[IC] [SR4] What I want to do when I grow up, High School builds character Options

[ShadowDragon8685]

Graciana's devastated outburst takes Zoé by surprise, and she blinks at the taller human's sudden anger. It hits her like a shanghai gut-punch (not the drink,) and so she does the first thing that comes to mind.

She hugs Graciana, turning her head and pressing it into the latina's chest, squeezing her. "I know, I know. It's bad, but... Well, we're not alone in this, right?"

[Ziathra]

Graciana is startled for a second by the hug. Then reflexes she developed in a large extended Latino family take over and she hugs Zoé back.

“I hope we're not alone, this is really bad.” She muses, “Patience, find an opportunity,” then speaks a little louder. “Do we know who precisely is behind this? I think I know how I got on that list, but I don't think that explains how the list got created. I'm no hacker, but I know some people who just love to watch things.”

[Vegas]

"Supposedly it's from the assessment tests results or something, but I'm hardly an expert on the details. That's Rio's gig."

She shot Zoé a look, knowing she might have bruised an ego not including her alongside Rio, but she decided to play it close to the vest not knowing for certain what Graciana was doing here exactly, not being a part of the initial communications.

@Liara [Daiyu]: She's cool, part of my clique I guess you could say. Never saw her info pop up from Rio though, maybe she sent it later if her results weren't in?

[ShadowDragon8685]

If Zoé took insult, she doesn't show it. Perhaps she's too busy hugging Graciana to notice, or just isn't that easy an ego to bruise.

@Daiyu [Liara]: She must be, if Rio invited her here. I guess I could double-check; we weren't the only ones on that list.

She looks up at the latina girl she has in a hug, smiling at her. "And we have a pretty good guess. This seems to be the brain-child of the principal of our school. She badgered the school district into sending a psychologist specialist to work up profiles, and they picked us out for personal interviews. Her name is Melinda Xavier, and I don't like her... But really, it's the principal we should like even less."

[Ziathra]

“I remember seeing her,” Graciana says. “I have an idea. I can get the principal watched and I won't even have to go to her office first. I can't get her watched all the time, but I should be able to learn something.”

[Koekepan]

Out in the parking lot, the wind abates somewhat, and watery, filtered sunlight breaks through the heavier clouds.

A large pickup truck, a stained and chipped late model GMC, rumbles and splashes into the parking lot of Logger's. There are two large figures in it - big men, or fair sized orks.

RL DEADLINE: 7 November 2013

[Aria]

More as a matter of innate caution than any sense that the new arrivals presented a threat, Hop kept one eye in their general direction

"So, we going to reconvene somewhere a bit less open and a bit less rustic?"

[Vegas]

"Yeah, sounds like a plan, I was just waiting on Rio. Maybe we can all group back together after Zoé gets off work? That little coffee shop over by the school? You know the one I'm talking about right?"

Daiyu paused as the name of the place eluded her for an instant, but nearly anyone who drank a decent cup of coffee at school was there on a regular basis.

[ShadowDragon8685]

"Um... No, I don't. And for that matter, we might to meet somewhere more... Private? Somewhere more under our control," Zoé suggests.

[Ziathra]

Graciana belatedly lets go of Zoé. She frowns a little as she thinks.

“Mom's been after me to make friends at school, but I don't think we can meet up at my place. Not if you don't want her to hear everything. How about a corporate park? Aztechnology has a nice one.”

[Vegas]

Daiyu shrugged and then nodded.

"It was just a suggestion and I didn't want to intrude on your home life. But if you think your aunt won't care or even might be cool with it that'll work too."

She had forgotten half the group was basically new to the school and likely didn't know all the traditional haunts.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Zoé hugged Graciana to cheer her up, and seems to have lightened her own spirits in the process. She smiles, stepping back from the taller latina, and looking to Daiyu, giggling.

"Are you kidding me? My aunt would be ecstatic if I had friends over. That would imply that I had made friends here."

Zoé loops her arm around the very tall Chinese elf's waist, and starts towards her bike, while she searches for Graciana's commlink, to send her a message.

@Hex, Hop, Daiyu, Graciana [Liara]: Hey, girls (and Hop; sorry, but you're literally and figuratively the odd-man-out in this group,) I'm sending you an address. Do not go there on foot. Either drive your car/bike/whatever into the underground garage (passcode for guests to follow), or take a cab to the curb and walk straight in, as fast as you can. It's a great building, but it's a really rough neighborhood and there's a gang zone DMZ across the street. Oh, and send me an idea what kind of munchies you like and I'll have the apartment order some before we arrive. Otherwise, well... I hope you like Earl Grey tea, rice balls/cheap sushi and Sugar Bombs.

Zoé heads to her bike, with Daiyu in tow, and climbs on; Daiyu can use the sidecar. After that, she'll have some explaining to do to her boss, and she'll probably have to drop Daiyu at the corner and have her walk into the shop on foot. She'll likely have to claim to her boss that she needed the restroom of a gas station or truck stop urgently, and was on for quite a while, but is feeling good now. Then she'll spend another hour and a half running pies, before she can collect Daiyu and head for her doss in southern Downtown.

[Ziathra]

Graciana actually manages a smile. She nods and gets back into her truck. Any member of the group who asks can get a ride. If Graciana was supposed to do things on the way home, she does them.

Once she gets home, she changes into clean clothes to do chores in, then gets her chores done. One of those is getting what she wore to train attack dogs washed and dried. In fact, Graciana will be an angel this afternoon, so when she tells her mother she made a friend at school today and wants to go over to her house, Graciana won't get crap.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Half an hour after getting off work, and after thankfully not getting too much shit from the break she took in the middle of a piddly three-hour shift, Zoé motors up a street downtown, with Daiyu in the sidecar of her bike.

While it isn't exactly the barrens, it's pretty clear that at some point, someone tried to gentrify this neighborhood and failed. Most of it remains older low-rises, with new bits of street infrastructure all over the place.

"From what I understand, they were trying to fix this up back in the early sixties," Zoé explains to Daiyu as the whisper-quiet electric monowheel rides up the street. "Then the Crash hit. Only one building was standing... But it stayed up." She pulls up to the curb at the front of a building which spears into the gloomy evening sky like a tower of light; bereft of the city's ubiquitous Wizard of Oz themed "Emerald City" AR sculpting, the Hylonome building stands proud on its own merits. The building's architecture appears to be some kind of fusion of classic North American, Baroque, and retrofuturistic, having heavy, ornate and irregular sidings climbing up the corners and stretching semi-organically across the layer of amber-hued glass, etched with white lines in what appears to be some kind of approximation of ancient circuitry.

The front of the building is set back from the curb, and features a semi-circle terrace of fountain spouts and greenery, with a statue in the middle of the euphemistic "courtyard." The statue is of a female centaur - the classical kind with a human head - completely bare and with her breasts, nipples and all, rendered in exquisite detail. "Look under her tail if you dare," Zoé teases Daiyu - the centauress has a bow and is wearing a quiver, which has an arrow nocked and pointing skyward. Prominent warnings, both in AR and visible light, warn that automated security measures will be deployed with zero warning and zero tolerance against graffiti artists and other vandals. That might explain why a luxury building standing right across from a derilect row of industrial lots is completely unmolested, even when the shopfronts to the left and right of the building are tagged.

Zoé turns to drive down the alley beside the building, and drives onto a vehicle elevator, sized to accommodate vehicles of up to huge North American pickup trucks and SUVs. It lowers them into the underground carpark, and she drives to a spot which has a unit number attached to it, again both in a sign on the wall - and it's an ornate, fancy sign, not just numbers in paint - and AR.

Getting off, Zoé smiles, leading Daiyu to the elevator - nice wood, metal arm-rests. "The security in here is tight. Ex Lone Star, all of them, and they have some nice toys. Punks and gangers alike leave the place alone. It's a nice building, really. I'm not sure how it stays afloat, given some of the rather reasonable unit prices... But I'm sure I don't want to know. It's none of my business."

She grins as the elevator starts to rise; it takes a while. Clearly, Zoé's unit is high up; she leads Daiyu into the hallway, to one of the units. In here, they aren't numbered, either in AR or in the visible spectrum. The door slides out of her way as she approaches it, and walks in. Immediately after she does, a soft, feminine voice, clearly electronic, declares "Welcome home, Ms. Devois."

The interior is... Well, overwrought might be a good word. Baroque definitely applies; one enters theroom and then barely a meter and a half in front are a set of stairs leading down, the effect being that one who enters their apartment gets to feel like the lord of their domain. A number of heavy, slat-like sliders covering the windows rotate and begin to rise up, away from the hugely tall bay windows; not only do the windows tint everything amber, they appear to magnify the light coming from outside. Hexagonal lights at irregular heights hang from the ceiling, heavy affairs, many of them darkened. A quite modern kitchen is immediately to one's left, rather narrow but appointed for both manual and automated cooking, with a large fridge at the end.

"The furniture came with the place. My aunt could've had them store it all at an additional fee and bring in our own, but... Why argue with free stuff? Besides - I kind of like it." Zoé deposits her PPP armor on composite stand next to the door, then starts down the stairs; there's one main room, very, very tall and quite large; while the doorway would be a bit tight for a troll, he'd have no trouble feeling at home in the tall main room, though the ornate furniture available by default would probably not fit him. Wood features heavily in the interior appointments, or a startlingly good facsimile thereof: especially on the floor of the main room, in the furnishings (which include a glass-topped coffee table with candelabra and sofa, a huge workdesk and some matching chairs,) and heavily overwrought in the window-frames.

"They callled it a 'Cyber-Renascence architectural style," the small blue elf explains, walking to the door at the bottom of the stairs, unzipping her jumpsuit. She drops her backpack at the side of the door to the left, and peels out of her Urban Explorer to the waist, turning to smile at Daiyu, seemingly without nudity taboo. "Which, you know, would earn them points for inventiveness if they hadn't ripped it off wholesale from a flatscreen video game that was about ten years old at the time. C'mon."

She heads into the next room, which is a bedroom; it's fairly narrow, with an ornate wood armoire and a workdesk with a house terminal atop it. Zoé continues to strip out of her jumpsuit until she's fully nude, then changes into a set of fairly regular-looking clothes in various shades of coal gray; a tube-top and a pair of tight shorts. They seem to shimmer a bit, and if one observes closely, there's a subtle floral pattern in very-slightly-different shades of gray against them. She doesn't bother with shoes, and throws the jumpsuit in a metal drawer that extends from the bottom of the wall. It retracts, and a wooshing sound presumably carries it to be auto-laundered. Then she flops back on her bed, sitting atop it with her arms across her knees. "And that's about it. Small, I know, but I'm a small girl." The bed itself is very low to the floor, with a thick mattress atop a very short metal platform with headboard that arches up above the sleeper. A thick, plush teddy bear sits next to the blankets, one of the few child-like touches in an apartment that doesn't seem very much to match its occupant, yet which she seems pleased by. "The bathroom's in there," Zoé murmurs, nodding to her right; a wooden panel that appeared to be part of the wall slides to the side, revealing a bathroom that was quite modern circa 2064; a very tight standing-room only shower in the corner that appears to be appointed to basically hose the occupant off automatically, large sink and mirror occupying the wall, etcetera. "It's a good thing the shower's basically automated - step in, close your eyes and let the pulse-jets and soap-jets do their work. You could wash yourself, but anyone bulkier than you would be banging their elbows. Two might fit, if they were both razor-thin elf girls and didn't want to do much more than grope each other awkwardly."

She chuckles salaciously for a moment, then takes on an immediate blush when she seems to process what she just said. "I, er... I didn't mean to imply... N-Not that I wouldn't be, i-if... Oh, fuck." Chagrined, she raises her leg, biting her big toe for a moment, then sighing.

"Anyway... Yeah, my need for a brain-mouth filter aside -" Does anybody make that aug? "This is my doss. It's nothing compared to the house my folks had back in the 'burbs of Boston, but... Well, I like it. When Cynthia told me that there was a building that aped a place from one of the games I loved, I was hooked and didn't care to do any more shopping around. There's just a few flaws, but nothing major, I -"

A soft ringing interrupts her, and the screen on the desk lights up. It records an incoming commcall; Zoé places her finger to her lips, as the screen shows what's going on; incoming call to the house node, blocked caller info. The screen says that the outgoing volume is muted, and vid/trid are both disabled. A male voice issues out: "Hey, babe. I hear you've got it going on, so why don't you tell me what I can get for what kind of prices, huh? Come on, I need some joy tonight!

Zoé's look is one of utter contempt and disgust, but rather than disconnect the call, the screen indicates she unmuted the audio. The tiny elf speaks, but the voice of a massive, burly, gravelly troll emerges. "Hey, Sweetie. You come over here with five hundrend nuyen on a certified credstick, and boy, I will tie you up and pound your sweet ass all night long! Make it a thousand, and I might even use lube."

The screen indicates the call disconnects, and Zoé looks slightly perturbed, and disgusted. She sighs, switching back to her own voice. "That... Was one of them. For some reason I keep getting commcalls from people who think this is a different building altogether, and apparently a joygirl, prostitute, courtesan, whatever, lives in the same unit number in that building. The lease won't let me disconnect the CHN's comm functions or auto-ignore them, since the management uses it to send out notices. And even when the caller has the right building and right unit number, the schmuck who lived here before me was a gigantic cunt. I keep getting bill notices for all kinds of things, and those leeches refuse to believe I'm a sixteen-year-old elf rather than a thirty-five-year-old ork. And worse, she had a lifetime subscription to some kind of burly he-man lumberjack man-on-man porno delivery service, and I can't cancel it without the bitch's ID info. I swear I'm about ready to burn the porno mag's matrix node to the ground if I can't stop getting that drek every three days or so..."

She shakes her head. "But yeah! A few flaws, but find a place that doesn't have any flaws and you've found an ambush. Anyway, you hungry? I had snacks stocked, or we could have the autochef whip something up, or order out or whatever... Think we should order for everybody? What should we get?"

She smiles, brightly, adorably, her toes curling into her blanket as she tugs it away from its neatly-made state, into a curled-up bunker around herself, as she smiles up at Daiyu.

[Ziathra]

Graciana thinks, Beautiful, as she sees the building for the first time. Nicer than ours. I wonder what they've got planted in front?

She minds her instructions and does not go to check. Instead, she punches in the guest passcode and parks her truck in guest parking.

After thinking for a few minutes, she leaves her survival knife in the glove compartment. I should have worn nicer clothes, but she said it was a bad neighborhood.

Graciana is still wearing a silver-gray top, charcoal-gray cargo pants, black running shoes and a black jacket. They don't have dog hair on them, though. Now her black hair is only pulled back on the top of her head, allowing the rest of it to fall free. Gray feathers with green and pink iridescence have been worked into simple, yet pretty earrings in her ears.

Graciana pauses at the elevator and sends a message off to Zoé:

@Liara [Graciana]: Hi, I'm here! Which floor are you on? Which apartment are you in?

[ShadowDragon8685]

@Graciana [Liara]: Didn't I send that when I sent the code? Here. She sends Graciana an AR command, instead of a floor and unit number. The floors and units aren't marked. Just put that into the elevator's system and it'll give you an AR guide trail to follow to my door.

[Ziathra]

Graciana enters the elevator and carefully enters the AR command. When the elevator stops, she will follow the friendly AR and wind up on the inside of Zoé's door.

Definitely different. Just how rich is this aunt?

Aloud, she calls, "I'm here!"

[Ziathra]

Rewinding time just a little at Koekepan's request.....

As she drives over to Zoé's, Graciana reflects that she's going to need good workspace and a new place to live soon. Mom's probably going to throw me out when I get thrown out of school. I could train stray dogs to protect me, but I need space for them too and a safe place to stick the truck. I also want to be able to go to the grocery store without being robbed.

One search for large spaces later, Graciana's commlink tells her that she is going to be looking at shopping malls and supermarkets.

“Search police summaries for these locations,” Graciana instructs her commlink. “Find the names of any gangs associated with them. Tell me which gang is involved at which location. Wait, save that to a text file.”

I just hope there's someone else out there besides Local 69, the P-verts and the Running Motors. I think they're supposed to be getting into a war soon.

I can heal a little. That should be valuable to a gang. I can't heal them for free, because I'm poor, but I could give them a discount. I'll also need something big and nasty with me when I meet the gang to chat. Maybe the biggest earth elemental I can safely call up. The gang will want a present, I can tell. I should probably try to reach Papa Gotcha and ask him what whichever gang I wind up dealing with would like, besides heaps of nuyen.

And so things go until Graciana reaches Zoé's place. By the time Graciana gets home from Zoé's, the commlink will be ready to tell Graciana that she'll be talking to the Dealers, who have some lovely supermarkets and malls in their turf, including some with truck access unloading bays.

[Aria]

Hop sat quietly in Graciana's truck as it made its way to Liara's pad. He'd been grateful for the lift as Zoe/Hex had wanted to conduct her own business with Papa Gotcha and he hadn't wanted to take the bus again. He wasn't sure that this really classed as a bad neighbourhood but then he guessed it was a matter of perspective...

He supposed the building was nice but the whole thing jarred to his mind, overblown, some corpers idea of opulence no doubt. He found himself missing the eco tower back at Stillwater, before the mercs blew it to shit of course, it had been good there. Ah well, can't retrace the past, gotta deal with the now!

Tucking his Condor under one arm he followed Graciana up...

[Koekepan]

In the gathering dark of the September evening, there are few faces on the street outside the Hylonome building. The few which are there show little sign of interest in the small fortress which the building represents. As the largest light source in the area, it sends the shadows running away from it even as its lights shine off the clouds above.

[Vegas]

Daiyu was impressed with Zoé's apartment set up, far different than the austere "Zen" layout of her place that her parent's demanded. She was half listening to the running tour from Zoé and half paying attention to the apartment itself as they headed down into her bedroom.

Daiyu was anything but a prude, but she did cast her eyes to the floor as Zoé changed right in front of her, more out of respect than modesty. She leaned against the wall as the tiny blue Elf girl flopped onto her bed and proceeded to talk, perhaps a little too truthfully about the shower, which brought a genuine smirk to Daiyu's dark lips.

She was about to continue the entendré when Zoé silenced her for the incoming commcall on the terminal. It was all Daiyu could do to contain her laughter by the end and she found herself shaking her head at the explanation of why Zoé was even getting these kinds of calls in the first place. She moved and sank down into the Lotus position on the corner of Zoé's bed as they started to discuss snacks.

"I'm down for anything. Everyone's so convinced I starve myself, but the truth is quite the opposite. I eat like a Troll!" She laughed softly, almost musically as Graciana called down from upstairs.

"Looks like some of the gang is here..."

[ShadowDragon8685]

Zoé smiles warmly as Daiyu seems to take comfortably to her apartment, and she slides up, hugging the tall elf tightly, from behind, laying her head on Daiyu's shoulderblade. "I know it's a mag place... But I'm really glad to have friends to see it," she murmurs, then they hear Graciana's call. She calls back, "We're in the bedroom! Down the stairs on your right!"

Letting go of her hug, she grins, sliding away from the bed and standing up. "Well... I've had quite enough of pizza. Spicy?" She walks out to the main room - a very short elf girl with only subtle curves to distinguish her from a boy, wearing nothing but patterned shorts and a tube around her mostly-euphemistic breasts, smiling brightly up at Graciana, and Hop. "You guys want spicy, or not? I want spicy... I'm not sure if I want to go Asian or Aztec-Mex, though. Of course, that is, if you guys don't want spicy, we can do something else!"

[Ziathra]

By the time Zoé gets out there, Graciana is at the bottom of the stairs in the main room. She starts getting out of her black jacket, revealing that the silver-gray top has long sleeves and a high neckline.

“Thanks,” she replies, “I love spicy! I've missed Aztec food horribly since moving up here. Is there any chance you can get Aztec hot chocolate?”

[Audacity]

At Zed's Automotive Repair, a young ork argues with his father.

"Look, I'll make up the time tomorrow, alright? It's just an hour, pops, and I need to get going - Master Daniels is only visiting for the night, and I'm not going to get another chance to hear him talk about paracritters in security settings again. That Americar, on the other hand, isn't going ANYWHERE, anytime soon."

At a glance, the pair of them are nearly mirror images of each other. Both are dressed in the same shop coveralls, decorated with grease smudges and sporting similar levels of extensive tattooing around the arms and chest where their sleeves are rolled up. Only the signs of age set them apart, and it has clearly hit the elder hard. Though only barely into his forties, Tristan's father has the lines and wear on his face and body of a man ten years older. He gives his son a withering scowl.

"You'll make up the time tomorrow," he repeats with disdain, turning his head to spit. He gestures over at the shop foreman across the bay. "And what am I supposed to tell Pratchett in the meantime, huh? 'So sorry, boss, my son had to go play shadowrunner. Any chance you can tell the client oops, we made a mistake, we need to keep it an extra day?'" He arches an eyebrow at his son, daring a response. Tristan scowls and shakes his head, unable or unwilling to rise to that bait. His father takes it as victory and continues: "What you do on your own time is all well and good, Tris, but when you make a commitment to be here, you need to be HERE. This is your JOB, Tris, and even if that doesn't mean anything to you, it does to me. And your mother, and your brothers and sisters. We all depend on this job, and you know it. Your mother and I worked too damn hard to get this family out of the Barrens for you to..."

"Christ, dad, save me the tired old 'pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps' speech," Tristan interrupts with an exasperated sigh, running a dirty hand through dirty hair. Didn't this just beat all. After the crazy day at school, what with that ridiculous new survey and the mysterious invitation that came with it? Special guidance? Yeah, right. More like special exploitation. Nothing new under the sun there. And now this? Tristan wonders what his dad would think about the special guidance - just another distraction from work, probably. He hadn't told him about it yet, and probably wouldn't. No need to worry the old man for something that was probably just a gimmick.

With a gesture and a thought, he brings up the maintenance specs on the Americar, the repair estimate scrolling across his vision in glowing azure. One hour? The diagnosis had already been made by the more experienced techs in the shop earlier in the day. All he had to do was put the damn thing back together with the new part. If he had all the parts close at hand, and channeled a little mana into making his hands faster... Maybe he could still make the lecture afterall. He shot a quick message off to the dojo administrator: Hold my seat. I may be a few minutes late. and closed the link. Turning back to his father, he said, "Alright, I'll finish the heap before I go, but I can't stay until closing. Tell Pratchett I'll come in early tomorrow. Hand me that bolter."

[ShadowDragon8685]

Zoé leans back, into the bedroom, looking to Daiyu. "How about it, Daiyu? Is Aztex-Mex okay with you?" She nods up at Hop. "And you?"

@Rio [Liara]: Hey, are you coming, or what? And if you do, is Aztex-Mex okay with you?

Zoé starts a quick data search, cross-referencing for Aztex-Mex restaurants that will deliver to her building, have good authenticity, and won't break the bank. (She scores 3 hits.)

"Okay, so... C'mon." Zoé tugs an ornate chair from the windowside to the coffee table's edge, and sits on the sofa, in the middle. (This is a good image of her apartment's main room.) "Okay, so, we need to sort out how we're gonna do this, right? C'mon, campfire! Oh, and take your shoes off, will ya?" The "flames" on the candelabra flicker into life. Holographic, with heat elements in the candlesticks themselves.