Graduation Day

Graduation Day
Date 2085-02-13 GM Asmodeus Location Seattle, Downtown Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Horizon	Null Sect
Bunny Hop Oberon Triage	Manther the Man-Panther Ally Spirit Various Other Guards and Such	Corrupted G-Man Corrupted Twins
Casualties and losses
N/A	Corporate Ownership of One Vtuber and their Records on File, Paydata	N/A

Summary

The Internet is a series of Vtubers.

Background

"Jinzo Jouzo is a wholesome witch of the North Pole, working with Santa to deliver gifts and blessings to inspiring female figures across the world! Known for her heavy metal karaoke subscriber streams and gap moe cuteness, she's part of the 17th wave of Horizon Black Color's talents."

So says real-name-Yuichika-Karata's blurb on the Horizon subsidiary KuroSanji's host portal for their vtuber talents. Recently in vtuber news, several former members of the KuroSanji team who have since left the company have been whistle-blowing harsh working practices and toxic work environments. Although current staff fervently deny these allegations and even trash talk their former senpais and kouhais on P2.1, the runners are approached by a woman who refuses to identify herself, claiming much the opposite.

The Meet

Ms. Johnson is a cold, business-like woman who opens by calling the three runners, Oberon, Triage, and Bunny Hop, all street trash barely deserving of the pay she's offering. A great start to a fruitful relationship.

Onto business, she further explains that there is a target for extraction in the KuroSanji downtown offices, regaling runners with the broad strokes of the drama outlined above. Jinzo Jouzo is a target of extraction for their unnamed organization, she goes onto explain, and is believed to be held physically at the KuroSanji Seattle corporate office in the Downtown area, anywhere from floors eight to thirteen. She is either unable or unwilling to provide the runners with any information beyond this, save that the target is unaware of any planned extractions but almost certainly willing.

Negotiations begin, with Triage leading the pack, stating that the sum on offer (a paltry 8k nuyen) isn't enough to justify the risk of running an extraction op against a direct Horizon subsidiary. He eventually sweet talks Ms. Johnson into another deal - fourteen thousand, plus bonus pay and top shelf UCAS SINs, if and only if the runners stay quiet. A deduction will be made for every instance of going loud. The runners happily agree, and regroup to begin the legwork phase of their preparation.

The Plan

Triage summons a kami and bids it to scout the downtown building they've been instructed to infiltrate - the spirit performs the task and informs Triage that the first floor of the building is warded, although the upper floors are not. Watcher spirits circle but are easily avoided. Finally, the spirit also does its best to scout the location physically, and informs the team that, to the best of its knowledge, there is a gap across from the eighth floor that can be jumped over.

Bunny Hop begins Matrix legwork, digging up fan speculation on the identity of Jinzo Jouzo. She comes up with five names - various soundalikes, former idols, and even a radio host of all people, although only the latter's files, Hannah Mulder's, are easily accessible. Within the 94.9 FM KUOW Seattle public radio station's host, itself a large, old-style office building filled with pneumatic tubes, Bhop disguises her persona as a simple office lady's and begins digging. She finds her employee file, and finds that she is a former UCAS expat who had been living in the imperial Japanese mainland. Shifting allegiances and a sponsored visa for her national SIN have led her back to the UCAS here in Seattle - this, combined with the earlier information from Ms. Johnson indicating that Horizon appears to have power over her visa, seems to corroborate the fan speculation beyond a reasonable doubt.

The rabbit also scopes out the corporate host, though finds no surprises about its capabilities from the outside. She safely returns to the others, indicates that she seems to have positively ID'd their target with face and name included, and nods toward Oberon for the next steps of a physical infiltration.

Fennec is also briefly called - Bunny Hop hatches a sketchy plan to get into the offline host, requiring Fennec as a known vtuber to fake applying for their program, and her hacking into the host in the brief moment it comes online to transfer her files. Although proposed initially as a plan-A to be enacted in order to give Oberon the most amount of intel possible before his physical infiltration, this plan instead ends up being a back-up, only to be enacted if Oberon is unable to secure a datatap on the physical server itself for her to link into.

The Run

The following day, Oberon makes his leap across the gap with a little bit of help from a spirit, while Bunny Hop scoots on by and marks any external cameras to scrub them of footage, as well as the wireless lock keeping the external access door closed from the outside. It opens with a click, and Oberon slips inside to find an inattentive guard. Cloaked twice over by a chameleon suit wrapped in a spell of invisibility, he slips through without trouble.

Bunny Hop, after only a little difficulty, settles into a capsule in a coffin motel nearby, and falls into hotsim to sleaze her way into the host. She marks the internal cameras on the eighth floor, and patches the feed through to the team, giving them an inside view of the facility. An industrial office space looks back at them - power regulators are on full display, as are guards and workers and cells. A small break room area toward the north seems to be Oberon's best bet moving forward, and using both the cameras and his mage-mirror-selfie-stick to peer around corners, remains unintruded upon as he does so, save by the strange image of a panther with a man's face resting by a man in a bright blue chair made of pure light. Weird, but not the target.

He surreptitiously finds his way into a secluded space, where a woman exactly matching the description of Hannah Mulder sits dully. He stands beside her and slips her a pre-written note, asking her if she would like to be extracted, and she responds with confusion and eventually acceptance, that yeah, this may as well be the point to which her mental breakdown has brought her. She affirms his request, says yeah, she'd like to get out, 'voice in my head.'

With confirmation, and with the plan in motion, Bunny Hop subverts the infrastructure in the host, disrupts the power regulator, and sets the lights and computers on the eighth floor to flicker on and off, a brown out. One of the guards enters her private area to investigate, and after a quick squelch by their decker, Oberon instantly nerve strikes him, bringing him to his knees and to the floor. The two sneak out of the room and back through the path they'd come from, coordinating a very quick plan to bring her directly to the roof and have an air spirit, courtesy of Triage, pick her up and bring her to safety.

To do that, however, the guard by the door to rooftop access needs to be distracted. Bunny Hop fakes a message to the guard's comm, spoofing another guard on the floor, telling him to report to the cell with the panther spirit, to examine a situation. He sends a message back, and the rabbit digs deep into the resonance to manipulate it in transit and alter its appearance on receipt, narrowing ducking being made. The guard, with his confirmation, steps forward and leaves the rooftop access vulnerable and unwatched. Oberon swiftly takes advantage and slips through with their target.

The host's sculpting, unfortunately, dims. The reflections, warped, seem to show creatures with horrific triangular mouths, rimmed with sharp teeth. Two twins, and a G-Man with a wide, grinning face, rez into being just in front of her - and the host goes on red alert. Black IC is deployed. Bunny Hop, leaning so heavily on her Matrix stealth, only stares with shock as her twisted reflection begins to fight the other personas' with tentacles so unlike her own style of combat. She says she has to leave the host, that she's been made, and the others hear only that she has to, instead, leave existence.

This is normal, thinks Oberon. Seems like average decker stuff. She's got it handled. He's got bigger issues anyway. After confirming the target's safety on the rooftop, and again confirming with Triage that a spirit is on its way, he sneaks back into the building and down the stairwell into the server room. Although this place too is crawling with guards, apparently summoned by the host going on high alert, he's very easily able to strip a little wire in a hidden back corner of the server room and slap a data tap onto the connection. Their decker is able to very swiftly infiltrate the offline host and delete Hannah Mulder's records on file, along with all other details of her vtuber persona that Horizon might have access to here. Job done and secure, she leaves the host by slipping right out the front door. A Horizon demi-god, just as she leaves, crosses her path and steps inside.

Oberon safely escapes as well, and the team make their respective getaways before meeting back up with Ms. Johnson for the handoff and their pay.

Aftermath

The crew are paid, with only minor deductions for going loud in ways that, largely, couldn't be avoided.

Bunny Hop awakens in her coffin hotel with a rapidly beating heart. She rises, pings the host to order a drink, rehydrate, and calm herself, and finds the menu, twitching, glitching, and edited.

• LEAVE
• THE
• GRID
• NOW
• FINAL
• WARNING

Triage, worried for her, calls after, and meets a brick wall made of deflection and rabbit emojis.

Rewards

Run Rewards (High, 15 RVP)

• 14,140 MCT Scrip (7 RVP)
• +2000 Nuyen worth of pay data in the form of confidential Horizon fiscal reports
• 8 Karma (8 RVP)
• 2 CDP
  • May purchase R6 Fake UCAS SINs at gear rates**
  • For Oberon:** May purchase Mercury Comet & any affordable mods at gear rates (limit of 28,000 Nuyen)

Game Quotes

"You know those little vacuum tube things they used to have in old office buildings? The host has those." / "So you're saying the Internet is a series of tubes?"

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Bunny Hop

This is too much. Now even ishisan is pinging me about it... Frag, and that was an MCT extraction too, wasn't it? Whatever, Horizon's not much better.

I need to figure out how to stop this. Maybe Ca1 will know... Or God forbid, Iron...

Triage: God, what is it with Vtubers and runs not going to plan? Idol culture was a mistake.

...what did Bhop mean, when she said that? She denied it but, I know what I heard. I know I shouldn't pry, but I worry about her. Some times I wonder if Psychology wouldn't have been a better field.

Who am I kidding, I'd be an awful therapist.