Charm City [IC] Options

[sunnyside]

The father takes the thanks as directed towards himself and gives a nod back to both Selina and Bongo. "And thank you. I'll release the escrow account to our mutual friend as soon as Sophie wakes up. "

Nari turns back and gives Selina a smile and wave before focusing again on acquiring access to a comlink, somewhat dragging the dad along. Though he has to ask her to wait as he stops to untie the boat from the dock, and then to actually get the boat going. The nimble pumpjets letting the rather ungainly looking craft move with a fair bit of precision away from the docks.

Back in the virtual Angel says <<Ok. Uh. I'll see about keeping a sprite assigned for that. Uh. That'll limit my ability to do other sprite based things. Well, as in not at all, unless I do some extra stuff that maybe I should practice anyway. But maybe we're done for a while and that's fine? I don't need to sprits to do most things, but they're good company.... Well, they're OK company... They're company. >>

Tubesnake might not be the slickest silicon wrangler in cyberspace. But without time pressures he's making fine progress on fuzzing the girls faces in the video and names in the audio.

(OOC: I'm assuming Fiona is still onboard, probably by the mother and Sophia )

The goons around the docks are relaxing as the boat heads off and start turning back to gazing at the party boat.

[Thanee]

"Well, I guess it's time to finally change into something a bit more comfortable," Selina comments on a job well done.

Now, the parents still have a lot of work ahead of them, but they did what the could and all in all it was quite a successful endeavor.

Of course, Frank is still out there, and still doing nasty things to innocent people. Hopefully, with their interference, and whatever legal channels the parents might pursuit, that will change in the foreseeable future.

Fiona, as promised, stays with the parents for the time being. She is in her human form and keeps a close eye on Sophie's aura and the surrounding area.

[pbangarth]

As they head back to the vehicle, Bongo says to Selina, "Yeah, two sparrows pulled from the clutches of a vulture. Not bad for one night's work."

He muses on the nature of metaphor, and how he might have phrased that more appropriately. Bongo gets that way, sometimes.

[Koekepan]

<<Awright everybody, back on board and I'll get us back to your rides, and we can head to the safehouse for a nap, or repair and recovery time. Angel, I'll have the key footage for you in fifteen, maybe twenty, then you can do the tagging on it.>>

[pbangarth]

"I could use a nap," says Bongo as he settles into a seat.

[sunnyside]

It isn't so long, a little over an hour after Bongo and Selina entered the apartment, that the comlinks buzz with a message from Brewster <<Good news. I've received payment and I'm forwarding it to your accounts. I know that it's often considered more appropriate for a fixer to not want to know the details of what happened. However it sounds like you may have recorded much more than usual and...taken something of a different approach.

Besides the natural curiosity I believe good fixers are cursed with, it is important for us to understand our teams. Help me help you and all that. What I'm saying, is I'm very interested in how that went down, and what you think about it. You can message me separately as you feel like it.

You should have a little time to settle, but I have a feeling there will be more work than you can handle in this charming city. >>

(OOC: If Selina checks in with Fiona, there hasn't been a move on the auras yet. Though it hasn't been that long. Sophie woke up and is luckily still fairly dazes as she was panicking at first. Now she seems dazed and is staring up at the ceiling. Nari has been keeping away from folks by staying on the "roof" of the houseboat with the dive suit comlink setup having mumbled something about socials and streaks. )

[Thanee]

<< Hey Brewster! Thank you! I am not sure what you mean by 'different approach'. Isn't it pretty normal to try to do things without being detected? >>

Selina will give Brewster a quick rundown of how they approached the job and what they did to get the girls out of Frank's grasp, once it was clear they were at the right place. Basically what she told the parents, maybe a few more details about the drones, but hopefully Tubesnake can also fill in there.

<< Now, this Frank guy is the kind of person that no decent metahuman being wants to freely roam the streets, so maybe we can still do something about it with what we recorded about him. >>

[sunnyside]

Brewster calls in live <<I'm sure I'll agree with you. But I think I'll be able to react much more appropriately once you've walked me through what happened, possibly with visuals? This is the only sort of reality TV I'll tolerate at this hour.>>

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake speaks live instead of on-stream to the more socially-inclined folks around him, in between cutting TriD footage: ""You can tell Brewster that we just used drones for scouting ahead, so we knew what we were getting into. An ounce of caution is worth a pound of ammo, y'know? Also, we used the tac data we gathered to compromise internal systems, so it was good on matrix prep too.""

<<Angel, I got you some footage. Ready to tag it up?>>

Tubesnake offers Angel some tasty data pies to snack on.

[sunnyside]

Angel stutters as they reply, which is somewhat impressive over a neural link, and might have taken a conscious or subconscious use of a editing program. <<Uh. So I don't really feel comfortable annotating myself. Also I don't rely get the magic stuff, or, well, that was really weird right? Am I the only one that thought it was weird? I was hoping that Bongo and Selina could do that stuff.

Oh! I have an idea. If Brewster wants to watch it, let's just play what we have live, and Bongo and Selina can throw in commentary or text, and then I position the text or modify your voices for the final. But he could watch it go while we do it.>>

(OOC: If you don't want to put down a mound of text you could just indicate going along with that, and mostly if it's a matter of sharing everything you have versus trying to keep anything back. At most you have the drones and any recording stuff on your persons.)

[Koekepan]

<<Hell, I was just thinking you could do searches for people so you could tag the video with the list of people there, besides our rescued victims. Better for me to at least keep half an eye on the road, never mind what the autopilot is doing. But if someone else wants to do facial or gait analysis searches and tag participants in the video, feel free.>>

[pbangarth]

Bongo supplants Selena's report with his own, including any visuals his contact lenses recorded and his own recollection of details that his enhanced memory can provide, such as context for parts of an image.

[sunnyside]

Angel replies to Tubesnake while info from the feeds starts rolling. <<I can try to get info on people after the first pass. I have access IDs for those with comlinks, if they haven't changed them. I should be able to get names. I suppose that won't work for anybody without a comlink but the ones that weren't guests took off their headgear to sleep, so I can run image searches for that.


....I usually get sprites to help with that, but I'm tied up there to make sure we don't miss Nari's comlink firing up again. Anyway, you want to know as many as you can figure out right? >>

Otherwise things start playing. Putting different views together in a block of virtual trids that float around in the vision in AR, possibly more than Tubesnake would like depending on how much he trusts the van's pilot. Angel fast fowards through stuff like drones crawling around in sewer lines and vents adding tags to leave that out of the public version. However Brewster comments <<Nicely managed. I'm not sure how often that will work, but at least it might work some places where they aren't expecting it. >>

Angel slows down as the flyspy first scouts the party tagging people for IDing later.

The bit that requires particular care is when Frank is using magic on Nari. For Fiona it had been obvious. However in trid it's really hard to tell anything happened. Mostly because he isn't throwing enough force to create the obvious mana distortions high force spells require. His face might have shown more, and lips could have been read, if he wasn't wearing that mask.

There's more fast forwarding as the flyspy stayed in position to track comings and goings and the door versus the party, which entirely moved into the main room by the big window for quite some time.

It slows down again with more tagging as guests start leaving. Angel tags much of the moving around before going through Franks door to not be included, but again Brewster gets to see it.

Once people head into the room Angel tags any glimpse of any of Bongo or Selina to not be included, and makes notes to blur Sophie and Nari, for anonymity and modesty. She rewinds briefly to emphasize the "jail" door.

She puts question marks around the spirit leaving and messing around in the bathroom.

Brewster adds at the point <<Huh. I didn't know you could somehow get other's spirits to move without alerting the owner, I'll have to remember that.>>

Angel fast forwards through most of the content after getting out of the apartment and flags it to not be shared. Though she slows down to make sure Brewster catches the negotiations in front of the boat.

While Brewster keeps his voice mostly in check, anyone paying attention to him instead of just the feed would notice him getting mad. Which seems reasonable (OOC: But on an ?ettiquete? check threshold 2 someone could tell that he's getting far too upset, even given the content. Especially for a fixer. Something is triggering him. He doesn't menton it, and once the recording stops he quickly regains his composure. Or more accurately brings it within an expected and acceptable level of anger)

<< I assure you I'll help with Frank and friends. I might not even charge the parents for it. >>

<<Much>>

<<Give then options available, I'm impressed you managed to pull that off undetected as a new crew. I know leaving without anyone spotting you or violence is to many the gold standard of Shadowrunning. However it seems all too rare in practice. Especially in new teams. It only takes one person in your team to spoil it. Besides the many ways detection can occur.

You also seem to have taken quite the interest in an additional individual. Some fixers would chide you for the extra risk. But if you succeed you'll find me most accommodating. Also, this has...interesting implication for the future. That's a bit of a long story that I don't share. But let's just say I'm motivated to keep you around. >>

As he finishes he's slid back into his professional "cyber elf fixer" demeanor.

[pbangarth]

Bongo replies, << Glad to hear you are satisfied, Brewster. It is always best to get the job done without confrontation. I'm really proud to be joined with pros like Tubesnake and Selena and a crackerjack newbie like Angel. Everybody did their part, and so, as they say, the whole was better than the sum of the parts. >>

He checks his account and sees Brewster's deposit of 6000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) .

<<And, thanks for the prompt payment. Another good sign! >>

He makes a note to himself about checking Baltimore for music equipment shops.

[Koekepan]

<<Hey, Angel. You can keep it simple; just use the cut down version I handed you. I already blanked the girls as much as I could, and this is about identity more than a detailed indictment.>>

[sunnyside]

Angel replies to the group <<Ok! Right! I can use Tubesnakes take to get this all done pretty quick. >>

(OOC: I'm taking it that Tubesnakes cut is much shorter and leaves out all details of infiltration or of the operation to get the girls. Just the idea of frank casting spells, girls heading off, and then getting put into the room with the "jail" door. )

Brewster gives a nod. By the timing it's in response to Bongo, but in AR everyone would see it aimed at them. Angel takes it as aimed at her, not quite aligned with the whole AR/real world misalignment bit yet. She's in VR, and if everyone was in VR, than everything would line up right.

Brewster continues << Glad to hear the team is working well. Please do share the final file with me. I know some folks who would be interested in it. If there isn't anything else, I expect you could do with some rest. I'm around, and I have a feeling you'll be hearing from me again soon enough.>>

[Thanee]

<< Getting the other girl out wasn't much of a risk, and it was the right thing to do. And any fixer who would chide us for doing so can look for talent elsewhere, as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, derailing everything for something that wasn't part of the deal, now that would be chide-worthy. But we made the decision, because the risk was absolutely minimal. Good thing to know, you got your heart in the right place there, Brewster. Appreciate it. >> Selina comments.

<< Also, thanks to everyone else involved! We really did some great work here together! Time to celebrate... or get some well-earned rest, at least. >>

[pbangarth]

Bongo is used to late night gigs, so ending things at this time of the morning is right up his alley, but it has been a stressful night all the same. He welcomes the comfort of his bed and is not the least bothered by the thumpa thumpa from next door. he does wonder a bit about Willie.

Well, he can take care of himself.

[Koekepan]

Tubesnake lets the others quibble about the ins and outs of the mission, and deal with the data wrangling while he gets the van away.

""I reckon we want that video all over TriD in under six hours, to really put the heat on him. We can't sleep on that.""

[sunnyside]

Brewster perhaps raises an eyebrow just a bit in the comments about chiding and having to look for talent elsewhere. But he holds his pleasant expression, especially as Selina finishes her bit. <<Enjoy your celebration. Though I can't vouch for much in this city being safe aside from the safehouse. Just stay sharp my new chummers. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll get to my own celebrations of sorts. >>

At that Brewster wraps up the call.

It isn't very long before Angel chips in <<Still no pings on Nari's comlink, but I can see she's messing with her socials. Hopefully in smart ways. I also got the video ready to go. It was pretty easy merging the annotations with Tubesnake's cut. >>

[Thanee]

<< @Tubesnake: Let me know, if I can help somehow. >>

[Koekepan]

<<Yes, ma'am. And thank you too, Angel. This is how it breaks down: whichever of you, whoever has the best contacts with journalists, or is our best Face for reaching out to journos, you oughta take this TriD that Angel just annotated and spread it far and wide. Dump it on Matrix sites, especially ones about abuse. Do it anonymously, but do it lots of places so he can't cover any of 'em up. Between meat journos and Matrix, he'll be up to his ass in alligators in no time.>>

[sunnyside]

Angel replies <<Well, uh, I sort of don't have a lot of experience with knowing people. Really any people. But Brewster sounded like he might know some people.

He's really really good at knowing people.

Selina and Bongo seem good with people too, but didn't they just get here?


I'm good with Matrix stuff. I mean journalists have to talk to people right? Like, they should show up on Matrix searches right? To be professional? So many Brewster and I can handle it?>>

After Angel put that out there they realized they were taking responsibility on themselves. But they'd just been praised right. Maybe they were right about being able to do this. It was just moving data right?

Then, wondering about what happens next, Angel adds. <<Uh. So is this the part where you all start drinking? Should someone make a joke? Do we just go to sleep? On the trid shows this is like the end right? I don't know what should happen next. Just, you know, just let me know instead of assuming I know. >>

[Thanee]

<< @Tubesnake: Well, I do not know any journalists at all. And, yeah, don't know a whole lot of people around here overall. But, as Angel pointed out, it might be possible to find some contact info in the Matrix. And then maybe go from there... happy to talk to someone and explain what it is all about, if they are willing to listen. >>

<< @Angel: Close enough, but that's not how it always works. Getting some sleep sounds pretty good, though. We have been up for quite some time now. >>

[pbangarth]

Bongo responds before turning in. << Don't need to know any journalists. Just dump the file into every newscorp's 'letters to the editor' box and every journalist's personal inbox. All you need is one hungry storyteller to take the ball and run with it. With all the evidence, somebody is going to bite. >>