Chapter Fifty-Eight - Operation: Goon Week Two

Chapter Fifty-Eight - Operation: Goon Week Two Operation: Goon Week Two, Electric Goon-aloo was interrupted three days in when I got a knock at the door on Wednesday morning. I broke the cardinal rule of the operation and jumped into some sweatpants, then opened the door with my revolver in hand only to blanche at what I saw. It was Dharti and Terry, and they were here to see if I was okay. The next twenty minutes as I set some very firm boundaries about workplace relationships and pretended not to notice Terry sniffing at the air were some of the single most awkward minutes in my entire damned life and I was impossibly happy that I didn't have to actually live with this in anything but my memories. It was sweet of them to break HR rules to discover my home address, but like... it wasn't a good time. "What's that buzzing noise?" Terry asked a moment before I slammed the door shut on her. The rest of the week passed in blissful loneliness. The nearest thing to human interaction was a shouting match I had with a customer support AI from the food delivery service I used when they didn't deliver my lunch on time. I gained four pounds that week. I also gained a lot of info. I had it all laid out on a paper in front of me by the next Sunday. Also, I decided to 'stay' an extra day. It was better to start the week-long loops on Saturdays and end them one Sunday later, that way if someone planned something terrible, I'd always have one day's foresight. I mean, if something happened in the span of a week because of my own actions, then that was a different story, but I felt like I wouldn't have great insight on that in any case. I worried about it, but in the end decided that I was being paranoid enough. Anyway, the list sat in front of me and I read through each day's events. I'd cut out a lot, to keep it simple to memorize. Sunday 22nd of September. - Big concert in City Centre, The Punk Pop Lady Killers. The CEO of SynthCorp LLC was seen hugging his HR rep. - One of the kidnappers associated with Miss Ojou's case was found and arrested. Sunday wasn't too busy. I'd almost missed that second story except it came up again later in the week. The CEO thing was a huge meme for... the entire week, really. Man, I was going to see every meme twice now. Time looping could really suck sometimes. Monday 23rd of September. - A small portal breach occurs in the Inner City, west-end. Starting at around two in the morning. Seven casualties. - Big power cut that lasted three hours. Brightbarrow Interlink blamed for it and apologized, said they wouldn't do it again. Turns out a small gang in the west-end area was 'guarding' a portal and charging people to stand nearby to become E-rankers. It was a small portal, a small D-rank portal. Goblins, apparently, which were usually E-rank monsters, only this portal had a lot of them, and some were pretty big. When it breached, it did so in the worst way. Lots of immediate dead, some injured, then the goblins ran amok. If I wanted to solidify myself as a 'hero' then stopping that mess might be a good way to do it. Plus, weak D-rank portals were worth tackling. The power bit was mysterious, and my half-assed attempts to figure out what was going didn't amount to anything. Maybe just nothing, but I made note of it anyway. Tuesday 24th of September - Two Luna Corp E-rankers died in an E-rank portal. That was all for Tuesday. I mean, there was more stuff. Some feel-good stories on the news, but that's the one that caught my eye, for obvious reasons. An E-rank portal shouldn't have killed people, not even E-rankers. I tried to dig for info and got nothing. I guess everyone in Squad B got a day off the next day, which would explain Terry and Dharti showing up when they did. Wednesday 25th of September - Black-market chrome clinic raided. One dead. - Protest near city hall about something or other. The black-market thing was a mess. One guy died mid-op, and the cops blamed the surgeon who had a friend post the raid video online. It showed the cops rushing in and beating people up, then shoving a patient mid-op off the bed to cuff them. That's the one who died. This book was originally published on novelhall. Check it out there for the real experience. I was mostly looking into that because... well, there was some top-shelf stuff grabbed in that raid. Second-hand, sure, but still. Thursday 26th of September - > The Kidnappers associated with Miss Ojou escape jail. - > Nice little Slowbane 850 Dual Sport for sale That was on a lot of news channels. Even had a street-side interview with Fran about it where she said nothing important. Five of them got out. Two guards incapacitated but not killed. One prison wall was blown up. It was a... surprisingly competent operation, really. The bike was... a neat little 250cc thing that was a little worn, but not too badly so. Going for a cool $7,500, but it came with bags and the odometer only had like, 12,000 on it. Five years old, but like, barely used. Friday 27th of September -> Synth meat recall. Boring, quiet day. Turns out some brand of meat that was meant to have E-rank levels of magic in it had a lot more. C-rank, at least. Someone found out and started trying to buy it up. I took note of the name and brand and range of the lot numbers on the cases. That kind of meat paste tasted like... well, meat paste. But hey, it was high in magic, so screw it. Might stock up a few cans. Give some to Mister Couchtop, maybe? E-rank pets weren't that uncommon for the ultra rich who wanted their pups and cats to live longer. Saturday the 28th of September -> Large breach some two hours out of the city. Yeah, I didn't have much on that one. Teams were sent out. Storm Catchers were on it too. Saw Mizu on the news. Otherwise, not much. And finally today... Sunday the 29th of September -> Huge glitch in the city-wide metro. Its AI went on the fritz. Eh, it wasn't much, but the story was interesting. Might be able to do something about it, but probably wouldn't. They didn't serve my part of the city, so fuck it. I carefully re-read the list two more times, nodded, then let out a long sigh. The week had otherwise been spent practicing some small amount of magic. I kept up my skills with the three cantrips I did know, and shopped around for something new. There was a neat spell triggered by boredom that I wanted to learn. Exhaust Senses. It was a touch-based First Level attack spell that... well, made a person's senses go dull. It could be relayed through any sufficiently well-made artefact though, and I think my sword counted. Mostly it did stuff like decrease visual acuity by up to a whopping ten percent... if cast perfectly. Still, it hit multiple senses, and wasn't a terribly expensive debuff to cast. Spell cost a couple of grand to buy the license for, so I planned on buying it a few times over the week to train it at home while learning Restore Stamina at work, maybe with Dharti's help. Other than that, I didn't get much done during the week. So I Reloaded. The first thing I noticed was the faint, lingering taste of steak in my mouth. Damn... that had been good. I checked the time. Nine-something in the evening, Saturday the twenty-first. Then I hurried to copy my list over before I forgot anything. Since there was nothing pressing the next day I figured it might be as good a time as any to poke at Miss Ojou. I had to figure out a way to tell her that I knew about the prison break, and to figure out a way to get her to give me that cash. I really wanted that bike, and some new cyberware. But first... well, I had some magic left in the tank. More, thanks to that steak. Be a waste not to waste it. Urgh... a week of doing nothing was hard to come back from. Laziness was so easy to ingrain into the psyche. But being lazy wouldn't save the world, would it? I finished up my list, then started to work. Restore Stamina was going to be a bitch and a half to carve, but I could see about practicing it a few times tonight, then maybe pick up the guitar again. I was going to get rusty. Heh, maybe that's the last thing I'd do tonight? Finally work on those callouses. ***