Marvel 2099: Street Rats IC

[Rater202]

Nova York, 2099. The city is a hellscape of skysrapers, neon lights, packed traffic both land and air, and in the slums poverty and pollution.

The public eye patrols the city, enforcing law and order, but the truth is there is no true "law" and no justice, only the will of the corporations and the rules of engagement they've mutually agreed on.

The wealthy rule from their ivory towers, while assorted gangs and cults claim territory and fight over scraps.

Which brings us to your gang. Small, composed out outcasts from society. You came together by chance about a year ago after meeting each other in the tunnels of Old New York's now derelict subway system and other, interconnected tunnel networks. Your territory is a small but secure section of those same tunnels and in the time since you've claimed it you've even managed to build a home and a few other fortifications, mostly out of scavenged subway cars and other reclaimed materials.

It's not much, but it's warm, dry, and reasonably safe. You're not exactly friends, per se, but comfortable acquaintances and work mates is close enough even if you don't trust each other with your darkest secrets just yet.

As you sit or work in the common area of your shelter, as you prefer, a short young woman walks in.

Hair pulled back in a long, messy tail, with large reflective "visor" style sunglasses, a trench coat, and far too many belts one could easily confuse her with a child who those in another world might say was dressed far too "90s edge" until her clothing melts into a dark, black goo. Her hair falls down loosely, her face now uncovered, and her body clad only in a layer of the same inky substance in ways that are flattering but not obscene emphasizing a level of muscle definition that no child could naturally obtain.

She stretches, arms over her head, and then bonelessly flops down on a perfectly good couch that one of you found next to a dumpster a few months back and cleaned up. "I got us a job," she declares.

"Leif Donarson, the leader of the local Thorite Chapter, has come down with a pretty nasty infection. Without medication, he might not pull through and to make things worse, he's contagious. The Thorites don't have the means to treat it, but word on the street is that our old pals at Alchemax have rediscovered the formula for an all-purpose miracle cure they managed to cook up before the cataclysm and are experiencing on it in one of their labs. The Thorites are willing to pay a small fortune in scrap to anyone who brings them a sample, and I happen to have an address for the most likely lab for the drug to be."

[Feathersnow]

The androgynous figure of Dex moves in the shadows. Health Insurance. Health insurance never changes.... They laugh at a reference no one else under 70 was likely to get. The strange brains of Taskmaster's line gave incredible recall, but at a terrible and strange cost. Sometimes the short, lithe shadow of a person made jokes like this, and the others just had to deal with it.

I'm for helping the Thorites. Having a God on our side is a good thing, and we could use a payday. What say you others?

[Lord Raziere]

Key:
A pink haired girl named Venus Miyahara wearing colorful coat and baggy pants of wild artificial colors listens to the pitch. She considers the implications of such a cure. There were more than a few online social groups she was apart of that would love to have information on the sample themselves. If she could get a hold of not just a sample, but a copy of the research, that cure could help a lot more people than just one Thorite. She just wasn't sure if the others were okay with doing charity work. If she could set up the plan so that she could get some information to distribute without disrupting the overall goal, then that would be a win.
"...Sounds like a good job, Arsenal. They must be working on computers not connected to Cyberspace to keep that secret- pretty much the only way to keep anything secret now. Just let me do a couple quick preparations."
Which was technically true- if searching for a flash drive (or whatever memory storage device they use in 2099) to put the cures information in counted as preparation. If she couldn't find one in the base she'd have to steal one from a local electronics store.
"I will be on security hacking job, as usual. I'll assume they're not connected and do it up close and improvised."
She will walk into her little room she set up with a stolen cyberspace jack and chair and few other electronics to sit in and try to find a flash drive amid the clutter- she brought back so much stuff for these missions that she might have one lying around. Some missions required cyberspace information being transported and it was amazing how much you could store in so little these days. If she couldn't find one here it wouldn't be disastrous but it would make this take a little longer.

[Batcathat]

The scruffy cat that was Jonah's most regular form was sitting at a distance that reflected the delicate balance between wanting to be close and still being rather awkward around people his own age. Or people of any age, really. And most animals. Also some of the more intelligent machines.

"Sounds good", Jonah said, as he tried pawing away something sticky from his other arm – well, other foreleg – with little success. Despite spending most of the past year as a cat, Jonah still hadn't gotten over how gross it was to clean himself by licking, which left a little to be desired about his hygiene. "I mean, if... if you guys think so. That it sounds good, I mean."

[TeChameleon]

"Can't say I'm much of a fan of the god-botherers." Detcord grunted from the busted, but comfortable, easy chair he had claimed. "Still, a lot of the records that survived of Thor say that he was a friend to mutants, and like the copybot said, having a god in your corner can't hurt, that's for sure. And anything that gives Alchemax grief is a win in my book."

The burly merc snapped the handgun he'd been cleaning shut with a few practised flicks of his wrist and holstered it.

"You have point on this one, Aelita; you find the score, you lead. You want me on overwatch or doing the wetwork?"

[tonberryking]

Off in one corner not too far away is the back third of a subway car so old, it may have rusted into place against the wall it crashed into.

For the rabbit roommate, it was a Godsend. While Clover was congenial and willing to help "pay the rent" or in general be 'one of the helpers' she was still a rabbit mutant and had some of her own eccentricities that were either from her questionable genetics or her crash course in humanity or both.

As such when she discovered what was left of the car she immediately moved in, cleaned it, barricaded the actual door, kicked out the window to serve as an entrance only she (and probably the cat) were able to fit through and from there turned it into into a veritable hutch. Often, gentle, tinny music or children's programs from yesteryears could be heard from whatever media player she had managed to scavenge, but otherwise she was quiet and kept to herself unless she was needed.

And there was no music playing when Arsenal returned.

The hatch she put over the window she kicked out slowly opened before Clover tumbled out without much noise, cautiously approaching the others, looking down at her large, bare feet.

"I... I wanna help too!" she says a bit too loudly, ears drooping, That kind of cure all should, um, be available for all people, at least I think." she stuffs her hands into her jacket's pockets, waiting for, perhaps, some sort of approval, or at least basic agreement.

[Feathersnow]

Hey, as long as a sample gets to the Thorites, I'm more than happy to cause their data to forcibly enter the public domain...

Dex disagreed fundamentally with their father on the worth of the megacorps, in that he, Corp Enforcer Raphael Foucault, thought they had some and they, Street Urchin Dax Foucault, intuited from body language that people were happier in the halcyon days of checks on unbridled greed. But hitting and burning a Corp that the Bloodguard didn't protect was, to Raphael's thinking, free advertising, so his wayward progeny was more than happy to sign off on the Alchemax job.

The others certainly didn't need to know Dex had left that door open when they left the Bloodguard. If they ever wondered why Dex could afford prescription pills but not fresh food, though, the others would guess pretty quick.

[Lord Raziere]

(OOC: If I'm overstepping by making up this floor plan information, let me know Rater, the plans aren't up to date so there is still room for changes if you want to make any when it actually happens.)

Key:
As she finds a flash drive, Key asks Detcord
"Aelita? Wasn't that the character from that ancient show called.....Code....Geyoko was it? bunch of hacker kids fighting the old British Empire or something?"
She will plug it into a laptop-most people didn't jack into cyberspace and still used normal laptop methods, as it was best for casual use- and deleted some old information that was on the drive, these things can hold gigabytes upon gigabytes of information but no harm in clearing it out. She takes the flash drive out then gets in her chair and closing her eyes, plugs herself into Cyberspace to search up the Alchemax laboratory layout, its street location stuff like that. Given that it was happening at the speed of thought and computers, this information came pretty much instantly to everyone else's point of view. She will open her eyes again to unplug and begin explaining what she can figure out but then Clover speaks up, and she is reminded of her days in a normal gang. How her gang leader taught her that a gang stuck together, helped one another because no one else would. Furthermore it reminded her of too many street kids she met learning about the world for the first time, how cruel and harsh the world could be. Especially outside the corpo's little company towns that were essentially gilded cages for those who lived in them. She knew that look, Clover had. That look was the look of someone needing to believe in something, that it wasn't all just meat, metal, electricity and pain. She pushed away the whispers in her head telling her to distrust, after that betrayal and said
"....I agree, Clover. Don't worry, I'll make sure we both get paid and that this all-cure helps as many people as possible."
She was going to make the plan to allow herself an opportunity to do the download anyways which would take a little more time than if they just wanted to grab a sample, but this way she could be more honest about it at least.
"So here's the floor plans:
She brings up the map on her phone.
"According to what information I can find it has four floors, First floor is just the common room and storage area- no not for the cure, just normal office stuff like the janitor's stuff, place to relax and take breaks, greet visitors, the usual. Second floor onwards are the actual labs, with floor being testing and observation and third floor being where they engineer the actual cure, with fourth floor being the computer and server rooms where the data they collect is all stored and analyzed. The good news is that this lab seems relatively low priority, megacorps are much more interested in weapons to destroy their competition in whatever military scenarios they dream up than in actually helping people, bad news is its still not off the grid so if there are surprises in there, I
don't know about them, and corps are always trying to protect their secrets as much as they can, these floor plans date back to this lab's construction, so who knows what they filled the lab with in the meantime. But if they have any security systems, they will be controlled on the fourth floor like anything else, internet of things and all that. Common area's just to look good for the public, testing area's probably just has homeless people test subjects with random illnesses they hired for cheap off the street so they can test out cut-rate less effective versions of the cure so the corp can make more money on the poor while saving the real thing for the rich. Y'know, classic cut-corners greed bull, nothing we need to worry about.

Ideally we'd just need me to get to the computers to get the information and Catnap to just swallow someone in the common area, then sneak in to get the physical cure for the money, but even a low priority lab like this probably has mercs guarding the place. So, I'm not taking chances on us screwing up the stealth job and dying because one of us couldn't help the other in time, Clover since your concerned about helping people, how about you protect me as we go to the fourth floor to get the data and disable the defenses so the rest can go in without the cameras on them and Catnap, how do you feel about you and the rest grabbing the cure? your shapeshifting will probably still be needed because access to the all-cure's samples is probably DNA-locked to the scientists themselves, the rest of you...well your the muscle, that is as usual, up your discretion and judgment, do what you need to do as long as it doesn't mess up Catnap's job. Entrance plan is probably for Detcord to throw this cords at windows on the fourth floors to blow a hole, we go in disable defenses we go in real fast, scare or stun the scientists, don't care which as long as they're out of the way, then he throws a one at the third floor, blows in a hole in that, and that team goes and gets the cure. Bit loud, but most of us are fighters so you can handle it, if you have concerns about stealth or people seeing your identity, I'll be taking care of the cameras and I got a box of thread caps with holes cut in them to be masks which I stole from the mall if you don't have your own, as usual we got some cheap short range hand radios for communication, which I also stole from a mall. Any questions or better plans?"

Anything else is probably not something she could plan for anyways. It hopefully should just be a normal lab. Going full stealth-heist would be the ideal by normal logic, but this group wasn't cut out for that style of job. Between Clover, Dex, Arsenal and Detcord it was better to be forceful and let them make their own straight lines and for her to handle the infosec side of things while Catnap could probably handle any of the other subtle stuff needed.

[Feathersnow]

Dex nods. I am best equipped to smash, it's true. I can imitate anything I see, but understanding it is harder. You want me to set a fire or anything to cover our exit?

[Batcathat]

"Uhm", Jonah said, caught between his desire to be included and overwhelming performance anxiety. "Yeah, sure. I can, I can do that. Yeah, sounds good." As casually as possible, he pinned his wildly wagging tail to the ground with a paw. "Sounds great."

[TeChameleon]

"Relax, kittycat." Detcord chuckled at Jonah. "You've already proven your skills; and even if things do go South, we've got the firepower to clear a path and get to ground if we need to."

The older merc tapped his teeth with his gun barrel. "Y'know, we really oughta Pinnochio the kittycat. The organbanks flash-grow mindless clones of the corpos who might need transplants- we bodyjack one of those, we've got a no-guilt body for fuzzy. And with this panacea, wouldn't even need to worry too much about rejection, if that's even a thing for Catnap. Eh, thought for later."

"For more present stuff, only mod I'd make to the plan is grabbing the janitor's credentials. Never seen an egghead who'd mop a floor, no matter how tight their security was supposed to be." he finished with a barked laugh.

He glanced at Arsenal. "Want to flip a coin as to who gets overwatch? Think the two of us are the most mobile in the air, and if the Public Eye shows up and things go shock-shaped, we'll need someone outside who can keep us from getting boxed in."

"And as far as ancient kiddieviddies go, couldn't tell you. Not as many of those as you'd think in warzones, even with the 'net." he told Key.

[Rater202]

((Hey, it saves me work))

"Key? Did I never tell you my human name? Anyway, sounds like a plan. Detcord you're better in the air than I am, given I don't really have much in the way of staying up. If there's no more questions than let's get going," she says while gesturing to the entrance of your lair.

[tonberryking]

Clover looks between the others, bobbing her head whenever a point or motion for the plan is agreed on, only to freeze up when Arsenal says it's time to go.

"Wait! Um.. what am I supposed to do in all this? Do I need to play the "lost crying child" routine again, or do you need me to crawl through an air duct to let you in?"

Poor innocent Clover. The obvious use she could contribute is often not the first solution she comes up with, for worse or better.