Mission 2a - What's New Pussycat?

At Cowboy HQ

The commissioner says, "Oh, I should make it clear that unlike the business with the jumping critter, I don't want this ending up on the evening news. If this case goes public, I not only will not be paying any of you, but I will also make it my personal business to have each of you under the biggest lens of scrutiny you can possibly imagine. Believe me when I say that you do not want us to be going out of our way to look into your lives.

"So can I expect you to get the job done?"

Sato inclines his head respectfully.

"I think we fully understand each other.  You will find we are very capable of discrete and professional resolution of thorny issues such as this."

"The only question we have is your desired timeline for resolution.  As you might expect, subtlety requires additional efforts, one of which is time. We aspire to be very transparent with you about what is required to achieve your desired results in the most pleasing way."

The commissioner says, "The sooner the better. I would like to see this taken care of within a couple of days, but so long as she is dealt with without a public spectacle happening prior to that, I am not that picky on the timeline so long as she is brought to justice."

"Very well then.  We will proceed without delay."  

"When we complete this mission, we will contact you via the same method we originally came into contact.  Please let us know if alternate methods of contact are preferred."

((if this is acceptable to the commissioner, Sato will rise and take a short glance at his colleagues to signal them to follow along with him.  He will then bow appropriately before taking his leave.

He will want to gather the team in a secure location so they can discuss the plan))

Following along with Sato..

You all head off to a nearby gyudon shop and grab a quiet booth. The waitress pours you each a cup of cold oolong tea and asks for your orders. The menu is quite simple, featuring nothing but gyudon in 6 different sizes: mini, small, medium, large, extra large and mega. Legends speak of a hidden 7th size called "king", but it is not listed anywhere on the menu. Optionally raw egg, cheese, kimchi, spring onions, ground daikon radish, and/or sliced burdock can also be ordered as a topping to your bowl of gyudon. There is also a children's menu featuring a small dish of curry with a juice box and a toy. Pricing is quite reasonable with dishes ranging from 2 nuyen for a plain mini, to about 7 for the mega.  ((Anyone with a low lifestyle or higher doesn't need to worry about paying for food here))

Sato orders a medium bowl with raw egg, kimchi and daikon radish.  If anyone orders cheese as a topping, he will look visibly disgusted and conspicuously avoid looking at it.

He flips up the police file in AR in front of them as he speaks in between bites of his gyudon.



"It seems our little Roku-chan has been a very naughty girl.  I don't know if you all read between the lines back there, but the honorable Keisatsu Choukan back there was dropping hints (with all the subtlety of falling boulders) that he would greatly prefer she quietly disappears and never reappears."

He pauses to savor an especially tart mouthful of kimchee, his face creases with a pensive expression as he considers his next words carefully.  

"I'm not much of a fan of cops myself, so I'm curious what got him so riled up.  Who knows, maybe there's some interesting wrinkles to this story?"

He looks down at his gyudon, mixing it a bit with his chopsticks before taking another bite and chewing it thoroughly before answering.

"I suppose we can pursue both options...to track or even identify her, we will need to know what makes her unique because she can change her looks.  To make her disappear without anyone looking, we will need to understand her friends.  Perhaps we can start with some Matrix research and since she spends time in Nakajuku where I live, maybe someone I know has heard about her.  If the report is true, she seems like the kind of person who makes an impression on people."

"What do you all think?"

Nobunaka orders a very large bowl with onions, kimchi and daikon.

"I don't like working for law enforcement, but if the money is right... eh" He shrugs his shoulders to emphasize.

Growing frustrated trying to utilize small chopstick in his huge hands, he abandons them to the side and alternates slurping the gyudon from the bowl and gracefully sipping his tea.

"We could always go to the Back Door and apply pressure to scare her out of hiding" he says, while wiping broth from his face with the back of his hand. "trying to bring her out into the open or get info from those that know her."

Nobunaka finishes his bowl with a belch. "I am especially interested in this 'Aka-Chan' who seems to

be close to Roku-Chan."

Tetsu follows Sato's lead into the guydon shop.  He takes a seat in the booth where he can see the entire shop, and orders a mega guydon with onions and kim chi.  

"Of course these cowboy bastards want us to take care of her, that's how they operate.  I have someone at Cowboy I can contact to see if there is anything else going on here we should know about.  If he doesn't know anything, then I say we pursue this case and see what we uncover.  It seems to me the clear starting place to physically check would be to check out the back door. I don't have much skill in the matrix, so I'll leave that part to others."

(I need to roll here.  I have a contact with loyalty 3 connection 4 is it:

Tetsu carried out 7 launched of one d6 :

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Sam does a matrix search on Rokudenashiko
Sam Dekker carried out 12 launched of one d6 :

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on Akane
Sam Dekker carried out 12 launched of one d6 :

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and on the crimes themselves, to try to get some details about them. When did they happen? How close together? Where, exactly? Maybe some surrounding context. Were they widely reported events, or reported at all? Etc.
Sam Dekker carried out 12 launched of one d6 :

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(sorry I forgot to do this in the last post. Didn't want to edit to change the roll?)

Tetsu gets up from the table and walks outside of the shop to make a call to his contact.

"Um," Sam says. "I don't uh, think scaring. Scaring her is the best, um, first uh... Opening salvo. If we go to, uh the uh, The Back Door we probably should let Sato do his thing. Um. I might have to Cyrano de Bergerac him."

Sam Dekker wrote:"Um," Sam says. "I don't uh, think scaring. Scaring her is the best, um, first uh... Opening salvo. If we go to, uh the uh, The Back Door we probably should let Sato do his thing. Um. I might have to Cyrano de Bergerac him."

“I agree with Sam.  If we are to do this quietly, we will need to do our homework first - we need to get to know our target both online and offline so we can cover all risks.  Remember, if this goes public, we lose, so our plan needs to be airtight.”

Sato smiles broadly at Sam’s last suggestion.

“Are you up for this, San?  It will require a lot of skill on your part to make me look good.”

((I love this plan.  It has all the necessary elements for a proper Shadowrun plan - boldness, high risk and opportunity for hilarious failure))

((you don't need to roll anything for contacts usually. Higher loyalty means they are less likely to betray you if they get squeezed by an enemy and are more likely to give you a deal on stuff as opposed to charging you for every little bit of info. Connection is just a measure of how many resources they have at their disposal. Their checks are secret though, so I roll them.))


Tetsu calls up his contact and the image winks into view, revealing the heavily cybered lieutenant. "Hey Tetsu, what's up?" he greets before being asked about Rokudenashiko. "Oh, her. Yeah, the Cowboys have it in for her. She's been attacking Cowboy systems all over the city. She doesn't seem to do any damage, at least not that our techs have been able to find out, but she overwrites all the icons in the system with her 'art'. Seems mostly harmless, if a bit of a nuisance. The department is pissed off by the embarrassment of it all while our techs are worried that she might be using the pranks as a misdirection for something that just hasn't been discovered yet. All I know is that it's a hassle to log in and find pink everywhere and all the icons renamed so you can't find anything."


Sam does some matrix searching on the incidents and finds nothing useful. The police seem to be keeping really quiet about them. Makes sense since such a huge intrusion would undermine both their images as police and their corporation's image as a security specialist. It is likely that if any stories on the incidents made it to the public, they were quickly scrubbed.

Info on Rokudenashiko is a bit easier to come across. Though she keeps her true identity secret, her art is moderately famous. Not exactly a celebrity artist, but famous enough that she doesn't need a job to supplement her art. He begins to take a look at images of the actual art pieces and it becomes a little more clear as to why the police would be upset enough to want to to see her dead. Every single piece appears to revolve around reproductions of her vagina. There is a a cute mascot doll shaped like a vagina, a kayak shaped like a vagina, as well as a great number of landscape scenes including a golf course, a fancy girl's college, and even workers attempting to seal off a nuclear leak all shaped like vaginas. She even seems to have raised money on a crowd funding site by selling a 3D scan of her vagina. In a country where the only word in their entire language that is considered to be profane and requiring of censorship is the word for vagina, it is of little surprise that there is quite a bit of backlash against her art. Though she has somehow managed to get her art shown in museums, the exhibits are often shut down by the government and there have been numerous warrants out for her arrest due to violations of decency laws. Considering the amount of government opposition to her work, it is kind of surprising that she has been able to make such a name for herself. However, it is not at all surprising that she works under an alias and keeps her identity secret. She seems to revel in the opposition, using it to further her work and subvert what she sees as governmental and cultural oppression of woman. Even her alias is a means of subversion which means roughly, "Good-for-nothing girl".

Akane is far less of a public figure, so there is less to find about her. She has no social media accounts (at least none of the more popular ones), and there are no news stories about her. All Sam manages to dredge up is a single image that was posted on the club's official site from some party. The image appears to have been taken without her knowledge, but her name is tagged on it. It is likely that she does not even know that she was tagged as she does not have an appropriate account to link the tag to.

Sato rubs his chin thoughtfully.

“One possible angle would be to pose as a wealthy art collector. I can front a lot of wealth which could be a way to draw her out, when we’ve established surety of our plan to finish the job.”

He pauses to think some more before proceeding.

“I do agree that we need to find out more first - especially about this Akane woman. I will ask around my contacts to see if anyone knows anything about them or know their hours at the Back Door club.”

((GM, I have a bevy of knowledge skills that could be useful here, like Local Rumors, Current Events and Fashion - should I roll once or several times?))

((Also, are you using the training times from the book? If so, I’d be interested in picking up one rank of Art as an interest after we finish the initial legwork which would have a crash course time of 24h))

Sato wracks his brain to recall any rumors of these women in his travels as a bartender.

((pre-edged Knowledge check on local rumors (or other, see above) ))


((woo!))

((yep, using the training times from the book. If you want, you can try to find a teacher who will give you a crash course in art. For rank 1 it wouldn't be hard to find and you would be done in (24/instruction hits) hours. For a knowledge skill, that would be 500 x rank nuyen. It would just be a matter of hitting up a local museum and bribing the staff to teach you all they can as quick as they can.

As for rolling knowledge skills, I prefer they be rolled separately as they could give no information at all, or a different perspective on the same information.))

Sato remembers something about vagina dolls getting spread about town on the local news. They looked identical to the ones Sam managed to find on the matrix, though Rokudenashiko didn't claim responsibility (yet). She is supposedly a skilled artist and computer wiz. Much of her art is digitally produced. She isn't really a bar hopper, as far as Sato knows, so if she frequents this club, it is likely to specifically meet with Akane. She doesn't have anything of a street reputation though, so she's not a shadowrunner or anything like that.

As for Akane, he thinks he may have heard of an Aka-chan, but it is kind of a common name so he is not sure if it is the same person or not. Sounds like the same person anyway as she is supposedly a fence for interesting matrix paydata. She isn't a big time player or anything, but a decker bar would certainly be a good place to deal in such a commodity.

Intriguing...I like this girl's style... Sato thinks to himself.

He relays the scuttlebutt he has heard about Rokudenashiko and Akane to the group.

"Either she's picking up paydata as a side job or...perhaps her vandalism is the side job...hiding a deeper secret...maybe she's using it to distract the authorities from the fact that she's doing something more nefarious while she's in their host."

"Sam, do you need to do anything else to be ready to do the Cyrano de Bergerac scheme?  I can patch you in on my ear buds and glasses so you can hear and see what is going on."

"I will need to look the part - any advice?"

Sato uses his commlink to browse appropriate used armor clothing.  He's looking for band T-shirts, ripped but comfortable jeans, army surplus boots and that leather jacket that is beat to hell but is so comfy you can't bear to throw it away.  He asks Sam for advice as well because his instinct will be to look cool, rather than slovenly.  She's an artist and he has to get her attention so the right mix is somewhere in between.

((Etiquette as a knowledge skill to know what kind of clothes would be appropriate to blend in at a hacker bar like The Back Door))




((Fashion knowledge skill for Hacker/artist chic options))

Sato remembers that, while the police report doesn't mention it, this is not just a hacker club. It's a hacker fetish club. Now if he was just going to a hacker club, he would probably be would assume the fashion would be mostly focused on a fancy modded deck case and possibly clothes that match said case, though no one would be paying attention to the clothing in particular. Instead if he was going to a fetish club, the fashion would probably be a lot of tight leather that shows off one's assets, or if one was female just about anything short and sexy would do. But since this is a hacker fetish club, he is a bit more at a loss for what the fashion there would be. So you all take a look at the club's matrix site to see some event pics.

The event images seem to focus primarily on the girls, with most of them wearing sexy anime cosplay that incorporates cyberware into it. Other themes include school girl uniforms, maid outfits, and the occasional miko uniform. It is a little more difficult to find males, but there are a handful of images of men dressed as butlers, anime characters featuring open shirts revealing rippled muscles. However the most popular theme seems to be for the men to dress like the women do. Some even pull off the look quite well and might even pass for one.

You do notice that both the men and women have all been obviously modified. A datajack in the very least (as each has one plugged into a cyberdeck or commlink), but most sport many other types of mods. These mods aren't the type that one would expect out of a shadowrunner though. The mods are more for fashion and screaming "look at me!" than for functioning as a criminal mercenary for hire. They are things like glowing fiberoptic hair, breast augmentations, skin pigment alterations, and some more exotic mods like horns, tails and fangs. You suspect they probably have other alterations that are not visible.

Sam knows that he can feed Sato with hacker and tech lingo and 1337speak, but he doesn't know anything about fetish clubs, fetish culture generally, or the intersection of fetish culture and hacker culture. So, he sees what he can pull up on the matrix

Sam Dekker carried out 12 launched of one d6 :

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Sam shares what he finds with Sato (and the others if they're interested) and saves whatever he finds to leave open for easy reference when Sato is in there.

This hacker fetish seems to be a very niche mix of cosplay and nerd culture with the body mod scene and something like a swinger's club. It is very much not something that is easy to find information about and The Back Door is definitely a unique location to cater to such a thing both in the country and possibly in the world. There really isn't much to look up about it beyond the club's matrix site itself which doesn't go into to much beyond some event photos, the club's menu and member fees.

Sato asks Sam if there are particular clothing shops that serve this culture.

He’s interested in a neon wig and a skintight outfit with a neon-highlighted tattoo in the outside that mirrors his real dog tattoos. He’d also want a fake data jack to blend in. He’ll invite Nobumaga and Tetsu along on the trip to get outfitted along with him if they wish.