Gojira Drinks Bleach and Fucking Dies
| Gojira Drinks Bleach and Fucking Dies | |||||||||
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| ShadowHaven | Kenran-Kai | ||||||||
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Bleach Bunny Hop |
Gojira Gaki Character2 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Gojira Gaki, their bodyguards, one feral ghoul | |||||||||
Summary
It's why Bleach stayed in Seattle, why she relished killing Yakuza for all these years.
All she's wanted is a shot at killing Gojira Gaki. And she finally gets her chance.
Background
Charon has apparently been seeking ways to get a foothold in Japan - and her network of contacts have stumbled upon something of interest to one of the elves she hates the least. Gojira Gaki is in Japan, dealing with a clan that is not his own. There's an opportunity there - they're more vulnerable with a smaller retinue, and the Watada-Rengo who control the area he's staying in are not particularly concerned with his safety.
All this spells an opportunity for vengeance.
The Meet
Bleach receives a pair of messages at roughly the same time - one from an unknown contact, the other from Charon. Both are asking for an urgent meeting. And while she's curious about the unknown, the choice is simple.
The maid calls the woman she's done so much work for lately, then arranges to meet at the Crow's Nest. It's a familiar dance for Bleach at this point - her gear's loaded up in the van so she can go where she's told to by the boss lady, and she sets out, arriving as quick as she can. But things are a touch different this time. She arrives and is greeted warmly by a skeletal servant. Mildly unnerved, Bleach accepts a drink from the thing - an old wine. Not necessarily to her taste, but it's a welcoming gift.
And then she sits down with Charon, whose explanation is simple. "I'm gonna pay you back a little. I found your guy, and you're gonna get a shot at him. Don't waste it."
A private flight is arranged, gear to be smuggled into the country, and Bleach is off on her vengeance quest.
The Plan
The funny part of the plan when you go to a place you've never been and have no contacts in is that planning is hard. So Bleach doesn't!
The first day, Bleach arrives at Charon's prearranged bolthole, collects her equipment, purchases lodge materials (at a massive markup) and prepares to go fact finding the next day. She relies on some things she'd heard years ago during her own time in the Yakuza, along with things she could find by sending her agent out hunting. A pair of criminal markets jump to mind - so she starts with searching the market in Chiba. After all, she'd heard that Gojira was staying someplace in Chiba. No better spot to search.
When she arrives, she's a clear outsider - half Japanese, half apparently-Atzlanner, blonde-haired Bleach stands out like a sore thumb. It's no surprise that a visibly unarmed woman in a janitor's jumpsuit gets accosted by a pair of men. Two thugs approach - one with a knife, the other empty-handed. An insult from one of them is responded with emasculation from Bleach, which quickly escalates the situation into a fistfight. A trained fighter and physical adept against a pair of thugs - it's no wonder that Bleach is able to put one down with broken bones. His friend whips out a gun - and the short barrel shotgun blast echoes through the market. The maid dodges of course - and when she backs up, hands raised, the thug starts dragging his friend away. That, of course, is just in time for the market's enforcer to grab the gun wielding man. He tosses the gunman over a fence into a small pavilion - and warns Bleach not to cause trouble. It's too late for that, but she promises not to anyway.
Trying her best to blend in, the gaijin-maid buys a couple guns and asks the gun seller for a bit of info. She's promptly redirected to the bar at the end of the plaza, with the gun salesman declaring that he doesn't compete with them. So naturally, she goes in, buys a drink, and waits for an audience with the woman running the place.
Once inside, Bleach is forthright - she's here to kill a troll. Immediately, the infobroker refuses to do business - and Bleach pays a few thousand nuyen to change her mind. 30,000 more nuyen later, she's gotten the names and general locations for a trio of trolls that the infobroker states match who she might be looking for. And that - that is a better start.
The next move is one of pure pragmatism. Bleach swallows her pride and approaches the Watada-rengo - who controls the area that these trolls are in - to ask their blessing for her next actions. Nabisuke, a local representative, makes it clear that he will only allow such a thing to go without retaliation if Bleach can provide evidence that he's not loyal to the clans. It's worth doing - not being chased by Yakuza is generally helpful.
She begins looking into a couple targets, but is swiftly finding that she can't cover enough ground. When her first lead goes nowhere, the maid calls for help - contacting Bunny Hop for assistance with tracking down her targets.
The rabbit gets on the job, and the next day, in the middle of matrix searches, Bleach goes back to a set of sewers that was her lead previously, disguised as a maintenance worker. Searching around, she's able to find that there's an unexpected entrance, hidden by an illusion - one that leads up into a building above. Inside is a symbol she doesn't recognize (later identified by BHop as belonging to a Triad), a locker room with a locker belonging to one Buntaro Ito, and an open bath which contains a horrific scene. Blood seeps into the pool, a body bleeding into it. On the other side of the room is a woman - unconscious, but apparently alive when Bleach checks. Briefly, she glances around, checking doors before she overhears a set of steps approaching. And in a few moments, planning went out the window.
The Run
Gojira Gaki enters the bathhouse as Bleach hides in a janitor's closet. The irony isn't lost on her - nor is the opportunity. She switches the AR fashion on her jumpsuit to match the symbol she saw earlier, claims a mop and bucket, waits for about thirty seconds - then steps out, stammering excuses. The troll elects to graciously allow her to leave. So she leaves the room, closing the paper door behind her - and hesitating, listening to what happens next.
Splashing, laughter. And she's quite sure she can hear the sound of flesh being bitten into. So she casts aside the cleaning clothes, flings aside her mask, whips around, throws open the door - and sees the woman who'd been lying unconscious eating the corpse.
Gaki points and calls out something simple. "Look. Fresh meat."
And then it's on, Bleach getting charged by the freshly turned ghoul - and ignoring it completely to charge Gojira. From there it's on, four shifter guards ganging up on her as she tries to fight their boss. She fights back one on five - one on six, when the ghoul is thrown back at her. And while she'd be doomed while surrounded on all sides, she has an edge. Bunny Hop highlights attacks incoming from behind, helps her find stable footing, playing the guard to her back from the matrix and keeping her from dying. A pair of kicks to the kneecaps put two guards out of the fight. Another strike brings down the ghoul. A strike from the matrix gets Gaki on his knees - barely able to keep from vomiting as BHop turns the stomach 'ware upside down. One more guard goes down, then the foe attempts to run.
And while Bleach tries to stop them from fleeing, a pair of mages join the rest of the retinue from elsewhere in the building. One puts her in a physical barrier, which she breaks. Another charge at Gojira gets her struck for the first time in the entire fight - sending her reeling. And while that doesn't stop her, a barrage of stunbolts does. She falls.
BHop, naturally alarmed, blows up Bleach's commlink - preventing it from falling into Gaki's hands. Immediately after, she gets in touch with her Yakuza contacts, trying to arrange a rescue. Bleach gets up though, waking tied up on a bench.
She breaks the cuffs keeping her held there, then dispatches the ghoul she'd previously tried to save. From there, she walks back to her bolthole, calls BHop to let the decker know she lived, then calls Charon. She admits to having lost her temper, and explains she lost everything. Her commlink, her dignity - and most importantly, a powerful focus made by Hereknight. Charon's furious that the ragemaid has put something that would get her associate onto the Yakuza's radar, onto MCT's radar - and, potentially, onto Ryumyo's radar. And then she makes it clear that if Bleach doesn't get it back, she - and Charon - will both be toast.
So Charon hangs up to start dealing with it, while Bleach recovers.
BHop, meanwhile, renegotiates - the six thousand initially promised is well below the disaster that's already occurred. So her pay is quadrupled and then some, to 26,000 nuyen.
The Chase
A motorcycle is arranged, and Bleach gets a simple order - go loud, catch Gaki, and secure that focus.
And then it's on - Bleach dons full body armor, slings a musket over one shoulder and a Barret rifle over the other, and flies down the Neo-Tokyo highways at inadvisable speeds. Through toll checkpoints she races, dodging into oncoming traffic to keep up speed, weaving between cars to catch the van that Gaki's fleeing in. Meanwhile, BHop tracks a swarm of drones sent by the local police to chase down the biker flying near-invisibly through the city's heart.
The drones catch her at the same time she catches the van. She can't catch them though - and is peppered with shots from the drones. BHop calls in assistance, The Girl in Many Colors flying into the local grid to help keep the maid alive. A mixture of thrown grenades and matrix trickery take out several drones - and when BHop is able to make the maid disappear from the rigger's sensors, Bleach gets away - but the van's gone.
She races after them, nearly losing control of the bike, and catches it again. She charges them down, throwing all caution to the wind (and burning edge) to catch up. A shot is taken through the back doors of the van - Gaki, having been tagged by BHop, takes the hit. A sprite's Gremlins cause the back door to open, and Bleach sees the opportunity she needs.
A high-explosive grenade is tossed directly into the van, the blast contained within its walls enough to kill all inside - and destroy the vehicle.
The maid stops by the burning wreck, finding Gaki still clinging to life, wounds already closing due to regenerative powers. She draws a final grenade, places it in the troll's mouth, then pulls the pin and leaves.
Aftermath
Bleach escapes overland, passing out at times before she finally reaches a place where Charon has arranged a pickup for her. Her commlink, both a masking focus and her powerful weapon focus, her disguise - all are destroyed in the blast along with Gaki's crew. She's out more than 200,000 nuyen between bribes, BHop's pay, and the gear which was destroyed.
BHop has used the resonance on the MCT grid, and passes out from fade in her apartment in the denouement. She'll live, but she'll need a maid to clean her apartment.
Charon swears off working with Bleach on sensitive topics until her anger issues are under control. Bleach explains she feels calm for the first time in years, but with no evidence of it Charon will remain cautious working with her for the foreseeable future.
Nabisuke knows that Bleach was responsible for Gojira's death, and may hold a grudge. The bounty the Yakuza have on her head is increased, from 100,000 nuyen to 115,000 nuyen.
Rewards
--- Run Rewards for "Gojira drinks Bleach and fucking dies" (Deadly x 2.66 runtime multiplier = 48 RVP) For Bleach:
-4 Shotozumi-Gumi Reputation
-4 Watada-Rengo Reputation
Wanted bounty from Yakuza increases by 15%
May buy off Vendetta at chargen rates (or swap target to Nabisuke for calling her a half-blood mongrel)
35 Karma (35 RVP)
28 CDP (13 RVP)
Initiation Ordeal Discount
For BHop:
26,000 Nuyen (13 RVP)
Owe 2 Chips to The Girl in Many Colors
22 CDP (10 RVP)
25 Karma (25 RVP)
MCT has BHop's Resonance Signature. They don't know much about it, though!
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Bunny Hop
placeholder for BHOP
Bleach
I don't have any regrets. I'd do it all again. That troll needed to die.
(This has ended up being a short story. Scenes are focused on what Bleach viewed as most important. Content warnings for gore and allusions to abuse.)
Fear and Loathing in Neo Tokyo
Seattle
Bleach could smell the opportunity from the moment that she reached the Crow's Nest - and when Charon offered her a shot at her enemy, she jumped at it. A flight got jumped, and she got to Seattle. Formalities were dealt with - security, so on. And then she got to finding info.
... She sucked at finding info.
While searching, she met a pair of goons. They insulted her, so she insulted them back. They then tried violence, but she's better at it - so one was put down, and the other ran off. The Yak bouncer might've been a problem for her after throwing around the gunman, but she talked him down.
Finding out what she wanted only cost her 30k nuyen. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things. But even with that in hand, she was at a dead end. So she called on one of the chat deckers for help, looking for a bit of remote assistance. Nobody who could do anything on the meat - every last scrap of the violence had to be completely, utterly hers. Nobody else could touch Gaki.
Neo Tokyo's Sewers
Her hands touch the trapdoor at the top of the ladder - and Bleach pushes the hatch open. Slowly, she sneaks into the hallway above - it's a damn sight nicer than the sewers. Nicer smelling, too. On the one side, she spots a symbol on the wall. Not Yak shit, not Mafia stuff, so she just takes a picture then ignores it. She moves to the other door - a traditional sliding door, made of paper. A moment of listening - running water? She enters.
It's a locker room for a bathhouse. Lockers line the walls. And at the end of one row - their name.
Buntaro Ito. Gojira Gaki.
Terrifying.
Her hands quiver for only a moment before she hisses a quiet curse under her breath - a flare of her aura calms her. She's here to investigate, but the locker's empty. She moves on to the bathhouse itself. The picture gets sent to BHop. 'Hey Nerd. Check what this is.' And then Bleach walks into the bathhouse.
Before her eyes, she sees a pair of limp bodies. One a corpse, halfway hanging into the pool, staining the water crimson as the bites taken out of it leak ichor. The other - a woman, chest rising and falling slowly. She stays calm - one thing at a time. She checks the first door - a sauna. Next - a hall, with two doors. She notes it, then checks the woman. Breathing. Labored breathing. She's been stricken multiple times by a fist the size of her head. She knows who did this. Gojira. She's seen it before. She saw it so many times. She saw it too many times, for so many of her formative years. Sasha feels fear.
Bleach isn't allowed to feel afraid. She gets angry instead, fists balling up, jaw working. But she needs information, and she's not a doctor. The fallen woman was left for dead - she has time, she thinks. So she moves on, checking the first door in the hall. Thank fuck - a closet of cleaning supplies. That's called plausible evidence. The AR on her jumpsuit gets swapped to that symbol from before. She collects a bucket, a mop, some cleaning agent - and freezes as she hears men entering the bath. One approaches her position - and she comes out with her mop, looking for all the world like a scared maid.
After all - she is.
Lazing in the bath is Gojira, four bodyguards flanking them. Bleach briefly - briefly - considers charging and taking them all on. There's no way she can take them all on at once. She'll die. She knows she'll die. Or worse, she'll be controlled by that troll again. She looks at the eyes - they're the same as she remembers. Everything about Gaki is as she remembers. The terror-
"S-s-s-sorry sir. I thought - that - that you were done, so I was going to clean."
There's a mean look in the ghoul's eyes. But - he shrugs and nods over his shoulder. "Go on, then." And Bleach's feet obey, muscle memory from a decade ago, not hesitating for an instant to get out of sight when confronted with the horrors she'd dealt with for so long. The door to the bathhouse closes behind her, and she's frozen - listening - hands shaking at her sides as she tries to collect herself enough to leave. A hit of guts would be helpful for getting her nerve back. She just got away clean. She wasn't recognized. Not her aura, not her face, not her 'pretty blonde hair' as she's heard it called too many times.
From behind her, she hears, "Don't worry. I'll make you better." A splash follows - then growling and struggling.
Not again.
She'll die.
No one else.
It's suicidal.
Never again.
She's sick of being afraid.
Never again!
Sam would be proud of her.
NEVER AGAIN!
Bleach whips around, tossing the mop away, donning her astrally glowing knucks then flinging the door open, letting it slam against the frame. The commlink in her pocket is tossed behind her - a camera feed giving her contracted nerd a clear view of her back as Bleach tries to do the right thing for maybe the first time in her life. It helps her stand tall. Her mask is ripped away, her masking dismissed as she raises her hands in a boxer's guard, ready for anything. Four guards. One troll. One vulnerable...human, eating the corpse. It's a ghoul. She turned back to try to save a ghoul.
Gaki's voice is lazy as they declare, "Look - fresh meat." The ghoul charges at a dumbstruck Bleach, who manages to pull it together only enough to sidestep the charge as if she were in a dream.
She's going to die. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that Gaki dies with her.
She charges blindly, screaming as she sprints through the three bodyguards - not one can hit her. No one can hit her. She won't be stopped. Her wild kick misses, and it's only BHop's scream in her ear that gives her enough warning to- "DUCK!" - move her head out of the way of his dismissive swipe. A flash of fear. It would've taken her head.
And then she's surrounded on all sides. Four bodyguards are swinging at her. Warnings flash on her contacts, alarms ring in her ears, and with supernatural quickness she ducks under blows, jumps sweeps, throws out a block - and then she sees an opening. Another block from opponents on one side, and she takes the momentum, leaping forward to where a pair are setting for new strikes. Her feet lash out at their kneecaps. With a sickening crunch, she smashes her foot into the knee of two men at once, backflipping off with the force of the blow and whipping around to fight the other bodyguards. In her face is the ghoul, the pair of guards having shoved it at her.
Bleach shoves it back, then jumps a swipe from Gaki in the pool. The guards shove the ghoul at her once more - and this time, Bleach roundhouses its neck, the unskilled opponent tumbling from a strike to its nerves. Bunny Hop is trying to tell her that she has an escape plan, that she's going to die. Her ears are pounding, her vision red. Her answer is screamed out loud. "I don't care if I die if I TAKE HIM WITH ME!"
The bodyguards might have known fear, in that moment - the ones with broken knees limping back, the others holding still for a moment. Gaki tries to retreat, the fear of a police response conjured up by BHop's clever decker work. But there's no escape. She's too angry for that. Her leg lashes out, striking the side of his leg - and making it bend unnaturally, toppling the troll in the water with a crimson splash.
The bodyguards fall on her again, and she's fighting for her life once more. One more gets struck in the leg, Bleach using the reduced mobility to let her keep up. Reduced to shambling movements, Gaki tries to shove Bleach in the pool. But BHop comes through - the troll crumbles to the knees, vomiting as their stomach 'ware is turned to slag. Desperate back and forths, and then - they start fleeing. Bleach's attempts to stop them are in vain. Gaki shambles to the door out of the bath, opens it - and there are two more guards. She won't stop. The maid can't stop. She'll kill it. She has to kill it. She'll never be safe if Gaki isn't dead.
As the troll crawls away, she charges after, the guards swinging and missing. But finally, finally, a strike catches her. The troll's beefy arm rises, slamming into Bleach's chest and sending her stumbling back. Sheer force of will keeps her on her feet.
Gaki keeps running. One of the guards puts a barrier around her - trapping her in with the last of the unarmed fighters. His blows are dodged without her even looking at him, the maid now fully reliant on BHop to cover her defense as she flings a fist forward into the barrier. Nothing will stop her. Nothing. Nothing! She charges through the shambling guards, who try and fail to stop her from getting close to the boss. But - the two newcomers are mages. What five fighters cannot accomplish in hand to hand combat, the pair of mages finally manage to complete. Stunbolts make the maid collapse.
She lost. She isn't safe. But Bleach's last thought as she crumples to the floor is simple. Gaki can feel fear. And she put that fear in them.
It isn't enough.
The Chase
When she wakes, she shambles back to the bolthole and contacts BHop and Charon, in that order. Charon's furious - magical signatures or something. Bleach makes clear she'll figure out how to make the problem go away. She's good at that. BHop's mad too - this isn't what she signed up for, she didn't know she was helping with assassination, she wasn't expecting grimdark violence. Bleach can shut BHop up by offering 20k more nuyen. It's worth it to keep her help, she would've died back there otherwise.
So the maid sits on her hands, lets people with bigger brains than hers figure out the next step, and rests.
She's itching to go by the time Charon calls to give her a motorcycle. The chase isn't what interests her, and getting shot by drones barely hurts at all. Salt rounds? Pellets? They might as well shoot her with a watergun, because she won't stop.
When she catches the van for the second time, she gives the hacker one order. "Draw me a circle around 'em." A yammering answer follows, which she ignores to repeat the same order. Then she twists the throttle open, ignoring safety and what is physically impossible for a barely-trained rider to close the gap tight. She leans over to the side, bracing the barrel on the bike's windscreen - and firing a trio of bullets through the van. And after the back doors open, a grenade follows, the last thing she sees before the blast a shocked retinue of guards and a glint of fear in Gaki's eyes. It's satisfying - she's pleased to imagine the same feeling she's felt for so long in their eyes.
And then it's done. She stops next to the remnants, still ignoring the decker's chatter, and checks the corpse. Living - regenerating. There's only one method she can think of to destroy the body that will satisfy her. The last of her grenades gets plucked from its place on her armor, set in its final resting place - Gojira's mouth. Bleach walks off with the pin, feeling better than she has in years.
Even passing out on the walk home doesn't sting. Not the six figures worth of gear thrown away, not the bridges burned to get here, not the angry Yaks, not Charon's anger. Nothing matters.
She's done it. They're dead. She can live free.
What comes next? Nobody knows.