So far Liara's intrusions go apparently unremarked. No sirens, no klaxons, no manifestations of all-encompassing dread or power.

So far, so good. Liara decides, for the sake of thoroughness, to poke the eyes out of Alpha and Bravo, despite the likelihood of those low-budget hall-monitors successfully detecting her being very low - after all, "very low" is not the same as "impossible," and she prefers "impossible."

The drones that Alpha and Bravo have manifest as are very small, too small to balance upon. Fortunately, she won't have to: she simply raises her left arm, pointing a golden targeting laser at the two drones, and activates her Disarm program, pulsing through them and sabotaging their Analyze programs. She goes for Alpha first.

4 IP

Are you fucking kidding me? Zoé finds herself quite irate at the length of time it takes to disarm the first IC's Analyze program, twice what it ought to have. Taking it almost as a challenge, she goes back for another shot at Bravo, an IC identical to Alpha in power.



Fuck my life, Zoé thinks to herself. For some reason, her commlink glitched out when she was disarming Bravo's Analyze program, and her Nuke program loaded itself and attempted to trigger instead. Launching a Nuke would unquestionably have garnered a lot of attention. Fortunately, the slowdown instigated by the Nuke's loading over her processor limit allowed her time to switch back to Disarm.

The tall, beautiful alien avatar stands at the top of the roof, simulated wind whipping over the crests on the top of her head, looking harried; the least of the two IC in the node had given her the most trouble, respectively.

After checking for alarms/traces, she takes a moment to enjoy a breather, and then begins the drudgery work of sifting the node for stealth icons. She finds it a little incredulous that security spiders for a public school system or IC of same would be operating in hidden mode, using a restricted hacking tool to hide from schoolchildren, but the unnervingness of this day has convinced her it's better safe than sorry.

She brings up her Analyze program as a window above her left forearm, and starts peering through it, scanning the node; sculpture, metaphor, icon and all the rest dissolve in the window into a hail of green symbols and matrix data, while anything detected as operating in stealth mode is highlighted in red symbols; and even after the window passes, their icons become visible to her and begin dripping red icanographic rain, and red trail-lines leading from her to their location point them out.

She makes several sweeps, until she is satisfied she has likely detected everything.



Satisfied that after ten passes of the whole node, she's either detected it or it isn't there, Liara pauses, sitting on a rooftop pipe to take stock of the icons she discovered, and begin analyzing them in depth.

Interesting .... there's something which looks ....

Wait a moment.

Its presentation is midway between a huge dirigible, and a whale, making it look like a blimp with a novelty shape, in Liara's view of her virtual world. It seems to inhale, and exhale. Streams of data move in, and are filtered, sifted, recording and monitoring. Gradually it exhales, and irrelevant garbage is spewed out.

It appears to be an agent of some substantial power which monitors all substantial activities, but does so from a hidden position. Where does the data go which it records? This isn't obvious.

On the other hand, it doesn't look like IC at all. It just sits around and feeds on the data streams.

What the fuck is that thing, Zoé thinks to herself. And how deep does this fucking rabbit hole go?

She'd been looking for security spiders or cloaked IC, and had expected to find some stealthed students. She just found some kind of unholy skywhale instead.

She's afraid to know... But on the other hand, she has to know. She begins by slowly and carefully Disarming its Stealth program, so it won't be able to resist her efforts to analyze it, pausing between each Disarm roll to buy two hits on Analyze to see if its stealth has been defeated.

IP 1: 1 hit
IP 2: 5 hits
IP 3: 5 hits
IP 4: 2 hits
IP 5: 0 hits (no glitch)

When its Stealth program has been disarmed, Zoé buys Analyze hits to determine the Agent's rating, what programs it has loaded and their ratings, the time it logged on, and its access rating on this node.

It only takes a few seconds before the skywhale, as she thinks of it, comes shimmering into full view. She sees now, clearly, that the eye patterning on the blimp's side has markings around it which suggest the sign of the Panopticon, and even as that realisation dawns on her so does another:

The firewall of the administrative system has vanished.

No, not in the sense that Liara looks upon a naked vista of administrative nodes and nexi, with agents and teachers hurrying hither and yon. Instead, it vanishes, as if that Matrix connection no longer exists.

That, and various buildings scroll marquees along their upper edges, declaring that they are rebooting.

F. M. L. Zoé feels a little nervous - but she hasn't been spotted yet. Those IC are literally incapable of seeing her now, and if there were any security spiders on the system, her scans would have found them.

She does, however, pause, to analyze the nexus, to determine if there's an alert or trace running.

There is no trace, she determines, as the buildings seem to collapse one by one as the nodes reboot.

No, neither is there any alert, as tiny steelworking robots work frenetically to build the nodes back up as they come back online. The city is reconstructing itself as things reboot.

Meanwhile, the great skywhale's mouth now opens wide, and its eye glows an eerie red. Smoky bits of data flow into it at an accelerating rate - it is clearly scanning the environment, and its tail thrashes up and down in slow motion. The firewall itself comes back, but now it seems much smoother, and while it has a black form, it seems to glow a deep red.

Better nip this in the bud before it finds me.

She quickly starts to disarm the Skywhale's Analyze program, so it can't analyze her; meanwhile, she sets her own Analyze program to alert her upon the entry of new icons.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 3 hits
IP 3: 2 hits
IP 4: 3 hits
IP 5: 2 hits

This motherhumper... She then carefully analyzes the Shywhale, to determine the Agent's rating, what programs it has loaded and their ratings, the time it logged on, and its access rating on this node.

Beating on the skywhale is tiring, and it takes punishment very well. While engaged in this diverting pursuit, Liara's analysis notifications warn her of multiple IC elements coming online, and her vision of her virtual world lights up as searchlights sweep across the dark cityscape.



The skywhale is rating 5. It's quite a beast. However, all it has loaded is Analysis - nothing else. At rating 5. It logged on at 12:01AM, and its access rating is a strictly read-only one. It has no power in this node, save that of auditing all activity.

This just gets better and better.

It takes Zoé several panic-inducing Matrix-moments to work out what happened; the Skywhale noticed her initially, then interpreted her vanishing from its logs when she Disarmed it as a reason to panic-shit itself. Having realized this, she skips into high gear. First thing's first; she opens up a commline to Rio, her avatar's head appear in an AR window over Rio's World of Wonderland game, speaking with a smooth, adult, womanly voice, but still labeled as her.

@Rio [Liara]: "Rio, hell's breaking loose in here. I just discovered a motherfucking Orwellian sky-whale, and if it saw me, it definitely saw you. No offense, my 'link's better. I've ducked the Skywhale now, but it re-launched the other IC. We need to make an omlette out of wherever it's dumping its logs to before someone driven by meat sees it."

Along with that, comes a transmission: authorization codes for a drone and many hacked rating 6 programs: Attack, Corrupt, Data Bomb, Decrypt, Defuse, Disarm, Exploit, Medic, Nuke, Sniffer, Spoof, Stealth, Track, ECCM, and Blackout. The drone is a micro-tapper bug.

@Rio [Liara]: "I sent you the codes to my micro-tapper. I'm going to try to get in here, but it's gonna be tricky. If you can get a physical access to the fiber trunks near the admin servers and open up a link, you could save a lot of trouble. The tapper's in a plastic Pokéball toy in my backpack's left top pocket, along with five meters of fiber cable. I'll tell Daiyu."

@Daiyu [Liara]: I'm giving Rio command codes for a drone. She may or may not be about to take a plastic ball and five meters of fiber-cable from my backpack. Don't give her hassle, but if there's anything you can do to give her or me good luck, now's the time.

She re-registers the incoming drones as targets Alpha through Foxtrot as before, and goes after them, attempting to disarm the Analyze programs of Delta through Foxtrot, in reverse order.

IP 1: 3
IP 2: 7

Foxtrot goes down quickly this time, thankfully, its searchlights unable to so much as catch a glimpse of Liara as she ducks and weaves through the suddenly-darkened city, free-running over pipes and beams and ducking behind huge HVAC units, aiming her disarmament beam. She pauses to determine if there's been any alerts/traces issued, and continues on.

IP 1: 4 hits
IP 2: 2 hits

So far, so good. With two of the three biggest lights in the sky now moot, Liara breaks cover, leaping up on a crane and dashing over it; she remote-disabled the last two, but this time she closes for a spiking. As the drone passes by underneath, she drops from the crane's boom to its payload, and from the payload she hangs down, dropping smoothly onto the top of Delta.

IP 1: 5 hits
IP 2: 4 hits

Peachy keen, Zoé thinks, going after the next target on her menu, well ahead of her schedule from last time, and pushes on, disarming Charlie.

IP 1: 5 hits
IP 2: 2 hits

Pressing on, Zoé feels she has the IC on the ropes, and double-checks to be sure that the education node is neither on alert, nor that there is a trace running. Then, assuming that neither is the case, she buys hits to Analyze the admin-sector node/nexus, looking for:

System, Firewall, Response, Signal, running programs, the number of subscribed icons, its alert status.

• System: 4
• Firewall: 4
• Response: 3
• Signal: 3
• Running Programs: 57 (Note: this is a Nexus, with much higher capacity than your typical commlink.)
• Subscribed icons: 322
• Alert status: elevated monitoring, but no active alert.

Liara comes to a stop in the 'trix, frowning. How is Rio going to find the admin node?

She Analyzes the admin node for its AID, and also to determine a full list of the programs it's running, which presumably will condense down into a simple "Program (rating) x (number)" list. Then she unloads her Purge 6 (Ergonomic, Mute) program and loads Scan 6 (Ergonomic, Mute), and swaps Armor 6 for Sniffer 6.

The armor cladding her alien avatar's body vanishes, leaving her in a cutoff tank-top and short hotpants, both pale red. She brings up her Scan program, searching the wireless activity in the school for the admin nexus's signature, to see if it's transmitting at all.

There are a couple of nexi in question.

The admin access nexus, which was the one in which Liara has been blinding IC, is one thing and obviously is transmitting. The administrative management nexus on the other hand, is behind the access nexus (which acts as a chokepoint) and is certainly not transmitting wirelessly. Doubtless it relies upon the access nexus for security and remote access authentication.

From what Liara can spot, the nexus is running many programs dedicated to dealing with various pupil databases, a rating 5 analyse, and a rating 5 browse, and a rating 5 scan programs.

Rio sets her Wonderland toon back to autopilot, intrigued. The Blinkies crack the school's more obvious nodes open constantly; after all this time, she wouldn't have thought they could miss something significant. Hard to believe that anyone would actually care about catching them at it, but today's been unusual already. Rio's natural twitchiness sets in. The thought of someone having data on her, any data, makes her skin crawl.

She shoots a reply off to Zoé. Top left pocket. I'm on it. Some people would ask why Zoé brought a tapper drone to school in the first place, or why she's borrowing her hot older sister's iconography. Rio, used to the oddities of the Blinkies, has accepted stranger things. She makes for the corner and retrieves the drone, avoiding making eye contact with anyone. Looking at the clever little crawler bug, she feels the familiar urge to start altering the registration. She could have so much fun with this. Squashing the urge with some difficulty, she shuffles out the door of the classroom and down the hall.

(Composure roll to resist Compulsion: 2 hits.)

It stands to reason that the admin servers are in the admin wing of the building, and they'll need air intake. Rio circles the building, staying close to the walls and looking behind herself constantly. If body language can scream, she's shouting 'I Am Guilty'. Hopefully no one notices. She comes to the vent she's looking for and, still glancing around guiltily, retrieves the little tapper drone from where it's been hiding inside her sleeve. She calls up her Command program and attaches the leash to the bug in AR, placing it carefully in the vent. Go, she tells it.

(Maneuver roll to pilot the drone through the vent: 3 hits.)

Rio watches through the drone's sensors as it crawls through the vent. Once inside, she orders it to look around, searching for the correct cable to tap. If it finds this, it has orders to initiate the tap.

(Drone perception roll to find the trunk: 3 hits, 4 hits.)

The correct cable isn't that hard, in some senses. The machine room of the school's administrative systems is neat, all by the book, and all the components are clearly marked according to standard label protocols.

A number of units have clearly been amalgamated to make up the multi-component, distributed nexus which is the main administrative system. It doesn't take long before the drone's tapper feasts hungrily on the cable, and the AR signal turns green: protocol activity established and verified. Right on the backbone.

Rio grins in satisfaction and opens a new AR window, inspecting her find. She shares the window with Zoé. @Liara [Rio]: I'm in. You wanted some kind of log dump? Calling up the paper hat of Stealth again and a simple origami tube of Analyze, she takes a look around the new node, searching for anything that might get the drop on her.

(Matrix Perception to Analyze Node: 4 hits, 3 hits, 1 hit.)

The internal admin nexus, which contains the data for the school's pupils, is a hefty rating 5 system. It is big, it is the newer of the two nexi in construction, and it has all those massive programs dealing with pupil activity, performance and management. It is also the one with those rating 5 analyse, browse and scan programs, which flutter and glance like talismanic papers against Rio's origami hat. She can feel the scan in particular pressing her hard.

@Rio [Liara]: "Oh, wow. That's... Quite a system there."

She logs on to the Admin Data Nexus, connecting through the connection to the Access Nexus. We need to find out where that skywhale is dumping its data to, she sends to Rio. And figure out why they singled us out to be fucked over. We need to go unseen to do that! Need to look for IC, and disarm the node's Analyze program.

She immediately begins Disarming the Node's own Analyze program.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 2 hits
IP 3: 6 hits

That went smoothly. Now convinced the node itself can't see her, Liara checks again for alerts or running traces, and if there are none, she checks for IC and unmasked security spiders.

Rio sets to work Disarming the Analyze program as well.

(Disarm rolls: 5 hits, 2 hits, 1 hit.)

The Analyze program is soon as blind as a bat to the two intruders, although the Scan is hunting back and forth like a shark, glancing off the stealth programs.

The nexus contains a vast amount of data, but of course a lot of it is old ,out of date, or incomplete because of stuff sloppily maintained on staff members' commlinks. Still, it is at least well arranged in databases on the nexus.

@Rio [Liara]: "We need to find that stupid skywhale's dump. There's so much data in here... Let's see."

Step 1: Disarm that Scanner while she's at it.

IP 1: 7 hits
IP 2: 4 hits

With the Scanner disabled, and feeling as if she had dodged a bullet somehow, Zoé bites her lip, and sets about analyzing the Skywhale's outgoing data stream and the node, to see if this is where is the Skywhale's data ends up, buying hits.

No problem on the log analysis, there's a great big data dump called LOGS, neatly divided into DAILY, LAST WEEK, ARCHIVE.

There are also lots of other bits and bobs. PERMANENT RECORDS, DISCIPLINARY RECORDS, MEDICAL RECORDS and so on are only a few of the many records on file.

No encryption whatsoever?

Zoé finds that a little curious, as she walks around the massive archive building that represents the data archives. She analyzes each of the logs to determine whether or not they have been sabotaged with data bombs or Corruption Bombs, scanning thoroughly; first pass buying two hits, then two scan passes.

DAILY SKYWHALE LOGS
Pass 1: 4
Pass 2: 4

LAST WEEK'S SKYWHALE LOGS
Pass 1: 1
Pass 2: 2

SKYWHALE ARCHIVES
Pass 1: 3
Pass 2: 3

PERMANENT RECORDS
Pass 1: 1
Pass 2: 2

DISCIPLINARY RECORDS
Pass 1: 2
Pass 2: 6

MEDICAL RECORDS
Pass 1: 4
Pass 2: 3

ACADEMIC RECORDS
Pass 1: 5
Pass 2: 2

All the records are squeaky clean.

Apparently the local administrative IT staff believe in candyball security: crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside. No data bombs, nothing in fact of any particular interest in security terms beyond the already disarmed programs.

All that on the outside and nothing on the inside? That's incredible, Zoé thinks to herself. Having ascertained the log files to be clean, she sends a message to Rio. This is unreal. The security on the outer nexus is like a fucking prison, and in here it's basically nonexistent. Should we teach them a lesson and burn the motherfucker to the ground, or install a backdoor for ourselves for later? Either way, give me a bit and I'll get access for us both.

She analyzes the ADMIN DATA node to determine if this is the node the Skywhale is running on (even if it's not active in here,) and to determine when data writes happen between the DAILY, WEEKLY and ARCHIVE logs, and when (or if) they're written to offnode backups of any sort. She also checks to see if there's any inactive (non-running, IE backup,) copies of the Skywhale agent on this node, or any other agents. Meanwhile, she begins the process of disarming the Firewall, now that the Analyze program has been disarmed.

After she spends a pass poking at it, she pauses to analyze the node's alert and trace status, and the status of the firewall's progress towards triggering an alarm for her disarmament versus how far she's gone to disarming it.

IP 1: 6 hits for Liara versus 1 for the node.

Finding that to be exceptionally in her favor to the point that it literally can't detect her, and as long as it hasn't started any restricted alerts issued on her or any unusual activity, she makes another poke at it.

IP 3: 3 hits for Liara versus 2 for the node.

Liara pauses again to ascertain her alert/trace status, and then ascertains the firewall's status. While it could theoretically still trigger an alert if things went very, very poorly for her and very well for it, she's almost got it disarmed, and once it's disarmed it's literally incapable of sounding an alarm on her.

@Rio [Liara]: Almost got this in the bag. By the way, why a stick figure?

IP 3: 2 hits for Liara versus 3 for the node.

Gleeful, Liara takes a moment to bask in her success. Now it's a mere formality for her to forcibly hack a flying admin account, as the node is literally incapable of noticing or taking action against her. She knows now the caliber of the security in here, and swaps her Defuse 6 program with Exploit 6, and Sniffer 6 for Track 6. Then she begins hacking.



IP 1: 4 hits
IP 2: 1 hit
IP 3: 4 hits
IP 4: 2 hits

Now that she has a brand-new Badmin account, Liara is the ADMIN DATA node A giddy rush runs through her as she cracks the toughest nut she's ever cracked. The first order of business: More scanning for stealthed icons.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 5 hits
IP 3: 3 hits
IP 4: 3 hits
IP 5: 2 hits
IP 6: 3 hits
IP 7: 3 hits
IP 8: 3 hits
IP 9: 1 hit
IP 10: 4 hits

This is, yes, the node on which the huge activity analysis agent is running, and Liara can even see its active access all the other small nodes which is, presumably, how it controls their panic shutdown response. Data is rolled up into WEEKLY every Sunday morning at 02:00, and the old WEEKLY is moved to ARCHIVE on the first of every month at 01:00. Very simple, very conventional.

The skywhale, as she thinks of it, doesn't have a latent copy here, but there is evidence of a regular backup procedure. To see the details, she'll need higher access.



No alerts, no problems, Liara is a blue, glowing ghost in the system.



Scanning for stealthed icons turns up precisely nothing. However, she does have an administrator's view of the details of scheduled backups, now that she cracked herself that access. The backups run daily incrementals at 05:00, apparently to a nexus managed by the Tacoma Education Authority, and complete backups once a week, on Saturday night at 23:00.

@ Rio [Liara]: Okay, we're in. The first order of business is upgrading Rio's access to Admin. The second order of business is copying the PERMANENT, DISCIPLINARY, MEDICAL and ACADEMIC records to her commlink. She's both in a hurry and greedy, so she grabs every single log that's currently in file, presuming it'll include every present user.

Once that operation is carried out, she swaps Decrypt 6 for Corrupt 6, targets the sections of Skywhale daily data dump that's been written since school opened until now, and Corrupts it, pausing after her first IP corrupting the file to Analyze the node for any changes in its status (such as alerts issued or traces launched.) If all is A-OK, she continues on and corrupts the file segment she wants scrambled three more times, and then buys two more hits to check the node status again.

IP 1 (Corrupt): 2 hits
IP 2 (Analyze): 4 hits
IP 3 (Corrupt): 1 hit
IP 4 (Corrupt): 2 hits
IP 5 (Corrupt): 5 hits

When the node status comes back and assuming nothing bad happens, Liara takes a moment to Analyze the data dump, looking to see if anything can be ascertained from it that points to the intrusions by Rio or herself. If the data dump is okay, she goes on to the next stage of the game: browsing the disciplinary and permanent records for any entries made since the morning's 5:00 transfer, looking through them to read what's been noted, who noted it, and especially if it was noted about her or anyone she's met today (specifically herself, Rio, Daiyu, Hop, and Colt.)

Copying the records of the pupils is no problem, but the security logs collected by the skywhale are truly massive. There will be a lot of copying, and a lot of room used on her commlink.

So far, so good.


It appears that Rio's earlier work was entirely unremarkable - it registers her commlink connecting to the access nexus, but that's effectively meaningless. So did hundreds of others.

Liara's earlier messing around with the whale was certainly noted, and correlated with her presence and activity with a 98% confidence level.

Nothing in the pupil records from this morning is of greater note than a few tardy reports, and a possible truancy - none of which applies to anyone Liara has met.

@ Liara [Rio]: Nice. Someday soon we're going to have to have a conversation about where exactly that comm came from. The stick figure is kind of a signature of mine. Can you handle those logs?

Pulling her oversized jacket closer around her shoulders, Rio dives back into the node. She grabs copies of PERMANENT RECORDS, DISCIPLINARY RECORDS, MEDICAL RECORDS and any other RECORDS she can get her hands on. Unable to resist the urge, she looks for her own name, trying to find the reason she was singled out as an incipient sociopath.

Nothing in those records suggests anything apparently sociopathic about Rio, as far as she can tell. Then again, with deep dives and data mining, who can tell?

Rio shivers. There will be time for more analysis later, when she's back inside out of the wind. @Liara [Rio]: Time to wrap it up in here. I don't want to get caught tapping this vent.

@Rio [Liara] I can try. You want "in and out like a ninja" or "fuck you, logs? What logs!" ... We should probably go with the "ninja" thing, though. Let's save "burn the motherfucker to the ground" for just after graduation.

Liara grabs copies of all [RECORDS] she can find, as well as the node's own data - a copy of the morning's datalog as recorded by the nexus, and a copy of the user accounts and password files. She can decrypt those later, but for now...

Rio [Liara]: Anyway, get out of there. I'll wrap up here, make and hide our accounts, and such, scrub the data trails clean. Can you decrypt those account files? I sent you something for it, I think.

Zoé sets about grabbing a copy of the Skywhale Panopticon agent and thoroughly quarantines it, to say nothing of not activating it - she and Rio ought to be able to find a good use for a deep datamining agent, or at least sell it for a few nuyen, but Rio will have to crack open its copy protection and the like, and probably rig it to remove its prohibitions against the illegal, as well as having checked it to be sure it's not going to be reporting back to them.

Her next step is to insert three different Backdoors (Reusable Exploits) into the system.



It takes her a matter of moments to accomplish this, and moves on to the next phase of her attack, but realizes after a moment it's going to take time she simply doesn't have, not if she's going to get any actual schoolwork done.

@Rio [Liara]: Okay, hit a snag here. It'll take me forever to hide the admin accounts. Realistically, probably half an hour for each account I have to hide. Maybe we'll come back to it after hours, but for the immediate future we're going to have to rely on sleazing in using legit accounts.

Instead, she deletes Rio's admin account, and moves on to the next step: Making a trio of hidden access points.



All told, that process takes 12 minutes. Zoé then sets about scrubbing the node data logs clean of any evidence they were ever there.

Attempt 1: 1 hit, insufficient
Attempt 2: 3 hits, success

With everything scrubbed, after a mild panic when she realized she'd forgotten to scrub the data trails of her scrubbing the data trails, she does it right, and moves back out to the access nexus. It's already mostly blinded to her, so she moves on again, locating Melinda's commlink. Zoé Analyzes it, to determine its Firewall and Analyze ratings.

Rio sends Zoé a brief image of a hand flashing a thumbs-up and exits the node, although she stays outdoors as the tap needs to remain in place. This time, she's too excited by the potential treasure trove she's sitting on to grumble about the weather. The gleeful adrenaline rush of a successful theft warms her, and her fingers practically dance in their AR gloves as she spreads her new files out across her field of vision. She sets to work with Analyze and Zoé's Decrypt program, running a little slower than it did on its owner's nova-hot commlink.

She sets the Decrypt program to run in the background and goes to work with Analyze, looking for recurring names, interesting keywords, and anything related to herself.

(Two combat turns worth of Decrypt rolls: 19 hits total.
Same length of Analyze rolls: 20 hits total.)

It doesn't take terribly long before Rio has all the passwords decrypted. Alas for node security - Rio pretty much owns the school's nexi now.

In her search for recurring themes, Rio doesn't discover much with respect to herself, but does discover a log of a recent exchange between the principal and someone in the Tacoma Education Authority:

• We cannot keep our performance numbers up if the Authority will do nothing to help us rectify pupil conduct.
• SETacPrinc
  

• The fact that you want increased disciplinary authority does not change our regulations. If the pupils are in VR then they should not be able to do anything meriting punishment. If they are not and refuse to enter VR, then you already have access to the enforcement team. Any gap between these two facts is something which reflects poorly on your staff's ability to monitor and control.
• TacEdAuCom
  

• The problem we have is not one we hope to solve with disciplinary authority - or not ours, at any rate. We want to get those children who are constitutionally unable or fundamentally unwilling to comply in the hands of those who can more appropriately meet their needs, and control their excesses.
• SETacPrinc
  

• We cannot jail children, or commit them to the reformatory system, without appropriate paperwork showing a clear pattern of malfeasance. You have repeatedly refused to give us that. Therefore, we appear to be at an impasse.
• TacEdAuCom
  

• We also requested psychiatric identification of those needing further care, to which your office made no response. If children can be classified as being in need of special assistance, then they can be removed as well. Please either provide the appropriate specialist, or we shall be forced to do so ourselves and leave your office to determine the redeployment of the children, away from this school.
• SETacPrinc
  

• We have identified an appropriate professional with a background suited to the purpose. She shall be on contract to us for six months, during which time she shall be given the duty of identifying all current delinquents, as well as all those whose likely future prospects tend them in the direction of activities which will not reflect well on the success and mission of all district schools. By redeploying these misfits and malcontents we shall not only vastly improve the statistics of the conventional schools, but the more marginal cases should improve the net results of the reformatory system as well. We hope that this meets with your approval.
• TacEdAuCom
  

• This is very welcome news, and not a moment too soon. This morning my desk was once more defiled by a biohazard which proved to be a blend of fecal matter and semen.
• SETacPrinc
  

Rio forwards this information to Zoé with an accompanying clip of an eye-rolling smiley face, disconnects the bug, and heads back inside gratefully. She gives the little drone a regretful look but slips it back in its Pokéball before heading back to her group of Blinkies, doing her best to look casual.

@Rio [Liara]: Fuck me... We're being shitboated? Labeled, so they can get their numbers up? Fuck our lives.
A moment later, she clarifies,
@ Rio [Liara]: I'm not sure where the word 'Shitboat' comes from, but my aunt tells me she heard her parents use it waaaaay back in the day, and it basically means preemptively painting someone a nice black color of drek in order to smear them. We need to figure out what do about this. Hopefully, Daiyu's been keeping that Hop guy on the line while we've been hacking - he's in here too. We need an action plan.

She's disconnected from the ADMIN - DATA nexus, and now is looking around the ADMIN - ACCESS nexus, suddenly more scared than she has been since... Well, since Lone Star came for her parents. The urge to call Cynthia and tell her to get the hell out of this school is strong - if she presents this evidence to her aunt, Cynthia would probably do it in person and immediately...

But that would leave Daiyu and Rio in the lurch. She just met them, but she likes them. Hop, she barely exchanged a few words with, but he doesn't seem like he deserves a fast ride on a shitboat.

@Rio [Liara]: I'm going to poke around something. Give me a bit... Something doesn't feel right.

She attacks Melinda Xavier's commlink; with its ratings, it should be virtual child's play. In her sculpting, Melinda's commlink takes the form of a rooftop house, a gleaming white eco-friendly thing, festooned with equipment and architectural features representing her various programs. One of those representations is a tiny hover-drone, similar to the much larger ones which represented IC. This one, however, is merely a remote-controlled spotlight, not an Agent in its own right. She climbs to the ledge of the rooftop, aiming her golden disarmament beam at the spotlight. It only takes an instant before the remote-controlled hover-spotlight's light no longer interacts with her.

IP 1: 4 hits

With her commlink's Analyze program disarmed, the free-running alien mantles the ledge, and hurries over to the next line of defense; a low fence around the perimeter of the house, simple metal but covered in amber, sticky stuff, like a fly-paper roll.

IP 1: 3 hits Vs. 1
IP 2: 5 hits vs. 0 (CRITICAL GLITCH!)

Liara pauses for a moment, generating a golden spike from her left forearm, slamming it into the nearest fence-post. The fence goes haywire, and she can suddenly hop right over it without it being able to stick to her at all.

Next comes the simple brutality of having her way with Melinda's commlink, Hacking it on the Fly, going for the only authorization possible on a commlink, the admin account.

IP 1: 4
IP 2: 3
IP 3: 7

It takes here mere moments to get in, gaining access to Melinda's commlink. She's in no mood for finesse here, and immediately assesses the commlink for active icons (Agents and personae.) Presuming she finds none worth mentioning (Obviously, she's here, and so is Melinda's own icon,) she begins scanning for other icons operating under the cover of stealth. It's rather akin to breaking into someone's home to search for other burglars and concealed defenders, bringing up her scanning program, golden light an scanlines playing over the house representing Melinda's commlink.

IP 1: 2
IP 2: 5
IP 3: 4
IP 4: 4
IP 5: 3
IP 6: 2
IP 7: 1
IP 8: 5
IP 9: 3
IP 10: 4

If that comes up nil, Liara will buy hits, Analyzing the commlink's subscriptions - the things it is subscribed to, and those subscribed to it.

Not a thing. Nothing whatsoever. What Liara sees is what she gets - a very simple little commlink with not so much as a fancy locked zone.

On the other hand, judging by what is here, it is being treated as strictly a work commlink, with very little personal material on it. A few cute icons, a little AR music, nothing else particularly personal.

This is beyond old-school. Either this woman misses the cyberterminal days... Or this link isn't one with the goodies.

Zoé is feeling paranoid. It can't be this easy, can it? She brings up her Analyze program again, playing it twice over the internal iconography of the data files she's after, golden light revealing green nonsense symbols raining down their surfaces: she begins with a filing cabinet full of manila folders, then moves to the comm-terminal. From there, she plays the golden scanlight over to a pile of envelopes that these days exist primarily as images in the public consciousness, and then lastly moves over to a wall terminal mounted below the security camera monitoring everything in the building.

All records and other files stored on the commlink (3, 3)
All contacts and commcall logs (5, 5)
All mail (4, 3)
All the commlink's data logs. (3, 2)

Hrm. From the outside, it looked like a house; in here it's more of an office.

Satisfied that the data isn't trapped, she clones it all to her own commlink, then she starts typing on the terminal, editing the data logs (buying hits) to erase any sign of her own presence.

That done, she turns, and bolts. She's spent quite enough time in these systems, and she dashes out of the building, logging out of Melinda's work-link. She continues her sprint to the edge of the building, and hails a skycab, which pulls over immediately, materializing literally out of thin air. She takes an action to log off, and the skycab flies her through the portal, back into the safety of her own commlink.


Once back in her own commlink, however, she begins Analyzing the data; all of the data. She takes a skycab in her own city to the private archives, where she's stored the information she's ripped off, and begins Browsing the data, for information relevant to what is going on; starting with the data she got from Melinda's commlink, then moving on to the data from the ADMIN - DATA nexus.

When she's done with that, she goes back to the secondary data from Melinda's work-link, its data logs, looking for information about where it's been, what other devices have spoken to it, what it's been connected to, where and when, and so forth and so on.

Zoé realizes unhappily that sifting the massive records from the nexus is going to be a job that's going to take awhile, probably an hour at least. So she puts it off for later, skims the records of those students who got singled out for the Melinda treatment, then analyzes Melinda's commlink's logs, finding nothing useful.

Annoyed, she gives it one last go, sifting the ADMIN - DATA records, looking specifically for communications involving Melinda, SETacPRINC, TacEdAuCom or especially more than one of the three, and pertaining to this student evaluation clusterfuck, especially as pertaining to any of the individual students. It only takes her two minutes, though she thinks that's a minute more than it ought to have taken.

(Since I was told over IRC to put this blop up...)

Zoé grows ever-the-more frustrated, despite the comfort of her own node. She shut off the wireless link, of course, and then set about setting her commlink back into a mode that it wouldn't register as having obviously illegal programs running. She dismissed her avatar's clothes, the tall alien working in her archives gloriously nude, as she sifted through the information available to her.

"Damn. This is frustrating," she speaks aloud to no-one, her avatar's voice smooth and warm. "Either they wiped most everything of note... Or most of what I'm looking for isn't here."

Without taking the time to do a full sift of the data, she won't be able to arrive at the criterion the staff and Melinda used to single her, Rio, Daiyu, Hop, Colt (though it doesn't matter as he's buggered off,) and her quick sifts reveal nothing - nothing terribly damning in terms of conversations involving Melinda, the principal or the controller of the Tacoma Education Authority beyond the one convo Rio already sussed out. She learns that Kittenburner is, as expected, a nauseating sadist whose problems should probably be cured with one round of 10mm caseless, taken cranially; breedorkgirl hates the Man and Drekboy likes to not only drek on the principal's desk, but then top it by having a wank atop it as well, downgrading him from "hero who did the thing we all wanted to do but observed too much decorum and knew too much shame to do" in her book to "fucking freako coprophilliac."

There isn't much interesting in terms of where Melinda's commlink has been. In fact, it was wiped clean by the Tacoma Educational Authority IT a few days ago, taken to her office, plugged into a terminal and hasn't moved a centimeter since. Its communications records were similarly unenlightening, containing nothing more than typical banal greetings.

The most "interesting" tidbit she can find so far aside from the one Rio found is that there was a discussion about increasing the emphasis on team sports, and whether that could save potential delinquents from a Life of Crime.


Unhappily, Zoé comes out of cold sim, and shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. She turns, and looks up at Daiyu, smiling; she leans up, hugging the Washout. "Thanks for holding me," she says, closing her eyes. "We need to talk later. We need to set up encryption, and I'm worried about your 'link's firewall," she whispers into Daiyu's ear. "And maybe that HoP guy."

Zoé closes her eyes, leaning back to get some classwork done. She's going to try and make it look like she's been doing good this day, and maybe get some satisfaction out of gym or Pokémon battling with Rio, but her heart's not in it.

Hop looked at the three girls, reading their nervousness, with no small trace of antagonism from the washout girl. It felt a little strange addressing pint sized blue aliens and their compadres but he wasn’t going to let them know that…

”Yeah, me and my sister are new here, thought I’d come and find the other newbies see if there was some common ground you know? Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude, but I’ll ping Anna, maybe she’ll be…I dunno, less intrusive? Perhaps you can look out for her, I can’t be there all the time and it’d be nice to know she has some friends here…dunno about the VR games, we play the Citadel, maybe we’ve met there…who knows…?”

Great Hop, real smooth, way to woo the ladies, Beth’d be laughing herself silly right now… but new people made him nervous and damned if he was going to apologise for it. He knew who he was and didn’t need some shitty assessment test to tell him that.

”So why the freak over the assessments? It’s just some bureaucratic crap isn’t it? Newbies getting profiled and all that to see how they’ll fit into the school image?”

…and then they were gone, diving off into their own little virtual worlds. He considered following them but judging by their gear he didn’t have a hope of catching them. Perhaps Beth would be up for a bit of mischief when she came back on later, he had no doubt she would breeze through their firewalls like they weren’t even there…

The parking lot outside Logger's, shortly before 4PM, is damp. Ancient, pebbly tarmac is rotting back to mud under the wheels of the heavy vehicles driven by the typical customer. The wind drives curtains of drizzle across the lot and the street outside. It is early yet, with few trucks and bikes around, and the weather makes everything look greyer and dingier than usual. The few AROs around seem yet more incongruous for all the drabness of the surroundings.

Papa Gotcha doesn't appear to be here just yet, but there is still time.

Zoé was flashy, there was simply no denying it. The girl seemed to revel in and it came naturally to her. Those who had gym with her could confirm that yes, the luminescent blue skin and the spots did, in fact, go all the way down. Her method of arriving and departing was flashy, even; when it was time to scream out, she went to the gym's locker room and changed, bundling up her dressCODE CYBERPIRATE outfit into her backpack and emerging wearing an Urban Explorer jumpsuit with a full SecureTECH PPP fitted, neither a sporting nor Urban Brawl style, but rather the bike racing model, complete with visored helmet.

One could be forgiven for wondering whether or not she was even capable of not looking like a space alien no matter what she wore. After school got out, she gave an encryption key to Rio and Daiyu, and hurried out to the school's student parking lot. Her wheels - well, she has a wheel. A Horizon-Doble Revolution with an attached sidecar in standard, glossy pink with with trim. The huge monowheel has an extra-black looking wheel, a large and powerful-looking searchlight is mounted on an automatic pivoting arm under the very top of the wheel, and the sensor suite has been augmented with an array of gadgets.

She'd sped off, promptly, but proved her ability to multi-task shortly thereafter.

@Rio, Daiyu, Hop [Liara]: Sorry I jetted like that, but I don't wanna be late for work. The boss would probably cut me a few minutes' slack, but I don't wanna push it. And Hop, sorry I was rude earlier. It's just.... Well, I think they're trying to label the kids who don't fit in. I dug into this Melinda Xavier person, she is not your friendly local high school guidance counselor. She's a criminal behavioral psychologist who's done a lot of work with the 'Lone Star Controlled Population Management Team', which it turns out is corpspeak for 'Prison Psychologists.' She's a psychiatrist of some flavor, but.... Well, look who we've been lumped with in being summoned before her:

Kittenburner: A kid who frankly needs to do everyone a favor and go play with a gang and get himself killed before he starts serial-raping and murdering people. This jackass is a textbook sociopath in the happening.
Drekboy: Every kid has probably thought about filing a deuce in the Principal's desktop inbox. When I first heard about it, I thought it was kind of heroic, in a disgusting way. Theeeeen I heard a rumor he had a fucking wank over it... This kid is touched in the head, and not by an angel, either. More like an angel's drunken, redneck cousin from "Down South," where it's "warm," if you catch my meaning. He's probably not violent, but I don't really want to associate or be associated in any way, shape, or form, with a fucking coprophiliac. (I meant a devil.)
BreedOrkGirl: She got pregnant just to take a stand against the Man and raise a stink about suppressing Orkish culture. I'm not sure she's a headcase, but she's definitely a hard-head. Did we invite her to this soiree? She probably ought to be here, she isn't terrifying, just an asshole par excellence.

I mean, a textbook sociopath, a kid who's... Well, fuck me if I know what Drekboy is, BOG is a hard case. (Getting pregnant as a teenager to celebrate your metatype because a lot of other ork girls get pregnant as teenagers? Dafuq was she thinking?) It looks like they're trying to weed out the headcases, hardcases, and anyone else they can paste a label on.

She sighed in her helmet, as she rolled down the road, and sends another message. Anyway, I work at Street Pizza. She sends them the code number of the pizza joint. It's a run for me, but in our service area, barely. Call in an order to be delivered to Logger's parking lot around, oh... 3:40 or so. The boss's lazy son also does deliveries. If he tries to give it to him... Well, I'll handle it. If you actually intend to eat what you order, make sure you say "I have a soy allergy," or the cheap bastard will substitute soy no matter if you say to use the real thing or not. Today's specials are hot hoagies on mycoprotein torpedo rolls and seafood bisque, which has actual seafood in it if you're willing to stretch the definition of actual seafood to include tank-raised krill. Order me an everything bagel with cream cheese and seaweed; toasted hot, and a tube of Thunderblast Red... And fuck it, a box of NERPS. Oh - and whatever you do order something out there, the total needs to be at least 30 or he'll just throw it in the "oops, deliveryguy got mugged" pile. (Check the fine print on the order site, deliveries are not guaranteed. What a putz.) Either pay in advance or don't plan to stiff me, either; if I try to claim I was stiffed, he'll demand the feeds from my bike and my eyes, and that could get messy.

After she finishes that, she continues on her route to her place of employment, turning her head at the one place she always drives past when she drives down a seedy road. @Rio [Liara]: Hey, you know a place called the Cathode Glow? I looked it up in a guidebook to Seattle and it says it's an old-school techno-wiz bar. I see it every day I go into work, and I really wanna check it out. Have you ever been?


After that, it's settling in to work shuttling pizzas, hoagies and other things around Tacoma with her Predator (loaded with Stick 'n Shock) on the bike where she can grab it fast, in front of her, until the appointed time - and the appointed delivery order.

Rio sets her classwork scripts running again and plays World of Wonderland for the rest of the day, trying to control her excitement through virtual bloodletting. She lives fairly close to school; when the end of the end of the school day rolls around, she has time to get her clunky old sedan home and pick up the rest of her 'gear', such as it is. She's been preparing for this day for months. There's not much; a duffel bag, easily slung over her shoulder, contains the little crawler drone Rio carries everywhere, a surveillance Flying Eye, and the pièce de résistance, her stolen Knight Errant Ford LEBD-1 combat drone, carefully restored from the lightning strike that took it out of commission. There's also a gun hidden under her bed, a little Barrens Special thrown in as a freebie by Tony the Mafia chop shop guy. Rio doesn't even know how to load it. After a moment of hesitation, she scoops it into the duffel as well.

She slaves her real comm to the junk Meta Link and, holding her breath, fires up her fake SIN for the very first time. Okay, 'Sasha Fujioka'. Don't screw this up. Even her ancient car is Gridlink-enabled; Rio sets it to autopilot and spends the drive to Logger's going over the data from the school's admin node, organizing and collating for the most interesting fragments.

Arriving, Rio gets out of the car and takes a look around the parking lot. Seeing no sign of their contact, she takes a moment to order Zoé's bagel and a couple of large pineapple pizzas, to be delivered at 4:00, and shoots a message off to Zoé. @Liara [Sasha]: This is Rio. Actually Hex for the purposes of the immediate future, I guess. I put the order in, don't be late. I've been in the Cathode Glow a couple of times, but it's super old-school, like, actual gaming consoles and stuff. Not my idea of a good time. I hear the owner is nice, though.

(Perception to look around the parking lot: 4 hits.)

Zoé is on her way back from an easy-breezy run when Rio responds, and fires a quick message back off at her.

@Sasha [Liara]: Really? Fair enough... And 'Hex'? Why 'Hex' - trying out a new handle? Anyway, I won't be. May be cutting it close, though. Good thing the autochefs are stocked and work fast, and... Ah fuck.

Zoé pulls her bike up in the parking lot to see the owner's son's car, a Hyundai Shin-Hyung. For a big order, she knew he'd give it to his son - not because of the practical reason that the sportsy sedan had more room than her bike's sidecar with its closeable lid, but because a big order meant the orderer was more likely to give a big tip.

Fortunately, she saw the owner of the car inside the shop, talking with his old man at the counter. Need to get rid of him... No I don't. I just need to get rid of his car. No ride, no delivery, no tips - looks like it has to go by bike, and not even her nepotistic, asshole boss could dare justify trying to tell her to let his son use her personal bike to make a delivery.

Just as she was drawing up a plan to make the son's car unavailable, however, he took a call on his link, as Zoé was entering the shop. His face lit up, and he rushed out of the shop, heading to his car.

She blinked at him, looking as the young man hurried to the driver's door, got in and sped away. "What was that about," she asks his father, who lets out a sigh. "his girl," the older man wistfully sighs. "Her last class of the day was canceled, and she called him to pick her up. He's stupid for her... Although I can't see what in the world she sees in him. Young love, eh?"

Zoé blinked, and shrugged. There was nobody sitting down to eat a slice or a steak (or a facsimilie thereof) in the shop at present. "Ah... So, if I needed off for an hour to go see a -" "No." He cuts her off gruffly. "You're not trying to butter up a girl to marry well, he is. Besides, you're not related to me."

Nice to see that honesty isn't completely dead in the Sixth World. Integrity's dead, though, and nepotism was last seen near it's body holding a gun. Justice is hoarding ammo in a compound in the woods, and fairness is missing, rumored to have fled to the hills to become a hermit.

"Right," Zoé says, trying to withhold the sarcastic tone in her voice. "Besides," he continues, "big order coming up. It's a ride and Logger's isn't a great place, but that's the price you pay for those chances at great tips, eh?"

Oh yeah, sure. Funny how we all have to split our tips equally, but your son's share of the split is only ever about half ours. Either he's the rudest asshole who never gets tipped, or you let him skim before the split and take his split, too. I'd lay even odds.

With the son out of the way, driving up to the University of Washington, up Downtown, she had only to wait for the order to be up to pack it up, place the insulated sack into her bike's sidecar, close the lid, and drive out to Logger's, arriving right on the crack of 3:57:23.

A bus halfway down the block grunts as its suspension compresses to let a few people out. Among them is Daiyu, dressed now more appropriately for the weather. A couple of nervous glances left and right, perhaps, and then she briskly walks over to Logger's, head a bit down, shoulders hunched against the wind.

Zoé does a double-take as she drives her monowheel past the girl on the street; in concession to the weather, the rake is gone, replaced by an elf teenager in a black plastic raincoat that could be anybody. If not for her AR popping up Daiyu as a contact, she never would have looked twice.

Zoé parks the monowheel inside the lot, at a parking stop with a stretch of rough gravel and broken sidewalk beyond it. A low-slung sports car like her boss's son's prized Shin-Hyung would have grounched and beached on any of it, a motorcycle would either flip or beach. Only those familiar with the massive monowheel's reputation would know that it was a vehicle capable of quite literally driving straight over a car without stopping; these minor obstacles would be smooth sailing for her.

She was also glad, very glad, for the heated seats and little heat blowers, one which was blowing hot air at the jumpsuit-clad front of her body, the other which was, at present, warming the pizzas and little else. Frowning inside her motorcycle helmet, she pushed the visor up, and waved for Daiyu's attention.

@Daiyu [Liara]: Hey, Daiyu, c'mere. I'd tell you to get in out of the cold, but... Bike. At the very least, the seat's warm and there's a heater, such as it is, in the sidecar.

She pops the sidecar's lid, unconcerned about the drizzle on the product; it was, after all, secured in a waterproof bag. Well, waterproof against reasonable conditions, anyway; it'd stand up to being sprayed with a hose, not being tossed in the Sound.

@Dayiu [Liara]: No wheels of your own/Mom or dad or mom and mom or dad and dad or whatever set-up you've got got the family ride?


While she watches to see if Daiyu will take advantage of her hospitality, such as she can offer, she sends another message to Rio.

@Hex [Liara]: Hey, you're in the lot somewhere, right? I just got here, and Daiyu's on the sidewalk not far from me. Gonna clue us in to what this is about and why you're using a fake ID? (I mean, I don't know it's fake for sure; I'd have to run it to be sure, and that'd jack you up if it flagged, so I'm not gonna even try. But unless you're enrolled in the public school system under a fake name, I'm pretty sure 'Sasha's' the fake, especially since her commlink is pinging back as a drekpile that was obsolete before its chips had cooled from the nanoforge.)

Rio moves in front of her car so Zoé and Daiyu can see her, blinking in the drizzle. Hadn't she already explained why they were here? Maybe not. Her terrible communication skills strike again.

@Liara, Daiyu, Hop [Hex]: The guy we're meeting goes by Papa Gotcha. He's a kind of... he finds work for people who are looking for it. You don't have to get involved if you don't want to, but hear him out first, okay? They think we're nobody at that school. Personally, I plan to prove them wrong. It should be more interesting than classwork, at least.

@Liara [Daiyu]:Thanks! And no, no wheels of my own right now, older brother has first dibs. He's the favorite.

Daiyu accepted the offer of a warm place to sit and wait with a grateful nod as she slid into the sidecar of Zoé's monowheel and moved the delivery food to her lap. She had settled in for only a few moments with the welcomed limited amount of heat washing over her before Rio made herself visible to the pair and sent her message about why they were all here.

"I suppose it won't hurt to hear him out? At least we'll get out of the rain..."

She climbed back out of the small sidecar, and waited for Zoé to join her before the pair started over to Rio and her ride.

"So just what kind of work does this Papa Gotcha have for a bunch of teenagers anyway? I mean Zoé's already got her after school gig slinging pies."

@Daiyu [Liara]: Wow. Really? That's... Bulldrek.

"We hope we'll get out of this rain. Just not into anybody's car." Zoé climbs out of the saddle of her Horizon-Doble Revolution, and looks around. She quickly ascertains that Logger's is the kind of place where Bad Things can happen to a pack of girls like herself, Rio and Daiyu. "Um... Guys? Gut Check here; this is an oily truck stop bar in the bad part of town... And we're three teenaged girls who look like we could maybe take on half again our own number in cub scouts before we started to get seriously outmuscled."

Zoé pulls her quick-draw holster out of the bike's saddlebag. There's no way to conceal the holster, let alone her gun, while wearing a body-hugging jumpsuit and her bike armor, she she elects for open carry - she is licensed for it, after all. She picks up the Predator, its smartgun system coming live and projecting a targeting reticule in her field of view, the Ares Arms logo flashing in her HUD as it assesses her Predator and determines that nothing has changed since the last time it connected to her PAN. It registers her improved rangefinder and advanced safety systems as the only active systems that interface with the smartgun, and shows her the ammunition count of her extended magazine; 19/19 rounds, both displayed as such and in a first-person-shooter like graphical magazine, next to the icon of the Ares-branded Stick 'n Shock ammunition loaded into the weapon.

Most people would assume that was a concession to the fact that she was a teenaged girl and probably didn't want to kill anybody. They were right about the facts that she was a teenaged girl and didn't really want to kill anyone, but they were not right about that being the reason her Predator was loaded with stick 'n shock.

That, of course, was Aunt Cynthia's decades of experience as an outlaw go-ganger telling her that most folks were much less resistant to stick 'n shock and taser rounds than they were to most forms of lethal bullets, and a person who's down is someone who's not shooting back at you, whether he's breathing or bleeding out. In Cynthia's line of work, of course, that was usually the prelude to ransoming them back to their own gang or their family (or selling them off to any interested parties if neither their own crew nor their family would (or could) cough up the jing to have them returned; one would find it amusing how willing Lone Star was to buy wanted felons off the hands of go-gangers,) or (if they were someone who had really been shedding a lot of Templar blood,) executing them.

As for Zoé, well... She was carrying two mags of stick 'n shock (one which was in the gun and a spare,) and two mags of regular ammo. She took them all out, slotting them into the gun-belt's loops, before holstering the weapon securely. She really, really hoped she didn't have occasion to use them; she knew how to shoot... But not very well. She starts towards Rio's car with Daiyu, the pizza bag in her arms.

"I don't know what kind of work he has for us... The obvious opportunities for gainful employment for the three of us here are all horizontal, but I don't think Rio's brought us here for that, and I don't think any of us are going in for that... Which leaves..." She looks to Daiyu, gulping. "Well, what are you thinking it's about?"