GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 19: Jumping Out Of Windows

 Characters:

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

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Back In The Safehouse

Two hundred large was more than enough for the crew, so they took Fernandez' offer ("Specter, what do you think?" "Give me the money") and then went off to each do their own thing with their ill-gotten gains.  It was the holidays, so naturally nobody did anything fun; The Peacock got therapy, and Paxos ignored her boyfriend to arrange bribes to officials in Peru.  Specter arranged to move into a penthouse suite starting on the 1st, but he spent the rest of 2078 skulking in the ventilation ducts of Tyger Claw hangouts to gain intel for the Wingless Dragons.  

In the new year, the crew picked up word that, despite their best efforts, Arasaka had gotten an idea of who had robbed them and was hunting them down.  Figuring it was because The Peacock had suspiciously never shown up again after the heist, they got extreme cosmetic surgery (a 6" height increase + alterations to their bone structure and skin to look Japanese, and started styling their hair in the undercut style of fem-V from the game), then they all went to ground in a safehouse Downtown.

After two weeks, The Peacock (aka Peacock, The) got sick of "wasting" time and left the safehouse to go look for more intel on Mary Jane, their missing sister.  They tracked down Bonya Slade, who was working under Rin Shimamura at Konpeki Plaza, and eavesdropped in on a girls' night out.  Over a long night and many drinks, they eventually confirmed that the person whose DNA had been used for the clones (who The Peacock knew to be Mary Jane), was on the books as a Militech employee. 

Knock Knock

At 7 in the morning, Peacock woke up to the sound of heavy footfalls from down the hall, and the tell-tale whine of drone propellers from outside one window.  They got out of bed and ran to their "escape route": a 4-story drop onto a dumpster.  Luckily, it was full of garbage bags.  They fast-drew their pistol from its implanted holster on their back and shot out the window, then jumped out and started to fall just as they heard a loud BANG (their door being breached).  Keeping under awnings, they left the scene and called in a member of their nomad family to come pick them up.

Though most of their equipment was lost, The Peacock had kept their cash thanks to their internal agent.  The bigger annoyance was having to get a new apartment on short notice; they didn't find anything with better escape routes, so when they finally moved into their new place in Japantown they kept a grapple gun on the window sill "in case".  They were pretty settled in by the time the rest of the crew finally left the safehouse, with word on the street that 'Saka had given up after their prime suspect had disappeared.

To counter the stress of the holiday season (and the attempts on their lives, and the new cyberware), the crew all spent a week undergoing more therapy.  For Paxos, this was interrupted when her door was knocked open with a battering ram at 6AM, revealing a Militech death squad in the hallway as it swung off its hinges.  As she stood up, a flashbang grenade landed several feet to her left, then detonated.  Blind and deaf, she turned towards where she figured her window was and sprinted towards it as the goons rushed in, guns blazing.  She jumped up onto her bed, feeling it shake beneath her from the impact of bullets, and leapt forward.

Glass shattered and after an agonizing moment, Paxos landed hard on the rooftop of the neighbouring building that she had been aiming for.  She rose back to her feet and moved towards the rooftop access as quickly as she could, but this gave the gunmen their chance: just as her hands found the concrete, the latest volley hit home, tearing her right arm off at the shoulder and crippling her left hand.  Bleeding heavily, she finally made it to safety behind the concrete and waited for her vision to recover.  The good news was that the goons hadn't followed her to the rooftop, because otherwise she'd be dead.

The bad news was that the door to the rooftop access was visible from her room, which meant she'd be a sitting duck.  Thinking quick, Paxos threw her severed arm off to one side as a distraction, and ran for the door when bursts of gunfire told her the trick had worked.  Twenty floors later, she made it to street level and hailed a cab.  Just as the car in yellow Davis Numbers Taxi Co livery pulled up, the death squad emerged from her building and spotted her.  Paxos jumped in and yelled for the driver to floor it.  With robotic precision, the driver, an indian man with a torrent of cables cascading down his back, performed a perfect J-turn and sped to the nearest hospital.  

Self-Directed Heisting

The crew held off on fencing the rest of the paydata from Arasaka Tower, so they spent some time taking care of personal things.  Paxos got surgery and a replacement cloned arm, then replaced what gear she could that she'd lost while undergoing therapy.  Specter took advantage of the chaos he'd been creating and stole some territory off the Tyger Claws by doing another drive by raid, firing an HMG out the window of a borrowed car.  The Peacock spied on his sister Emma (the one who worked in Militech security) and came to the realization that she was going into Militech Tower for at least a few hours every single day.

It was suspicious enough that they wanted to break in to find what they could about Mary Jane (the sister who was supposedly a Militech employee that they'd never been able to find).  The rest of the crew was on board immediately, though Jar did point out that The Peacock had too many sisters to keep track of which was which.  The Peacock started things off by trying to track Emma back to her place, but got momentarily distracted by a passing drone and followed it until coming to their senses several hours later in Heywood.  Not a great sign, but it would have to wait.

Jar and Specter hit up corpo bars and corpos, respectively, for any easy intel.  Looking for any gossip that might expose some vulnerabilities, Paxos called up Tamsin Zahra, a production assistant she knew who worked on the set of Horizon Daily News, a corpo talkshow.  Turned out there was a story, which the crew actually knew some of already: Militech was under investigation by a large team from the FDA for running an illegal human cloning operation.  The fact that Militech was nominally nationalized meant NUSA President Meyers was implicated.

Another interesting tidbit was that Jackie Wu, the exec in charge of the program, had been placed "under house arrest" some time in October.  This had seemed not to take, as it hadn't stopped her from attending the brain chip deal they'd arranged at the Black Room a month later.

Notes:

Upon further review, Skillshards still exist but are high illegal (LC1), which means buying one has a good chance of bringing down heat.

New rule for extreme cosmetic surgery to evade being hunted by a corporation: the person attempting to track you down takes a -1 for every point of humanity you lose due to surgery.  The Peacock spent 7 because "we've got to get close to 0 so we use the houserules you made before the campaign ends".

The Peacock is a non-binary character, which was a sarcastic nickname because they look incredibly drab.  It also works in that they defy the gender binary, while peacocks display quite a bit of sexual dimorphism.  All of this was definitely intended.

They also maxed out their cybereyes and have now gone full Kanon.

For a long time, Paxos has been wondering why "internal agent" was on the list of essential cyberware.  Turns out it's because that's where cash is stored.  She got one installed.

Forgot the bleeding rules during Paxos' escape.  RIP my beautiful houserules, we will never use you.

During the raid, Paxos was forced to leave behind her most prized possession: a locket depicting a bird.  Birds are extinct (in Night City, anyway), so it was a reminder that there was still beauty in the world.  No more.  She also lost the XXXL Mr. Studd cyberpenis, which was equally important.

The Peacock now has Short Attention Span, and it came up almost immediately.  Specter has it too, but he has way fewer relevant long-term skills.

Militech's base BAD is -10.  It's going to be hard to get it down now that Peacock wasn't able to do Tracking.  In my system, there are 10 skills that can lower it, so without a crit they're capping at -1.

I've been saying the PCs can plan their own heists for story reasons if they want, and they're finally doing it!  Part of it is probably that they now have infinite money so they can take all the time they want.