Chapter Sixty - Using Great Power for Great Naps

Chapter Sixty - Using Great Power for Great Naps I took a nap. A very important nap, one that I awoke from at about eight-something in the evening, feeling... well, feeling like I could sleep another two or three hours, but I didn't have a choice but to get up and get ready. So I got my gear out. Leotard, coat, backpack, sword and gun. The works. I stuffed it all into the backpack, then prepped to leave the apartment. The last thing I did was set a Save. Man, this was gonna fuck up my entire sleep schedule for the week, wasn't it? Oh well. I was young enough to get away with it, I figured. People at work would take one look at me and assume I was partying all weekend, which wasn't too far from the truth, actually, only the weekend had already lasted a week and a half for me. I gave Mister Couchtop a few final chin scritches, then stepped out. Today's mission was two-fold. First, grab the cash. That bit was probably going to be easy. I'd looked up the arcade Ojou talked about, and it was a nice little space tucked in a relatively busy part of the west-end of City Centre. It took nearly an hour to get there, and only because traffic was so light. Still, once I arrived, I set a Save, then walked around the space, looking for cameras or traps. There were TVs across the street, playing F-ENE News Now. They were showing HD footage of Timothy being shoved into an armoured cop cruiser. Heh. Poor Timothy. I found the arcade, and after scouting it... well, after barging into it and pushing my weight around impolitely, I discovered that the camera system had been simply unplugged and that the side-door leading into the staff area, the same where the lost and found was, was left unlocked. I Reloaded, put on a cough mask and baseball cap tugged low, then a bright raincoat that would change the shape of my outline. Darting in from the side entrance, I reached over, grabbed the purse, and left. It was a Limpet Mode purse. Kind of thing that probably cost a grand. Inside was a fat stack of hundred dollar bills that I carefully counted out. Five hundred of them. I whistled, Reloaded, and did it all again, but faster. I gave the purse to some random girl walking along the street. She looked a little down on her luck, so I stopped her and pushed the empty purse into her arms. "Here, take this," I said. "Huh?" "It was a gift from my piece of shit ex. All yours now, love. Have a good one." There. Evidence disappeared. I found an alley, picked up my backpack that I'd tucked away, and shoved the cash into it. I didn't think that Miss Ojou would double-cross me... but I still felt a little nervous. Mostly because I had a year's worth of my normal wages in a ziplock bag inside my backpack. Next up, the western end of the inner-city. I took one of the late buses, hugging my backpack close. The west-inner city was kind of nice, but there was a river running through with a couple of bridges that crossed it, and everything on the other side was a bit of a shithole. The place I was heading to was just across one of the further bridges, technically in one of the uglier parts of the city. It was a lot of tall, fat apartment buildings that had probably once been worth something. They overlooked the ocean and all. Now they were old and poorly maintained, and on the wrong side of the wall. I'd watched a lot of reports about the incident that would happen tonight. Or was it more accurate to say tomorrow morning? The breach happened at around two in the morning from the reports that came in later in the week. Seven casualties. That wasn't nothing. My worry was that if I showed up too soon, people would be pissed rather than happy to see me. I got off the bus, then found a motel nearby. One of those 'rent a night' places that no one cared too much about, and which had a vested interest in not having good security. I got changed into my combat gear. Cargo pants, leotard, loose coat, mask, a pair of gloves, then my revolver strapped to my thigh and sword at my hip. I tucked that combat knife into the small of my back as well. The sword was cool, but I didn't have the actual experience to use it. Stepping out of the motel, I started down the street. It was approaching nine thirty. Late enough that the streets were mostly clear. I tugged my cap lower and wondered if this was a good idea at all. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I was definitely rushing into this one, but... Well, I wanted 'Deadline' to be a 'hero.' I think that if I did a few things to solidify that identity as someone helpful and mysterious, then there were good odds that when I started making noise about the Breach, people would actually listen. At least, I hoped that's how it would pan out. The portal couldn't be out in the open, otherwise some corps would have spotted it. Actually, I think a lot of people were impressed that no one had discovered it before it breached. Though I also think that the news were downplaying what the local gangs could do. This place was run by a group called the River Rats. Small-time gang. They did prostitution, some smuggling, and I think they had some gambling shit going on. And, I suppose, they sold portal access for cheap when the opportunity arose. That last one made sense. There was, according to the rule of thumb, about a one-percent chance that a normie standing next to a portal would become an E-ranker. The actual math was way more complex, with curves and stuff, and a lot of other factors, but generally speaking, it was close enough that everyone used that number even if it was wrong. So, most corps like Luna Corp that had access to repeating portals would pick out times and dates near a low-threat portal's opening and would grab a bunch of people willing to shill out the big bucks to just... stand nearby. That was how most people climbed to E-rank. In my shitty small town, there had been a tiny corp, and it cost twelve bucks an hour. They had plastic benches. I remember spending a lot of my saved up money to sit around, but I never became an E-ranker from it. Though... it might have helped? Luna Corp charged fifty in Fortress ENE, had multiple guards, and offered limited catering. Rich sorts would go hang out next to a B-rank portal for a few hours, where that one-percent chance was a lot closer to six or seven, but they were paying a huge premium for that difference. Sometimes they made a big event of it, practically a ball, with high-ranked guards and lots of snobby sorts. This D-rank that the River Rats had found? Probably not so classy, but it was paying the gang well. People knew the shut up about it too. Ten bucks an hour, and they weren't that well organized. Anyone was let in. Children, babies, men and women, something the corps wouldn't allow because E-rank children were a bad idea. Angsty teenage E-rankers were also generally frowned upon, though it wasn't unheard of. Whatever, that probably wasn't a concern for me. The portal was a block over from the waterfront, inside the basement of an old butchery place that used to take in dead monsters from portals and render them down for parts. It had shut down a few years ago and had sat abandoned until now. There were two guys by the entrance, both of them wearing low pants and colourful Ts. They had little compact SMGs by their sides. One of them saw me coming and smacked his friend. "Oi," he said. "You, ahl booking for somethin?" "Yes," I said as I came to a stop a few paces back. "Portal. D-rank. You're covering it down here, right?" "Nah," he said. I blinked at him, then sighed and reached into the pocket of my cargo pants. I pulled out a hundred dollar bill. "Let me stand next to it with the other chumps, yeah?" "Yeah, but you're looking real weird, girl," he said. "So?" "So? Dunno, you might be here to cause trouble." "I'm not," I said. I was tensing up a little, but trying not to show it. Then the guard shrugged. "Aight," he said. "Ain't my job to refuse cash. Got you marked as 'weird girl with mask. You've got ten hours. There's some dude down there selling mattress space, but that's extra, ya know?" "Makes sense," I said. "Thanks." "No prob," he replied. Then I was past him and pushing through a set of double doors into the plant. The portal was a few rooms in, at the far end of a factory floor with stainless steel tables bolted to the ground. People were hanging around, music was playing from a radio and there were kids running after each other. ... Well, shit, maybe I came here a little over-dressed. ***