Hyper-Reality - Session 013
A GURPS cyberpunk solo Actual Play
Here we are, folks. The exciting climax of HR’s first arc. I had a ton of fun writing this, hope ya enjoy it just as much. ^~^
Chicago Hypernet, Layer 03; 8:50 AM
Shards of crimson code crunched beneath Velvet’s boots. Acrid smoke bleeded out between the cooling fins of her blaster rifle. All across the the pyramid’s flattened peak, mechanoids and machine gun turrets laid shattered and torn, condensing into heaps of amber flame. Heat was optional this deep in the Hypernet. Nonetheless, sweat beaded on her brow, ran down to cloud her vision beneath the armor’s visor. She shook it from her eyes, squinted towards the center of the summit. There stood the woman the witch’s garb, beside the beam of pure light.
The silhouette waved Velvet over. She wouldn’t keep her waiting.
“I’m not sure what I would’ve done without you,” Velvet confessed, retracting her visor. “Don’t think I even got your name!”
“Mari, darlin’,” she said, giving an elegant little bow, “Aetherlink explorer extraordinaire.“
VELVET.usr
[Hidden]: Failure.
“Cheeky, eh? You remind me of someone I know.” Velvet said, finally looking her head-to-toe. “That’s some rare cosmetics. I thought dot-Dungeon\\. skins got deprecated after EDEN 3.5.”
“Hah, well. They’re still around, if you know where to find ‘em.”
Mari took off her hat, unfurling long, straight locks of fire-red hair. A streak of azure neon fell beside her freckled face, laying lazily across white-golden robes. She must’ve noticed Velvet staring. She flashed her a wink.
“See somethin’ you like, sugar?” Velvet cast her gaze aside. Mari seemed satisfied with that. “Enough chitchat, though. You got a date with destiny.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Velvet caught the flash of magic in the corner of her eye, turned back in time to see the horizons shifting around her. She saw Mari waving her hands, shrinking? No, Velvet was rising. A glimmering magenta haloed her as she drew a sidearm, flung blaster bolts at Mari’s feet. They bounced harmlessly off an circle of swirling geometry, before weapon and armor were shorn to scrap around her.
“Sorry love, they don’t pay me to babysit!” Mari called, twirling her with a wave of her hands. “Other end of this uplink’s your personal pad. Try not to do anything stupid when ya decompress.”
Velvet could scream and flail all she’d want. Didn’t change that she was ten yards above the summit, drifting for the beam. Just as her mind flattened to bytecode, something sharp jabbed her in the side, and the world turned to white.
Eastside, Level B2; 8:45 AM
“Third row, nearside... Fuck!”
Outside was a problem: Big-ass semi-trailer parked wide between Amber and her bike. Its shrimp-chef mascot seemed to sneer at her through hologram eyes, made her howl bloody murder as she shoved between cars, bowled over an innocent, upstanding narcotics dealer. She swung herself under the trailer, dodged bullets while she leapt across the second row of cars, threw herself on her bike. Its Japanese motor roared as she tore out onto the road, cut beneath the offramp.
Amber Lu
Driving/TL9 (Motorcycle): 6 - Success.
Someone was following her. In fact, someone was right on her. Just as she’d committed, banked hard into the corner, a pair of blue headlights edged into her vision. Closer, closer- Too fuckin’ close! Just as impact seemed certain, she dipped low enough to touch her knee to the metal grates beneath the offramp. A sudden sound indicated her pants tearing open, followed by the ugly twang of skin across metal.
Amber Lu
Fast-Draw: 13 - Success.
She wouldn’t go down without a fight. She drew her Desert Eagle, fired wildly through the Toyota’s windshield, only to hesitate as the glass fell to pieces. There was Dutch at the wheel, flanked by Don flipping her the bird.
“You bitch! I just replaced that shit!” Don yelled via brainwave.
“Is it always about money with you?!” asked Riley, popping laser beams out the back window as they made for the freeway. “Ey- Ey-, Watch it, you’re gonna get us killed!”
“We got trailers, Dutch?” Amber asked.
“Who put you in charge?” he groaned.
“Fuckin’ tell me!”
Circumstance answered that for her. An armored brick of black metal sweved into the onramp, bristling guns and snarling gangers. Their beams and bullets lit the ten-lane tunnel like fireworks on crack, sending Amber and Dutch weaving between panicked traffic.
Highway 94 tunnel, Southbound; 9 AM
Amber Lu
Vision: 15 - Failure.
Tactics: 11 - Success.
Amber grit her teeth as she banked into the next curve, felt the rush of stale air against her skinned knee. A glance over her shoulder nearly cost her an eye - the trailer next to her flashed as a beam-laser sliced across it.
“What the hell are you doin’?!” Dutch snarled.
“Buyin’ us time. You wanna see somethin’ crazy?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. “Suppress ‘em!”
Amber Lu
Driving/TL9 (Motorcycle): 6 - Success.
Tires squealed as she made her move. She cast the cycle in a wide, sweeping arc back through traffic, fingers tightening around her ten-mill. Short bursts of Riley’s rifle kept the Hyenas buttoned up as she emptied her mag at the the tires, sent the whole van careening towards the median. She pulled the throttle, saw the driver aim to crush her against the jersey barrier, then pinned the brakes and slipped behind. The resulting whirlwind of metal and ferrocrete damn near took her head off.
“Amber!” cracked the shortwave.
“I’m fine, don’t worry!”
“Behind you!”
Amber’s eyes flitted to the mirror. A blur of black and red neon jumped from car to car, launched itself off a sedan right at her. A sickle-like blade emerged as Samira bounded through the air, grazed her neck just as she ducked her head. That same moment found her stuffing the spent iron in her pocket, drawing her Desert Eagle for return-fire. Its fifty-cals felt like thunderclaps in the cavernous tunnel, drowned out the firefighting robots racing by on the roof.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” said Samira, eyes blazing. Amber pulled the throttle, dodged the next swing, before Samira impacted another car, whipped out a some sorta SMG. “Aw, fuck you. I got bigger fish to fry!”
Amber Lu
Dodge: 10 - Success!
The spray of bullets found their home in Amber’s cycle. In seconds, the front wheel warped, gyrated, folded in on itself and sent her flying.
Her screams lasted well past landing on her back. She scrambled around, tried to get her bearings in the blur of pain and fear, till pneumatic hands clamped onto her limbs, held her still as the tunnel roof raced by above her.
She was fine. No, she’d been saved. A firefighting robot rolled beside her on hyperskates, holding the rescue capsule like an EMT. As its doors folded shut over Amber, a mauve datagram slipped between the closing cracks.
VELVET: Take a breather, girl. We’ll be fine.
Highway 394, Brownell Industrial Park, 9:15 AM
By time Riley emerged into the foggy morn, Samira had found a shiny Mercedes to close the cap. Crimson lasers bounced off its polychrome coat, left his rifle of little use. In return, he’d dodge wild sprays of lead from Samira’s gun, leaving the fastback riddled with holes.
“Can’t this thing go any faster?!” Riley shouted, bracing against yet another swerve.
“I knew I shoulda gotten the turbo!” Don growled. “Ey, ey- Watch the traffic!”
Metal groaned, plastic strained as Dutch jerked the wheel, sent the car careening for the railing. The morning gridlock had choked the highway proper, leaving them threading the needle along the shoulder.
“We’re screwed!” Don shouted.
“It ain’t over till it’s over.” Dutch replied, wiping the sweat dripping down his visor. A moment later, he unholstered his pistol and shoved it in Don’s hands. “Get ready.”
“The hell am I spos’da do with this?!”
The answer was coming into view. Squinting, Don saw the flashing lights of a police barricade through the thickening mist. The offramp down was guarded only by a sawhorse, and the cyan mesh of a portable gravfield.
“Shoot the projector,” Dutch barked, “Shoot the fuckin’ projector!”
Don Testarossa
Guns/TL9 (Pistol): 9 - Success.
Don was way ahead of him. He grabbed a pair of sunglasses from the glovebox, stabilized himself against the center console. “Keep ‘er steady. Steady!” he seethed through gritted teeth. Just as the sawhorse splintered against the front bumper, Don emptied his whole clip into one of the exposed projectors. The exposed power cell detonated in its socket, sent the field scrambling like electric arcs. The world became a blur of light and pain. All he’d hear was his racing heart.
Highway 394, Chicago Heights offramp; 9:16 AM
“Holy fuckin’ shit!”
Vick felt his jaw hit the floor. The beat-up car, caught in the eddies of a grav field, went cartwheeling through the air next to the bridge. It rose high enough to see the driver’s visor, right before it slammed into the onramp across the street below. It came to rest back on the empty highway, mangled beyond all recogniton.
When he gave chase, the slight pain in his leg turned out to be a metal shard that’d impaled him by the shin. The very next moment brought a deafening crash, and screams from the rookies off by the median. Lithium batteries exploded on impact, scattered glass and steel like improvised shrapnel.
Vick ripped off his cracked visor, whipped his gaze down the road. The fireball came to rest beside a fan of broken metal and broken men, alongside one that that rose to his feet.
Vick Masters
Fright Check: 6 - Success.[Hidden]
Fright Check: 18 - Critical Failure!
A squawk from Vick’s brainwave confirmed he wasn’t theirs. He drew his gun, shouted as the guy - more of a boy - staggered forward, tripped on his own laser rifle. A shot of morphine through his internal injector, and he was on him like white on rice.
“Don’t move! Don’t ya dare fuckin’ move!”
“Hold your fire!” the boy pleaded, giving a sharp cry when Vick stomped his hand.
“What are ya, my fuckin’ drill sarge?! You piss me off, I’ll beat yer ass to protein-paste!”
“Ain’t me! Ain’t us!”
“The hell?!”
Perhaps against better judgement, he followed the boy’s frantic gesture towards the old fastback. Sure enough, a humanoid figure of red neon dragged the victims from the crash, stabbed them with something sharp. He’d left the boy to his rookies, just taken off, when a low, rumbling noise shook all the teeth in his jaw. Stark blue light cut through the mist from an unmarked aerodyne, near-blinded him as it swept in low beside the crash site, birthed a pair of heavily-armed soldiers, followed by a silhouette he couldn’t quite pick out.
Not that it mattered. Vick knew what to expect. Chicago’s finest were feared in the world of crime. But to corpo enforcers, he might as well have been the bugs under their feet. They watched wordlessly as he finally collapsed, sprayed biofoam all over his bleeding leg.
He didn’t expect the femme in a plugsuit that emerged from between their rifles, nor the rescue pod that came skidding to a halt just inches behind him. A familiar woman leapt out, hugged the netrunner with both arms. Despite the morphine, her name still hurt like hell.
Don was out cold. Dutch barely hung on. He tried getting up, felt white-hot pain erupt through his arms and legs. All he could do was lay and watch, as Samira stood over him proud.
The approaching figure didn’t bode well. Gynoid, corpo-type. Its sensor and movement booms swung like twintails off its round head. Obviously the designer’s type.
Its green eyes regarded Samira without expression, canted its head at her words. When she’d finally stopped bragging, the Gynoid asked aloud,
“You are certain your men perished in the wreck?”
“Don’t know, don’t give a rat’s ass!” Sameera cackled. “Fuck ‘em. I caught these rats fair-and-square! Just give me their shares, and we’ll call it even.”
“Gladly.”
The gynoid’s arm sprouted a cannon, turned Samira’s head to hamburger.
It strode over to Dutch, knelt down till they saw eye-to-eye.
“Welcome to Artemis Heavy Industries. Terms and conditions will apply.”
A total roller coaster! Somehow everyone is alive haha, thankfully!