Sunday, December 9, 2012

Dystopic: Capturing Meissan

Leningrad's player wasn't there but I couldn't think of a good reason for him not to be there (but also couldn't be bothered running him) and so we kind of just pretended he didn't exist for that session.  You know how it is sometimes.  I've got a few weeks (probably around a month) until the next game so we've got time to come up with an excuse later.

The team regrouped at Bio-Connects HQ and Nomad 6 and Tokyo were both briefed on the situation.  Their plan was for London to approach Meissan as someone who'd partially cleaned up her mess and who wanted to be paid a lot for it.  He was to lure Meissan up onto the roof.

There was also an argument about whether London's phone should be destroyed to get rid of CASEI.  In the end, London used it to find out if Meissan were a British agent and if she'd been given a mission to kill off a Cheiron agent who'd been making partnership arrangements with Bio-Connects.  He found out that she'd been declared a rogue agent and redlisted (kill or capture call out) for the past seven months.  No such mission had been declared by British Intelligence either.

They decided to head to the breakfast bar (which was part of a Super-Mall with apartments up top, businesses in the lower middle, shops and eateries in the lower floors and a subway station in the lowest floor) and Nomad 6 got permission to land on the ceiling airship-park.  Reaching the location, Nomad 6 paid for the spot with a chit-card (like a Woolworths card with a certain amount of cash on it only it is recognised everywhere yet totally anonymous unlike a credit card).  He paid at the start rather than the end so he had to pay a larger amount to cover a day and a night in case they stayed that long.  The security guard could keep the unnecessary extra so it was also a bit of a bribe.

They found a spot surrounded on two sides by the rooftop walls and on one and a half sides by a tall set of air conditioning duct / machines and a cooling tower.  Nomad 6 climbed onto the cooling tower and got into position with his bow.  Tokyo was handcuffed and had a sack over her head and had to kneel with Miami pointing a gun at the side of her head.

London went down sixty eight floors in a great big elevator which had mirrored walls and couches ringing it.  Once he was on the right floor, he came out and found a very blue cafe worked by attractive women in pleated skirts.  He spotted the only white woman in the cafe who had a packet of e-cigarettes by one hand as she held a PDA with the other.  She had curly dark hair and wire-framed glasses.

London approached and she made him right away, asking him to sit, which he did.  They had a short conversation where London outlined the plan and offered her Tokyo.  When she demanded to know if anyone else were with him he boldly explained that there were two others AND Nancy Kurosawa (Tokyo).  She was both an arrogant and suspicious person and the two elements of her personality warred for a minute.  London rolled low on his Persuasion (one dice) and she rolled low on her Subterfuge (two dice) but she won by enough to tell that there was more to this than met the eye.   She finally accepted his offer but had no intention of going to the roof with him.

As she headed into the elevator behind him, he sensed that something was about to go down and accurately read in her body language that she wasn't planning on going with him to the roof.  So he backed up to the end of the elevator, giving her a moment to hit the button.  There was also a couple kissing in the elevator but there wasn't anything to do with them at this stage.

Meissan placed an e-cigarette in her mouth and London shot her instinctively with his silenced SMG (gun has a noise emitter that makes a sound that cancels out the gunshot) before she managed to shoot him.  He winged her and her shot buried itself in his special dragon skin armour (jelly-like substance between two layers of fabric that hardens on ballistic impact like a kevlar plate).  It wasn't a regular shot but a high-velocity thick dart intended to pump poison into him.  Since the one point of damage downgraded to bashing I figured that the dart hadn't penetrated the armor and so he didn't have to worry about that.  She then stepped out past the elevator doors so that he couldn't see her.

Nomad 6 got a call from CASEI (the program on London's phone) and when he responded he could hear gunshots.  The call then disconnected and GPS turned on to show London's location.  He hopped down from the water tower and Miami took the hood off Tokyo's head.  As they raced for the elevator, Tokyo hacked the systems and turned on the fire alarm (but not the sprinklers as they only go off if a certain amount of smoke is detected due to the risk of damaging merchandise).

London ran out of the elevator and fired another burst into her and this did a hefty amount of damage.  At that, Meissan turned tail and ran for the subway stairs, moving with surprising speed in an almost halting and supernatural manner.  She was soon lost in the crowd called by the fire alarms.  Still Tokyo managed to spot her through the cameras and London, who followed her onto the subway platform, also spotted her.  Miami used Patterns and could tell that Meissan wouldn't get onto the currently parked subway train in the next few days.

When Tokyo, Miami and Nomad 6 were in the elevator, Nomad 6 spent some Faith to quickly cause the elevator to descend faster than normal by stringing Point A and Point B together so that they were almost touching.  Ahh, the joys of bending reality.  They got down to the ground floor in time for London to have snuck around behind Meissan (who was gazing around with segmented golden eyes looking for him) and press his gun against her back.  She stiffened and he led her into the elevators.  They were silent on the way up.

Seeing the guns, the security guard who'd come out of his box to help usher people to their vessels simply stepped back into his box and locked the door.  The team hurried out to their dropship and got in.  Nomad 6 flew away.

London used Voice of Heaven and said: "Tell me who you were working for and why you did this."

Despite some difficulty getting the lore to work (he had to subtract her Resolve from his roll), his power won and she responded: "Cheiron Group wanted to take out Bio-Connects infiltrator asset to undermine Kurosawa and leave the company vulnerable to further attack due to the military contracts they recently won with the Japanese Military."  The lore wore off and she fell silent.

Nomad 6 put the dropship on autopilot and checked Meissan's wounds and saw that they'd healed to merely deep scabs.  She also looked a fair bit more gaunt than when London had first met her.  They flew the dropship to Bio-Connects and part of the way there Meissan started drooling a thick drool that indicated dehydration and she was all the more gaunt.  She passed out and Nomad 6 put the call out for a hydration team to be waiting up there.

When they landed, Kurosawa and a team of medical experts were waiting.  The experts rushed off with her and most of the team (who wanted to keep an eye on her).  Kurosawa and his daughter returned to his office.  Tokyo told him everything (leaving out the demonic details) and Kurosawa determined to keep Meissan with her bizzare augmentations for further study rather than relinquishing her over to British intelligence.  He didn't mind so much what happened to Muoi Kai so long as they learned from her what they could.

London, Miami and Nomad 6 went to speak to Muoi Kai as Tokyo went to get showered and dressed for her party but the doctor wouldn't let them in without Nancy or her father's presence.  So they called down Tokyo and were finally let in.

Muoi Kai had had her limbs disconnected and put on a table to one side.  Her forehead and torso were strapped to the metal table.  The team instantly felt sorry for her as all evidence suggested that she thought she were simply in the fight against Cheiron and had been hoodwinked.

London led with a very official revelation that Muoi's boss was working for Cheiron Group, had been redlisted by the British government, that a team were coming for her and that she'd better tell what she knew.  Muoi became anxious about that and didn't say anything which led London to apply a bit more verbal pressure.

Tokyo swept in as the good cop and defended Muoi Kai as a hoodwinked poor woman.  Muoi quickly responded to Tokyo's good cop routine so Tokyo convinced London to go 'get a coffee' and leave them for five minutes.  It was amazing how well the Good Cop / Stern Cop routine worked out.  I was roleplaying Muoi and despite the fact that it was a bit transparent I could 'feel' the NPC warming up to the possibility of having someone on her side - especially as it was the woman she had almost helped kill for no good reason.  Tokyo even got Muoi's word that she wouldn't attack them and had her limb augmentations put back onto her.  A process that took five minutes per limb.

Muoi then explained that:

  • She'd met many of Meissan's friends tangentially but Meissan tried to keep her various assets apart.
  • Muoi had been considered Meissan's military asset.
  • Muoi is irritated by the whole secret agency business as she had no way of knowing that her old handler had gone rogue and would prefer to get out.
  • Muoi met a man with an accent nearly identical to Miami's (hispanic American from Florida) but while she'd seen his face she'd never gotten his name.
  • Meissan was interested in footage of blurred individuals (thought to be ghosts in Japan) and had Muoi watched CCTV footage for them.
  • Meissan was allied with a team of four individuals who also had a paramilitary feel who would be alerted when such footage was found.
  • Meissan and Muoi knew several politicians who were influenced by Cheiron but allegedly the British government refused to allow them to touch such individuals.  Muoi can give their names.
  • Meissan had told Muoi that the Le Reve woman was a Cheiron agent visiting Tokyo as this was the only place she could receive new orders.
Tokyo promised Muoi that she could go home but that she needed to hide out.

Tokyo then went to see Koji Yukichi and demanded the service of him and his mother to make up for the death of her pilot and the near death of herself.  He was to go out amongst the underclasses and sow hope within them.  He was happy to swear his life to her - doubly so when she revealed her true angelic form. Tokyo gave Koji extra Presence, a little extra Persuasion, and the Inspiring merit with two of his own Faith, keeping one for herself.  At that stage he became worshipful of her and opened doors for her and even tried to convince his mother of her true splendor but his mother remained suspicious (even after seeing Tokyo's true form) so Tokyo said she'd give her time and asked Koji to keep working on his mother.

London was told by British Intelligence that Kurosawa wasn't cooperating and so he went to see him personally.  Kurosawa explained that he wasn't going to release Meissan as he had no reason to believe that British Intelligence would tell him anything they learned and it was his company that Meissan had been attacking.  He needed to learn what he could and he could only rely on his people to do it.  He gave a time frame of six months before releasing Meissan.  London did manage to get Muoi from him, however, and she was given to the four British Intelligence agents who took her away with them.

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