Atrophy

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

@SierraBusy tonight, but I'll hit you up with a PM tomorrow and we can work on having our characters become best buds before @Blitzy kills Calypso.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

Hey folks, my schedule is freeing up a little bit and I'm reconsidering joining in again! Have a few ideas mulling over in my head but if anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears. C:

@KaiserElectric

Hit us up with those ideas _{so we can destroy them.}

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

@Atrophy Cayne be coming fo yo ass.

@Blitzy

I'm sure that they'll just become best of friends once they put aside their differences.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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Hillview High - Mason Square
_{@Fernstone@Surtr Inc}

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Penny knew it was pointless to try and run. The school was surrounded by the unimaginable, and she doubted that there would be anyway to break through the curtain of black, shifting tendrils. She knew that dragging Maddie around with Rien was only exhausting them and that, eventually, the Glutton’s avatar would hunt them down and catch them. The only reason they weren’t being devoured now was because it was off after someone else. She stopped near a tree and looked at Rien. She didn’t know about them, but she was exhausted after hauling Maddie away from the school. She hated the idea, but maybe it’d be better to just try and hide the unconscious girl. If they were all doomed anyway it didn’t really matter, anyway.

“This isn’t working,” said Penny, and she slipped her arm out from underneath Maddie’s shoulder before dropping her bag, shrugging off her jacket, and letting it fall to the ground. “Cover her up with this and hide her with some leaves or something,” she continued, her voice strained and defeated. “I’m going to...I’m going to try and do...something. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not going out like this.”

Penny picked her bag back up, as little good as her improvisational artillery would do, and headed back towards the school building proper. She heard some familiar voices as she stepped closer to the building, and her pace went from broken march to a stumbling run as she saw Claire’s aura through the brush. She burst out of the woods in time to see Claire slam Britney up against the wall of the school and accuse her of things that were, well, mostly true. Penny was as mad at Britney as Claire was, but the fact that Claire was stupid enough to start up the infighting again at a moment like this forced Penny’s anger to swell up and laser sight itself on her. It took all of her willpower to resist grabbing a handful of pens from her bag, instead letting her nails cut into the skin of her palms as she stepped up beside Justin.

“He’s right, you stupid idiot!” shouted Penny. “Do you really think this is what Hagan would’ve wanted!? He tried to protect us, so stop being such a dumb bitch for once and use your goddamn brain! I hate her as much as you do, but Britney is the only one that knows about this shit. Let her go, please Claire, let her go, and maybe we can figure out some way to get out of this.”

She had slowly moved forward as she spoke. Penny could feel the energy burning off of Claire as she approached. Cautiously, Penny reached off with her hand to grab Claire’s shoulder and guide her away from Britney. She was close enough that she no longer needed to shout, her voice a whisper as she begged Claire, “Please, this won’t solve anything.”

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

There was something seemingly sterile, almost hospital-like about the Bachman & Clench offices that did little to make Calypso feel welcome when she stepped out of the elevator. Artless white walls were illuminated by bright fluorescent lights that buzzed, and not a single head turned as she stepped by the sea of cubicles that stretched from wall to wall. No windows gave any betrayal of sunlight, of if the outside world even existed, of if there was anything beyond this room, and perhaps that was the point. The only noise was the occasional cough, or a stifled yawn, but most of the employees seemed to be busy at work while they stared into space, a mass-produced visor cutting them off from the rest of the world so that they could focus on whatever their task on hand was.

Perhaps, underneath their visor, they were working on a lovely beach, or casually chatting with their coworkers about last night’s game while punching in a few strings of data, or secretly viewing pornography, but Calypso saw nothing more than a bunch of mouth-breathing drones, a hundred or so blips in a network designed to increase profits by a few fractions of a percentage. If this was the price to pay to be rubbed down by cabana boys, perhaps Calypso would reconsider her fantasy after all. She imagined that part of the reason there were no windows in this room was fear that an employee might realize how pointless their existence was and jump out of it. Just being here made Calypso feel uneasy. She quickened her pace as she made her way to the corner office, what was meant to be a light rap-a-tap on the door coming out as a heavy bang-bang. She was so ready to get out of this corporate void.

She thought she heard a come in. Even if she didn’t, she had already opened the door and made her way in, being extra certain to seal the door shut behind her. It was a corner office, although that was only a guess, because instead of windows there were screens that showed aerial views of rolling green landscapes and rushing rivers. A pleasantly sweet aroma filled the air, something like cinnamon apple, and the office was immaculately designed with abstract art, a mahogany desk, and a leather couch. It was a stark contrast between the drab place Calypso had just walked through. Seated behind the desk was a slight woman in an expensive looking pantsuit, her heels kicked up on the desk with one hand behind her head while the other swiped at air. Her hair could hardly be called that; it was more a sculpture made out of obsidian, styled into spiral and molded to fit her head perfectly. Not a single strand was out of place and when the exec moved the hair didn’t even wobble. Unless Calypso was in the wrong room, then this woman went by the moniker Sloan, or at least she did on Capri.

After a few seconds of waiting, Calypso realized that the woman hadn’t even noticed her.

“Excuse me, I—”

“Shit!” yelled the exec as she jumped out of her chair. Sloan was so loud that even Calypso had jumped a little, thinking that perhaps she had gone to the wrong office. “Finally you’re here! You are the delivery girl, right? I mean, look at you, obviously you’re the delivery girl, hah!”

“Sorry for being late,” said Calypso, taking a glance at her phone. She was a few minutes early, still. A look of annoyance came and went before she peered back up at the suit. “Do you have the package?”

“Do I have it?” Sloan sounded almost offended. “Do I have it? Why would I have it?” Calypso looked at her phone again, confirming that the request had been to pick up a package from the sender. Sloan continued, “You’re going to get it for me. Isn’t that what you do?”

“Of course, ma’am, I must’ve misread the description. Where is the pickup?” asked Calypso, ready to be away from this woman as soon as possible. Something about the change in the job stank like a setup.

“Ghajotia,” said Sloan, a cruel smile betraying her lips.

“Sorry, but I can’t do the impossible,” said Calypso with a laugh. “Ghajotia is locked down. I’m a courier, not a cyborg ninja. Unfortunately, it seems we both wasted each other’s time. I know the way out.”

Calypso’s hand was on the door when Sloan spoke, “Maybe we could work something out, Callie.”

Calypso froze for a moment, and then turned back towards Sloan. Sloan had a look of satisfaction on her face as she sat down, beckoning Calypso to join her.

“It’s Calypso.”

“It’s Callie Graham,” said Sloan.

“I think you have me mistaken for someone else,” said Calypso, still standing.

“I think you have me mistaken for an idiot,” said Sloan. “You are Callie Graham, age 23, Bandi residence. A month ago you delivered a package that blew up a skin shop. You work at the Black Hole bar on the border of Bandi and Ghajotia, you’re currently single, and your only family is your mother who lives in Ghajotia. And I can assure you, Ms. Graham, that the reason your mother isn’t responding to your calls is not because she is dead, for the time being at least. A meatbag like you has certainly heard of the hunts, have you not?”

“I have, but my mother is aug—”

“I suggest you shut the hell up and sit the fuck down.”

Calypso shutted the hell up and sat the fuck down.

“You pissed off a lot of powerful people when you blew up that clinic for the Neanderthals, Ms. Graham. A lot of powerful people. That clinic was owned by my company and was frequented by some very dangerous friends of mine, and just about all of them want you dead now.” Sloan paused, letting that thought sink in.

“It was an accident,” said Calypso through gritted teeth. “If I had known what was in the package, I wouldn’t have delivered it.”

“It was negligence brought upon by greed. How many of your little Capri packages do you think ending up hurting others? Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. But I’m not here to lecture you about morality. Besides, you should be more worried about your mortality,” said Sloan, smiling at her own cleverness. “They see you as the cause of a great loss, but I see you as an opportunity. An investment.”

“Most people would just call it blackmail,” said Calypso, her fingers clawing at the chair. “But I’m listening.”

“I am offering you protection, for both you and your mother, from the Shepherd and the more radical of the sheep in his flock,” said Sloan. “I suggest you accept it, or the friends of mine might have to forcefully extract the augmentations from your mother before dropping her off in Awakened territory.”

“It’s pretty clear that I have no other option here, but you could at least give me the catch before I sign away my soul.”

“The catch is we now own you, at least until you make us enough money to make up for the loss caused by you blowing up one of our clinics. Trust me, it’s a fairly hefty sum, and a gutter rat like you is more likely to catch a bullet before she ever sees that much money, but it’s the only chance you got.” Sloan slid open a drawer on the other side of the desk. “Alternatively, I could settle things for you right now.”

“Well,” Calypso tried to smile to hide her fear, “looks like I’ll be getting a job out of this interview after all. Consider me a proper lackey, then.”

“Delightful. I knew you would do the smart thing,” said Sloan, closing the drawer. “Let’s shake on it to make it official.”

Sloan barely reached over her side of the desk, forcing Calypso to stand up to shake the other woman’s hand. The moment her tentative hand touched Sloan’s she realized her apprehension to touch the other woman was justified as Sloan’s hand clasped around Calypso’s wrist with a crushing grip. Sloan slammed Calypso’s hand onto the desk and twisted, forcing Calypso to her knees as she yelped in pain. Calypso caught Sloan’s left hand part as a blade emerged and she looked away, a louder scream erupting from her throat as she felt the knife tear through her right pinky finger. Blood spurted across the desk as Sloan let go of Calypso, who quickly put pressure on her right hand as she bit down on her tongue to distract herself from the pain. Calypso felt a hand wrap around her ponytail as she was pulled up to her feet and onto the desk so that her ear was inches away from Sloan’s mouth.

“Consider that your apology. Welcome to the Consortium,” said Sloan, her voice seething with anger. “If you ever try to fuck us over, you’ll wish that the Awakened had gotten to you instead. Now get the fuck out of my office. I’ll contact you when you’re in Ghajotia.”

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

My days off have finally become actual days off again. I have a post in work already, and it should be ready no later than... Thursday? My goal by the end of it is to have Calypso freed up so they can start bumping into all y'all jerks.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Whew! Just got offa ten day stretch followed by another damn wedding weekend. My next day off isn't until Thursday, but I'll definitely be posted by then.

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

Calypso had never been shot before, although she had been shot at. Still, she imagined that the feeling in her stomach right now was quite like being shot in the gut. She stood in the fountain square outside of her appointment as the news broadcasted the crash, her head still ringing from the distant sonic boom, her mouth agape in disbelief as she watched the footage of the crash loop and loop. Already, it was being reported as an accident; every disaster in Arcadia was an accident. Despite this, it struck Calypso as odd that all of the accidents seemed to happen around the poorer districts—although perhaps she had been reading too many ramblings of a paranoid shut-in on the message boards again. Even if there was some grand conspiracy out to get the little guy, she wasn’t concerned about that; she was concerned about her mother.

How many times had she tried and called that woman? Three? Five? Everytime the line went dead, and every message she sent went unread. From looking at the map of the quarantine, Calypso’s neighborhood had been absorbed into Ghajotia, which meant she was now temporarily homeless, but her mom was living in proper Ghajotia. So each unanswered phone call, each unread message meant either one of two things. The first was that her mother was in a Trance-induced coma, dead to the world for the next couple of hours. The second was that her mother was just dead to the world. Calypso failed to keep the tears contained as her phone buzzed, an alert from Capri that she was due to meet her client in ten minutes.

Screw this, she thought, sitting down on the edge of the fountain. Already she knew that she was going to go through with the job, despite being nowhere in the proper state of mind. The fact of the matter was that she needed money if she was going to stay somewhere that wasn’t in the streets tonight. She had friends she would have relied on, but they were in the quarantine. Perhaps dead. Like her mom. And anyone she cared about. And anyone she didn’t care about. And…

Stop it, stop it, stop it. You can’t control this, but it doesn’t control you either. Focus up, she thought, patting her cheeks and wiping her tears on her sleeves.

A few deep, controlled breaths later and Calypso was standing. One or two more heavy sighs and she had started to walk, heading towards the revolving doors of the silver tower in front of her. From the base, it was nearly impossible to see up to the top of the building that was a beehive of offices and research labs. The windows were mirrored and polished to a shine, blinding anyone who stared at them for too long when the sun hit just right. A blue hologram of a woman dressed in a smart suit welcomed visitors to the Jazani Plaza, reminding them to check in with security if they did not have their access chip to their floor.

The lobby was clean, it was quiet, and it didn’t smell like piss. Already it was vastly superior to the Black Hole Bar; just being in it made her feel slightly better. Calypso liked to imagine a life where she worked in a building like this. However, her fantasies never included her doing any actual office work, which likely would have driven her into a bottle to escape the drone lifestyle, and instead focused more on the glitz and glamour of what she imagined life with a steady paycheck would be like. She thought of things like rooftop pools with hot cabana boys, dinner parties where people were only murdered with words, rubbing elbows with socialites that she couldn’t stand but desired to stand amongst, and other stupid things.

Normally, Calypso wasn’t the kind of girl who turned many heads, and she personally liked things that way. She was rarely the prettiest person in the place even in Ghajotia, and here where all of the men and women were crafted nearly entirely out of silicon she wasn’t even close to being anywhere in the running. Thus, she knew that when the few people inside of the building’s lobby turned and stared at her it was in the same way someone would stare at a sideshow in a carnival. At least, that was the best she could hope for, because if the security saw her as any kind of threat there would be nothing more than a slim chance to escape. More likely, she’d be dumped out back in a black bag with the rest of the garbage. With that thought in mind, she slightly quickened her pace to the check-in.

The woman behind the desk was a perfectly designed blonde who seemed pleasant enough with her fake smile full of bleached teeth. Calypso noticed the lobby guards shift ever so slightly closer as she approached the desk, ready to escort her away at the first sign of worry in the secretary’s eyes. Calypso pushed her hat up and gave the secretary a pleasant nod as she reached the desk, putting her hands on the edge where the other woman and security could see them.

“Hi?” said Calypso, adopting a somewhat airheaded accent where all of her sentences rose in tone, “I was told to check in here? I have an interview with Bachman & Clench? Name’s Sara Sampson? Am I in the right building?”

“One moment,” said the blonde, likely assuming that the woman in front of her was wasting her time with an interview considering the way she was dressed. She stared off into space, her eyes seeing something that Calypso clearly could not. A second later her focus returned. “I’ve called an elevator for you. Please, head on through.”

“Thanks?” she said, and walked past the desk.

Calypso hardly blinked as she stepped through the security scan, knowing that nothing would be picked up on her body that was out of the ordinary—her static pick, which cost a few jobs worth of dosh, was undetectable on almost all scans. She gave the man who waved her through a smile, playing the part of a happy-go-lucky college grad about to be absolutely devastated by the realities of the business world as she bopped by lightly, and rounded the corner to enter into the elevator that was waiting her arrival. The theatrics did not end until the doors closed with a ding and the elevator began to rise. Calypso collapsed against the wall as the numbers went up and up, her hand shaking as she pulled out her phone and prayed to see a message from her mother. She was greeted with the dancing Capri goat, eagerly awaiting her to confirm that the package had been picked up, and nothing else. Moments later, the doors opened and she choked back her emotions.

It was time to play her part.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Hell yeah! New thread new victims!

Shadows in the Dread City- A Cyberpunk RolePlay

Still here y'all. Schedule got a little busy, but should have something out within the next few days.