Fennec Bueller's Day Off
| Fennec Bueller's Day Off | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Kanaga-gumi | ||||||||
| Fennec | Yakuza Spider | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | The Infosec of A Lot of Blackmail | ||||||||
Summary
Fennec and Bunny Hop meet up to discuss very important things, and Bunny Hop eventually requests Fennec's help for a specific job. She provides a dossier on Yakuza Matrix hosts and defenses, and asks Fennec to dig up dirt on any higher ups in the Kanaga-gumi that they can find.
Fennec's legwork is unmatched, spending weeks detailing the specific comings and goings of these hosts until she finally settles on one very likely candidate with a very hefty sub-host to boot. She decides to strike this gambling destination host late at night just as a spider that Bunny Hop had identified as being particularly weak comes on shift. Thanks to clever social maneuvering and her social media homework, Fennec is able to finesse the Spider into bringing them down into the sub-host to see some particularly interesting sculpting. After a short time, Fennec fakes having to jack out for "her job," and simply hides from the spider, as well as erasing the mark the destination host had requested to place on them. Now alone in the sub-host, Fennec uses their free access to the hosts files to dig up the requested dirt, and bails as soon as possible before being discovered.
Background
Bunny Hop, the daughter of Kanaga-gumi shategashira Takashi Kurosawa, is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Takashi Kurosawa knows she is a technomancer, and is leveraging that information to make her a personal tool for the Kanaga-gumi, and a spy to help track down those that had tried to assassinate him several months ago. Already on thin ice, damned if discovered by the gumi and damned if she doesn't fulfill Kurosawa's increasingly demanding requests, she is desperate for leverage that may help lift her out of this situation. Blackmail seems the obvious choice - if Takashi Kurosawa loses standing in the gumi, then he loses his connections to MCT, and as a result, much of his leverage over Bunny Hop and potentially his financial motivation for cutting her loose. It's not perfect, but it's a start. Already a spider for the gumi, however, she is under close scrutiny. A datasteal even in her off hours is likely to be discovered once logs are checked. Knowing this, she decides to contact Fennec for a data trade - she has juicy intel she thinks Fennec might want, for the price of getting her what she wants too.
The Meet
Without revealing that information, Bunny Hop and Fennec meet up to discuss a very important data trade, however business very quickly becomes friendly as they reveal their technomancy to one another. Nonetheless, Bunny Hop has a special request for Fennec, and offers information on Project TALC (Building on Biometrics) for their assistance. She is looking for blackmail material on the Kanaga-gumi's higher-ups, including potentially the shategashira and wakagashira. Providing Fennec with an oddly detailed dossier of known and suspected Yakuza hosts, data sub-hosts, Spider rotation schedules, threat levels, and Matrix combat specializations, she requests that this be a quiet job, as things blowing up would "create more problems than it would solve." Fennec, naturally suspicious, wonders why Bunny Hop couldn't source this data herself, but chooses not to pry. She agrees to take the job with an unerring nose for curiosity.
The Plan
Fennec performs exhaustive legwork in the weeks prior to the run, profiling hosts, comings and goings of guests and heavy hitters, spiders, Matrix defense ratings, and so on, until they land on one host in particular - a destination host styled after an enormous pachinko parlor, representing the Matrix presence location of several other Kanaga-gumi gambling dens and pachinko parlors in the docks area of Tacoma. This host happens to have a sub-host with a tougher shell to crack than many of the other hosts Bunny Hop had provided them with, making it a likely candidate to house the information their "Johnson" requested. Fennec resolves to visit the host late at night and sweet talk her way into the data sub-host.
The Run
Visiting the host several times late at night over a few weeks just to establish a regular presence, Fennec chooses a night to strike when a particularly weak spider is at play, one who also happens to be particularly vulnerable to social engineering according to her research online. Recently broken up with and struggling with addiction, he makes a particularly vulnerable target.
Pretending that her preferred pachinko machine is malfunctioning, she requests staff assistance - due to the late hour, only the spider is on hand to answer, and replies curtly as a result. Nonetheless, with some sweet talking and commiserating about their mutual love of liquor, he's convinced by how quiet the host is at this time of night to at least come over and take a look. Once there, Fennec continues talking to him, feigning a shared interest in his hobbies and a shared profession as a security spider until he seems particularly interested in keeping her company. After a discussion about host sculpting, he mentions that Fennec would love to see "the area downstairs," although immediately seems to backtrack on that thought. Fennec pushes, however, and through the power of gentle prodding, convinces him to bring her there, purely to look at the sculpting of course. He agrees, on the condition that Fennec absolutely, under no circumstances, does not touch anything. She's granted a mark on the sub-host and allowed to enter, with his supervision.
The sub-host takes the shape of an enormous warehouse, walls lined with dataterms and center stacked high with shipping containers and boxes. After some more small talk, Fennec announces that they absolutely have to go, their boss is calling and found out they're not paying attention in their assigned host. They perform a Matrix Hide to disappear from the spider's sight, and the spider, none the wiser, pumps his fists when she's gone, chanting positive affirmations all the way back to the main host.
Fennec stays busy, erasing the destination host's mark and hiding from the sub-host as well, now that she's able to do so in a data host. They clean themselves of any OS with some complex forms and set about searching through the host for a trove of blackmail data, just as Bunny Hop had requested.
Aftermath
Fennec discovers Kanaga-gumi plans months to years in advance, movements of kumi-in, of drug routes shifting and evolving to avoid law enforcement patrol, ledgers and accounting for inventory and bribes. She also discovers that this seems to be somewhere that the oyabun, Sato Kanaga, keeps information on several of his own men, as well as his enemies, in the event that this blackmail may ever need to be proffered quickly as a weapon. In particular, she finds information on Takashi Kurosawa, an audio transcription of a meeting between him, the at-the-time shategashira of the gumi, a Kanaga-gumi kyodai named Kousuke Yamada, and a kaikei who remains unnamed and serves as a witness.
Takashi Kurosawa had evidently participated in the lynching and execution of several newly SURGE'd and goblinized Japanese citizens during the eruption of Mount Unzen that took place with the passing of Halley's Comet in 2061. While such fanatical radicalism isn't unheard of among the Japanese public, it so happened that one of those caught in the crossfire of his group's organized killings was the son of a Maasaki Watada of the Watada-gumi - a high ranking lieutenant at the time who has since ascended to the title of oyabun. Despite the biases of the Old School toward SURGE'd metahumans to beginw ith, such behavior deserves swift retaliation, and after hearing of several others dying in gruesome and public ways as a message from the Yakuza to those who might be careless with their judgment, Takashi Kurosawa put together the resources needed for a Fake SIN, just strong enough to flee the country and the influence of the Watada-rengo.
Yamada and the then-shategashira express their disappointment that Kurosawa had hidden this information from them during all his years of service at that point, for which he fiercely apologizes. They tell him that the oyabun likes him, that he reminds the oyabun of himself in his ferocity as a warrior, efficacy as an enforcer, and loyalty as a Yakuza, and that the oyabun is torn in two at this news, as a man who has much to thank the late Akira Watada for himself. Despite Kurosawa's loyalty and ability, he is now nonetheless a liability if discovered, a man who could spark inter-clan war if not cut loose. However, the oyabun would rather try to cultivate his bright future. Remove a pinky as penance, they tell him, and he agrees to do so at the oyabun's next audience.
They also clarify that they cannot question his loyalty, and state that his life from before joining the gumi must be utterly cleansed if they are to accept his apology. They mention in passing that a Japanese man who marries a non-Japanese woman is no true adherent to the traditional Japanese values they espouse - albeit, they also state that a Japanese man who does not remain loyal to the woman he marries is not a true man either. To that end, they clarify how convenient it would be if she were to disappear, without the clan or Takashi Kurosawa's involvement at all.
Almost non-sequitor, the kaikei informs Kurosawa that he meets a lot of interesting figures in the underworld during his visits to lock-up, and has a list of valuable contacts outside the web of the Yakuza to share. If Kurosawa is to walk the path to gumi leadership after all, he will need to learn to deal with those outside the organization.
"Family comes first, but business is business. The Kanaga-gumi does not deal in half measures."
Fennec resolves to collect as much data as they can and leave the host as soon as possible, before any probe IC can make another attempt at spotting her in a place she doesn't belong. They hope that this information is what Bunny Hop might be looking for.
Rewards
6 Karma (6 RVP)
14 CDP (7 RVP), for unlocking a treasure trove of Yakuza intel
2 CDP Base
Optional:
Up to 12,000 nuyen from selling paydata quick before word of the leak spreads, if Fennec so chooses (6 RVP)
Ninja Vanish at chargen rates for being a sneaky little fox (5 RVP)
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Fennec
Wow! I should give up on this silly 'hacking' stuff and just talk to spiders instead, these guys are so - cute? Pathetic? I can't pick which! Still, another picture perfect host dive by everybody's favorite matrix fox! Get dunked on, cryptobro.
I hope Bun's happy with what I got for her.