GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 24: Making The News

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Negotiations

Chromedome finished working on Paxos, then walked over to Specter, still wearing his blood-covered smock and yellow rubber gloves.  The ripper made it clear that he needed payment, and that this wasn't a safehouse.  Specter took out his agent and wired him the eddies, then dialed The Peacock and said they'd be out of his hair soon.  As the doc shuffled away, Peacock answered and welcomed Specter back into the land of the living, then asked after the status of the other two; Specter replied "Mad, but physically fine".  They chatted about the safehouse in Little China that they'd checked out with Jar, then The Peacock said they'd bring the AV around soon and hung up.

City Center had closed their airspace after the crew's activities an hour ago, so they were forced to detour around through Westbrook, which also started to close its air space just as they made it across the river into Arroyo.  They landed in the parking lot of the department store and headed over to retrieve their companions.  The sign said "CLOSED", but Jar did the secret knock on the front door to get "CD" to answer.  Chromedome gave Jar an elbowbump (he still had on the blood-spattered rubber gloves), and led them into the waiting room, mentioning he was looking to get them outta there as soon as possible.

Specter gave them a wave, then The Peacock went over to have a chat with Emma.  They apologized for the gunshot wounds/kidnapping/brain surgery, but she was understandably hostile, and refused to acknowledge that they were her sibling.  The Peacock claimed that they were just looking out for Mary Jane, but Emma scoffed and asked how street criminals could provide better medical care than one of the big three corps in the city.  When they talked about doctors, did they mean more people like "Chromedome"?

The Peacock replied that while they didn't have all the luxury that they'd have a prison cell, at least the docs they knew wouldn't implant cranial bombs in their skulls.  She shot back that no doubt the "safehouse" she'd heard Specter talking about on his agent would be substantially dingier than a prison cell.  An argument then ensued over the morality of working for a corporation; after all, weren't The Peacock et al just working for corps through a middleman?  Well, at least edgerunners could choose their jobs!

When asked what other reason she thought they could possibly be doing this for, Emma said that just because she couldn't think of an angle didn't mean there was one, and as far as she was concerned, the two of them were probably still going to be sold off to some corp.  It all ended up being moot, because the crew had guns and Mary Jane, so she was coming along whether she liked it or not.  Everyone boarded back onto the AV, Specter carrying Paxos, and Jar waved "adios" to Chromedome.

Since going over the bay would take them too close to the spaceport, they flew out in a giant loop to the east.  Evidently they didn't go far enough, because they were hailed over the radio and told to land.  Fortunately, Jar was able to persuade the border cop on the other end that they were NCPD on a secret mission themselves, and they were let go.  The Peacock set down by the nuke plant in Northside, then called a pair of taxis to get them the rest of the way to Little China.

Settling In

After getting out a few blocks short of their destination and taking a circuitous route through alleys, the crew arrived at their safehouse.  It was a basement "suite" with a bunch of mattresses on the floor and nothing but the basics.  It would have looked out at foot level on the waterfront, were the windows not covered in cardboard and heavy curtains.  Everyone did their best to ignore the smell of rat urine and moved in they'd brought with them, while The Peacock got on the holo to Oni Tokugawa to try to find a medtech who'd be able to carry out the treatments for the Monad's Disease that Mary Jane needed.

Paxos woke up in time for the evening news several hours later and found she was still exhausted, with a slight headache.  The crew were the lead story, of course.  The NCPD were calling them terrorists and claimed that they'd hacked the helicopter causing it to fire on civilians, but they didn't have much more to go on thanks to Paxos' work with the security cameras and disguises.  They were also accused of purposefully detaching the AV pad that had crushed 18 innocent civilians by Militech ("On President's Day, of all days!").

Nothing was reported missing, and there was no mention of either of The Peacock's sisters.  A while later, MJ woke up on the cot she'd been set on after they'd pried the goo off of her, and the crew let Emma bring her up to speed.  In her version of events, they'd been kidnapped by someone pretending to be their sibling, Pat, and were more or less stuck there for now.  The medtech they'd hired for an extortionate rate, Ivan Poggio, showed up, and with that they were on full lockdown.  

The Long Haul

Over the next several days, Paxos' headaches and fatigue wouldn't go away, which led her to believe she'd developed a dependency on the adrenaline and would need anti-addiction therapy once they were out.  It was going to be an unpleasant couple of months.  In spite of this, she did her best to make The Peacock look good by mentioning all the good things they'd done, like the time they'd helped out the clones.

After the first week, they learned something disturbing on the newscasts: the authorities had put out high-quality photos of the crew along with both their handles and real names, with requests for anyone who knew anything to cooperate in the hunt for these awful terrorists.  Still nothing about the sisters, which reminded The Peacock to ask after their other sister, Jane.  Did the other two know where she had gotten?  As far as they knew, their whole family and just disappeared one night.  Emma looked to Mary-Jane, then explained what had happened.

When they were kids, their parents had gone out to do some big job with their crew.  While The Peacock was out getting scopburgers and milk from a convenience store, the place they'd been staying got raided by Kang Tao goons.  Jane had disappeared before the raid, and was now apparently a high-flying executive over there.  In Emma's estimation, she'd sold them out for a golden ticket, which seemed to have worked out for her.

March rolled around, and more bad news was revealed.  The NCPD had apparently learned that the crew had been operating independently, which meant that there was going to be a lot more heat coming down on them.  Turned out the corpos could tolerate a bit of industrial espionage from their rivals, the lowly criminals who did the dirty work couldn't be allowed to get any ideas.  It was suggested by some "criminal psychology expert" that this was like a political terrorism incident, and that the crew were fanatical and could not be reasoned with.

The Peacock was oddly pleased in spite of this, because it lent their story that they just wanted to take care of their sisters quite a bit of legitimacy.  Paxos decided to risk it and got Tokugawa to set up a secure line to Mitch, and found that he'd already jumped town and left a message for her, hoping they'd meet again.  Specter let his rent lapse, since it'd cost him less to just rebuy all the stuff that'd get repo'd (and it was probably going to get raided by the pigs anyway), but it did mean that he was letting the last memento of his old gang go: his adoptive mother's gold bracelet.

More time passed as the manhunt continued and the crew stayed in their bolthole.  The gang war in Watson finally ended, with Maelstrom all but eradicated and the Tyger Claws poised to take all of their territory despite the losses.  Through Tokugawa, they learned that everyone's homes had been hit (except for Jar's, where the Voodoo Boys had held off Militech), and that Sabela, Paxo's friend, had been arrested on suspicion of aiding terrorists.

One night, The Peacock got a genius idea: you could really spice up the instant curry they had a pallet of if you added the flavor pack from a cup noodle!  Emma pointed out that their mom had used to do the same thing, but as with everything else from their childhood, The Peacock couldn't remember that.  A few days later, Ivan Poggio took the siblings aside and let them know that Mary Jane's condition seemed to be improving; in his professional medical opinion, Militech had probably been taking as many samples as possible, even if it had been damaging to her health.

Another month passed in their dingy basement, leaving them in May.  Sabela Elara had been in "indefinite detention", but her corpo employers had finally sent a legal team so she might get out sometime soon.  One night Specter was watching some cyberball, and got very upset when Emma said that the games were all rigged.  This escalated into a shouting match but luckily they were talked down by the others before any more damage had been done than a broken TV remote.

When their time in the safehouse was finally up, Emma took The Peacock aside and apologized.  It was now pretty clear that they had just been trying to help, and she admitted that Militech had been fucking them over.  They were touched, and offered to split rent on a place, since their old one had been raided by the pigs and all of Emma's accounts would be frozen.  The rest of the crew (except for Jar) also went about finding new places to live and got their lives back into some sort of order after 11 weeks in the safehouse.

Back To Normal

The crew got back to their usual downtime activities, which for Paxos and Specter meant copious amounts of hypnotherapy; she got over her addiction to mega-adrenaline and he did more meditation while repeating that killing people was bad.  Meanwhile, The Peacock was eager to make some cash after spending tens of thousands on their safehouse and the medical care plus live-in fees from Ivan Poggio.  

After they'd had some time to settle in, they got a call from Oni Tokugawa.  He had a job, which he could assure them was not from Militech, given their recent issues with the corp.  Pay was excellent, and there would be a meet at the Afterlife club to discuss further details.  The crew agreed to the meet, but when they arrived at the top of the staircase, the red dot of a laser sight bloomed on Paxos' chest.

Notes:

The way I'm running this game, all Influence skills are explicitly trying to scam people, and all have downsides.  Forming genuine connections is not a skill you can learn in the cyberfuture.  This meant that The Peacock convincing Emma and Mary Jane came down to a reaction roll, with bonuses for good arguments.

The mention of cranial bombs in the original interaction shook Emma, but no PCs noticed it due to failed secret rolls.  It gave a big boost to later reaction rolls.

"Well, at least edgerunners could choose their jobs!", please ignore that the crew and edgerunners in general are so completely amoral that there is almost certainly no job they would refuse.

The Peacock replaced On The Edge with a variant of Amnesia.  They can't remember anything prior to the events of the game beyond the broad strokes in their backstory, which is mostly just a few bulletpoints.

They also dropped their dream of starting a taxi company, and are planning to leave Night City with their nomad family, the Birds of Prey, when the campaign ends.

The addiction rules from CPRed are pretty bad, because every use is a (fairly difficult) roll or else you get addicted.  Decided not to change anything in my adaptation which led to the comical "Oh no I did one drug and now I'm addicted!" moment.

It is actually illegal to say that any prepackaged food tastes bad.  YumSnacks won a lawsuit requiring them be referred to as "technically delicious".