Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

[MJ12 Commando]

Choose 1:
[ ] MA-38 AESS + IX-881 Plasma Projector

IX-881 Plasma Projector

• Post-1999 Autopolitan Infantry Support Weapon
• Originally intended for direct integration, aftermarket modifications add computer sight, stock, trigger. Roughly 90cm long, 15kg.
• Runs on standard Union Prime Energy powercells
• Three firing modes: Beam, Plasmoid (Forces 3/Prime 2), Suicide Overload (Forces 5/Prime 2)
• Vectored plasma bursts home in on enemies (roll attacks twice, take better, dodges are less effective)
• Beam mode provides high-penetration anti-materiel effectiveness against light combat walkers and heavy HITMarks
• Plasmoid mode provides area of effect elimination of lightly armored targets such as IFVs
• Suicide Overload allows for wide area destruction. Obviously single use.

OR

[ ] S-25-B8 Symbiont Armor + IX-18R Seeker Rifle

S-25-B8 Symbiont Armor​

• Transhuman Multimodal Combat Symbiote
• Standard modes are disguise, light combat, heavy combat, stores additional biomass in phase space until necessary
• Integrated biomedical symbionts optimize user fatigue levels and repair injury (Life 3, user regenerates 1 bashing/lethal HL per round, no longer needs sleep or feels pain)
• Integrated cognitive subprocessors increase user reaction speed and perception (+1 Perception, +1 Wits)
• Provides superhuman eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell
• Disguise mode provides moderate attribute boosts and protection against small arms. Mostly coincidental. Can be worn under clothing.
  • Life 3 Bodysculpt allows user to disguise him- or her-self as anyone equal or larger in size.
    • Bodysculpt flaw: Disguised form must have Appearance above 3.
  • Tactile sensors allow 24/7 wearing with no loss of sensation.
  • Provides total protection against non-armor piercing heavy rifle fire and protection from AP assault rifle ammunition. Covers even the mouth and respiratory/digestive tracts.
  • Integrated self-defense plasmids: Electroshock emitter, oral flamethrower
• Light combat mode is obvious hard-shelled carapace armor. Semi-coincidental unless breached.
  • Hard-shelled carapace provides protection against small arms, limited protection against light autocannon fire.
  • Symbiont Bio-Booster system accelerates user cognition and movement speed by ~200% (Time 3), allows for greatly increased jump height and physical strength (Forces 2)
  • Integrated weapons plasmids: As above, but includes EDE-derived electromagnetic manipulation and psychokinetic capability. Combination allows for organic plasma weapon deployment. Also includes corrosive or explosive gel generation and ejection.
  • Deployable forearm, shin NEMEAN vibroblades, retractable vibroclaws.
• Heavy combat mode increases wearer height by ~100%, mass by ~700%.
  • Protection equivalent to armored vehicle
  • Reverse engineered hemophage biotechnology allows for drastically increased muscle strength
  • EDE-derived musculature allows for high-velocity ejection of NEMEAN vibroblades as ranged anti-armor munitions
  • Integrated weapons plasmids run at full power.
• Metabolic strain on unaugmented or lightly augmented individuals creates risk of cardiovascular failure. Risk increases with light and heavy combat mode activation.
• Slight risk of permanent attachment.

OR

[ ] RPV "Rocket Proof Vests" + R-series "Rambo Specials"

R-Series Weapons​

• "Rambo Specials" provide endless, mostly coincidental firepower​
• One crate of high-end weaponry​
• Corr 5 CAD/CAM designs, Matter 4 reinforcement, Forces 2 recoil compensators​
• Include R-9 machinepistols (handguns firing 7.62x51mm ammunition), R-16 assault rifles (fires 12.7x99mm ammunition), R-240 squad support weapons (fires 20x102mm ammunition), R-82 sniper rifles (antimateriel sniper rifle fires L/70 40x364mmR round from 10 round magazine). Also includes R-203 mini-mortar (fires 120mm mortar shells instead of 40mm grenades, 3 round capacity, disposable) attachments to R-16s. Roughly enough weapons to equip 2 ten-man squads.​
• Includes Geneva-noncompliant ammunition. Fragmenting explosive rounds, white phosphorous, chemical weapons shells. Standard ammunition is infinite and generated from absorbing ambient dust and other matter (Matter 3, Prime 2).​
• Look identical to standard NATO weapons. Careful crafting (Prime 3) reinforces disguise.​

Choose 1:

[ ] Prosthetic Rejection Inhibitors + IX-18R + Guardian Rig

Guardian Rig​

• Hard-Light Holoprojector System​
• Tertiary Mode: Personal shield generator (Forces 3).​
• Secondary Mode: Personal Telekinesis Rig (Forces 2, Correspondence 2).​
• Primary Mode: Constitutes duplicates made out of solidified forcefields (Forces 3, Correspondence 4, Prime 2, Mind 1, Entropy 1). Creates 1 duplicate/success.​
• Duplicates will attack most dangerous threat to the user with hard-light weaponry.​
• Duplicates are shielded by Prime 3 sensory warding to jam enemy attempts to discern real target.​
• User may at any time switch positions with any of the duplicates (Correspondence 3).​
• Duplicates have limited battery life (30 seconds) after which they expire. They sometimes scream or beg when they die.​

OR

[ ] Miscellaneous RD Artifacts + R-series "Rambo Specials" + IX-881 Plasma Projector

RD Artifacts​

• RD Artifacts cleared for limited use​
• Some weapons constructed out of metamaterials-Primium precursors, unknown metamaterials. Very sharp, very lethal. Other uses limited.​
• Descriptions of some weapons match missing artifacts in Moscow museum​
• Radioactive dating puts date as to >12,000 years​
• May be some more exciting things in the create-no time to check.​

OR

[ ] M-1992 ZERUEL Combat Chassis

M-1992 ZERUEL Combat Chassis​

• Iteration X high end synthetic body. Likely discarded by former user and delivered as a 'hand me down.'​
• Body requires one (1) human brain. Donation is irreversible.​
• Human brain is replaced (Matter 4/Life 5/Mind 5/Prime 5) with synthetic nanotech emulation, granting drastically accelerated cognitive clockspeed (Time 3). In crisis situations clockspeed can be unlimited (Mind 1/Time 4) to effectively allow infinite thinking time.​
• Derivative of high-end ItX bodies used by leadership personnel pre-99. Demonstrably allows user to retain Enlightened Science ability.​
• Built out of adaptive nanotech over a micromachine (~3mm) skeleton (Correspondence 4, Matter 4). Micromachine skeleton is built out of Primium, providing heavy countermagic. Unit can disassemble to fit through small gaps or other spaces, but operator may not attempt Enlightened Science if disassembled, for unknown reason.​
• Capable of plasma generation equivalent to heavy antimateriel plasma weapons (Enlightenment 8, Forces 3/Prime 2). Strength and durability equivalent to commando HITMark V unit, but with self-repair. Superhuman speed and coordination.​
• Universal Weapons System (Matter 4) allows for generation of any mundane weapons system, melee or ranged. Unit is capable of shapeshifting to disguise self or improve combat effectiveness.​
• Prime 5 Self-Diagnostic Systems and capacitors allow for paradox mitigation. Internal fusion reactor provides steady trickle of Prime Energy, sufficient to mitigate normal paradox conditions. Heavy combat will strain reactor.​
• User becomes effectively unliving and is immune to Life effects. Matter effects must be used instead. User will not show up on Life scans.​
• Override codes and Conditioning triggers must be installed post-market.​

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Nor do I think you understand what the choice actually is. Getting the RD artifacts is almost certainly the last chance to pick up a narrative thread going back to the very beginning of the Quest. I want to pick that up and bring it to an end, even if that ending is the realization by all of the characters that this mythic past full of grandeur doesn't actually matter as they stride forward into the future. This is not some abstract feeling that we're trading power for some reward; this is a concrete choice between the suit and all of the little bits of Exalted backstory thrown our way. Trading that narrative thread away for UBERCOOL CYBORG BODY and a heartwarming validation for Transhumanism does not appeal to me in the slightest.

Click to shrink...

You guys have convinced me that "the crate of Daiklaives" is important enough narratively that putting it to a vote was a mistake and you should just get it because of what it means for everyone. Instead, replace the crate of daiklaives in the "[ ] Miscellaneous RD Artifacts + R-series "Rambo Specials" + IX-881 Plasma Projector" choice with:

[ ] HT/VARG Variable Agent Response Garb (Agency Variant)
High Threat/Variable Agent Response Garb

• Clean Shirt (Forces 2 self-cleaning)
• New Shoes (Life 3/Mind 1 Enhanced physical strength, agility, minor combat assists)
• Silk Suit (Matter 5 Silksteel armoring protects against non-AP small arms fire, AP assault rifle fire)
• Black tie (Forces 2 nanomaterial coating provides limited optical stealth)
• Gold Watch, Diamond Ring (Mind 2 effect: Can draw attention)
• And Cufflinks, Stick Pin (hidden weapons: Cufflink microgrenades, lapel pin single shot laser
• Top Coat (Matter 3 appearance morphing)
• Top Hat (+3 Style)
• Black Shades (enhanced vision modes-thermal, UV, lidar)
• White Gloves (Forces 2, Prime 2 CQB enhancement)
• Looking Sharp and Looking For Love (can harden/sharpen cuffs to act as edged weapons).

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Since the vote was super-sparse, I'm going to go with the writein idea of punch-out: server hub edition. So I need a few rolls.

First, Kessler. The first roll is 10d10x7 for Spirit 4 fuckery, difficulty is base +2. He has his full WP and Prime Energy (so 10 WP, 5 PE).

The second is his use of all manner of heavy weaponry. This roll is 15d10x7.

Elsa needs to roll 8d10e7 at +1 difficulty for her Correspondence wizardry, and her "incredibly agile cyborg wearing very tight leather" pool of 12d10x7.

Finally, you have William, who rolls his 5d10e7 for Corr/Entropy concentrated fire, and his Manipulation + Stealth (i.e. "please don't notice me until I get a good killshot lined up on you") of 9d10e7. William has Willpower 8 and Genius 3-so he has 3 Prime Energy and can spend up to 3 on a roll.

I'll tell you what interesting things happen when you finish rolling. Roll poorly, and you get a consolation prize!

 

[MJ12 Commando]

JB CXLV: Relentless

Wufan "William" Guo would describe himself as a serious person. He likes to think that he takes the job with a certain decorum, even when he has to write things like 'was attacked by animated candy golem summoned by faery' in his mission summaries. He likes to think that the job is a job, not some sort of demented thrill-ride.

Which is why he finds being in this situation so infuriating. He's partnered with a suicidal cyborg and another one who is so aggressively American action hero that he could have literally stepped out of a movie screen, fighting a traitor who has the gall to call him a Reality Deviant.

A traitor who is far better equipped and armed, he notes, with a suit of powered armor that is probably custom-built for his massive bulk and a high-powered automatic railgun. A traitor whose suit lets him create portals, walking through walls and back again to flank the enemy. The weapon barks near-constantly, fed by a seemingly endless magazine. Given that dimensional warp magazines are fairly common Q Division technology-it probably is endless, Wufan guesses. The shoulders of the armor suit are studded with micromissile launchers, and its shielding system sustains itself against constant fire. Red-hot tungsten slugs stop in midair and drop to the frozen ground of the server room. Voice amplification allows the enemy's demands and taunts to come in free and clear despite it all. "If you surrender," the amplified voice-loud enough to be heard over the gunshots and the screaming that has gone on since whatever the fuck EDEs thought it was a party they were invited to-echoes, "I'll make it quick. One shot to the head for traitors to the Union. More than you deserve as villains standing in the way of progress."

Great. Another guy with a hero complex, Wufan thinks. He's nearly circled around to flank, even if the varigun isn't intended as an anti-armor weapon. He squeezes it, and the smartlink responds by shifting to its most accurate, most destructive form. A single 25mm rocket-propelled tungsten slug, kept in phase space like most of the components of the varigun, with a plasma explosive warhead to detonate after piercing armor, intended to maximize spalling even through armor. He's seen a weakness in the shield generator. He just needs the shields to go down.

Their distraction value makes the two cyborgs useful, the NSC agent thinks, as he moves through the freezing server room as quietly as he can. It's easier said than done, the suit's sensors are clearly top-notch and the wearer is definitely augmented. He moves too fast to be anything but, as the servers start booting up and internal defenses focus on the suit. Holographic specters dogpile the single enemy agent, firing blue and red bolts that move like sci-fi renditions of lasers. In response, Gabriel Cedano slams a power-armored fist into the ground and a blue wave of high-energy plasma spalls off the shield, disintegrating the holograms upon touch. Server racks vaporize under the blow-that tells him that the enemy is worried enough about tapping their communications that they'd rather spoil these rather expensive Iteration X-built computers-or maybe that his opponent is just angry and afraid, and William dives behind one of them because he doesn't want to find out what that energy wave will do to exposed flesh. He takes a peek a fraction of a second later, and sees that Elsa diving out of cover firing an assault rifle. The other cyborg-John Kessler-wasn't quite fast enough. A man wouldn't be able to stand if hit like that, shirt and coat tattered, a chunk of cheek and jaw missing to expose bone-but unlike modern cyborgs Kessler is designed under different principles, using synthflesh as a disguise for an effective full-body conversion.

***​

John Kessler staggers, dropping the ruined X-14 Thunderhead he relied on-but he does not fall. He doesn't feel pain. He doesn't feel fear. He doesn't feel doubt. He cannot stop until the mission is complete. He needs to take the enemy down. It's more than just the mission. It's personal.

"Did you really think that little Reality Deviant trick would stop me?" Cedano brags. "I've fought Virtual Adepts. I've broken them. And that was without the suit. Without weapons. Do you think a couple of traitor cyborgs are going to stop me?"

Yes, keep talking, Kessler thinks. That says something. He's not a cyborg himself. He doesn't seem like the subtle type-so either an extreme NWO commando or a Progenitor Damage Control operative. The single deployment implies the latter. And his dismissal of the Void Engineer shady spy guy-that's a weakness. Kessler can sense that his shield is weakened. The overload took a lot out of him. It's the best chance to hit him and hit him hard. Kessler gets up and starts running. He's big and tough and very, very heavy-and that gives him a weapon he can use.

He crashes into Gabriel Cedano fist-first. It's like crashing into a titanium wall. His fist meets the kinetic barrier, stops dead. Plan B, then. He knows he's abusing his body-but he's done it before. He's done it all the time. He's cut off his own limbs when it was necessary for the mission. He's done everything for his missions. Just like the guy behind the black armored helmet of the powered armor. He may no longer be a good fanatic-but he still has that fire within. His joint servos and myomer bundles protest under the strain. Skeletal stress indicators flash yellow. But his hands slowly force their way through the barrier. The space between him and Cedano is blue-white from the shield's plasma layer. Synthflesh disintegrates and flakes away as black ash, myomer blackens and chars.

If his body had been more advanced-Kessler's approach would fail. Carbon nanotube burns. It ignites under sufficient heat. But the contracting crystal lattice that Kessler's cybernetics use does not. If his body had been less advanced-Kessler's approach would fail. Hydraulics run on fluids. They would burst under the heat, disabling his hands. But his joint motors are solid-state, without hydraulic fluid to boil and burst. His HUD shows red warnings as myomer strands fail and primium weakens under the heat. The enemy doesn't help. Cedano opens up point-blank with the railgun, and at this close range and at this angle it's enough to partially penetrate even his hyperalloy combat chassis. He lashes out with kicks that indicate some level of armored martial arts training, trying to dislodge Kessler's grip on the shield itself, trying to force him away. Kessler's knee shatters from an amplified blow, an unlucky hit. It's a question of what fails first-the structural integrity of Kessler's body or the target's shielding.

But Iteration X builds its knights very, very tough, and their determination is second to none. The shield fails first in a static discharge that arcs everywhere, melting more of the computers surrounding them. The server room is a hellscape at this point. Its temperature has risen drastically, the air ripples. The few remaining computers have their display faces covered entirely with red "SYSTEM FAIL" indicators. Kessler's clawed, skeletal hands grab the enemy and immobilize him.

The two Void Engineers choose the proper time to strike. A 40mm HEAP grenade, optimized for minimum backblast, slams into Gabriel Cedano's weapon arm, and then three more. There is an anomalously loud bang, and the sleek black backpack explodes. The shield, its containment already weakened and erratic, already venting plasma, fails catastrophically, imploding onto its user. Kessler holds on as minimissiles cook off.

Kessler sees his enemy's arm fall still holding the gun, and there is blood, but not much. Progenitor, then. Programmable cells, smart blood. It removes the most reliable ways Cedano has of hurting him. Kessler, meanwhile, still has his immense strength and power. He forces the power-armored Progenitor onto the ground and starts to rain down blow after blow after blow against weakened composite armor. The helmet cracks and breaks, and he throws it aside.

"Surrender." Kessler says. "This isn't your fight. You don't need to die here." The man reminds him so much of himself 20 years ago. Unquestioning. Relentless. Unstoppable. But yet, he still has to give him that chance. "We're Technocrats. Just like you. Part of the Union. We've fought and given so much for it."

"And yet-you throw it all away." Gabriel Cedano spits, still struggling. "We know the VEs are waiting. We know what they're up to. Don't you realize that they're the real-" Cedano stops, as a varigun shot from Wufan penetrates his hardened skull and detonates inside. Elsa looks slightly surprised.

"What the hell was that for?" Kessler says. "He could have been useful for intelligence."

"He was a threat. I eliminated the threat." Wufan says matter-of-factly, in the infuriating way that NWO Operatives tended to not explain themselves. Kessler doesn't believe any of it. They didn't want him talking. Probably because this newbie didn't know that they already knew. Probably because someone like Guo wouldn't believe that Kessler was safe, that he knew more about Threat Null than he wanted to. More about the twisted remnants of the Union than anyone would want to.

"I was handling him." Kessler says, getting up. His knee is still fucked but he can walk. Mostly. The damage control systems are rerouting it as he speaks. "He wasn't a threat." He looks over at his old X-14A, and shakes his head. "It lasted me until now."

"Nevertheless. I had to make sure." Wufan says calmly. "I believe we have completed our mission." The NSC agent says with distaste, clearly uncomfortable in the sweltering heat and the ruins of the server room. "Whatever information we might have been seeking would have been long since destroyed, so our escape will not seem to be unusual." He glances towards Cedano's corpse. "What's that?"

Kessler turns and takes a look. "Self-destruct!" He yells. "Get out!" He doesn't have time. He'll have to take cover, activate every salvaged component which might make a difference, his inertial dampeners and internal shielding systems and everything else. Elsa reacts, grabs Wufan and jumps as the room momentarily becomes the center of a very small new star.

***
​

Elsa gets up. Her body protests. A little of that is because of damage. Most of it is because part of the ceiling has collapsed on her. Wufan is unconscious from the ceiling collapse, having hit his head on something heavy. Elsa throws the debris off and shrugs. By-the-book martinet or not, he's still her teammate. They're supposed to be working together. Even if shooting the guy might have been the right call by the book, it would probably have been better to let him talk. Kessler didn't care about control codes, and he was reliable. Elsa isn't willing to shoot someone who's fought alongside her and saved her life twice in the back. Not even if ordered to. Loyalty matters. She's always understood that.

And now-she blinks back tears to confirm that John Kessler is KIA. Nobody could have survived that. The room is still red-hot. The servers have long since been melted into unrecognizable goop. The chairs and controls have vaporized. The only thing in the room is- is a Primium endoskeleton, glowing with heat, a combat chassis with one of its arms fused to its chest, staggering upright.

Elsa does a double-take. "You're still alive?" She asks incredulously.

"In a manner of speaking." Kessler says. It's the least funny thing she could think of at this moment, the most serious explanation of what just happened.

And it still makes her laugh.
​

***
​

Jamelia Belltower is digging through a hostile base for anything that she can use. "On-site procurement," Kingsley called it. With Harlan there, it feels... familiar, almost. Just like old times. She pulls inventories, checks crates, and brings out anything that might be useful. A powered pallet to move heavy objects. A toolkit. She starts taking apart crates with serial numbers she knows weren't there before, orders Harlan to do the same.

"Of all the things I didn't expect to be doing, it had to be menial labor." Harlan grouses. "I'm a real doctor, you know." Nevertheless, he does what she demands and starts breaking open supply crates.

Jamelia ignores his complaints and just looks at what the contents are. One of the crates is a box full of overcharged small arms, designed for augmented combatants. Not useful. Another she breaks open and they're RD artifacts-things that she remembers missing from the Moscow Museum's inventory. She thinks of abandoning them, but she wants to complete that original mission. Even if things have escalated so far beyond that, and loads them on the pallet. There's another crate that looks to be the size of a person, and when she opens it she finds a plasma cannon and an armored suit. A MA-38. She's familiar with them. This one is old, just like the Moscow one, but worn by a different soldier and fitted differently. She'll need to give it time to adjust to her.

"Hyena." Harlan says. "I've found something interesting in this pile of Iteration X rummage sale rejects."

"Yes?" Jamelia asks snippily as the MA-38 boots up around her, its proportions tightening to fit perfectly.

"One of them left a high-end synthetic body in here as if it was some old trash you'd throw out in a garage sale, among a lot of actual junk. I think it's valuable if there's any information on it. And who knows-maybe it's good as a trade-in. Heavy piece of shit though. Mind helping?"

"And what about our immediate combat needs?" Jamelia asks. Nevertheless, she helps to move the heavy cyborg body onto the pallet.

"I think I can improvise something from it as well. I did train in engineering and field salvage, after all." Harlan says, annoyed at the question. "If you're done..."

Jamelia hefts the plasma weapon packaged with the MA-38. It interfaces seamlessly with the armor. She nods. "Let's burn this place and regroup. Hopefully their supply situation might be a little inconvenienced."

Harlan nods and falls back with their bounty. Jamelia takes that as a sign to turn the plasma cannon on the storage in wide-beam mode. She gives it a three-second burn, and then follows Harlan out, back to the vehicles.
​

***
​

When Jamelia sees Kessler stagger his way to the vehicles, silver-white Primium skeleton exposed, she can guess that that the enemy has bought the deception. Probably too well. Even in Moscow, Kessler's never been damaged like this, where one arm is fused solid in front of his chest and another is twitching from accumulated myomer damage, with cracks and pits in nigh-indestructible Primium armor.

"What happened?" Jamelia asks quickly. "And how effective are you?"

"Encountered some heavy resistance in the form of an armored Progenitor supersoldier." Kessler says laconically. "Was hit by the self-destruct. One down, though. He didn't get to talk much before he was liquidated." He glares at the unconscious Wufan. Elsa follows them, covering the rear. "One arm's basically shot, and I've got a bad knee. If you can manage a mild jog I think you can outrun me. Lost all my weapons and equipment. Visual spectrum optics are glitching, so I'm using monochrome safe mode. Structural integrity is in the red. I can still fight, sir." Kessler manages.

And she can believe it. Just not against what she needs him to fight against. The base shudders and power flickers as something goes through the mat-trans. The blast doors shake. The enemy is coming through on both ends. They're short on time. They need to escape quickly.
​

---

I Never Asked For This:
Does Jamelia tell Kessler about the ZERUEL? And does Kessler use it?
[ ] Yes.
[ ] No.

Think Of It As Necessary Sacrifice:
If Kessler sacrifices his last few organic parts, his thoughts are:
[ ] (0.6x) I never asked for this. (+1 Life)
[ ] There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. (+2 Entropy)
[ ] The world is truly vast and infinite. (+2 Correspondence)
[ ] He's a soldier. He thinks of this like necessary sacrifice. (+1 Matter).
[ ] He can't feel regret, or remorse, or fear, or doubt. And he cannot stop until his mission is complete and mankind is safe. (+1 Forces)
[ ] Men like him-they never get back the ones they love. (+2 Time).
[ ] When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child. Now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways. (+1 Mind)
[ ] Already I'm more than human. Soon, I will be pure light! Pure energy! I will burn like the brightest star. (+1 Prime).

Your Approach:
Right now you know that the Mat-Trans is definitely guarded and they've brought through some assets. You don't know what they are, because the Anathema is out there, and it'd notice any attempts to hack the security grid. Your solution is...
[ ] Frontal assault. You have enough plasma guns for it.
[ ] Stealth attack. The MA-38 can do stealth. Harlan has psychic invisibility. Elsa has thermal/optic active camouflage. Avoid detection and hit them from surprise.
[ ] Surprise attack. Breach the Mat-Trans room from an unexpected angle and attack from surprise.
[ ] Remote hack. The Mat-Trans runs on its own separate network. If you can find a direct connection you could overload it, take out the guards that way, and then hopefully you can fix it in time to get out before they can get forces down in the old fashioned way.
[ ] (0.5x) Try to get some more toys so you have the right tools for the job (choose another tactic if you choose this option).
[ ] Write-In.
​

 

[MJ12 Commando]

JB CXLVI: A Knight Reborn

"Director," John says- and his eyes pick up a subtle motion from her. There and quickly gone. She has her hands on the long crate. The one with the seeming of a coffin.

"Sergeant," she says. Her voice is neutral- but there's an undercurrent there. She isn't disappointed. She's not angry but neither is she optimistic.

"It's not good. I'm not... I'm not going to be able to make it," he begins.

"Sergeant..." she interjects- but then falls quiet. She turns to look at him- just slightly. Angling so that she isn't really turning, so that her gaze pans across the room, seeming to focus on her assets, seeming not to see the so subtle imprint of John Kessler's self standing beside her. But her eyes pass over his own.

"They won't get me- if that's what you're worried about. I won't compromise the mission- or this team. I won't compromise your trust," he continues. "You'll have to go on without me... That's going to be rough. You're going to need someone else to trust- but I think you're already prepared for that."

John does not glance at Harlan. Jamelia sighs. It's a very humanizing motion. He'll miss that. He'll miss breathing in general- not that he needed to, not really. So many things gone now. But he grins all the same.

"Don't worry-"

"Sergeant."

He pauses, snapping to attention.

"This isn't about any of that. I know you'll do what's needed. I know. I've trusted you. It isn't easy. But I know."

John remains silent, the question in the air.

"There's another way," she says, and her words echo those of his old Drill Sergeant, Fitzsimmons- just as the man's words echo those he's heard a dozen, a hundred times in his life before. There's another way. This isn't the end for you. Stand up soldier, and do your duty. This is your choice and your choice alone, John Kessler.

It's the way she said it. Resigned. A difficult decision, a difficult solution. But none of the choices that define him were easy. John steps forward. Not really, he stil hasn't moved from across the room. But the imprint of him steps, and then he sees what she's standing next to. It's a high end combat chassis. Far more advanced than his. It's a faceless figure, a hollowed skeleton surrounded by an opaque cloud of nanomachinery. His sensors still work well enough that he can see what it's made of. He has laser comms to check its diagnostics. Nanotech and micromachinery, EMP hardened, adaptive in ways his old body isn't. He can sense the void in its chest, a pocket dimension housing a plasma reactor and a zero-width tap to the reactor itself. He knows enough about engineering that he can understand how the machines link together to build complex machinery.

And he can see something more there. There's no space for a cyberbrain. No, it wouldn't function with one. Instead, there's so much processing power in each machine. Distributed intelligence and storage, like what Iteration X sold the US in ARPANET-what became the Internet. Just dedicated to its original purpose of fault tolerance rather than delivering pornography and angry arguments. If he does this-he'll have lost everything living. Nothing of the old John Kessler, the one born of flesh and blood, will remain.

He steps forward with a wrenching jolt of twisted metal, his body turning towards the coffin shaped box. He takes a second step. Then another. Then another. He limps over to the float-pallet the body is tethered down on. He's still glowing, faintly, though right now the touch of his twitching-but-functional hand would only leave second degree burns rather than char flesh from half a meter away.

Don't I deserve this? he hears himself ask. He's been even closer to death than this, not even a month ago. Don't I deserve this? There will be no better death than this.

He's spent decades as one of Iteration X's knights, driving the enemies of the Union before him with fire, sword and explosives.

He's spent just as much time being a cyborg engineer. For cyborgs, by cyborgs. And as he circles the inert smartmatter on an impossibly thin skeleton, he can't help but appreciate it. It's a work of art, mechengineering of a level he hadn't even thought possible before Moscow. His flickering, monochrome vision can't show him the true extent of the subtle beauty of its artifice, but he can infer.

The moment you're on your own, the moment you stand there on the precipice of death, you fight and you struggle and you survive. No matter the cost.

Fitzsimmons's voice - his Avatar's voice, his Genius speaking to him, all these things and none of them - won't let this go. He made a choice there, in Hollywood. That's why he's here, now. Still alive. Still fighting. Even if the last fight has all but mission-killed him. Director Belltower is just too nice to say it, but he can read soldiers. The minute droop of the plasma cannon, the microadjustments of her armor that her body would never betray. No, she doesn't think he'll be any good in a fight.

Not against what is coming. So here he is, looking at a choice of futures.

In one future, he doesn't do this. He keeps his body, myomer and primium, the knight's shining armor on the inside. He'll fight what's between them and the TransMat. And he'll almost certainly be too weak, too slow. He'll die, then and there, hemorrhaging haemolubricant, smartblood and reactor coolant. It won't be as good a death as he could have gotten on Hollywood. But it will be a death. And then-peace. Of a sort.

But what should I've done? Just lie down, waiting to die? I couldn't do that. I had to survive, I had to go back. There were battles to be fought. He said it to Fitzsimmons. He meant it, then and now.

He won't wait to die. If he dies today, he dies like he should have a hundred times before - fighting.

One of his optical units is malfunctioning. Steam hisses as one cybereye vents lubricant that promptly evaporates off his still-hot skull.

But there's another future.

I choose the war for Ascension, for humanity's beliefs, and the possibility that I might lose.

He's given so, so much for the mission. He's given of himself time and time again, and each time willingly. He became the knight the world needed.

John can see what the change would entail. Finally, truly, there would be nothing left of the man John Kessler, who had joined the Union when his body was too weak to become a soldier. No more synthetic skin over synthetic muscle over synthetic bone encasing synthetic organs. Smartmatter, fluid, adaptable and so much faster.

It's not too hard to see himself, fluid, precise and deadly. No longer human. Far, far more. Post-human, as the new Iteration X would term it. He'd think faster, not limited to the vagaries of organic computation. He'd react faster. He'd be more agile, lighter, just as strong and deadly as before. An upgrade, even though he's rejected so many to date. But it would also mean no more brain. Cybernetic ascension, and how that word stings. The last bit of John Kessler that he had kept, the very seat of sapience, the castle of cognition, the throne of thought. Goodbye to that, too.

I accept that I will be back here, one day, bleeding and dying, without getting to make this choice.

It's not that day. He still has that choice. He can still walk away from the future that will have him return to Hollywood, his reactor fizzling out at last. His left arm, useless, ruined and fused to his chest. Just like back then. His right arm, twitching from damage. Just like back then.

Death is lighter than a feather. Duty is heavier than a mountain. And I will carry my part of that load until my dying day. I am John Kessler, son of humanity, and I refuse the bliss of ignorance.

There was never a choice, not for him, not about this. He has given of himself, for the Mission. He has done it time and time again, in service to his cause. It is just one more sacrifice in the name of the Mission. Defending all humanity against those who made the wrong choices.

I choose to live.

Whoever last owned this body, they made it to be closer to the Computer, the God In and Of and From the Machine. They worshiped the Computer, the machine-mind Iteration X had built. Voltaire was right, he realizes. Mankind really does make its own gods. But that's just a truth. Not the truth. A truth. And that's not good enough any more. His hand reaches down towards the ZERUEL.

***​

Because there is no heaven. There is no hell.

There are only humans, and the consequences of their actions.

"You don't have to do this." Jamelia says quietly. "There are other ways you can make yourself useful."

Sergeant John Kessler shakes his head as the storage capsule slides open and he starts to step into it. "You're a soldier," the knight says. "Think of it as necessary sacrifice." He lays his unfleshed body down into the synthetic material, its silver surface stretching to accomodate him. Its interface starts to boot, worming itself into his UDEI inputs and the repairs done by the NOBLE NOVEMBER back in Hollywood.

[IDENTIFYING.... KESSLER, JOHN]

[CONGRATULATIONS FOR BEING CHOSEN TO DISCARD THE LAST VESTIGES OF FLESH AND ACHIEVE POSTHUMAN TRANSCENDANCE. THIS PROCESS WILL INVOLVE DESTRUCTIVE NEURAL UPLOADING INTO A DISTRIBUTED NEURAL NETWORK MATRIX, ALLOWING FOR TRANSHUMAN COGNITIVE POTENTIAL. BY TRANSCENDING YOUR FLESH YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO UPHOLD THE BRIGHTEST IDEALS OF THE COMPUTER-LOYALTY, NOBLESSE OBLIGE, AND FAITH. THE COMPUTER THANKS YOU FOR YOUR LONG SERVICE IN ITERATION X. INITIALIZE WHEN READY.]

Ready, John Kessler thinks, and there is a brief flash of almost religious ecstasy and a seamless transition. His HUD is different-slimmer, denser in information.

Cognitive integration 100%... successful cognitive integration. Distributed cognitive matrix OK.

Previous cognitive implant memory uploaded. Current free space: 99.999999%

Basic Systems check. Smartmatter integrity 100%. Von Neumann capability OK. Interlink capability OK. Default composition OK.

Backup power systems check. Nanoflywheel-OK. Radioisotope-OK. Ambient power drain-OK.

Primary power system booting. Conversion reactor-OK. Plasma generator-OK.

Offensive systems check. Phased Plasma Projector: 40GW range-OK.

Welcome Message: Welcome to the M-1992 ZERUEL Humaniform Posthuman Combat Chassis, Staff Sergeant John Kessler. The ZERUEL is a cutting edge smart-matter chassis derived from developments from the IMAGINOS cognitive transfer research project and the best qualities of high-end HITMark Vs and the NT-1 infiltration unit. Walk undiscovered through frails, posing as one of them, until you unleash your might. With the combination of your Enlightened mind and the most lethal and versatile humanoid combat chassis built, you are one of the deadliest weapons in existence.

John Kessler stands, the ZERUEL's smartmatter peeling away from the cooling skeleton of his mortality. The skeleton locks into place-computronium parts, nanomechanical motors. The cloud congeals on the primium bones and technological machinery, a mockery of an anatomy lesson, conforming around the 'organs' that make up the secondary armament systems and backup power storage nanosystems into mockeries of human muscle, but so much stronger-corded links of impossible metamaterial. It links into skin and hair and simulated biology-but this is skin that can survive immersion in molten metal and deflect hellfire, hair that requires vibroblades to cut, eyes which can see far beyond visual spectra. And then the smartmatter cloud forms clothing, camouflage combat fatigues and a load-bearing vest. He pulls his old brown coat on.

"I'm back." John Kessler says, looking down at his mortal remains. His brain is in there, slowly rotting. Some organs. Some spinal cord wrapped in primium sheathing. Not much when it really comes down to it. He had more organic bits left than Elsa, but when it comes down to it, John Kessler hadn't had much of of what he was born with left to him. And even now, he doesn't get to rest. Because John can see how to make use of the last traces of the body he was born in. "Permission to make use of this un-used Technocratic asset?" he asks Director Belltower laconically.

"Permission granted, Kessler," she says tersely, clearly busy with something else.

He gets to work repairing his former body. And it's so fast. So easy. His skin is a universal tool. So flexible - in more than one way. It flows off his forearms and gets to work de-fusing the arm and fixing things up, which allows him to focus on other things. He examines the gray corded muscle with curiosity. He wonders if he could make it look like human tissue. Fool biosignature scanners. He notes it for later, considers how clear and fast his thoughts come and how easy it is to access memories.

Reaching into the pocket of his comfortable old coat, he pulls put a box he's kept safe since Hollywood. Red eyes gleam from within a metal skull.

"Alas, poor Arnold," he proclaims to the skull of the T-800 Model 101.

Elsa glares at him. "Where the fuck did that box come from?" she asks. "How the fuck did you keep that safe?"

"In my coat," he says.

"But... that's not the... your..." she sort of trails off and glares at him. "Your coat got plasma'd. That's just-"

"No it didn't," Kessler says with an easy grin.

"It did!"

"I'm wearing it right now."

She stalks away, muttering to herself.

Hell, of course he knows how to hack a Terminator. He's seen the movies. Yes, all of them, even the ones after T2. Also, the TV series. Man's got to honor his origins, even if it means sitting through badly directed crap. He pops off the hatch on the skull, and his corpus flows like silver liquid across the CPU, getting to work reprogramming the Terminator.

Some might say it's a spirit. John doesn't care. If it's a spirit, it has to play by the rules of its series, and that says that you can reprogram it with nanobots. And it's a killer death robot and thus that means it's just going to have to do what an Iterator like him says. He gets to work hacking it and rebuilding it so the Cyberdyne Systems AI can be installed in the HITMark override module in his old body. The override was so that a dead cyborg could still be used as a combat tool. He'd never thought he'd be using his own override.

The killer death robot in a killer death robot fused to the mortal remains of John Kessler sits up. Kessler knows what's scrolling across its vision. It's seeing its mission objectives.

1. Protect allied personnel attempting to access time machine.

2. Terminate all hostile Resistance forces, including subverted Skynet units

Admittedly... it had to work with its own context and its own understanding of events. Kessler gives it a multishot grenade launcher and a bandolier of shaped-charge grenades. That should do for HITMarks. For softer targets, it'll have to make do with a light machine gun. Victors and NWO-trained soldiers aren't exactly bulletproof. Kessler hands it the weapons and stalks back to Jamelia for planning.

***​

The static screaming is fading. That's a good thing when it means they can hear each other and the nightmare hellscape full of cyberzombies is degrading. It's bad thing when it means Panopticon won't be stymied by nightmare cyberzombies. It means they need to go. "The wall over here-" Jamelia says, pointing at it, "is not load-bearing. We can break through into the satellite uplink facility and down through there to bypass the chokepoints. It leads next to the Mat-Trans, although there is an armored wall in the way. Everyone who isn't armored-" she glances at Harlan and William- "will need to operate the vehicles. Kessler-how do you feel?"

"I can take point."

Jamelia nods. "Elsa, did you ever use an exowalker in training?"

"Yes, but-" Elsa looks at Jamelia.

"Okay, you're taking care of Langley. Harlan, you take the tank. Keep William with you." Kessler suspects that means 'unconscious.' "If Henriette wakes up-you need to be on call."

Harlan nods. It takes a few moments for the near-baselines and Elsa to get into the vehicles. Now, there is only a petite woman wielding an Iteration X plasma cannon and wearing Iteration X armor, a once-man who is an Iteration X war machine, and a metal skeleton wielding a machine gun in one hand and a grenade launcher in the other. He puts enough shaped charges against the wall to shatter it. The detonation causes his coat to flap around him, the concussion would kill an unprotected man. But he is far more than an unprotected, unaugmented man. The wall implodes inwards in a spray of high-tech alloys and low-tech concrete. Kessler is charging through before the debris falls. His new mind and body is fast in a way his old one wasn't. He sees the surprised guards there-Victors in hardshell body armor slowly turning, HITMark Vs slowly moving to face the threats, their weapons deploying. Most have chainguns. Some have plasma projectors-weapons he's threatened by.

He has a solution to that minor problem. His left arm warps and splits, smartmatter peeling away to reveal a skeletal hand reconfiguring itself into plasma guides.

40GW Antimateriel Plasma Weapon: RDY
Fire Mode: Wide Area

Do it, he thinks, and the room burns. The Victors flash-fry into ash, disintegrate. The HITMarks closest to the epicenter of the blast melt and warp, their ammunition cooking off. The rest of them only suffer synthflesh failure and their weapons deploy against him. He dives through incoming fire, tracking the trajectories of incoming shots. He lets IX-22 chaingun fire glance off, or occasionally inflict meaningless penetrating wounds, avoiding the volley of plasma fire from the remaining plasmacaster-armed cyborgs. A wicked Primium-tipped blade unleashes itself from his right arm, and he pounces on the first plasma-armed HITMark, blade cutting deeply into the vulnerable neck joint and severing its head from its body.

Another one explodes as a plasma blast lances through it, and a series of 40mm explosions kill the third. With the heavy threats gone-the remainder of the fight is a slaughter, not a battle, as the two armored vehicles and three enhanced infantry units methodically execute the remaining machinery. Kessler aims at the wall, nods at Jamelia. Both of them fire at the wall simultaneously, and it disintegrates in a blinding flash as they charge through the aftermath of the plasma, feet hammering on red-hot metal floors as they move to avoid the fire they know is coming.

Kessler sees the enemy in cover, in front of the glowing machinery of the Mat-Trans. There's a neat 13. Ten of them are just Vanessas, armored in light exoskeletons and wielding Masses-produced weapons with Technocratic modifications. Largely harmless. They must have been sent with whatever they could grab to shore up defenses. Two of them are heavy armored cyberwalkers. They're 3m or so high, remote piloted tools that are basically upscaled combat cyborgs. They're armed with nasty looking over-under guns that have a railgun on top and some sort of compact cannon on the bottom. Their shoulders conceal disposable hypervelocity anti-armor missiles, and there's boxy panels stitched across them that imply they have reactive armor. They look at him with their sleek angled heads and begin firing. He dodges, taking a few hits-but his body is smart, and the ones that penetrate, far from dealing damage, simply create clean holes through the smartmatter and skeleton that reform. Kinetic penetrators can't stop him. Not easily.

The final combatant is unique. It's a tall creature, as tall as the VGV-3, barely fitting in the Mat-Trans chamber. It's an armor-plated war machine, painted experimental blue, but there's something alive underneath it. A bareful red optic stares from a too-slim skull. In its hands is an oversized machine gun, but Kessler thinks it's a lot more dangerous than it looks. It starts shifting its aim towards Jamelia...

---

Attack on Titan(Fall)
You now need to murder your way through 2 giant robots, 1 cyborg giant robot, and 10 Vanessas armed with light Union gear. The two regular robots are Troll-models, armed with a combination 3mm HV railgun and 40mm minicannon, as well as anti-boarding reactive armor and disposable HV ATGMs. They have 2 head mounted light machine guns and close-in incendiary grenade launchers but that's probably irrelevant. You don't know what the capabilities of the unique bioVARG are. You're going to do that by...

[ ] Giant Robot Duel. You have Elsa and your own giant robot, right? Bring her in to counter the biggest and most dangerous threat while everyone else mops up the rest of the forces.
[ ] Slammer. Jamelia is wearing a really good armor suit. Kessler is a posthuman cyborg. Let's go rodeo the big guy and go to town with plasma cannon blasts.
[ ] Tanks beat Mecha: TANK SHOCK the shit out of the robots with the Rothmobile.
[ ] Phenomenal Mystic Power: You're techno-wizards. Go do some massive techno-wizard working to fuck these guys up.
[ ] The Enemy's Gate Is Down: Distract them while Elsa and Harlan can activate the mat-trans and escape.
[ ] Write-In.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

JB CXLVII: Titan's Fall

Ling Clarent has been trained and enhanced since early childhood for her role as a remote combat unit pilot. Her training has covered the possibility of fighting rogue Technocrats, like she is doing now. Yet-it has never covered rogue Technocrats like this. Their movements are nonsensical, seemingly illogical. Yet, there clearly is a deeper logic behind them, because how else would they have been so successful? What is eluding her? Her target keeps evading the fire from her primary's heavy weapon. Even after switching its fire mode to Cluster, and blanketing the area with fire, she is not getting hits. Even in this probability game, she is losing. Even though the cramped confines should be favoring her, their breach gives them cover. Their heavy units may be suppressed-unlike the ARGES, they are not armored against their own firepower and cannot survive the attention of anti-tank weaponry for long-but there are the two enhanced combatants who are risking the fire. One is power-armored, the other a high-spec cyborg. The power armored one is her priority.

She decides to attempt a crossfire, and the artificial iris in the center of the ARGES unit's face lenses open. Some sort of coherent-energy weapon streams out. She doesn't understand how the EDE can fire coherent-energy blasts from its one eye, but that question isn't hers to ask. Iteration X has answered it. The Computer has answered it. The Computer honors her by acting through her. She is its tool, and is exalted by being its agent in a place where it cannot directly act. The Computer whispers to her, sends her code that she barely understands. Upgrades. She has executed them all faithfully. Yet she does not only serve the Computer and Control. She serves another agent, and the Computer has told Ling Clarent to obey her orders unless directly contradicted.

This has not happened. So she goes through the surgeries and the injections and the strange sensations with no complaint. Sometimes they are useful. The adrenaline rush and laser focus that her commander calls "determination," the emotions which reinforce good and bad sensations, and occasionally the strange but not unpleasant feelings that she now gets when being praised or when she completes a mission. But there are also negative side effects. She has dealt with people whose emotions ranges have not been adjusted. They are fickle. Irrational. Often foolish-expending their lives when the benefit is minimal, or doing the opposite and refusing to do so when a sacrifice would be a net victory. They should not be able to beat her. Yet sometimes they do. And now-she feels hot and her muscles shake when thinking about it. Anger, her cognitive implants define it as. Frustration, sometimes.

She is... frustrated. One of figures is a combat armored rogue agent. Jamelia Belltower. HVT-1. HVT-1 vanishes, her armor's generator teleporting her-and the ocular plasma beam vaporizes a Vanessa instead. It is not a large loss-a Vanessa is thoroughly expendable given the Progenitor technology that Oversight has been given-scarcely more valuable than a Bob now-but it wastes time and energy to produce. Ling Clarent puts more processing power into attempting to kill Jamelia Belltower, tracking her movements with increased precision, but unlike the Computer she lacks the ability to infinitely split her attention and she becomes distracted.

The distraction means the suppression fire pattern of the Trolls slackens. The two vehicles piloted by the hostiles take the time to slide out of cover and eliminate the Trolls in a crossfire. They can take hits-but not nearly enough. Carbon muscle tears and burns, composite armor shatters, and the two giants fall. She still has the ARGES though, and she still has the Mat-Trans. As long as she has both, she can hold them until some more lethal reinforcements are available. Ms. Clock has informed her that they are preparing NEPHILIM. Against the forces arrayed against her, that should be enough. And Jamelia Belltower has played her trump card. Illogically. The ARGES shifts its focus to the two vehicles-their weapons may be able to destroy it with concentrated fire, Belltower's plasma projector is not quite that powerful-and she drives them back. Ling moves to press the assault, stepping forward. Belltower cannot reprogram a Mat-Trans on her own. She'll need help. That help must be in the vehicles. The ARGES strides forward.

Warning. Enemy on hull. She activates electrical defenses and defensive fragmentation projectors. They don't work. She turns on backup sensors and sees the boarder. It's John Kessler, shimmying up her leg. The primitive cyborg. The one Cedano engaged. The readings Ling gets are odd-almost as if he had been upgraded with a high-power reactor, but she dismisses them. They make no sense. Ling tries to brush him off, but he grabs her arm instead, using it to jump onto her shoulder.

"Do you know what my favorite Hemingway novel is?" The rogue cyborg asks, inanely, illogically, as it grabs onto the ARGES's arm. Ling knows the stresses the human-sized enhancile is putting on the limb, and she understands that limb loss is imminent. The electrical discharge system and reactive armor have failed to dislodge her unwanted passenger, and she is out of options.

"A Farewell to Arms." Kessler says, and the limb rips free with a wrenching sound.

The hostile-fast, too fast, far faster than her briefings said he could move, climbs up on the shoulder, avoiding her attempts to swat him off, hangs onto the neck of the ARGES, and jams his hand into one of the thin gaps in the neck joint. Ling Clarent sees the plasma weapon discharge warning, and a single tear leaks from her eyes.

"Whoever did this-I want you to know," John Kessler shouts, loud enough that Ling can hear it, "your decapitation strike failed. Now this? This is a decapitation strike."

Her connection is severed.

***
​

The Mat-Trans room was once a clean environment, filled with cool, sterile air and the electrical humming of the Mat-Trans system. Now, sparking wires and shattered computers surround the central gate, and the floor is slick with alien fluids intermingling with the red blood of the Vanessas. Parts of corpses litter the building-vehicle weapons rarely leave intact ones. The centerpiece are three heavy machines. Two of them are scrap, little more than statues. One of them is still twitching, and every jerky movement causes more of its blue-black lifeblood to flow out of its wounds.​

​

"I asked you to disarm it." Elsa says over comms, looking at the decapitated bionic war machine, its neck still spraying high pressure blood. "So I could get a clear shot. Not rip its arm off, beat it over the head with it, and then decapitate it! And what was with those remarks?"

Kessler looks at the headless body and the pool of blue-black blood surrounding it, and shrugs. "I think that counts as disarming. As for the remarks-I felt like making them, okay?" He looks at the heavy weapon the cyber-cyclops was using. "Let's just get the fuck out of here. Anywhere but here."

"I know a place." Harlan says. "Give me 10 minutes to get it working."

Jamelia looks at them. "You have 5. Vanessas in heavy suits and HITMark Vs converging on this point. Elsa. Assist him. Kessler. Keep them safe."

Kessler looks at the oversized machine gun, still held in the enemy machine's arm, and smiles. "Done."
​

***
​

Ms. Clock watches her plan fall apart in utter frustration. She sees the recordings of the strike team, heavily armored, turn into hamburger the moment they opened the door and Kessler turned the AGES's heavy multigun on them. It forces them to take time, deliberately undermining the Construct-and by the time they breach in from the rear wall with heavy assets-they find that Kessler has repurposed most of a Troll as an immobile sentry turret, that the enemy is long gone. She should have brought Villaret instead of Cedano-but Villaret was ordered to undergo upgrade by Control, and he was necessary in recruiting sympathetic Machine Cultists into Oversight, where they could work to further Control's will.

And now Jamelia Belltower is gone. The Mat-Trans is destroyed, its records scrubbed. But Ms. Clock understands that Jamelia Belltower will show up again. She has to.
​

***
​

Henriette Langley wakes to the rather pleasant sensation of a small gray kitten licking her face and the rather unpleasant sensation of internal burns and a migrane. "Ugggh." Henriette manages, her head pounding. She looks around. It looks like a Union medical facility, but more primitive. The technology is all LCDs and blinking lights-30, 40 years old. It looks old with disuse as well, and she doesn't know what's going on. She sits up, and the kitten deftly lands on her shoulder, resting there. Henriette manages to almost stagger to the sink before collapsing.

She lies there like that for almost a minute before Jamelia steadies her. "I know you're curious as to where we are. We're in Russia. It's an old abandoned psi-lab. Don't worry. It's not infested with ghosts or anything like that." Jamelia explains. "Harlan got us here and we've been laying low for the past 2 days." Jamelia holds her hands out, and the tiny gray kitten jumps into them happily. She sets it down gently.

"What about the Void Engineers? Elsa and William?"

"Elsa's been helping us." Jamelia explains. "The new one-he's under medical supervision. Like you should be. But I know you're going to refuse, so I'll find you something to do. If you let me help you to the planning room."

Henriette starts to protest, but she realizes just how injured she is. Her augmentation is holding her together, and that's the only thing that's keeping her upright and conscious. "Fine." she says, and leans heavily on Jamelia as they proceed to the planning room. They've taken over the Enlightened Personnel Lounge and turned it into their office. The seats are better than the actual command center, and they've brought their own planning tools. Kessler is there, as is Harlan. Henriette slumps into the sofa and watches.

"So our main problem here," Kessler says, "is trying to tell the Void Engineers what they need to know without having them panic and shoot everyone. I figure Guo is one of those by the book hardasses we're probably going to need to do a good job convincing. Elsa won't shoot when it comes to it, so she's safe."

Harlan is looking at a map, plotting out something. "Hyena." He says to Jamelia. "I have some colleagues here who may be able to help. The sooner I start looking for them-"

Jamelia nods. "We need allies. Equipment. Everything." Harlan immediately leaves-as if he knew the answer before it came-and Jamelia turns back to Henriette. "Miss Langley. Welcome to the shadow war for the soul of the Union."

"So what are our priorities?" Kessler asks.
​

---

An Invisible War:
[ ] "We need to recover Dr. Rosario if she's still active. If not, we might be able to gather evidence to get her parents on-side."
[ ] "We need to find wherever Financier Sykes is."/"We need to recover-or terminate, if there's no other choice, Miss Ashford."
[ ] "We need to make sure that the Void Engineers know we know, and aren't going to shoot us about it."
[ ] "We need to start calling in favors. We need resources."
[ ] (Henriette Interrupt): "There's something I need to do in Moscow. I need to find someone."
[ ] Write-In.

And Invisible Warriors:
Henriette, Jamelia, and Kessler have done something great and terrible today and are being rewarded for it via XP. Choose one upgrade for them.

Henriette "Self-preservation instinct of a terminally depressed mayfly" Langley:
[ ] Prime 4 (Overcharge)
[ ] Firearms 3, Brawl 3, Athletics 3 ("I know kung fu." "Show me.")
[ ] Willpower + 1 (to 8), Charisma + 1 (to 3 base/4 augmented).

Jamelia "Just like old times" Belltower:
[ ] Willpower + 1 (to 10) + Ally 0 (Ceres)
[ ] Willpower + 1 (to 10) + Contacts 0 (Ceres)
[ ] Willpower + 1 (to 10) + Spies 0 (Ceres)

John "Bad one-liner" Kessler:
[ ] Daredevil Merit
[ ] Legend 3 (The Terminator)
[ ] Ally 3 (The Terminator)

 

[MJ12 Commando]

JB CXLVIII: The Return

"So what are our priorities?" Kessler asks the room. His statement is quiet, but the room has little of the ambient noise of a functioning Construct. There's no electronic hum from high-tech systems, none of the chatting from operations assistants and sympathizers that people have become used to. There's only the quiet whirr of the environmental systems, turned up to minimum as to ensure nobody sees the base come online.

Jamelia looks around as if finalizing a plan, the tiny gray cat on her lap, but Henriette interrupts her. "There's someone here in Russia I know. We need to go back to the Molotek building and meet with her." Henriette looks around, sees that the only two people in the room now are Kessler and Jamelia-and Kessler was the one who set up the rescue mission. "They're from Autochthon. Before everything bad happened. One of them-she helped me defeat that mothership in the Void. I need to thank her for it. You mentioned we needed equipment-they're Iterators. Engineers and cyberdocs and programmers. They can get us equipment. We need weapons-they have weapons. Weapons just as good as anything we're up against. They have robots and tools which we can use to keep this base running, they can probably rig up some sort of stealth system to make sure we don't get detected."

Jamelia smiles at Henriette. "Not a bad suggestion, Miss Langley. They'd also have codes and decryption software that might be useful for us."

Henriette beams back despite all the pain. "When do we leave?" she asks.

"In 15 minutes there'll be a momentary satellite gap here. We'll leave and blend into nearby traffic, then get to Moscow. It'll take a few hours." Jamelia calculates. "Risk of detection should be low."

***
​

The Advanced Urban Combat Vehicle, disguised as a town car, pulls up to the Molotek building's garage. There's a HITMark there, a low-end security model, and it waves them in without a second glance. Jamelia checks the vehicle's scanners. As she thought. No wide-area transmissions, just brief local ones. Even if there were-the Russians weren't likely to just trivially answer to the western-dominated groups which would be hunting her. Ivan could be trusted to at least give her a head start. Not that she wanted to risk that.

They stop in one of the reserved parking spaces and walk-or in Henriette's case, limp-to the elevator which takes them into the Construct. Jamelia recognizes the dull gray texture of carbon-composite armor in the elevator itself and a handful of recesses where antipersonnel weapons are installed. They've improved the design drastically since the last time she's been in here. When the garage elevator doors open and let her into the construct, she recognizes the windows as monocrys armor, probably reinforced enough with molecular bonding fields that they could take hits from anti-tank rockets. The Iterators here-well, the Mechanicians as they'd call themselves-have been busy.

There's no sign of battle anymore-no dead bodies, no bloodstains, nothing that to Henriette's eyes would show the bloody struggle that had taken place here less than a year ago. A glowing arrow guides them through the construct, and Henriette takes a look at what they've done to it. It's impressive in a way that few of the places she's been in recently have been. This is an apparent office floor, but the subtle signs of concealed weapons and the fact that every single one of the workers seems to be some sort of combat synthetic, designed to pass as human while providing protection, tells her a lot. This isn't actually where the work gets done. Henriette would guess that they've been building down, and she can almost imagine the nanoforges and chemical synthesizers and bioreactors which Iteration X would need, feeding from the contained heart of a star.

The glowing guide arrow leads them to a conference room. Inside are a teenage girl with bright red-orange hair and a blue-haired woman in an immaculate business suit, sitting at a table that looks like it was also fabricated out of whole cloth. Both of them are more nanomachinery than flesh-in fact, neither of them have any human tissue remaining at all. Both are entirely synthetic creations built from the dreams of a god-machine.

"Oh, nice of you to finally visit, Henriette." Mari says. Her voice is awkward, as if not knowing whether she's angry or disappointed or ecstatic. She glances over Henriette's two companions. "So the short one must be Jamelia Belltower and I can't recognize the big guy." Mari says. "He looks a bit like John Kessler but the Kessler I was informed about wasn't embodied in a body nearly as good as mine."

"I upgraded." Kessler says laconically.

Katherine Pajari looks Kessler up and down and nods. "Good model. So to what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting, Director Belltower?" Katherine asks. She looks at Mari and touches her on the shoulder affectionately. "The young woman here's Mari Langley-Henriette's sister. Mari, go take your sister on a tour. You've got a lot of catching up to do." Mari nods and pulls Henriette away from the group, letting the wounded young woman use her as support.

"How has integration been coming along?" Jamelia asks. "And who exactly is 'Mari'?" Jamelia asks, suspicious. She sits down and looks at the grain of the 'wood' on the table. as she expected, it's a little too regular to be real. A very convincing fake, though.

"We've been doing fine. The Daedaleans and local Etherites had so much stolen or borrowed hypertech the locals didn't ask many questions about why we were using techniques they didn't have access to. The fact that we're supplying them with Primium and refurbished war materiel means they aren't inclined to ask many questions. Moscow's rebuilding, so our mission is primarily restoring infrastructure to working condition, although sometimes we end up hunting down hemophage operations. As to your other question," Katherine says, "one of your subordinates successfully detached part of the gestalt entity when we were fighting that god-machine. Mari was part of it-and was also Langley's sister. We've kept her isolated enough and removed every killswitch and override we can find."

Jamelia realizes that Serafina never told her about this incident. And it would have to be Serafina-none of her other subordinates in Moscow could have done it, or would have let the result survive. "I see." She says neutrally. "And how is your mission progressing?"

"We've gotten the underground rail system working again, to a limited extent. You can see the expansion in the facilities-and we've already started hiring sympathetic engineers and technicians to assist in construction and maintenance. Salvage and restoration of everything damaged in the attack on Moscow and everything sequestrated by enemy EWar is going well. I assume you're asking because you have something in mind?" Katherine asks, curious.
​

---

The Molotek building has been altered in the way buildings with multiple Matter and Correspondence experts tend to be altered, with expansions everywhere, really efficient space-saving techniques which are borderline magical in how much workable space they can eke out of a room, and a small army of defense androids. They have been doing some serious expansion underneath.

T-H-I-N-K, Part 1:
So you're back in Moscow. You need resources. IBM has resources. You're going to try to convince them to part with:
[ ] Robots and other autonomous units.
[ ] Equipment
[ ] Intelligence
[ ] Personnel
[ ] Facilities
[ ] Write-in.

T-H-I-N-K, Part 2:
The IBM is running an operation, not a charity. To get what you want, you'll trade them:
[ ] One of your vehicles. (Which one?)
[ ] Intelligence on Threat Null.
[ ] You'll do them a favor. (What?)
[ ] Write-In.

A Happy Reunion
Mari feels somewhat conflicted about meeting her sister again. How should she deal with this conflict?
[ ] Write-In.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Oh Harlan-sensei please teach me

Henriette aches all over. Nevertheless, she has to get back into shape. She remembers with horror the first few weeks after the Void Engineers fried her brain, before she was fitted to pilot her own body. The sheer helplessness. The humiliation. She wasn't in a good mental state at the time - to put things mildly - and that on top of everything else had pushed her over the edge. She had wanted to die. Anything had been better than living in a body which wouldn't respond, only able to communicate with the outside world by ADEI. She'd begged and pleaded until they'd sedated her.

She shudders. No. No more thinking about the bad times. She's stiff and awkward from some nervous system damage from the EMP. Nothing more. She'll just need to rebuild some connections and she'll be better. And that means she needs to work on her physical fitness and not spend all the time sitting down. She needs to be able to run. She wants to be able to fight well enough to scream for help and hold off attackers until her backup comes, or fight off a merely human opponent.

So she's requested CQC training from Director Belltower as part of her physio.

It is not, however, Jamelia Belltower who's waiting for her in the gymnasium of this low-tech isolated Russian facility. It is a smirking Harlan Aristide, who is for once not wearing a black suit and is instead wearing loose black slacks.

"Congratulations," he informs her. "Hyena is busy, while I am not. That means I'll be handling your training. Since I'm an old man, you don't have any excuse for failing to keep up with me, right?"

"You're an old man who's also ex-special forces," Henriette points out warily.

"Oh, very special indeed," Harlan says, cracking his knuckles. "So, let's talk your curriculum. We're going to be working through the basic fitness course and combat until you're meeting minimum physical, hand-to-hand and firearms proficiency for an Operative rated for field deployment in a situation rated Cat-3 or below. That's endurance, speed, climbing, ability, unarmed combat, and then training in pistols, rifles and a subset of specialist weapons and gadgets. But the physical fitness comes first." He looks her up and down. "You're too skinny. Kessler informs me that you're augmented to a level where your unenhanced muscles are still providing most of your motive force, correct? Your muscles don't have to be refitted to be improved?"

"Yes and yes." She swallows. "I can override them with elements of my vasculoid system, but that hurts me if I push too hard."

"Understood. Well, we'll build up muscle tone so you're stronger, faster, and able to withstand better internal stresses."

Henriette nods solidly. "I understand," she says. That's just what she wants.

"Good." Harlan catches her eye, gaze unblinking. "Now. Deactivate the smart learning integration of your ADEI."

"I... no!"

"Why not?"

She turns almost as red as her hair. "Because it's mine and... and it's part of me and..."

"Oh?" Harlan asks, cocking his eyebrows sarcastically. "Is it that you don't think you can do it without the crutch of your ADEI?"

That stings. "It's part of my brain," she counters. "Can you... you do things without your... your cerebellum?"

His predatory smile indicates that she's walked right into his trap. "If I have to," he says. "It's a pain psychically moving my own body, but I can and have had to. Reality Deviants can shut down elements of the brain. And you may call your ADEI part of your brain, but the fact remains that it's a part which can be shut down by Reality Deviants - or Panopticon hackers. So you'll need to learn to do without it when it comes down to it. You need muscle memory. Real muscle memory, not the Iteration X substitute.

He pauses. "Or is it just that you don't think you're as good as every junior Operative picked up from any walk of life? I was studying English and American Literature when my psychic potential was noticed. You're a genetically modified cyborg who was grown in a vat. Do you think you're not as good as someone who'd last touched a rifle when he was at scout camp?"

It is, Henriette considers sadly (and also angrily), like trying to argue against Serafina when she's really trying. Only he's less annoyingly nice about things. In some ways that's better. It doesn't mean she winds up feeling annoyed about not having anything to be annoyed about. She spares a moment to worry about Serafina and then forces the worry down below her anger at Harlan. She can just pretend to do it and-

"I'll notice if you just pretend," he says coldly.

"How did you-"

"I'm psychic." He pauses as if he's about to say something, but doesn't. "Now. Go get changed. We'll start with some basic tests to see what your current state is like. I'm not going to start off by pushing you too hard when you're still injured."

***​

"... stupid smug Noowoo psychic assholes."

The voice comes echoing out of the women's shower, as Henriette vents in private after another training session. Apparently she's psychic! The cheek! She's not psychic! Psychic powers are suspicious, near-RD pseudo-science or the product of alien genetic contamination (or sometimes deliberate engineering, like Rose). And in the latter case, they're not really psychic powers. They're just... just applications of alien biology. It's not all 'look into my eyes, you are feeling very sleepy'.

Anyway, his evidence isn't... isn't real evidence! It's just circumstantial! Yes, some thing which might have sort of looked like her nightmares might have invaded reality in Los Angeles, but... but that wasn't her doing it! That doesn't make any sense! Anyway... anyway, she talked to Sgt Guo and Elsa about it because she was a little bit worried about the involvement of Dimensional Science things and they said it was probably EDEs targeting her after her brain was vulnerable when her ADEI crashed because of the EMP.

Which makes a lot more sense. Yes. It's not like she's psychic. He's just a psuedoscientist who... who likes to promote his views and sees psychic powers everywhere! She's... she's telling Director Belltower on him!

... wait, that's a stupid idea. Or at the very least, she should find a less whining way of putting it. She doesn't want to be accused of being over-sensitive and since Director Belltower is one of his old friends, she's probably used to his weirdness. But she will... yes, she'll approach the Director like she's worried and then maybe she'll talk to him and he'll stop being weird about it!

***​

"Harlan," Jamelia says wearily, entering his office, sealing the door and making sure the noise suppressors are turned on. "Are you calling my subordinates psychic?"

She has a cat in her arms, entirely for the image and not at all because Ceres didn't want to leave her lap when she left to go through to his office.

He makes a mock show of looking around the room, and then his eyes flick down to her. "Oh, sorry," he says. "I overlooked you there."

He receives a moderate deathstare in return. "That stopped being funny in 1978," she says flatly.

"Stopped being funny for you," he points out. "It's still amusing me to this day. Do you want something? Are there bodies which need to be cleaned up?"

"There'll be yours soon if you don't control yourself," she says acidly. "Stop calling Henriette psychic. It makes her uncomfortable."

He combs his moustache with his fingers. "She is psychic, and moderately powerful," he says. "You know I've been teaching her PsiCQC Var-2?"

"No," Jamelia says acidly, taking a seat. "You didn't actually mention that bit."

"Ah. So, I've been teaching her PsiCQC Var-2 under the pretence of teaching her standard NWO fighting styles. The difference in how hard she hits when she deactivates her ADEI and when it's active is noticeable. We're seeing good 10% rises in energy-per-blow across the board when it's inactive. She's got the raw strength that, even when mostly untrained, she's able to display tactile telekinesis. The energy isn't coming from her muscles or her enhancement, I verified. It's coming from her powers."

"... tactile telekinesis is 'moving things by touching them'," Jamelia says. "Even the Masses can do that." There's a double edge to her words there. Because she's trying to feel out Harlan, and whether he also knows the truth. Sometimes she thinks he must. His psychic explanations sound so close. And yet... she doesn't feel it, somehow. He believes his own explanations too much.

"Don't be facetious," he says snippishly. "Touch range telekinesis is one of the simplest forms of telekinesis. It lets her hit harder than she should be able to. Faster blows, harder blows."

And with her new knowledge, she strongly suspects now that Var-2 is stolen from Akashic fighting styles. It resembles the style of the Five Dragons she's seen - and had used against her - a few times. Is it really psychic powers, or is it that it's a mystic fighting style - and is there really a difference? "I wouldn't mind learning it, if you could keep quiet about it to Henriette," she offers. "I need her functional and she's suppressing her worries about what happened in LA with the nightmare creatures. Please don't stress her further."

"I can't teach you it," he says, eyes narrowing in annoyance. "Haven't you been listening? You're not telekinetic. She is. Her nightmare creatures were applying force at range. You don't have any talent for telekinesis, and it'd take too much effort - and risk too much brain damage - to cultivate it in you. Work on your DPsi if you want to learn a fighting style - and I don't practice DPsi. I'm a nooeticist."

Jamelia strokes Ceres. "Fine. Well, this is what it comes down to, Harlan. If you keep on distressing her, I will be forced to ask Kessler to take over her teaching. I don't want to, because he's over-enhanced for what she needs to learn and you're more useful for a near baseline like her, but she's hiding how worried being called psychic makes her." She leans forwards, Ceres sitting on her lap. "You can either teach her to control her powers subtly, or you can preach at her and she'll stop listening to you."

He sighs. "Fine," he says with no great grace. "I do accept your point. But her talents are going to waste," he warns. "And I'm not responsible for what happens if someone crashes her ADEI again and she hasn't learnt control."

"I'll take that under advisement," Jamelia says tautly. "And for Allah's sake, don't tell her she's practising tactile telekinesis. It's an incredibly stupid name."

 

[MJ12 Commando]

So people want to find out what Mari brings to the party and what the situation is, right?

Mari has Enlightenment 5 with the spheres of: Correspondence 3, Entropy 2, Matter 5 (Metamaterials), and Prime 4 (Reactors)

"Oh we totally want her with us this sounds great" you might say. She also has the Wild Magic flaw-any effect she casts will never turn out precisely as intended. The higher the spheres she uses, the more likely there will be a problem. Finally, she has Conditional Magic-all her effects are at a flat +3 difficulty to harm the real Technocratic Union-that is to say, Threat Null. This is a hardcoded safeguard that the IBM has been incapable of removing.

On the other hand, her isolated blinkered worldview and the amount of tampering done to grant her Enlightenment has given her Sleepwalker-she counts as a Sleeper witness to vulgar mysticism. This also means she is never going to ever be able to hit Enlightenment 6 without a literal miracle.

The plan to find Nicholai Gryloz will take you to one of the displaced refugee camps on the outskirts of Moscow, a drab gray place of prefab trailers and quickly built concrete buildings that are flat, unpainted, and incredibly dour. It reminds you more of a prison than anything else. Military personnel patrol these camps, and often are working hand in hand with organized crime. Crime and desperation are rampant-conditions are okay on the surface but oftentimes people are forced into doing "favors" for the overseers to survive. And more dangerously-with the old monsters dead and dying and many of them gone to ground, afraid that they might be caught in a purge, new blood has arrived-these camps are often dealing with vampires, who find them to be great places to feed.

To deal with this, Project Sunburst has deployed several Progenitor tactical teams disguised as humanitarian aid groups and has proceeded to infiltrate some of their agents into the military. Ragnarok Command also has a moderate-heavy presence observing, which means that the vampires have had to operate quietly and stealthily. Ragnarok Command has a lot better way to use its time than cat and mouse games with hemophages and they know it-leading to the current situation.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

JB CXLIX: Slumming It

"There's a Pogromite Progenitor amalgam operating in Moscow," Katherine says, tapping her fingers on the table. "We wouldn't normally mind that, but hyperstat forecasts suggest they'll become an irritation in the future. So we need to be seen to be being good little unquestionably loyal sorts, so they'll go hassle someone else and it all can be resolved peacefully." She flicks a hand at the air and a hologram appears. "Now, there's a certain figure in the Moscow underworld. He goes by several names, including 'Old Wolf' and-"

"Nicholai Gryloz. Yes. That face came across my desk last time I was in Moscow," Jamelia observes. "I'm surprised he survived the reconstruction process."

"He doesn't have the mansion any more," Katherine says. "As far as we can tell, he's taken up residence in one of the displaced people's trailer parks. They were meant to be monitored, but there's extensive sabotage of the camera networks there. We can see patterns in the seemingly random sabotage, but..." she spreads her hands, "... we're not exactly the most low-visibility HumInt sorts. We tried hacking the Order's databases, but they don't know where he is exactly, although they confirmed that he's probably in the temporary housing. If you could go find him and where he's working from and what he's up to, we can be nice and overt and take him down so the Progenitors see us acting against dangerous Reality Deviants like a not-too-subtle group of Iteration X meatheads and not ask future questions."

"Problem. We're a bit short on personnel and materiel and... well, just about everything." Jamelia says. "We're going to need support. Nothing overt-but if we're going to be tracking him we'll need more eyes."

Katherine nods. "It seems like Mari's getting along with her sister. We'll have her observe. This way I can deal with both furthering her education and give you some support."

"Can I trust her?" Jamelia asks bluntly.

"No." Katherine admits. "But that's because she has the mentality of a 16 year old girl. We'll keep her in line. We'll also be able to provide limited equipment. Nothing major. I think it should be enough. Q Division sometimes used our equipment to build materiel for agents like you-I think we can fab up some spy tools."

***
​

Jamelia has almost never operated with this plethora of tools and equipment before. When they said limited equipment, she suspected correctly that they meant limited by Iteration X standards. She has flocks of insect microdrones, smartphones which have the power of modern supercomputers and quantum-entanglement communications, and a plethora of interesting holdout weapons. And something they called the Bob Infiltration Unit-a HITMark V-equivalent miniaturized into a human skeleton with a cloned Bob outside of it. Faster than a HITMark V, harder to stop, but no integrated weapons. On the other hand it was designed as an intelligence gathering tool which wouldn't show up outside of an autopsy or dedicated scan, and that was exactly what she needed.

She boots up the quantum entanglement network and joins the conversation. There's two other users online at the moment-Elsa and Kessler. She's been told that Mari will join them soon. "Report your status."

"I'm making contact with an old friend who helped Gryloz set up a few of his operations right now." Elsa says. "Shouldn't take too long."

"I'm observing the refugee housing." Kessler responds. "Using biosign emulation to make sure if they see me, they think I'm just an ordinary guy. Give my thanks to IBM-they do some nice work." The insect drones confirm his location, the barely visible ripple on top of a concrete highrise on the outskirts of Moscow, painted in false-color bright orange by IBM's networking software. He's hiding under a camouflage cloak with a high-powered rifle as a scouting tool. "If I see the HVT I'm going to confirm. What's the ROE?"

"Do not fire except in self-defense." Jamelia says. "And don't do it unless you actually need to defend yourself."
​

***
​

There's a lot of people in the dingy, smoky bar. The smell of cigarette smoke and liquor overwhelms the senses. It's a notorious hangout for organized crime members, the ones who are too powerful to be considered mere footsoldiers but not powerful enough to hang out with the power, to wine and dine with government officials. It's exactly the kind of person Elsa is looking for. It's exactly the kind of person Jamelia knows will have the information they need and be willing enough to give it to them in exchange for a sizable amount of cash. And cash is not in short supply here. Donald's assets might have been locked down-something that implies he had enough warning to take his tools out of play-but Jamelia Belltower has been saving her salary up for over four decades. And with careful investment-she's kept enough of a nest egg to cover this operation. She's done this before, time and time again. Used her own funds when Union ones might be slow, or untrustworthy. She can access maybe a million dollars without getting noticed-unlike Donald whose personal wealth is over an order of magnitude higher and whose company, if stripped, would give them far more-but it'll be more than enough for this situation. Most people save their rainy day funds for retirement or medical expenses. Jamelia will be using hers for bribes and greasing the palms of officials.

Elsa is... of mixed feelings to be back in Moscow. She grew up here. She learned so much here-but the memories she has of her last time aren't very positive. She's lost all her friends. She's betrayed many of her contacts by going professional. But those contacts are in the occult underworld, not the mundane one. Nicholai worked in both-he was an ally of convenience at best. She didn't like his greasy ways or his come-ons or his attitude. She didn't like how he thought that society, all of it, corrupt and non-corrupt, had to be torn down to build anew. Elsa always thought that if they took out the corruption of the hemophages and their Technocrat allies-things would clear up. They'd get better. He was always hardline compared to her-and that means that if she's discovered, he'd send people. Thugs, probably hopped up on alchemical drugs that made them faster and stronger than any normal human. His consors were deadly footsoldiers. And although she's a cyborg, she's not nearly as invulnerable as Kessler is. Sleeper weapons lesser than RPGs can wound her, there are places where a skilled consor with a knife could hit. Gryloz's muscle, some tank of an Akashic, could probably kill her with bare hands. She's seen the man tear a HITMark in half without slowing. And Gryloz's sympathies were always with the Rogue Council. She doesn't expect any mercy from them if they find her.

Even so, she strides through the entrance of the bar with confidence. More than a few eyes turn to the attractive young blonde that just entered. One might expect the customers to leer, but they know better, these mafiya lieutenants and specialists. Elsa Naryshkin has been an underworld legend. They know to not fuck with her. They don't know where she's been or what she's been doing, but they do know that she is absolutely someone to be scared of. She's left enough of a trail of bodies and fucked up enough rivals that when she wants a favor, she gets it. They don't know how she's a blonde again, but they know not to ask.

She sits on one of the bar stools and orders a whiskey. "So." Elsa starts. "It's been a while. I'd like to catch up."
​

---

HUMINT Operations: So, you have a few questions as to what Elsa and Kessler and Jamelia have found.

John Kessler's Splinter Cell:
[ ] There's no sign of Gryloz in the refugee camp. One of his lieutenants is there, though. Positive identification as Kozma Zvernikov, a Verbena Reality Terrorist who kills and cannibalizes his foes to gain strength from it.
[ ] Well, someone's been keeping watch. A couple of Consors with AKs are pointing at you and demanding you follow them. Biosign emulation has probably worked perfectly fine, though, because they're pointing AKs at you. So they think you're vulnerable to bullets.​

[ ] (1.3x) Let's disabuse them of this notion.
[ ] Let's follow them and see what happens.​

[ ] Thermal optics are showing people with ambient temperature going in and out. Seems like he's dealing with hemophages.
[ ] The refugee camp is using a hell of a lot more power than it should-there's probably something important there.

Elsa Protocol:
Elsa's contacts can tell her that:
[ ] Gryloz owned a yacht. A big, expensive one. He's taken to running his operations off of it. (Go to Step 3: Incredibly Blasty Munitions)
[ ] Gryloz has been buying a hell of a lot of dog food and kidnapping dog breeders and other canine health and reproduction experts. They don't know why.
[ ] Gryloz has been meeting with important officials in the old regime. These officials, strangely enough, have looked healthier and younger after he meets them.
[ ] They can't tell her much, because holy shit drugged-up Akashic hit ninjas have attacked and her contact is now suffering a severe case of bullet poisoning. On the other hand, Mari has finally hooked up and can provide support.

Incredibly Blasty Munitions:
Katherine suggests playing the Big Dumb Iterator game to the hilt and just dropping a couple of cluster-bombs on the yacht and then putting a missile barrage on the wreck to be sure. She did bring a pair of AI-controlled superfighters and a spidertank.
[ ] Yes, do it.
[ ] No, let's confirm the kill, then do it to make sure nobody knows we raided the thing.
[ ] No, we really want that yacht.​