Session Date: 5/11/2023
The club episode was on Sunday, so we woke up Monday morning.
Net stayed with Esperanza. Cipher stayed with Mamá Rosa. Garf wakes up in a dumpster, Omen finds her. Emerick wakes up at the safehouse.
Omen finds Garf and picks her up by scruffing her like a kitten, which wakes her up. He flicks her nose to make sure she’s really awake. She complains about her hangover and Omen gives her crap for blacking out.
Net texts the group chat and mentions the job opportunity from Phoenix. Everyone agrees to do the job. Net moves on to his morning routine, then calls Phoenix and lets her know we are interested. She has a place for us all to get together and meet, sending the details over to Net. He then calls Cipher and asks if he will go, to which Cipher agrees.
The meet is in a diner in Heywood.
Net and Cipher are the first to show, finding Phoenix in a big corner booth. Net slides in next to her and they chit chat. Omen and Garf are the next to join. Omen orders food on the way in. He slides into the botoh and Garf joins, laying her head down on the table.
Emerick and Torrent are next to arrive, with Omen waving at them. Torrent sits glued to Phoenix’s side, enamoured with her. Emerick looks more cleaned up and put together than usual.
Once we get our assorted drinks and any ordered food, Phoenix explains the job:
Omnitech Industries → unethical practices. Glorified slaver, test cyberware on people. Phoenix wants the truth. A scientist - Dr. Markov - is ignoring the general Omnitech Process to do these unethical things and she wants this scientist to fall, but she would prefer him alone to take the fall. At this time, Omnitech Industries is being blamed for the unethical practices of Markov. The job is to infiltrate Omnitech Industries and get the files that incriminate Markov so that Phoenix can leak it. $2,000 per person total. She will give $500 up front, then $1,500 on completion of the job.
Net asks why she chose us out of everyone else, and she explains that she saw us in The Afterlife and she felt that we were a good group. It’s more or less a matter of us being in the right place at the right time.
Emerick listens to this and notices that how Phoenix is going about this doesn’t quite make sense: she is acting in such a way to set herself up more. If she organized the team behind this, then this makes her position even better. It would give her a pseudo-fixer vibe. At the same time, Omen realizes she has a big story already, but she wants to get more information and publish the big story instead of the high level content. She is nervous that she may not be able to see this through to the end.
Omen asks what she wants out of this, and she replies that she wants the story, the footage, and the feeling of breaking all of this open to shake up the industry. Garf wants to know who is being kidnapped, or if there is a pattern, and she explains that it’s anyone they can get their hands on, nobody specific.
Phoenix realizes that Emerick is a media and will pay him an addition $500 for the footage from the infiltration and mission.
She has more details:
We will specifically be infiltrating their HQ, 10 blocks away from city center. She has a few ideas on how to get inside. The first is that she knows a group of employees that frequent a bar and drink on Fridays - 6 of them, to be exact. If we played our cards right, we could mug them and steal their ID cards and pretend to be them. The second option is to fake the ID cards and forge some. The third option is to sneak in and deal with obstacles as they come. We could, for example, fake a shipment with a forged invoice and send this fake shipment in.
During this discussion, Phoenix realizes that Net is a tech and they talk about some technical details that may be useful for this gig. After she finishes explaining, Net mentions that he has learned from his mistakes and thinks that acting their way in instead of sneaking would be a good way to go.
Phoenix explains that she has no hard deadline for this job, but she would like for it to get done sooner rather than later, so if we don’t do it by next week she will start to get nervous and look for another group. Omen warns that we cannot guarantee her safety, but she is unbothered by this.
Through conversation, Phoenix figures out that both Garf and Cipher are netrunners, and she is glad about this. Their skills will be rather useful to extract the files she would like.
Emerick is struck by the realization that he actually has an idea of who Phoenix is. He recalls that a few months back he was on an obscure forum that he occasionally visits, the type that focuses on old school anarchy and the like. There was a story that was posted about a local politician that was exposed for corruption and doing their job incorrectly. What had caught his eye was that the video that went with it was very chaotic, and reckless, generally rather absurd and over the top. He recalled that it was also seemingly intentional. At the end of the video, Phoenix is interrogating the politician and then blows out the window of his penthouse. She pushed him out of the window to his death, and the shot of the broken body on the ground below was actually the thumbnail of the video. The way he died actually caused his corruption and the like to stop in its tracks.
He also realizes that she is a wanted criminal with a crimestat rating of 2.
Emerick and Phoenix talk a little more, and then he gets up and leaves. Phoenix invites Torrent to hang out as he’s leaving, and the two spend time together.
Net texts Cipher to let him know that he is going to go get therapy from Katchya. In a similar line of action, Omen and Garf go to the gun store, then go to Katchya’s for therapy.
Specifically, though, Net wants to do addiction treatment. He is very open with Katchya about how Juice drugged him with blue glass involuntarily. He is more concerned about his cigarette addiction, but Katchya explains that blue glass is very addictive, and Net confirms that he’s had symptoms. She explains that the blue glass addiction is far more serious of an issue and if he wishes to be treated, it will be material cost + 10% payment ($550 total) for treatment, which he agrees to.
Omen and Garf show up as Net gets started. They would like therapy as well. Garf has her new shotgun, which Katchya takes away during the therapy session. OMen admits he wants therapy, and Garf agrees to do it as well. Omen pays for both of them.
Another week passes:
- Omen & Garf get standard therapy
- Net gets addiction therapy
- Emerick gets extensive therapy (23)