IC: Post or Die, Lifelines, and deadlines Options

[Seth]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond


While Zo deals with the drone, and hopefully attracts attention Jade Tiger waits for the ghouls and or dogs to arrive up the corridor. Sparks of lightning crackle all around her, and both hands are sheathed in what appears to be ball lightning.

[Red-ROM]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

Zo's second burst finishes off the drone in a shower of sparks and scrap metal. There's a small pop of a window shattering that goes unheard under the racket inside the tunnel, and Oswald opens up a peep hole for himself. Jade heard a low hum of people yelling, but it's impossible to make out over the sounds coming from behind her.

[Notsoevildm]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

<<@Zo: Just being polite. You might have had your holiday snaps or collection of horse porn stored on your 'link. Not that I would go snooping around, you understand.>>

Ferret mentally clicks on the icon for Zo's link, opening it up in the main window of his AR overlay. Jezus, AR is slow.

He resists the urge to dig through the orc's data, focusing instead on the link's wireless sub-system. He sends out a ping, looking for active or passive nodes, but nothing comes back. So he drags his scan onto the icon and sets it sniffing for hidden nodes. Almost immediately he gets a hit, then another and another, until he has five in total.

<<@team: Bingo! I have five hidden commlinks in range of Zo's 'link. I'll try and triangulate through the blimp and add them to the map overlay, but first I'm going to try and hack them. Prof watch the store. I need to go hot to do this.>>

He holsters the pistol and lays down in one of the bar's booths, hidden from the entrance. The silver rodent in Zo's commlink takes on a more substantial form as his consciousness fills it, then it launches itself towards the nearest commlink node.

[Warlordtheft]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond


"Nothin close to horses--though there is a vid of me an Shiela slotting off last night if ya like orc on dwarf action.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) "

[pbangarth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

<<Got you covered.>>

[Seth]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

Jade Tiger pulled her fingers our of her ears. The curse of having more than mortal senses was that sometimes it was difficult to ignore things. If she could still hear the far away shouts, ignoring the Barghest wasn't going to work. I don't like these dogs She mused Perhaps I can get some ear muffs with white noise or something... ah well stop worrying and get on with the job at hand.

"I hear shouting, far away... Time to go deeper in I think. " saying that Jade Tiger headed deeper down the tunnel, using the power of her thought form to blur her shape, and move quicker.

[Notsoevildm]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, The Matrix

The chromed ferret barely slows at it tears through the first firewall, pausing mere nanoseconds to start a file transfer before leaping towards the second, which falls just as easily. A lag spike freezes his icon momentarily on the way to the third, but it too is overcome along with the fourth.

The meat Ferret twitches as his cerebral boosters are pushed to the limit. He's never tried to hack this many nodes at once and the strain is showing as he separates his consciousness across the multiple nodes. Not only that, but either Zo's link is a piece of drek or the gigapulses of data flowing through it are killing his bandwidth. With a thought he reroutes the data transfers via the blimp.

The blimp!

<<Oz, I assume the blimp's got a gunnery soft. Triangulate these nodes {Commlink IDs} and update them on the map. You might want firing solutions for them too.>>

He pauses a moment, to kill a few redundant processes on Zo's commlink then launches himself at the last node.

//SPLAT//

He doesn't so much as log on to the node as smack into its firewall. His claws scrabble for purchase on the non-standard code, barely scratching it.

Frag. Different algorithm. Need another approach!

His jaws open unnaturally wide and he sinks his teeth into the smooth wall, flooding it with access requests in attempt to overload it.

Too slow. Too slow. But too late to back out.

[pbangarth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

The twitches and grunts from Ferret were a little disconcerting. Weren't body motions supposed to be cut off by the hardware when someone went virtual?

Not a perfect science yet, I suppose. As if any science could truly lay claim to that epithet.

Professor decided to keep an eye on Ferret, in case he needed to be jacked out in a hurry.

[Warlordtheft]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

The riniging of gun fire in Zo's ear stopped. His AR display showed him at 28 rounds in the clip, and switched in a fresh clip. Putting the other away in his jackets internal pocket.

<Well if they were seeing anything from the drones, they aren't now>

[Red-ROM]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, The Matrix
The tiny ferret icons dig into the cheap comlinks with little problem. No analyze running. They hadn't even disabled the standard user account. The one that had the better firewall gave him a bit of trouble. An alert went off, and he wasn't sure what the response was going to be yet. He started to snoop for data, but what to look for?

[Notsoevildm]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, The Matrix

And then he was in. He had felt the firewall harden, trying to block out his access requests but one had slipped through and that was enough. He lands on all fours in the commlink's node. An alarm is blaring - one of those headache inducing tones - and he doesn't have the user rights to shut it down. It will have warned it's owner or be in the process of doing so.

He kicks off the data transfer anyway, vomiting a stream of file transfer commands into the node. Then he quickly scans around for any active IC, unlikely he hopes, or system icons. If he's lucky he might spot the system alert and be able to block it before the user notices. At the same time, one of his searchlight eyes scans around the node, looking for any useful data files. Maybe he can scam a copy of the phone's address book or message log before he gets booted.

His voice echoes strangely over the team's commlinks as if several versions of the message are being sent simultaneously <<I am in all the hidden comms. I have a distraction in the works but may need to run it real soon.>>

[Sephiroth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

Jovan had expected that he would pass unhindered through the ceiling of the underground chamber and safely into the room above, so it came as a rude shock when Jovan's astral form slammed into ceiling roughly. He had failed to notice the aura of the earth shining dully through the astral shadow of the ceiling - a critical mistake. Of course, this did not occur to Jovan, being a person of nearly fanatical self-assurance, and in the milliseconds of time he had before the canines' waves of mana reached him, the more thoughtful part of his mind dismissed it as a hidden trap put rapidly into place by Archer while the two had been talking. Perhaps some sort of disguised ward.

In the meantime, the reflexive part of the nosferatu's slightly fractured mind quickly adjusted to the new development. Jovan willed himself down and backwards, flying swiftly towards the astral shadows of the cargo trucks sitting behind him. The air elemental quickly followed suit.

[Sephiroth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Inside the Flipped Van

The watcher seemed a bit overwhelmed for a moment as Jovan sent it rapid flashes of his thoughts. It took a few seconds for the watcher to sort out what its summoner was saying to it.

"Those fools! He was just now starting to speak civilly! 'Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,
Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth,
With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave!'

Fine, tell them that they have the green light from me to attack the ghouls. Archer is a bulky man with a ponytail; I still wish to talk with him afterwards. Him, not his corpse. Make sure the others are very much aware of that. All I got out of him before we were interrupted was that he has Long Legs down here, I think alive."

[Saint Sithney]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15 AM, Inside the Flipped Van


<<Word from below is that the ghoul with the black ponytail is the leader. If you can avoid killing him, he'd have the most answers.>>

[pbangarth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

<<I'll try to remember that as he comes for my entrails.>>

[Warlordtheft]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

Hmph, none of dese guys is coming out of this alive.....what info he would have is secondary ta getting da trucks.


"Jade, ya ready to start da body count?"

[Red-ROM]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

The dogs took off barking, racing toward the spirits that invaded their territory. Archer grabbed his rifle and followed after them. the rest of the horde spread like a foul odor over the nooks and crannies of the warehouse, waiting for the next intruder. Jade could smell them among the dust of the warehouse shelves. as She rounded the last turn in the tunnel she saw the shadows crawling with their auras. She could hear their claws scratching on metal and concrete. Hear them creaking into wooden crates. They hadn't moved yet. She thought, this was her chance, as she heard the clack of a rifle's firing pin. A ghoul laying prone amongst the pile of bones and bodies got off a shot, and she expected another from the Ork in the bus.

the Matrix

The nodes were generic, white walls and open spaces, there were still help Icons floating around. Ferret probably found the user's address book faster than he could, but it was just in time. The default response to the alert was to terminate the connection, and Ferret was spread too thin to stop it in time.

[Notsoevildm]

[b]Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, the Matrix

Frag! thinks Ferret as part of himself is unceremoniously booted from the customized link.

At least I managed to grab some data before the connection was terminated.

<<Got kicked from one of the links. Likely the boss mans. Disctraction coming online now before he can warn the rest of them.>>

//Command:Play//

Troll porn accompanied by a 'pounding' thrash metal track begins to stream to the media interfaces of the four other commlinks.

I doubt any of them are running virtual, but still one can hope.

The hint of a smile crosses his meat face as he gracefully logs of the other nodes and opens his eyes.

[Seth]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

The combined entity that was Jade Tiger grinned as she saw the situation. Almost perfect for the plan. The combination of spells and thought forms, made everything seem in slow motion, and she carefully checked her situation, observed the shooters, observed the ghouls, and watched Jovan hightailing it out of the room. Let's help him out she though

The guns were not too much of a problem just yet. The biggest threat is probably that physical adept over there with his magic weapons. No actually probably the dogs. Unfortunately they were a long way away, and the ghouls were closer. Choices. Choices..

The choice was made: "Eat this" she cried as tossed the grenade into the middle of the a large ghoul cluster. Jade's real forte was melee combat, but getting close to fight this lot hand to hand, entertaining as it would be, wasn't part of the plan.

!BOOM! the grenade exploded.

The shrapnel from the grenade bounced off Jade's magical defenses, although she instinctively turned her head away. Even to her finely tuned senses it was hard to see into that cloud, and evaluate the effect it had had on the ghouls.

Throwing a bolt from her Lightning sheathed fists, Jade ducked back from the entrance so that in order to get to attack her, the ghouls would need to chase her.

[Warlordtheft]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

"Jade--your welcome! And no, I don't wann it back."

[pbangarth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

Was that an explosion in the building?

"Hey, Ferret, did you hear tha... Oh. Yeah." Ferret was lost in the Matrix again and likely heard nothing.

Poor bugger. Counting on me to keep his pelt in one piece.

[Notsoevildm]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

Ferret blinks his eyes and looks around the abandoned bar as he settles back into his own head. Reality can just be so grubby sometimes.

"Hey Prof, I'm back. Give me a hand up. I got us some paydata and maybe gave Zo and Jade a litte help with a troll porn distraction. Anything happening in there?"

As he listens to the Prof, he takes up his previous position covering the street. At the same time, he pulls up the phone list he snagged in an AR window and starts running a cross-check on the various numbers.

Frag, no matrix connection to the outside world. I'll just have to do it later.

[pbangarth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

"I'm not sure, but I think I heard an explosion. Hopefully a grenade from our side. If it was, we should be seeing some running out the door shortly.

"Any idea what the paydata is?"

[Sephiroth]

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Deep inside Annex in Redmond

Jovan's mind was racing, trying desperately to keep up with the chaos of the moment. There wasn't enough time to sit and formulate a proper plan of action, or create an elaborate strategy on-the-fly. Madness, he thought to himself briefly, this is why I detest uncontrolled combat! If those trigger-happy fools had just waited a little longer...

He and his elemental companion managed to pass through the shadow of one of the trucks mere milliseconds before it was hit with a wave of mana from the dogs. A cold shiver traveled down his spine back at his meat body as he felt the strength of the dog's attack upon the truck. Mind grabbing onto an idea he had had earlier, he continued to fly through the length of the truck all the way to the other side. Flashing a picture of their destination to the spirit, Jovan's astral form rotated in flight and unloaded two quick bursts of mana at some of the dogs using his innate abilities. Then, without wasting another second, he pictured himself at the t-junction far down the tunnel behind him, and he disappeared with a vibrant blur of motion.

[Notsoevildm]

Friday, Sept. 12, 2071, 12:15, Lusty Wife Bar and Grill, outside Annex in Redmond

"Any idea what the paydata is?"

"Not sure. I kinda got kicked from the node as I downloaded it. Looks like his contact file. If our Johnson is playing some sort of game here, we might find her details in here along with Jovan's buddy Jonathon."

While he might not have access to the outside world, he is at least able to run a cross-check of the data in the contact file against the numbers stored in his own link.

Let's see if the boss-lady is playing for both sides.