Friday, 28 June 2024

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 31: Turned Tables

Characters:
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner
Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Smoke Cloud
After a quick bribe tossed to the local PD, the crew spent two days arranging to purchase some gear on the black market.  At the meet in empty lot in Japantown, the seller showed up in a van with a small crew.  Eddies and a briefcase full of armour-piercing ammo and flashbangs changed hands, but as the seller turned to leave, a sniper took him down with a round to the back.  The rest of his group piled into the van and left the crew on their own, in a gravel lot with precious little cover save a light rain, their own car over 50m away.

The Peacock could tell where the shot had come from, and turned around to see the glint of a sniper's scope on the rooftop of a vocational school across the minor street behind them.  They quickly pulled a smoke grenade from their armour's tactical pockets and dropped it at their feet, concealing the entire crew.  Paxos ran a ping, and with that, The Peacock took aim at the sniper through the smoke, but unfortunately the shot went wide.

The sniper dropped down and crawled out of sight, but the crew were a bit pre-occupied by fully-automatic fire coming in from the direction of their car.  Fortunately, the smoke hid them, and of the torrent of bullets, only a single shot hit Paxos in the thigh, largely stopped by her armour.  The crew ran south, abandoning the car and leaving the smoke and an outbuilding between themselves and their assailants, then jumped two stories down onto a pile of garbage in an alley.  Other than Jar landing face-first, nobody was harmed, and they dusted themselves off and escaped.

Friday, 21 June 2024

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 30: A Specter Is Haunting Northside

Characters:
Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner
Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Explosive Finale
As Specter bounded up the stairs, the majority of the gunfire missed due to his chameleon skin, and the bullets that did connect merely bounced harmlessly off of his metalgear armour.  He got a good look at the person he figured must be Sota Nagasawa, who was holding a fancy tech rifle.  His hair was lime green, and his black and gold biker gear had a katana at the hip.  He appeared otherwise unarmoured, and stood beside the rifleman at the top of the stairs and behind four other Tyger Claws with big pistols.  Specter returned fire, turning all four of the goons into red mist and hosing down Sota as well.

Unfortunately, he had subdermal armour and took only light damage, though his torso was a mess of shattered metal and synskin.  Sota dropped his rifle and his katana flew into his hand as he lunged down the stairs, swinging wide and missing Specter's midsection.  The rifleman fired a burst and in a stroke of phenomenal luck, hit Specter in the head five times.  His heavy armourjack helmet deflected most of the bullets harmlessly, but one struck in the one gap between armour plates and penetrated into his brain... killing him instantly.

As he fell, Specter's arm acted on reflex and his internal grenade launcher activated and fired into the ceiling.  A concussive blastwave full of shrapnel blew into Sato and the gunman, though they both survived, and just as the coast looked clear, a chunk of concrete the size of a table broke free from the ceiling and fell onto Specter's corpse, crushing all but his right hand into chunky salsa.  The others heard his communicator go dead, but figured it had probably just been damaged in the explosion.

Thursday, 13 June 2024

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 29: One Man Army

Characters:
Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner
Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Silent Assassin
The lead ganger opened the door, and was shocked when Specter greeted him with a flurry of cybernetic fists to the gut, that he somehow managed to block.  The Peacock, meanwhile, snuck out a side door and got the enemy netrunner in the neck with a taser dart, leaving them spasming on the floor.  Paxos fried one through the walls with a short circuit, and Jar punched the goon Specter had been working in the groin, the shock of which knocked him straight out with a short yelp.  Specter ran up to the last gangoon still on his feet and took him out with a blow to the solar plexus that sent him stumbling past The Peacock.  

The crew teamed up to stomp the 'runner until they were out of commission (with Jar, of all people, dealing the final blow), then dragged their defeated foes into the "body pile" in the excavation room and got back to digging.  Specter took a break, exhausted from the strain of his sandy and the chameleon skin, while Paxos kept watch through the walls with her Ping soft.  After another half-hour, their shovelling was rewarded with the satisfying *thunk* of metal-on-metal, and Jar got out the plasma cutter to break into the vault itself.

While he was cutting, another ganger came into Paxos' x-ray vision at the base of the stairs, and, though muffled through the doors, his voice was loud enough that they got the gist: he'd brought a bunch of the initiates to help move bodies.  The leader moved into the parking garage and asked where everyone was, in a shout, and where the lights were.  With some quick hacking into the dead netrunner and the shouting ganger's agents, she was able to send a message that appeared to be from the 'runner saying that they didn't want any kids getting in the way.

Wednesday, 5 June 2024

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 28: Garage Door Opener

Characters:
Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner
Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Waiting For Grout To Dry
The crew debated over what to do next for a while until they realized that the gunfire had stopped.  The Peacock could hear what sounded like casual chatter from upstairs, suggesting the Tyger Claws had won, and Specter was sent up to take a look.  Through eavesdropping, he learned that they were calling Sota in early, so security would be ramping up tomorrow, then headed back down the stairs to regroup.  The crew decided to climb back out the hole in the cells, but as The Peacock went they knocked loose some concrete chunks which were followed by a pile of soil: if anyone looked in the cells in the next few days, it'd be obvious that something had been inside the basement.

On their way back to the car, they rounded a corner directly into the results of a firefight.  A Trauma Team medic was going from body to body, checking for paying clients and then loading them into the gleaming white AV, while a pair of armed guards stood with assault rifles at the ready.  When they saw the crew, they raised them, and one ordered them to freeze, but the other lowered his rifle whispered "hey, that's the Jar!  Better leave these guys alone".  The medic finished loading the last of the wounded then banged his fist twice on the side of the hull; at that, the guards loaded up and the AV sped off towards the nearest hospital.

Paxos looked over those the four who were left: two of them looked to be small-time gang members judging by their lime green bandanas, while the other two seemed to have been their victims.  They hadn't been harmless, though; judging by the wounds on the gangers, one of the victims had pulled a gun and been a good enough shot to take them down with her.  Paxos asked for the first-aid kit and stopped the bleeding of the non-gang members, and started patching one up as best she could.  Before she could start tending to the other, The Peacock got bored and said they were leaving with the car.  Her desire to help outweighed by her desire to not take transit, Paxos went along.