave it three-out-of-ten. Damien lost the ninja and inexplicably lost his shirt for some reason. Harvestine was like MY BIKE MY FUCKING BIKE YOU ASSH--.
SMASH. Pete totals the rear-van of the convoy. He also totals the moped. However, he did not total himself as he was still in one piece and not in pieces.In acknowledgment of how ridiculous the stunt was, all the nearby windows exploded out of respect (or a delayed shockwave, or divine decree). A nearby flock of cyborg birds (cybirds) spontaneously combusted too. Even with Peter's levitation aid, he was pretty damn amazing he survived but even more damn amazing that he could still drive the moped. He mostly drove it out of spite because he drove the piece of shit to Harvestine.
“Hello, everyone.” Pete said as though that stunt was basically breathing for him. He turned to the ork. “Here's your moped, by the way.”
Pete hands over the moped. The moped comically crumples into a pile of useless techno-parts. It takes all of Harvestine's will to not strangle him on the spot and use his body as fertilizer.
“Next time,” Peter glared. “There will be no levitation.”
(In less humorous circumstances, the crushed corpses bake forlornly on a rooftop of a sunlit skyscraper. In their wretched hobo-hands, fingers clutched at bags of Reese's Pieces. A receipt flew away – an errant wind revealing the bags were bought only minutes ago. Rest in piece. Rest in pieces. Donovan. Murphy. O'Burke. Carlos. Boris. Isaac – the professional who died doing what he loved. You shall be remembered.)
ANYWAY, the members were now back into the team. The QUICK DIRTY BASTARD TEAM. Guy is useless. Pete observes. Shodan remembers she needs to fill up her daily rage quota, proceeding to rip a van-door and beat the driver into a pulpy mess. Coincidentally, the driver is named Kirk. T. Pulp and the thematics only encouraged him the scream louder. Peter fireballs the shit out of two trashbags. The trash bags were in fact, people and they went screaming and pissing down to their deaths. Leaving an unslightly yellow stain in the ocean. One stupid guard decides a death-cyborg was an easy target and made advances. Harvestine melts his face with a flashbang.
Incidentally, the man is named Michael Melt. The irony was enough to make him sob even more.
With most guards are either demoralized, dead, or face down in their own piss, the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS proceed to loot the shit out of the vans. Damien steals a man's uniform and a gun because reasons. Harvestine and Peter pops another van, finding an illegal amount of magical plants, inducing them into happy seizures. Peter remembers they had a plot device to search for and attempts to ping it, inexplicably settling off all the astral beacons. This makes the end of the Tetris blockade shine like a pretty rainbow. Shodan and Guy saunter over to the last van because it wasn't opened.
There was a dude with a smile on his face and a totem in his pocket. His name was Jeremy Jerome - better known as JJ to the more cooler code-cats.
“Oh hey. Are you hackers?” JJ smiled. “Do you do games?”
SOMEWHERE IN SEATTLE, TEAM SCIENCE – Damien (cookie dough), Guy (rainbow sherbert), Shodan (I. DIDN'T. HAD. ANY. ICE. CREAM. YOU. FUCKERS.) – waltz to the bridge. Teamwork reveals that the bridge is easily hackable and is guarded by security guards. The security guards are poor numbered, poorly trained, and poorly experienced – so basically Guy with less bladder control. Guy finds the narrator's comparison to be insulting. ANYWAY, the bridge goes up. The convoy is hella-confused.
Damien goes on the bridge, I don't know how but I bet there was crazy Kamen Rider shit. He manages to picks out the three vans, despite the Quick Dirty Bastards having no prior knowledge of what the goddamn vehicles looks like. Regardless, there is Van A, Van B, and Van C. Damien decides C is his favorite letter today and loots the shit out of it except BAM. NINJA. Needless to say, the Bastardly adept found himself in a rather unsuccessful but incredibly anime fist fight with a fast little fuck. In a van. Somewhere in Not-Seattle, Robot Hideo Kojima is writing this idea down for his next game. Nearby, Shodan zones out. Guy plays Tetris, inadvertently causes a traffic jam in the middle lane as the pieces correlated to real cars and Guy really sucks at Tetris. Guy tries to reverse the damage and fails astoundingly in his Data Check. The screen pops up with porn.
Van porn.
Small vans. Large vans. Medium vans. Lusty, lusty vans. Volkswagens for the cheap. Mercedes Benz for the more discerning tastes. From black to brown, white to flaming decals. Wide vans. Skinny vans. Minivans. Megavans. Van Mans. Megamans. Vans of every shape and color and model and fetish. This isn't just sex in a van. No, it is sex with a van. Human. Elf. Dwarf. Ork. Midget. One metahuman often accompanied the van, engaging in pursuits that were explicit and definitely not driving at all. A vast majority of them were middle-aged males. A vast majority of penises. Penises in thrusters, exhaust pipes. Windshield wipers. Penises. Hyperrealistic. Hyperelastic. Hypereverywhere. Penises. Penises. Penises. Guy proceeded to get ill and vomit his stomach's contents. The resulting rainbow-puddle turned into a dick-shape because reality hates him.
Back at TEAM MAGICKS, Harvestine catches wind of Peter's realization and immediately laughs at his expense. Peter throws up a little out of spite and tries to ply for the boat. He fucks up his entire persuasion because hey, you can't have spell Quick Dirty Bastards without mistakes. Apparently, “renting the boat” was sailor-lingo for “sexytimes.” So was “buying the boat” and “I can still have your harpoon, right.” Peter starts to sweat, because the sailors were the sharks, and he was their dinner, and they were totally going to eat him out if he didn't pull something fast.
“It's only two-fifty,” Fisherman Steve purred. His sultry baritone was like two whales making out.
“I...” Peter was trying not to get acid reflux again. “I have a confession to make.”
Steve pulls a clove cigarette from behind his left ear and lit it up. “Go on.”
“I like boats.”
“We all do, darling.”
“No, I mean. I really love boats.”
Peter proceeds to march to decorative boat sculpture that embellished the centre of the brothel. He scales around the watercraft because he did not have enough maritime knowledge to know which end is which. After finding the right end (the behind end), he proceeds to make apathetic humping gestures towards it. He glances at Steve sheepishly.
“I fucking love boats.”
Fisherman Steve rolls his eyes because he ain't fishing for dicks tonight and for some goddamn reason, his boat gets more tail than him. Still, money was money and apparently, vechicular porn was the haute couture of fetishes in 2072. He pouts (seductively) and sighs.
“That'll be one-fifty.”
So Peter gets the boat on the assumption he will fuck it up. Harvestine joins along on the presumption she gets boat-boners from Peter boning (although in reality, she wanted to laugh at him some more). Steve drives the boat sorrowfully because he getting no love tonight. Harvestine was then like OH SHIT, WE FORGOT THE HARPOON and then she found one.
“Yay! Harpoon!” Harvestine held it up all Lion King-style. Peter did his best to ignore her.
They sailed off unimpeded by buxom sirens and stripper sharks – though Harvestine kept on making awful sex-boat puns much to the chagrin of Peter. They arrive at the bridge, which was currently suspended thanks to TEAM SCIENCE. Peter is like hmm, what should we do. Harvestine is like HARPOOOOOOOOOOON and then she fires it off.
The pointy end sticks onto the bottom of the bridge – which was intentional. However, the cable of the harpoon wrapped around Harvestine's leg – which was unintentional. She flies through three hundred kilometers into the air and some more because this is the FUTURE, thus this is a FUTURE HARPOON so it goes FUTURE FAR. Anyway, the ork finds herself suspended from the bridge – which was embarrassing, but also kind of awesome.
As Peter was on drugs, he swore Harvestine was kidnapped by snakes. Damn snakes.
She does not go noticed as Guy is like OH NOES, WE NEED TO HELP HER because aiding Damien through hacked car controls was getting kind of boring and we all know he's at least ten years behind maturity-wise. Shodan was like, yeah, whatever. They go to Hover-stine and suddenly realize Guy has a strength of one. Shodan has a strength of two. A combined strength of three wasn't enough to lift up Harvestine's fat ork butt. This is why you shouldn't optimize your characters, guys. Fortunately, they logic out they just need to free-fall the bridge. So Guy just does that.
“I'M HELPING!” Guy squees.
“RWARRRRGGHHHHHWARGH,” Harvestine garbled. It was hard to words when you are falling.
Harvestine makes angry vulgar hand gestures to spite Guy. Guy wasn't paying too much attention because he was trying to high-five himself except he only had one hand, so he high-fived his face instead. Shodan actually helps because she has common sense and also because she caught Harvestine's hand in time. She lifts up Harvestine with the Peter's aid. Peter flips a fingers at gravity and joins them via levitation. They gave each other high-fives in victory and presumably had a barbeque over the remaining trash bags.
The bridge also crushes their escape boat – much to the chagrin of Fisherman Steve. Steve spews a couple of salty swears as the bridge goes back to its original position and some more. Because Guy sucks at video games.
“So we have me. Shodan. Peter. Petest,” Harvestine counts. “Damien, I guess.”
“WHERES. PETE.” Shodan asks.
Guy and Harvestine's electronic-text-thingys go bee-a-deep.
“hi guys. see the moped?” the message reads. “look up.”
“Pete has a moped?” Guy asks.
Harvestine realizes that it was her moped in question. “Why that son of a bi--”
Enter the Pete. Text messager in one hand. Devil horns gesture in the other. Dramatically appropriate light behind him and casting his disco suit (two-sizes too big) – a shade of blinding white. His expression on his face was of disappointment he wasn't naked when he decided to spit in the face of death and kick his nads for good measure. He was also disappointed that Shodan forced him to wear a suit a gunpoint during the beginning of the campaign. His stunt did not go unnoticed by the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS. Peter magic-braces for impact because he realizes Pete was stupid. Guy was awed. Shodan gave it three-out-of-ten. Damien lost the ninja and inexplicably lost his shirt for some reason. Harvestine was like MY BIKE MY FUCKING BIKE YOU ASSH--.
SMASH. Pete totals the rear-van of the convoy. He also totals the moped. However, he did not total himself as he was still in one piece and not in pieces.In acknowledgment of how ridiculous the stunt was, all the nearby windows exploded out of respect (or a delayed shockwave, or divine decree). A nearby flock of cyborg birds (cybirds) spontaneously combusted too. Even with Peter's levitation aid, he was pretty damn amazing he survived but even more damn amazing that he could still drive the moped. He mostly drove it out of spite because he drove the piece of shit to Harvestine.
“Hello, everyone.” Pete said as though that stunt was basically breathing for him. He turned to the ork. “Here's your moped, by the way.”
Pete hands over the moped. The moped comically crumples into a pile of useless techno-parts. It takes all of Harvestine's will to not strangle him on the spot and use his body as fertilizer.
“Next time,” Peter glared. “There will be no levitation.”
(In less humorous circumstances, the crushed corpses bake forlornly on a rooftop of a sunlit skyscraper. In their wretched hobo-hands, fingers clutched at bags of Reese's Pieces. A receipt flew away – an errant wind revealing the bags were bought only minutes ago. Rest in piece. Rest in pieces. Donovan. Murphy. O'Burke. Carlos. Boris. Isaac – the professional who died doing what he loved. You shall be remembered.)
ANYWAY, the members were now back into the team. The QUICK DIRTY BASTARD TEAM. Guy is useless. Pete observes. Shodan remembers she needs to fill up her daily rage quota, proceeding to rip a van-door and beat the driver into a pulpy mess. Coincidentally, the driver is named Kirk. T. Pulp and the thematics only encouraged him the scream louder. Peter fireballs the shit out of two trashbags. The trash bags were in fact, people and they went screaming and pissing down to their deaths. Leaving an unslightly yellow stain in the ocean. One stupid guard decides a death-cyborg was an easy target and made advances. Harvestine melts his face with a flashbang.
Incidentally, the man is named Michael Melt. The irony was enough to make him sob even more.
With most guards are either demoralized, dead, or face down in their own piss, the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS proceed to loot the shit out of the vans. Damien steals a man's uniform and a gun because reasons. Harvestine and Peter pops another van, finding an illegal amount of magical plants, inducing them into happy seizures. Peter remembers they had a plot device to search for and attempts to ping it, inexplicably settling off all the astral beacons. This makes the end of the Tetris blockade shine like a pretty rainbow. Shodan and Guy saunter over to the last van because it wasn't opened.
There was a dude with a smile on his face and a totem in his pocket. His name was Jeremy Jerome - better known as JJ to the more cooler code-cats.
“Oh hey. Are you hackers?” JJ smiled. “Do you do games?”
Part 3: JJ, you cray cray
Show Content
Spoiler
BECAUSE HE HACKED THE FUCKING VAN AWAY. JJ pops a wheelie off the bridge. JJ even pops his head out just too see the looks on their faces. However, the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS don't like it when npcs leave them behind like idiots. Damien likes to play hero and jumps in for the ride. Unfortunately, JJ doesn't play nice because he borked the brakes. Inspector Damien is now in total lack of control of this situation. Pete drives in the plant-a-van taking along Peter;Harvestine is in the back because ooh, magic plants. Shodan gives chase in another van. Guy goes with Shodan, feeling absolutely dirty when he goes in through the back-end of the vehicle.
ANYWAY, there was a car chase. It was probably wild and rad (especially with Pete's RADNESS) and had a million hobo-casualties. I am pretty sure an old lady got ran over along the way, plus a couple of raccoons and traffic cones. Basically, a scene suitable for an action-thriller blockbuster filmed in high-definition and like all action-thrilled blockbusters, there was obligatory one-sided banter.
“haha. u guys r pretty cute :) for a buncha losers” JJ texts as he somehow dodges Damien's exploding fists. He also makes the text in blinding rainbow because he is obnoxious and secretly fourteen years old on the inside.
No one replies because no one was undignified enough to do that.
“i guess ur just shy :)”
A couple seconds pass.
“or know u made a big mistake :)”
Nothing.
“maybe u R a mistake. are u born on a highway because thats when most mistak”
Annnnnnd JJ accidentally smashes into a building. See this is why you shouldn't text while you drive. JJ admonishes himself for not following basic traffic etiquette and scrams into the building like a dork. Damien, Shodan, and Harvestine (with a comically large sack of wizard-plants over her shoulder) give chase but not before getting almost ran over by Pete and his RAD disregard for pedestrians. Guy sends out his only drone and proceeds to go into a coma because the player had to leave for a couple of minutes. Peter marches back, grabs Harvestine's moped, and places it into Pete's Rad Van because he is the only considerate member in the party.
JJ goes to floor 404 to lose them. Shodan, Harvestine, and Damien to floor 404 to catch him. The pursuit is simply too arduous to put into words but I can assure you it was incredibly action-packed and full of dead bystanders. Harvestine has to slow down because IKEA furniture was too durable to destroy and there was GODDAMN TOO MANY OF THEM. Damien has enough of JJ's fast little feet and BODY TACKLES THE SHIT OUT OF HIM and its THROUGH A GODDAMN WINDOW and INTO ANOTHER BUILDING. He breaks JJ's robot-arm and breaks his spirits because Damien is using his body as a surfboard.
“HA! I'm awesome!” Damien declares to JJ because he wanted to rub it in his stupid hacker face.
“NO YOU AREN'T.” JJ manages to scream despite being buffeted by debris and dead rats.
“You are my surfboard,” Damien points out. “You have no reason.”
“Well,” JJ growls. “Reason THIS.”
And then JJ proceeds to stick a taser into Damien's adepticles and leaving him to deal with his thunderballs. Shodan realizes Damien was probably in danger and while she still doesn't care about him, she proceeds to JUMP THE HELL OUT OF THE WINDOW, ACROSS THE CHASM OF DEATH, and INTO THE BUILDING. Damien would be wowed except his eyes were watering. Harvestine catches up and decides to celebrate by tossing a grenade.
BOOM. The grenade was for JJ but there could be good reasoning that it may be for Damien too. The building was in flames – a conflagration concentration. Fortunately, the building with Feng Shui in mind. While Feng Shui may be decreed as superstitious bullshit, Feng Shui is in fact the Shadowrun version of OSHA code for ghosts. It's spiritual, you see. Needless to say, Damien was unscathed. Shodan was unimpressed. Guy was still in a coma.
But cantonia was getting too boring for him. So, he decides to stop being an useless piece of technomancer shit and actually contribute to the goddamn mission. He attempts to search for JJ's whereabouts. He ends up with JJ's email address instead, which really frustrates him and he was honestly looking forward to psychologically scar someone. Instead of, you know, actually searching for an address, he complies all the van porn he could find, sticks in a few pictures of kittens, and send the entire damn thing to JJ.
JJ pops back with a loving puppy-boat porn combo. Guy is incensed because goddammit JJ was copying his style. He sends back plane porn – and a couple of extra parakeets to boot. JJ sends back planes with parakeet porn, and Mickey Mouse for some reason. Eventually, Guy gets upset in this very mature battle for very mature kids and proceeds to seek out JJ's host servers for porn. He complies every of JJ's van, plane, train, and boat porn, stud it with pictures of rainbows and unicorns and other Lisa Frank abominations, and sends it back to JJ. To rub it in, Guy also systematically wipes out every trace of porn from JJ's servers. His sprites were too happy to oblige.
Suddenly, Guy gets a friend request from JJ. For some reason, he accepts.
“hey!!! :)” The message blinks.
“Hello.” Despite every fiber of his being telling him otherwise, Guy replies.
“hey bro u know what happened to all my porn? :o”
“Uhm.” Guy tapped out. “They went on vacation.”
“ohhhhh okay, oh well i guess i better lock them better in the basement next time. :)”
Guy felt incredibly shamed that he was sharing his contact information with this guy.
IN MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS, Shodan drags Damien out of the burning building. Peter's astral senses ping the artifact to be underground. Shodan drags Peter into the maintenance tunnel to search. Harvestine does the most sensible thing and proceeds to rip the shit out of the nearest manhole. Guy gets weirded out by all this violence against public property and joins with Pete in his Rad Van, listening to Barry White and other old-timey records. Harvestine thinks Guy has no taste. Anyway, the manhole gets opened and Harvestine goes in like Batman (but an Ork) because nothing is more closer to nature than a literal shit-tunnel.
Sewerlines of 2072 are like sewerlines of 2013 in that they were consistently caked with filth and other wonderful organic things. As far as Harvestine's eyes could see, the sewers went on infinity and shit-finity. Harvestine considers getting out before she dies of poo-gas-poisoning. On the other hand, she knows the totem was super important and HOLY SHIT MOLE PEOPLE.
“Holy shit!” Harvestine was giddy. “I thought they only existed in terrible B-movies!”
“Scree,” the mole people replied despite the fact they are actually just oversized Devil Rats. Also for some reason, they wore top hats, monocles and other pleasantly outdated Victorian-wear. It would be cute except it was kind of terrifying.
“I come in peace,” Harvestine dramatically waves her arm around. She also gives them food because no one told her it was bad to feed wild and possibly rabies-infected critters.
“Scree. Scree. Scree.” They accept her food out of politeness and proceed to nibble on her arms too. Talking about biting the hand that feeds you.
“You guys are eating my arm.”
“Scree.”
“Are you even playing attention to me?”
“Scree.”
“Okay, then.”
Harvestine uses a dapper-looking Mole Person as a flail to knock back the masses. She scurries out and tosses in a grenade because grenades always make everything better. The manhole belches out a particularly foul smelling cloud of mole-chunks, mole-fur, and moleskin gloves – ending her search here. Disheartened by the lack of fulfillment for her latent megalomania, she goes back to the Rad Van with the other people.
“I guess we lost the artifact.” Peter shrugged.
“I am sure it'll turn up somewhere.” Pete glared.
“BULLSHIT,” Shodan rolled her eyes.
Suddenly, Guy's text-message thing beep-a-boops. He takes it out with his only arm left.
“wts: magical doohickey 50K. malware market, 6PM. i c guns i run. :)"
It takes all of Harvestine's willpower not to rip out Guy's remaining good arm out of the socket. The rest of the Quick Dirty Bastards take turns to invent increasingly offending swear-words for the situation they fucked themselves into.
BECAUSE HE HACKED THE FUCKING VAN AWAY. JJ pops a wheelie off the bridge. JJ even pops his head out just too see the looks on their faces. However, the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS don't like it when npcs leave them behind like idiots. Damien likes to play hero and jumps in for the ride. Unfortunately, JJ doesn't play nice because he borked the brakes. Inspector Damien is now in total lack of control of this situation. Pete drives in the plant-a-van taking along Peter;Harvestine is in the back because ooh, magic plants. Shodan gives chase in another van. Guy goes with Shodan, feeling absolutely dirty when he goes in through the back-end of the vehicle.
ANYWAY, there was a car chase. It was probably wild and rad (especially with Pete's RADNESS) and had a million hobo-casualties. I am pretty sure an old lady got ran over along the way, plus a couple of raccoons and traffic cones. Basically, a scene suitable for an action-thriller blockbuster filmed in high-definition and like all action-thrilled blockbusters, there was obligatory one-sided banter.
“haha. u guys r pretty cute :) for a buncha losers” JJ texts as he somehow dodges Damien's exploding fists. He also makes the text in blinding rainbow because he is obnoxious and secretly fourteen years old on the inside.
No one replies because no one was undignified enough to do that.
“i guess ur just shy :)”
A couple seconds pass.
“or know u made a big mistake :)”
Nothing.
“maybe u R a mistake. are u born on a highway because thats when most mistak”
Annnnnnd JJ accidentally smashes into a building. See this is why you shouldn't text while you drive. JJ admonishes himself for not following basic traffic etiquette and scrams into the building like a dork. Damien, Shodan, and Harvestine (with a comically large sack of wizard-plants over her shoulder) give chase but not before getting almost ran over by Pete and his RAD disregard for pedestrians. Guy sends out his only drone and proceeds to go into a coma because the player had to leave for a couple of minutes. Peter marches back, grabs Harvestine's moped, and places it into Pete's Rad Van because he is the only considerate member in the party.
JJ goes to floor 404 to lose them. Shodan, Harvestine, and Damien to floor 404 to catch him. The pursuit is simply too arduous to put into words but I can assure you it was incredibly action-packed and full of dead bystanders. Harvestine has to slow down because IKEA furniture was too durable to destroy and there was GODDAMN TOO MANY OF THEM. Damien has enough of JJ's fast little feet and BODY TACKLES THE SHIT OUT OF HIM and its THROUGH A GODDAMN WINDOW and INTO ANOTHER BUILDING. He breaks JJ's robot-arm and breaks his spirits because Damien is using his body as a surfboard.
“HA! I'm awesome!” Damien declares to JJ because he wanted to rub it in his stupid hacker face.
“NO YOU AREN'T.” JJ manages to scream despite being buffeted by debris and dead rats.
“You are my surfboard,” Damien points out. “You have no reason.”
“Well,” JJ growls. “Reason THIS.”
And then JJ proceeds to stick a taser into Damien's adepticles and leaving him to deal with his thunderballs. Shodan realizes Damien was probably in danger and while she still doesn't care about him, she proceeds to JUMP THE HELL OUT OF THE WINDOW, ACROSS THE CHASM OF DEATH, and INTO THE BUILDING. Damien would be wowed except his eyes were watering. Harvestine catches up and decides to celebrate by tossing a grenade.
BOOM. The grenade was for JJ but there could be good reasoning that it may be for Damien too. The building was in flames – a conflagration concentration. Fortunately, the building with Feng Shui in mind. While Feng Shui may be decreed as superstitious bullshit, Feng Shui is in fact the Shadowrun version of OSHA code for ghosts. It's spiritual, you see. Needless to say, Damien was unscathed. Shodan was unimpressed. Guy was still in a coma.
But cantonia was getting too boring for him. So, he decides to stop being an useless piece of technomancer shit and actually contribute to the goddamn mission. He attempts to search for JJ's whereabouts. He ends up with JJ's email address instead, which really frustrates him and he was honestly looking forward to psychologically scar someone. Instead of, you know, actually searching for an address, he complies all the van porn he could find, sticks in a few pictures of kittens, and send the entire damn thing to JJ.
JJ pops back with a loving puppy-boat porn combo. Guy is incensed because goddammit JJ was copying his style. He sends back plane porn – and a couple of extra parakeets to boot. JJ sends back planes with parakeet porn, and Mickey Mouse for some reason. Eventually, Guy gets upset in this very mature battle for very mature kids and proceeds to seek out JJ's host servers for porn. He complies every of JJ's van, plane, train, and boat porn, stud it with pictures of rainbows and unicorns and other Lisa Frank abominations, and sends it back to JJ. To rub it in, Guy also systematically wipes out every trace of porn from JJ's servers. His sprites were too happy to oblige.
Suddenly, Guy gets a friend request from JJ. For some reason, he accepts.
“hey!!! :)” The message blinks.
“Hello.” Despite every fiber of his being telling him otherwise, Guy replies.
“hey bro u know what happened to all my porn? :o”
“Uhm.” Guy tapped out. “They went on vacation.”
“ohhhhh okay, oh well i guess i better lock them better in the basement next time. :)”
Guy felt incredibly shamed that he was sharing his contact information with this guy.
IN MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS, Shodan drags Damien out of the burning building. Peter's astral senses ping the artifact to be underground. Shodan drags Peter into the maintenance tunnel to search. Harvestine does the most sensible thing and proceeds to rip the shit out of the nearest manhole. Guy gets weirded out by all this violence against public property and joins with Pete in his Rad Van, listening to Barry White and other old-timey records. Harvestine thinks Guy has no taste. Anyway, the manhole gets opened and Harvestine goes in like Batman (but an Ork) because nothing is more closer to nature than a literal shit-tunnel.
Sewerlines of 2072 are like sewerlines of 2013 in that they were consistently caked with filth and other wonderful organic things. As far as Harvestine's eyes could see, the sewers went on infinity and shit-finity. Harvestine considers getting out before she dies of poo-gas-poisoning. On the other hand, she knows the totem was super important and HOLY SHIT MOLE PEOPLE.
“Holy shit!” Harvestine was giddy. “I thought they only existed in terrible B-movies!”
“Scree,” the mole people replied despite the fact they are actually just oversized Devil Rats. Also for some reason, they wore top hats, monocles and other pleasantly outdated Victorian-wear. It would be cute except it was kind of terrifying.
“I come in peace,” Harvestine dramatically waves her arm around. She also gives them food because no one told her it was bad to feed wild and possibly rabies-infected critters.
“Scree. Scree. Scree.” They accept her food out of politeness and proceed to nibble on her arms too. Talking about biting the hand that feeds you.
“You guys are eating my arm.”
“Scree.”
“Are you even playing attention to me?”
“Scree.”
“Okay, then.”
Harvestine uses a dapper-looking Mole Person as a flail to knock back the masses. She scurries out and tosses in a grenade because grenades always make everything better. The manhole belches out a particularly foul smelling cloud of mole-chunks, mole-fur, and moleskin gloves – ending her search here. Disheartened by the lack of fulfillment for her latent megalomania, she goes back to the Rad Van with the other people.
“I guess we lost the artifact.” Peter shrugged.
“I am sure it'll turn up somewhere.” Pete glared.
“BULLSHIT,” Shodan rolled her eyes.
Suddenly, Guy's text-message thing beep-a-boops. He takes it out with his only arm left.
“wts: magical doohickey 50K. malware market, 6PM. i c guns i run. :)"
It takes all of Harvestine's willpower not to rip out Guy's remaining good arm out of the socket. The rest of the Quick Dirty Bastards take turns to invent increasingly offending swear-words for the situation they fucked themselves into.
Part 4: Shake your Moneymaker
Show Content
Spoiler
BUT FIRST SOME COFFEE because
was appropriate for this situation and also Shodan needed to work her barista shift anyway. They all join up in Lone Star Cafe (except for Damien, who fell asleep and got thrown out of the Rad Van for some reason). Everyone proceeded to fire off money-making ideas of increasing ridiculousness and implausibility. “We should mug the SHIT out of people,” Harvestine says. “That will only land us into more trouble!” everyone else was like. “We could steal it from some corporation, maybe?” Peter offered. “NO. THAT'S BAD,” Damien would decry, except he is face-flat in the asphalt. Guy wants to join in on the planning “May we can torrent cash!”
“That only works for Japanese cartoons,” Harvestine rolls her eyes. “Also you have no friends.”
Shodan interrupts Guy's sniffles with “MAYBE. GET. A. JOB.” Pete was like “NO. This is the cyberpunk future and in the cyberpunk future of Obama's America, we don't have jobs, we get money in the most counter-intuitive and convoluted way possible” but secretly, he admits she has a point and he was kind of desperate for ideas so he attempts to get a job in the Lone Star Cafe. His plan was to con the middle management out of his job because hey, they ARE in the cyberpunk future and they had to do it the cyberpunk way.
“Yeah, no,” the target replies. Pete fails. Guy with not an ounce of originality attempts to regain his self-perceived coolness by copying what Pete does but a bit differently. He instead uses his personal life as an impromptu resume, attempting to ply the manager's heart into giving up his job out of pity.
“In grade school, I was bullied constantly. There were actually criminal gangs and some forced me to do homework at gunpoint. If I do an okay job, they only beat me up once. If I do a stellar job, they only peed in my lunch. Sometimes they like me because they give me a dead rat. A lot of gangs like me, which was why my locker was full of dead rats. It smelled bad.” Guy stared forlornly. “Really, really bad.”
The manager was moved to tears of pity and confusion because he gave Guy a free coupon to psychiatric help and told him to get the hell out before his bad elf mojo spread to him. Guy pouts and sulks away, inadvertently causing a small fire in the kitchen. Shodan manages to stomps it out because the fire was obviously an allegory for Guy.
Shodan sighs because she knows sooner or later, she has to pool in for the plot-device ransom. She decides to intimidate the shit out of every customer (“TIP. OR. DIE.”), leaving behind a scrawny 340 nuyen, broken windows, and metahuman-shape holes in the walls. She turns to the middle manager and intimidates the shit out of him. The result was Lone Star definitely need a new manager. And a new wall too.
Pete finds all this monetary increases to be kind of boring. He remembers he still kind of hated Damien for no particular reason other than his stupid face and decided the adept needed to be punished. Pete proceeds to go where they last dropped off Damien. Damien was still in his chameleon suit. Pete decided to hack his chameleon suit.
After a few anatomically distorting postures (it was good thing Damien was super flexible otherwise he would be dead of accidental spinal injury), all of Damien was under Pete's remote control. Pete had to stop snorting from laughter as he forced Damien to violently hip-thrust, cartwheel, and twerk into the streets. The vulgar postures were definitely hilarious, but its amusement was incredibly short-lived and Damien didn't deserve the energy of Pete's thumbs. Out of reasons of laziness and spite, Pete decided to rig the controls of Damien's suit into the electronics Rad Van. For Rad reasons.
It was a shocking phenomena that day for the neighbors as Damien flumped on the asphalt and wriggled away, making car noises for some reason.
Damien putters to the employment parking of Damien's workplace and stands up violently, because Pete remembered Damien was a person not his Rad Van. Damien attempts to climb up the stairs like eight times (because he fell down eight times, stairs are barely car-friendly) much to the amusement of bygoers. He slams his face into the glass before the automated door decides to take pity on him, letting him into his daily job as a reverse stripper.
What is a reverse stripper? You may ask. Like most corporations surviving to 2072, Goodwill had been constantly expanding on discerning tastes for the sake of customer satisfaction and profit. This includes markets of the more risque because this was cyberpunk. You cannot spell “future” without “sexual frustration.” They initially started with vanilla – hookers, pornography, oddly shaped animal dildos, the works – but then metahumanity emerged. So they had to get a little exotic with what turns people on – even with the inventions of BTLs. Genitalia-shaped pastries. Ghost spatulas. LSD-laced condoms. Reverse strippers was just the cherry on the top.
Basically, a reverse-stripper was like a vanilla stripper – expect instead of taking off their own clothes, they take other people's off. Apparently, this gets people bothered and hot – scientists are still baffled why it hits a lot of people's erotic spots. Reverse-stripping also acts as Goodwill's donation process. Stripped clothes are never given back because they are given to charity. Not that people are complaining, of course.
“Are you...okay?” A fellow reverse-stripper asked Damien. “You look a little...rad.”
“Yes, I am okay.” Damien-except-actually-Pete replied. It was pretty amazing he was speaking and snoring at the same time. “Do I look okay to you?” Damien slaps his co-workers face in a sort of dead-fish manner to prove his point. His hands were cold and clammy.
“Okaaaaaay? I suppose?” The intruding fellow scuttled away before he could catch the crazy from Damien.
“Yes. Good.” Damien-but-not declared as he decided to slap himself in the face. He decides that it would be beneficial for the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS if they took Damien's contribution with his permission. And who needs permission anyway? All for the team, right? Anyway, Damien sort of goose-steps to his boss, a chunky flabby man who was looking at him with concerned confusion.
“Damien...are you alright?” The boss asked. His nametag said Billy Blanc. It was sort of ironic.
“I need my paycheck,” Damien speaks, also he was drooling a little. “Now.”
“Uh, why?” Blanc the boss questioned. “You usually are okay with picking up pay at the end of month.”
“Economy's bad.” Pete silently curses Damien's goody-two-shoes because he had to pull an excuse out of his ass. “Insurance's rate going up. I need to fork over the payment – now. It's kind of urgent because” he made a weird microphone feedback noise. “Family emergency.”
“Well,” Billy Blanc, one of the few less douchey citizens of Future Seattle makes a genuinely sorry face. “You know how I am all for supporting friends and families...”
And he shows Pete Damien's paycheck. Unfortunately, the raw-stipend was not enough – only a measly 2500 nuyen – barely a dent on the 50k ransom. So Pete-Damien politely declines, saying he needed to work and work out. Money ain't easy, you know – however, people are...and vehicles were the haute couture of fetishes this year...
Damien proceeded to spazz out on the dance floor – doing maneuvers that are more appropriate for a car than a human. Pete decided since this was Damien – they probably had cool anime names. There was the Worm (Damien rolling on the floor). The Parallax (Damien slamming into walls). The Grand Theft Auto (Damien accidentally knocking over club-furniture). The Abyss (Damien collapsing because Pete's frequency dropped). The Roar (Damien making annoying car-horn noises). However, the most beloved move was what Pete fondly named the Tokyo Drift...which was Damien making random hip-thrusts. It was very stupid looking but for some reason, it made the crowd go wild.
“TAKE MY PANTIES.” An increasingly-naked fat guy screamed. “TAKE MY EVERYTHING,” a nearby lady threw her small child at Damien. Damien was covered in too many smelly and sweaty clothes but he continually hip-thrusted because hey, Pete was a crowd-pleaser.
“THIS ONE GOES TO ALL YOU LOVERS OUT THERE,” Damien limp-waves as he swaggered to the exit with 3000 nuyens in his chameleon panties. He vrooms to the Lone Star, much to shock of everyone. Pete can take his spoils much to the disgust of Shodan. Damien make car noises to his relatively posh apartment and collapses at the entrance – because Pete remembers he still sort of hates him.
Still, the cash wasn't enough. At this time, the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS were getting a bit QUICK DIRTY DESPERATE.
“Maybe we can grow drugs,” Peter suggests.
“No, even better, we advertise drugs,” Pete slams his hands down as though he was proving a point. “We create a supply – but we create a bigger demand. A dot-com boom. A Ponzi scheme.”
“...Do you even know what you are talking about?”
“...Yeeees,” Pete said after an unnaturally long pause. “I took finance class.”
“Huh, so did I.” Peter sat back, a bit intrigued.
“YOU. KNOW. PLANTS. TAKE. A. LONG. TIME. TO GROW. RIGHT.” Shodan sighed, out of her uniform because her shift was over.
Peter looks at Shodan and gave a shrug. “We have magic plants.”
“Magic AND plants AND crimes against metahumanity?” Harvestine stands up. “Count me in!”
“Ladies. Gentlemen,” Pete takes out a pair of sunglasses that he didn't have until now. “And those outside the gender binary – we aren't discriminate. We had solidified a plan that tries people's temptations. But beware, the pans also try our temptations. This is a heist that would either make or break us as a team (if we could technically be called as such, eh). We are all going in. We are making rad...” he puts on his sunglasses. “...or breaking bad.”
“Ooh! Ooh! I know that reference!” Guy piped. Harvestine proceeds to kick his shins out of spite.
BUT FIRST SOME COFFEE because
was appropriate for this situation and also Shodan needed to work her barista shift anyway. They all join up in Lone Star Cafe (except for Damien, who fell asleep and got thrown out of the Rad Van for some reason). Everyone proceeded to fire off money-making ideas of increasing ridiculousness and implausibility. “We should mug the SHIT out of people,” Harvestine says. “That will only land us into more trouble!” everyone else was like. “We could steal it from some corporation, maybe?” Peter offered. “NO. THAT'S BAD,” Damien would decry, except he is face-flat in the asphalt. Guy wants to join in on the planning “May we can torrent cash!”“That only works for Japanese cartoons,” Harvestine rolls her eyes. “Also you have no friends.”
Shodan interrupts Guy's sniffles with “MAYBE. GET. A. JOB.” Pete was like “NO. This is the cyberpunk future and in the cyberpunk future of Obama's America, we don't have jobs, we get money in the most counter-intuitive and convoluted way possible” but secretly, he admits she has a point and he was kind of desperate for ideas so he attempts to get a job in the Lone Star Cafe. His plan was to con the middle management out of his job because hey, they ARE in the cyberpunk future and they had to do it the cyberpunk way.
“Yeah, no,” the target replies. Pete fails. Guy with not an ounce of originality attempts to regain his self-perceived coolness by copying what Pete does but a bit differently. He instead uses his personal life as an impromptu resume, attempting to ply the manager's heart into giving up his job out of pity.
“In grade school, I was bullied constantly. There were actually criminal gangs and some forced me to do homework at gunpoint. If I do an okay job, they only beat me up once. If I do a stellar job, they only peed in my lunch. Sometimes they like me because they give me a dead rat. A lot of gangs like me, which was why my locker was full of dead rats. It smelled bad.” Guy stared forlornly. “Really, really bad.”
The manager was moved to tears of pity and confusion because he gave Guy a free coupon to psychiatric help and told him to get the hell out before his bad elf mojo spread to him. Guy pouts and sulks away, inadvertently causing a small fire in the kitchen. Shodan manages to stomps it out because the fire was obviously an allegory for Guy.
Shodan sighs because she knows sooner or later, she has to pool in for the plot-device ransom. She decides to intimidate the shit out of every customer (“TIP. OR. DIE.”), leaving behind a scrawny 340 nuyen, broken windows, and metahuman-shape holes in the walls. She turns to the middle manager and intimidates the shit out of him. The result was Lone Star definitely need a new manager. And a new wall too.
Pete finds all this monetary increases to be kind of boring. He remembers he still kind of hated Damien for no particular reason other than his stupid face and decided the adept needed to be punished. Pete proceeds to go where they last dropped off Damien. Damien was still in his chameleon suit. Pete decided to hack his chameleon suit.
After a few anatomically distorting postures (it was good thing Damien was super flexible otherwise he would be dead of accidental spinal injury), all of Damien was under Pete's remote control. Pete had to stop snorting from laughter as he forced Damien to violently hip-thrust, cartwheel, and twerk into the streets. The vulgar postures were definitely hilarious, but its amusement was incredibly short-lived and Damien didn't deserve the energy of Pete's thumbs. Out of reasons of laziness and spite, Pete decided to rig the controls of Damien's suit into the electronics Rad Van. For Rad reasons.
It was a shocking phenomena that day for the neighbors as Damien flumped on the asphalt and wriggled away, making car noises for some reason.
Damien putters to the employment parking of Damien's workplace and stands up violently, because Pete remembered Damien was a person not his Rad Van. Damien attempts to climb up the stairs like eight times (because he fell down eight times, stairs are barely car-friendly) much to the amusement of bygoers. He slams his face into the glass before the automated door decides to take pity on him, letting him into his daily job as a reverse stripper.
What is a reverse stripper? You may ask. Like most corporations surviving to 2072, Goodwill had been constantly expanding on discerning tastes for the sake of customer satisfaction and profit. This includes markets of the more risque because this was cyberpunk. You cannot spell “future” without “sexual frustration.” They initially started with vanilla – hookers, pornography, oddly shaped animal dildos, the works – but then metahumanity emerged. So they had to get a little exotic with what turns people on – even with the inventions of BTLs. Genitalia-shaped pastries. Ghost spatulas. LSD-laced condoms. Reverse strippers was just the cherry on the top.
Basically, a reverse-stripper was like a vanilla stripper – expect instead of taking off their own clothes, they take other people's off. Apparently, this gets people bothered and hot – scientists are still baffled why it hits a lot of people's erotic spots. Reverse-stripping also acts as Goodwill's donation process. Stripped clothes are never given back because they are given to charity. Not that people are complaining, of course.
“Are you...okay?” A fellow reverse-stripper asked Damien. “You look a little...rad.”
“Yes, I am okay.” Damien-except-actually-Pete replied. It was pretty amazing he was speaking and snoring at the same time. “Do I look okay to you?” Damien slaps his co-workers face in a sort of dead-fish manner to prove his point. His hands were cold and clammy.
“Okaaaaaay? I suppose?” The intruding fellow scuttled away before he could catch the crazy from Damien.
“Yes. Good.” Damien-but-not declared as he decided to slap himself in the face. He decides that it would be beneficial for the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS if they took Damien's contribution with his permission. And who needs permission anyway? All for the team, right? Anyway, Damien sort of goose-steps to his boss, a chunky flabby man who was looking at him with concerned confusion.
“Damien...are you alright?” The boss asked. His nametag said Billy Blanc. It was sort of ironic.
“I need my paycheck,” Damien speaks, also he was drooling a little. “Now.”
“Uh, why?” Blanc the boss questioned. “You usually are okay with picking up pay at the end of month.”
“Economy's bad.” Pete silently curses Damien's goody-two-shoes because he had to pull an excuse out of his ass. “Insurance's rate going up. I need to fork over the payment – now. It's kind of urgent because” he made a weird microphone feedback noise. “Family emergency.”
“Well,” Billy Blanc, one of the few less douchey citizens of Future Seattle makes a genuinely sorry face. “You know how I am all for supporting friends and families...”
And he shows Pete Damien's paycheck. Unfortunately, the raw-stipend was not enough – only a measly 2500 nuyen – barely a dent on the 50k ransom. So Pete-Damien politely declines, saying he needed to work and work out. Money ain't easy, you know – however, people are...and vehicles were the haute couture of fetishes this year...
Damien proceeded to spazz out on the dance floor – doing maneuvers that are more appropriate for a car than a human. Pete decided since this was Damien – they probably had cool anime names. There was the Worm (Damien rolling on the floor). The Parallax (Damien slamming into walls). The Grand Theft Auto (Damien accidentally knocking over club-furniture). The Abyss (Damien collapsing because Pete's frequency dropped). The Roar (Damien making annoying car-horn noises). However, the most beloved move was what Pete fondly named the Tokyo Drift...which was Damien making random hip-thrusts. It was very stupid looking but for some reason, it made the crowd go wild.
“TAKE MY PANTIES.” An increasingly-naked fat guy screamed. “TAKE MY EVERYTHING,” a nearby lady threw her small child at Damien. Damien was covered in too many smelly and sweaty clothes but he continually hip-thrusted because hey, Pete was a crowd-pleaser.
“THIS ONE GOES TO ALL YOU LOVERS OUT THERE,” Damien limp-waves as he swaggered to the exit with 3000 nuyens in his chameleon panties. He vrooms to the Lone Star, much to shock of everyone. Pete can take his spoils much to the disgust of Shodan. Damien make car noises to his relatively posh apartment and collapses at the entrance – because Pete remembers he still sort of hates him.
Still, the cash wasn't enough. At this time, the QUICK DIRTY BASTARDS were getting a bit QUICK DIRTY DESPERATE.
“Maybe we can grow drugs,” Peter suggests.
“No, even better, we advertise drugs,” Pete slams his hands down as though he was proving a point. “We create a supply – but we create a bigger demand. A dot-com boom. A Ponzi scheme.”
“...Do you even know what you are talking about?”
“...Yeeees,” Pete said after an unnaturally long pause. “I took finance class.”
“Huh, so did I.” Peter sat back, a bit intrigued.
“YOU. KNOW. PLANTS. TAKE. A. LONG. TIME. TO GROW. RIGHT.” Shodan sighed, out of her uniform because her shift was over.
Peter looks at Shodan and gave a shrug. “We have magic plants.”
“Magic AND plants AND crimes against metahumanity?” Harvestine stands up. “Count me in!”
“Ladies. Gentlemen,” Pete takes out a pair of sunglasses that he didn't have until now. “And those outside the gender binary – we aren't discriminate. We had solidified a plan that tries people's temptations. But beware, the pans also try our temptations. This is a heist that would either make or break us as a team (if we could technically be called as such, eh). We are all going in. We are making rad...” he puts on his sunglasses. “...or breaking bad.”
“Ooh! Ooh! I know that reference!” Guy piped. Harvestine proceeds to kick his shins out of spite.