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.

Once they had some time to breathe, Paxos informed the others that the systems of the sniper she'd picked up with Ping matched those of the sniper who'd tried to kill them outside the Afterlife.  When The Peacock came back the next day to check on the car, they found it a burned out husk, and they then had to explain that to their nomad clan.  Luckily for them, they were forgiven.  June rolled around, and the crew all went off to get therapy.  Afterwards, Paxos spent a week seeding more falsified information in the fractured Peruvian databases for her eventual escape under her new persona.

Audition

Jar, meanwhile, had finally tracked down a replacement solo for their crew, and a meet was set up at the Afterlife.  The new guy, Flex, was a freelancer with no formal ties, known for being a bit of an airhead with lots of natural talent that came through when it counted.  He had also had some spiritual awakening and decided to have most of his cyberware removed and replaced with cloned parts.  The Peacock asked how this guy was supposed to fight anyone, but Jar just kicked up his legs and said "You'll see".

Flex, having bribed his way past the bouncer with his "all-natural drugs scooby snacks", walked up to their booth.  He was suntanned, in a loose, flowing shirt and pants, with a lei around his neck and wearing flipflops.  The outfit contrasted sharply with his enormous cybernetic arms that were each as thick as his torso.  Across his back was an alarmingly long sword that just seemed impractical.  The crew all agreed that he looked like serious business, and welcomed him aboard.

Having just lost one of his family's cars, The Peacock had gotten everyone to take the NCART to the meet, and they boarded to discuss further light business.  In essence, they were between jobs and waiting for the heat to die down a bit.  As if to emphasize this point, at the next station, just before the doors opened, Flex said there were four corpo-looking goons with rifles waiting for them.  Two ran in at the far end of the car and opened fire, landing a glancing hit on Flex that did no real injury, while Flex stood, drew his odachi, and cut down one of the pair who were at the closest door in half.

The other goon staggered back while hosing Flex down with fire, but he just dodged out of the way, then closed and struck at the neck, decapitating him.  Paxos chucked a flashbang grenade down the train, but only succeeded at blinding Jar and deafening the rest of the crew due to the kill squad's anti-dazzle eyes.  Jar caught a pair of rounds in the torso, but they didn't do any injury, and The Peacock responded with the charged shot down the train that injured one of the two surviving goons.

Paxos finished hacking through one of their firewalls and exploded the battery in his agent, setting his head on fire.  Flex followed up on by running around the outside of the traincar to close with them and landing a blow on the flaming goon, though he stayed standing, and The Peacock's gun jammed.  Jar was still blind and deaf, so he just sat tight.  Flex drove one of the rifles into the floor with his sword, preventing it from shooting anyone, while the other winged his arm ineffectually.  The man on fire collapsed, and Flex ended the fight with another decapitation strike on the last assassin.

Notes:

Paxos' player noted that, because they're criminals and their homes keep getting raided by the cops/corpo cops, buying a place doesn't actually make sense.  Clearly this means that Big Landlord is behind the idea of edgerunners in the first place.

Me describing Flex to his player: "Okay, so he's a bit of a hippy who refuses cyberware, except for two giant arms, and his personality is kind of just 'whoa, dude'".  I am a very eloquent individual.

Flex being an "airhead with natural talent" means that he has 6 levels in the Street Samurai talent that gives +1 per level to all combat skills and Tactics, but only has 4 points in his best combat skills.

Realized that Flex didn't take Move and Attack penalties at one point.  Not a big deal, he didn't do any real damage that turn.

The Peacock rolled a crit failure when firing their charged shot and used Luck to make it hit, only for their next shot to also fail and jam.

The crew's heat level has been high enough that four separate factions are now attempting to track them down and kill them.  I've now rolled the same faction 3 times in a row, which is surprising, but makes a good story, I suppose.