Charm City [IC] Options

[Thanee]

"Well, a perfect fit can only be perfect, if there is no compromise. You can only ever have one of the two."

Selina laughs, as he grimaces through the shock of the heavy liqueur.

"What is that stuff? Not sure I can stomach that. I guess, I can try a sip, but don't think I can manage a full glass of that..."


"Anyways, unlike me, you have been here many times, I imagine. Have you been to the floor upstairs? I have only heard some rather vague rumors about what they offer there. To be honest, that mystery has piqued my curiosity a bit. I'm really like a cat, if it comes to that. Always curious about everything."

[pbangarth]

Bongo replies to the wink, << After the set, I'll buy you a drink, and we can chat.>>

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake nods to himself as the toxins do their work. It's a dirty job, and one that he would have done with the sniperlegs bots, but who needed gunfire attracting attention? Not him, that's who. He reels the cables in, and has the bots either crawl back on their own, or help the damaged back.

While he does this cleanup work, he sends out a group message: <<Hey y'all, I got the critters whacked. I'm ready to set up a relay node to fix the comms, but anybody want to tell me what they need to get'r done? Angel, you want anything specific?>>

[Thanee]

<< @Tubesnake: Awesome! Good job! I have had my agent program collect some commlink data in here, maybe that can be useful to figure out some 'links that have been here at that night and possibly get some more information that way. I can have it sent over. >>

[sunnyside]

(OOC: Just a little bit of time here. I PMed Seth. After that I'll sort of play them for a bit but with them asking Tubesnake to walk her through things. then we can decide how to move forward long term later.)

She takes a little while reply to Bongo. AR is meant to be convenient, but not so convenient while performing. Eventually she manages to get a message back. "Let's hear some more and then see about talking away from the band when I can."

----------------

His public profile is quite brief. Just Mike, single, looking for women, VIP

He glances up at her from the swirling liquids. "Well, I wouldn't advise just having a shot. But that's what the old ritual is all about. It isn't just starting at swirling green liquids. If you fill it up to about here." He points to a spot on the glass. "Than you've got an alcoholic concentration more like a standard cocktail. If you'd like you could set down a second sugar cube and fill the glass up, than it'd be more like a fruity sweet drink. Just with a different flavor profile than strawberry or what have you. Give it a try if you never have."

He pauses a bit before continuing.

"I do like coming here, and I've been invited up to the third floor. I think with the whole prohibition thing they feel a need for having something actually prohibited. So there are strippers. Which isn't exactly prohibited, but I think there's a bit more too it, and let's say they aren't checking the IDs on the strippers. Not my scene, obviously as I'm down here. "

[pbangarth]

Bongo keeps singing, but now modifies his voice to sing a harmony to the band singer's melody.

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake takes the coiled cables down to his van, while the undamaged drones drag the damaged back as well. Oh well, he knows how to fix them and he can recycle the silicone rubber and the rest of it to rebuild them from the original moulds.

Once he's dumped his load in the van, he grabs a broom and goes back up to the scaffolding, bringing along a Fly-Spy as a discreet relay for Angel's needs. The broom he can use to clear up the dead beetles as well as accumulated trash on the scaffolding.

[sunnyside]

(OOC: With 6 hits to 5 ones Bongo does almost manage another glitch. FYI Selina got 3 net hits on Etiquette, which I tend to use for trying to get people talking outside of a con or negotiation, as well as just fitting in.)

Bongo is getting the hang of projecting from a crowd to the stage, and her smile is getting broader.

By the end of the song, she whispers something to the singer. He seems upset, but she quietly says "Renee can just synth my part for a couple songs, I'll be right back."

And then with the briefest of winks at Bongo she heads off stage towards the restrooms as the remaining two members go into the next song, with the decker adding her part in and the male singer taking up the center front of the stage.

------------------------

Tubesnake gets a message from Angel "I'm not sure what to do. I don't get things not all being interconnected. I can find your node easy, Could you lead the way?"

(OOC: I'm not sure how comfortable you are with hacking. You could choose to work together, with Angel handling the heavy lifting and cracking. Or you could just explain the physicality of accessing the coffee machine from the eye spy, and then having to detect something from there to get into the inside network. )

The mess on the roof would take Tubesnake a long while to clean up. But few would say he doesn't have plenty to do if they could see him.

[pbangarth]

Bongo follows. As he goes, he takes a look at how Selina is doing. She seems to be in control.

[Thanee]

Selina looks at the drink, still a little sceptical. "Alright, looks like I'll have to take your word on it."

"And afterwards, you show me what is going on upstairs? We don't have to stay long, or anything, I probably like it better here as well. Just curious, as I said. And how can I compare without having at least seen it once, right?"

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake whistles while he works - unfortunately, nothing like the sophisticated musical stylings inside the club, but a sort of cheery musical medley of nonsense picking up bits and pieces of pap from the last fifty years. Any words that might go along with them are surely invented, and entirely unexpurgated. A lot of the trash from scaffolding and roof alike is shoved judiciously down into an alleyway behind the building, next to a dumpster. Particularly big chunks are preceded with him carefully eyeing the surface to be sure that nobody is likely to be hurt.

In between bursts of whistling and the occasional: ""Look out below!"" he communicates with Angel.

<<OK, ma'am, your problem is that there are barriers between devices, so you can only follow a particular path. You got in the node, that's great, but you see from it there's a thing called JavaKaffa3.3? That's your gateway. If you can jump from the node into that, you'll see a bunch more stuff that you couldn't see before, and that's your playground.>>

He takes a moment to make sure that the Fly-Spy is nicely nestled in a huge expansion seam, expending no energy except for its relay comms. He adjusts his gloves, takes a firm grip on the broom, and shoves one of the dead jauchekaefer off a beam so that it crunches down near the mouth of the alleyway. Another way to tell people to steer clear, really.

[sunnyside]

(OOC: Hmmm. Angel really was built to crack systems from the matrix, they aren't so good with the real world electronic warfare stuff. Of course they can thread any program or call a sprite but still. I'll play them RAW for a while before giving them the bonus for build repair skills equivalent to that offered to regular hackers. Anyway they cracked the coffee machine easily enough but glitched trying to scan for the financial system and other interesting things which are in hidden mode. Glitching aside hey actually have easy access since they're dropping right into the third floor versus coming in from the outside. Tubesnake is actually pretty good at that part with a dice pool of 8 from AR.)

Angel sends Tubesnake a thumbs up emoji, and then goes quite for whole three seconds before getting back in Tubesnakes ear "Arrrgggh! There isn't anything there! I can get in easy enough, and I hacked a picture frame and a fan, and looked around for signals but there isn't anything. I can't do anything here. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) "


-------------------------------------------

She (Her name, if Bongo scans her open node, is Rose Griffith and she has an extensive profile up. From the pictures flying by she either had or does sing with bands other than RetroStack here). leads Bongo into the hallway with the bathrooms, swaying her small hips in her flapper dress and looking at him over her should, under her jet black up do. However she doesn't go in and instead turns and gets close to him.


"I might still see about getting that drink when the set is done, but I didn't want you getting caught up in something else. How are you doing that thing? Where it seemed like only I could hear you? Actually maybe what I really want to know, since I should get back soon, is if you'd be interested in seeing if we might be able to make some music together? "

=-------------

Mike look confused at Selina, and leans back clearly confused. Taking a sip of the sweetened and diluted absinth gives him a little time to saver and think. Then he seems to put things together in a way satisfactory to him and he waves a hand at her briefly. "Ah! The cat thing. Just too curious, aren't you? Or maybe into all that? Well, if you really really want to find out, I'm sure I could arrange something.

Even if it isn't quite to your taste we could get out of here and find something more to your likin. Like the saying goes. "

He pauses a moment for effect

"Curiosity killed the cat.. but satisfaction brought it back!"

At that last bit he raises his glass in a toast.

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake frowns, and pauses in his detritus removal. He clips on his second safety line and lets the broom dangle from a lanyard on his harness while he brings up the working display in his goggles.

<<Hang on a second there, ma'am, let me see what I can get from your pet coffee machine.>>

[ Spoiler ]

Scanning for nodes: 8d6t5 2

<<Here, does this help? Figure the hardware ain't the greatest. Let me send you the list of items.>>

Tubesnake quickly extracts the scan list from his interface, and offers the blob to Angel for her own purposes. Then, back to work scrubbing a stubborn patch of decomposed bat dung and mushrooms off a corner of a girder.

[pbangarth]

Bongo smiles a Bongo smile and moves a little closer. "Nothing would please me more than to make ... music with you, Rose. Here's some of the things I have done." He makes available the bio of Bongo Slade the musician from Toronto.

"The thing I do with my voice is a talent I have. I have a little Magic working for me. It's come in handy in some performances, and in some scrapes I've encountered in my other life. Funny you should mention getting caught up, because I and my co-workers are here tonight looking for a lost girl. Her family thinks she's in trouble. She was seen here and we came to get leads. I figured someone on stage might have had a look at her and seen who she was with.

"Then, well, " He gently returns an errant lock of her hair to its place. " Then I saw and heard you, and I got caught up."

[sunnyside]

(OOC: So keeping with the general 4th edition trend of hackers being present, scanning is only a complex action when you're there in person and can declare where you expect a hidden node to be (such as a drone or camera). It's an extended test with 1 combat turn duration for a general scan., but I'll let Tubesnake buy hits after their initial respectable roll. It takes a total of eight combat turns, but scanning is passive and the spider isn't keeping an eye on the coffee machine.)

Angel sends another smiley after Tubesnake sends over the information.

A few seconds later as Tubesnake sends some detrius down he startles a group of drunk women in short black dresses that had moved into the ally. They look over and see the Jauchekafers bodies and start screaming. At about the same time Tubesnake gets a frustrated Angel in his ear again. "I hacked the two hidden nodes you found right away after a little threading. I got into somebodies comlink and some main server. There's all sorts of financial information and stuff in the server, but it's just boring inconography and data and everything is listed by things like table or server numbers instead of pictures I can't do anything with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) "

(Tubesnake would know there's probably something somewhere that has the table layouts. However Selina is sitting at the table in question, which has a sign by the stairs leading down to it that says "Table 17").

-------------------

The club is full of all sorts of amusements. In poor Rose's case her face clearly shows how Bongo is sender her on an emotional rollercoaster ride. At first she seems very enthused looking at his bio even moreso once she gets to some of the location info. "Ah! So you're new in town! Not here for a gig either I take it? "

Then things plunge downward as she hears he's here looking for some other girl. But just as her mouth was starting to form a hard "F" Bongo switches things up again and she blushes.

"Ah. That makes more sense. I'd have been upset with you emphasizing "My gal" like that earlier if the gal wasn't me."

(OOC: Remember that glitch?)

"I guess I can see if I can help you with your other thing over that drink you promised. " She gives him a light touch on his nose and starts back towards the band.

[Koekepan]

<<I gotcha, ma'am. All you need is a reference for server and table numbers. They have to have it, if only for scheduling their staff and tip payouts, but also probably for kitchen and bar reference usage. What you are looking for is a lookup table that you can probably find in the layout section of their application configuration. Those are usually graphic so that the dullest manager or maitre d'table can set up a map without having their hand held. It's in there - you just have to find it. Another place you might find that is in lighting controls, where they can optionally dim certain tables for shows or whatever. If they have security cameras online, chances are they also have table visibility setups there. If the servers have their own 'links for the house application, I betcha that's listed in there too. Make a note of the financials you find, because they might leave clues to big activities there, once we have the tables sorted.>>

Tubesnake waits with the broom, rather than pushing more detritus onto the poor shocked women, and takes the time while they calm themselves down to send off his message to Angel.

[pbangarth]

In answer to Rose's question, Bongo replies, "Not looking for a gig tonight, but I rarely refuse a sit in for some percussion. Gigs might come once I am settled in town."

He waits a minute or two, so as not to be seen to be too involved with Rose coming back from the hallway, and then returns to the main room. He glances around to see how Selina is doing.

[sunnyside]

Over the audio link Tubesnake hears Angel say "thanks" But without a lot of confidence followed by some frustrated humming sounds. Then they say "Ah! I'll make a data friend! They'll know what to do!"

This time Tubesnake gets a while to work before Angel is back in Tubesnakes ear and this time she's broadcasting to the group "It's Frank Torres! That's the guy. I even have his address. It's some uptown place to the North. My map app says it's a 21 minute walk from here. I guess there's all sorts of other stuff in the business server, and the guys comlink. Oh yeah, I had to hack the comlink of the guy that was sitting with Frank and Sophie, turns out he was the one that bought the table, but he didn't change his access ID since then and was online. Then I figure out to look and there were messages and things on there where he used Frank's name, and Frank can be found in a public search. And I managed it myself....well, the sprite did most of it, but I compiled them so it counts..."

She's obviously proud of herself, even if her speech trails off as she gets distracted.

(OOC: Angel dropped their sustained exploit thread to better summon a resonance 5 data sprite to manage some of stuff they found frustrating. Picked up 1 physical damage getting a hair overconfident threading a new boost for their exploit program. Also it feels like the matrix ought to be green.)

-----------------------------------

Rose says over her shoulder "Tommy probably wouldn't like that. But if you like trouble I'd tell him you're a friend and let you in on a song...if you like trouble." She smiles and heads back to the stage.

As Bongo heads out to the dance floor he hears Angel's news.

[pbangarth]

Bongo chimes in on the matrix chat. "Great work, Angel. So what's the plan? Should we head to Frank's place and check him out, or what? If we're sticking around, I have an opportunity to stir up some fun and trouble here." He adds a few images and emojis (Yes, old tech!) to calm any fears that he might get distracted.

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake takes a deep breath, and stretches now that he's finished enough cleaning to look plausible. He takes his broom and starts back.

<<All done then, ma'am? Shall I take the relay back again?>>

[sunnyside]

Angel replies back to the group "So the business node is going to the outside from here, so I can access it without the coffee link, so I should be good without it! However right now I have access to the business node, and the two commlinks. If I clean my tracks I might have to hack into them again, but that's pretty easy for me as long as they don't go changing their access IDs. Is there anything anybody else would like to know?"

(OOC: Tubesnake knows more about the real world aspects of the matrix than Angel does. If you remove the eye spy she'll still be connected, but if a spider realizes they're outclassed Tubesnake would guess there is probably a gateway the club is using that could be shut down, which would dump angel. Though as long nobody gets suspicious, or blows up the server room or something Angel should be fine)

[Koekepan]

<<Awright, ma'am, but if you aren't sneaky enough and they cut things off, I can set up a relay again. Just keep me informed, right?>>

Tubesnake continues wrapping up his tools, including the Fly-Spy. It's not as if he couldn't get it back up there in seconds.

[Thanee]

<< So, this Frank Torres guy has paid for the table where the picture with Sophia was taken during that night? Great work, Angel! And Tubesnake, too, of course! Team effort. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) >>

<< I will check out what is going on upstairs. Probably not quite legal what they are doing there. I don't think I will stay long, though. >>


Selina also raises her glass. She is curious about how that drink tastes like, after all, and hopefully it really isn't too bad.

"Santé!"

[pbangarth]

Bongo wanders slowly towards the stairs, nodding to Rose and taking a good look at the guy handling the synthed percussion, sizing him up. For, like, later, yo?

[sunnyside]

(OOC: No idea what you or your character would think of absinth if you've never had it. But it's got a fair bit of sugar and water in it now after dissolving the sugar cube.)

Shortly after exclaiming "Santé!" Selina notices Mike slips away, probably using AR for just a moment. But he smiles when he comes back.

Selina has her own distractions though. Specifically Angel, again communicating with everyone "Yes...well no, Frank Torres is the guy with his arm over Sophia. The table was paid for by the other guy, whose comlink I hacked once I had the access ID....uh...I guess I didn't ask the data sprite what his name was, but I still have access to his comlink. "

Back at the table Mike finishes his drink and says "Well, we can go up to the third floor in a bit. But I believe you'd mentioned something about wanting to dance?"