Cyberpunk 2020 - The Man Cave

[eveglass]

What sort of sick, twisted person hijacks a medical clinic? One who doesn't care about their own longevity, apparently.


[Outside The Man Cave and Brainstorm's clinic, Jason Storm is filming Revenge of the Cyborgs. Which lead's one of Hydra's personalities, the debutante Bling, to do things like this...]
Bling: "Can you sign... these?" *pulls down shirt*

[We set the scene for the night's game.]
Pat the GM: "It's 4:15 p.m. in mid-October. It would be lighter out except for the dark clouds..."
Julie: "It's California. The weather can't be that bad."
Pat the GM: "Yeah, but it's Cyberpunk."

[Bling and BrainStorm are in a meeting about promoting BrainStorm's clinic. Bling's valley girl accent starts grating on some of the other players.]
Seb: "Can you just kidnap them already?"

[The action begins.]
Pat the GM: "The door to the conference room bursts open."
BrainStorm: (annoyed) "I'm in a meeting!"

[The intruders into the conference room are Japanese mobsters with large guns.]
Pat the GM: "What do you do?"
Seb: "Wait, do they have a chance of not being kidnapped?"
Pat the GM: "No."

[Once the goons have ensured that BrainStorm and Bling aren't gonna start shooting back...]
Pat the GM: "An Asian man walks in--"
Kyn: (singing) "Secret... Asian man!"

[Bling is taken away to the staff room and frisked.]
Bling: "What are you looking for!?"
Good: "Weapons."
Bling: "Do you think I can get away with weapons in this?! Look how tight this dress is!"

[Last night saw the arrival of a new PC, Tracer, played by Tony. Tracer is a crooked cop and Viper's cousin. So when Viper hears about what's going on at the clinic...]
Seb: "Tracer gets a text to get to the Man Cave in five minutes."
Tony: "You don't know where he is."
Seb: "He has to get to the Man Cave in five minutes, no matter where he is in the city."

[Bling has sent a message to Viper to come in "quietly."]
Viper: "Can we go through a wall? Silently?"
Firecracker: "I don't do silent."

[The other characters contemplate calling the police.]
Tracer: "You don't want police presence."
Viper: "Not when I'm done with them, I don't."

[The counter-incursion to the clinic begins. Bling, in a room full of civilians, with several Japanese mobsters outside, realizes what's going on.]
Bling: "All you have to do is make sure they don't go through these doors."
Guard: "I don't have weapons!"
Bling: "Then use your body!"

[Viper slips in through an elevator shaft.]
Bling: *doesn't notice Viper on the camera monitor, due to Viper's high stealth*
Kyn: "Sorry."
Seb: "I'm thinking the cameras are down."
Marc: "With a 24 in stealth, they might as well be."

[Viper deals with the Japanese woman who's been posted at the reception desk quickly and messily.]
Pat the GM: "Did you notice?"
Kyn: "Dude, a person's head just got chopped off."

[More of the same.]
Pat the GM: "So, you lob off her head. There's a geyser of blood."
Julie: "So, clinic's closed tomorrow..."

[Meanwhile, Firecracker and Tracer are coming through a side door. Step one: open the door.]
Firecracker: "The second the door comes down, end anything you see. I'll rush anything that's left."
Kyn: "Well, there goes the 'stealth' element of the plan."

[Firecracker and Tracer engage in a firefight with the Japanese mobsters in the clinic's hallway.]
Julie: "Understand that all the maintenance to my clinic is getting charged to the Man Cave."

[Firecracker and Tracer take out a hostile mobster.]
Marc: "Firecracker's motto is 'don't think -- act.'"
Seb: "Wrong fuckin' motto, buddy."

[One of the Japanese mobsters throws a grenade.]
Tony: "There you go -- you wanted a hole in the wall."
Seb: "Quietly!"

[One of the Japanese mobsters swings a katana at Firecracker.]
Marc: "I parry the katana."
Seb: "If it's a mono-katana, you don't want to be parrying it. It'll slice through your wolfer... your armor... your arm..."

[Viper, meanwhile, has gone further into the clinic.]
Pat the GM: "A guy's running past you."
Seb: "Not without his head, he's not."

[Viper prepares to cut the guy's head off.]
Pat the GM: "Roll stealth."
Seb: "No, no stealth. It's 'batter up' and his head flies off. There's no stealth."

[Viper acts.]
Pat the GM: "His head's lopped off."
Julie: "My poor clinic. Pat, why can't I have nice things?"

[A mobster enters the staff room where Bling, the non-medical staff, and the patients are. Bling tries to flash-dazzle the mobster, to no effect.]
Pat the GM: "He's shooting."
Kyn: "Who's he shooting? I assume me?"
Pat the GM: "Yeah."

[Bling is shot. Thankfully she's a cyborg.]
Bling: "Here I am, trying to bring you business, and what do I get? Shot."

[Bling has been shot.]
Bling: "This was new skin! [beat] Oh, well."

[In the shootout in the staff room, Bling, the guard, and BrainStorm's ex-solo orderly Chiller charge the shooter.]
Pat the GM: "Bling's shot but she's okay. The guards are okay. Chiller... isn't wearing armor. He's dead."
Julie: "See if I ever write forty thousand words for you again."

[Firecracker and Tracer reach the staff office after the shootout and deal with the remaining mobsters there. Firecracker sees his girlfriend Strawberry in the room.]
Pat the GM: "Strawberry's there. She gives you a hug."
Firecracker: *eye twitches*
Julie: "And now he remember she was here today."
Strawberry: "...It's not my blood, I swear."
Firecracker: "I'll be back."

[Firecracker goes down the hall to the observation room for the operating theater.]
Marc: "Are there guards there?"
Pat the GM: "Yeah."
Marc: "Not anymore."

[Viper talks Firecracker down from killing the mobsters armed with full-automatic weapons that could surely kill them all.]
Marc: "Firecracker's just waiting on the word. It could be any word."

[Meanwhile, BrainStorm and all her medical staff are being held hostage to conduct very complicated surgery by the head Japanese mobster, Shei Shei. He has, by now, put explosives on the walls around the operating theater that will explode if it looks like BrainStorm's allies are going to do any heroics.]
BrainStorm: "Not as many doctors would be as amenable to having their staff blown up as I am."

[Firecracker calls a friend to figure out how he should handle the situation.]
Firecracker: "How would you go about getting into a sealed room rigged to explode?"
Ken, head of Arasaka security: *boggles*

[The emergency surgery BrainStorm has been tasked with doing is to install 'centipedes' into the nervous system of three patients. It turns out the 'centipedes' are a black-ops project by Arasaka that they'll want to get back. Soon.]
Hydra: "You realize we can't let anyone leave here alive."
Viper: "And usually it's so hard for people to bring a smile to my face."

[Ken, head of Arasaka security, has informed Firecracker that he's got barely a half-hour before Arasaka and Section 9 arrive to take back the centipedes. They need deal with the explosives in the operating theater, and quickly.]
Firecracker: "Can you get me an AVR type 6 pulse weapons?
Viper: "Not in 25 minutes."

[Crunch time arrives.]
FIrecracker: "Just give me a signal."
Viper: "The signal is you go in and kill them."

[Viper, Firecracker, and Tracer enter the room with the mobsters.]
Seb: "36 on initiative. I go first."
Pat the GM: "Okay, what do you do?"
Seb: "...'I need to talk to your boss.'"

[Combat ensues.]
Marc: "I grab his machine gun, throw him to the ground, and open up full auto on his friend."
Seb: "I'm gonna let him do that and then stab the guy on the ground."

[The PCs storm the operating room and take hold of Shei Shei.]
Viper: "So, you expected failure?"
Shei Shei: "I expected... inconvenience."

[Viper takes hold of Shei Shei.]
Tony: "Are you trying to get him to tell you why he's here?"
Kyn: "No, he's gloating."

[Bling leaves and another of Hydra's personalities, Victor the Corporate, enters to take control of Shei Shei.]
Victor: "I'm taking you somewhere... safe. Please don't try anything; it'll ruin my suit."

[Among the other objects brought by Shei Shei was a body-sized tube, which is the height of Arasaka black ops. If anyone knows we have it, or even that we've seen it...]
Viper: "There's a problem with the staff. They've seen the tube."
Special Delivery: "That's why I'm gonna talk to them."
Viper: "Better you than me."

[Special Delivery, BrainStorm's office manager, talks to the staff.]
Special Delivery: "If any of you ever speak of what happened here today... Well, do I need to say more? This never happened. Don't ever speak of this. This goes to your grave. Dismissed."
Staff: *leave*
BrainStorm: "All right, that was heavy-handed."

[Special Delivery fills in the boss on what's going on.]
Special Delivery: "It's an Arasaka black project. They nuke cities for this. We're gonna make it disappear."
BrainStorm: "Fine, disappear it."

[Special Delivery fills in BrainStorm on the status of her clinic.]
BrainStorm: "Is my equipment intact?"
Special Delivery: "Surprisingly, yes."

[More of the same.]
Special Delivery: "The back door was taken off its hinges, there's a grenade blast in the hallway, there's--"
BrainStorm: "What?! Back up to the part where people were throwing grenades in my clinic!"

[And yet more...]
BrainStorm: "Are my patients still here?"
Special Delivery: "Yes. In the staff room. They're in shock."
BrainStorm: (deadpan) "You don't say."

[Tracer wins the line of the night for understatement.]
Tracer: "BrainStorm really hates it when we dirty up her clinic."

[BrainStorm goes to talk to her patients and do damage control.]
Pat the GM: "You have six patients waiting. Five are for the familia, only one is not."
Seb: "I could use my mono-katana at least one more time tonight!"

[For the last of the six patients, there's always the age-old strategy: lie.]
Victor: "I'm so sorry. I'm gonna fire the producer right on the spot! ...We apologize, this was an extra scene for Jason Storm's 'Revenge of the Cyborgs.'"
Mr. Jones: "If I sign a waiver, can I be in the movie?"
Victor: "Of course!"

[As Victor leaves, BrainStorm takes stock of the damage.]
BrainStorm: "Tell Bling we'll fix her up -- it's no problem."
Victor: "The damage is merely superficial."
BrainStorm: "That's why it's no problem."

[After everyone leaves, the familia clean-up crew comes in to get rid of the evidence.]
Kyn: "Look on the bright side: you get a free renovation out of it."

[Viper brings the Arasaka black ops projects to a warehouse guarded by some family members.]
Viper: "Understand what we have here."
Guard 1: "I don't know what we have here."
Guard 2: "Doritos, right?"
Viper: "Yeah. Let's keep it that way."

[To cover up what really happened, Victor Stone is releasing a fake news story to say that cops confronted Shei Shei at the docks and he escaped by boat.]
Victor: "You were appropriately heroic in the story I'm writing. Would you like to be shot in the line of duty?"
Tracer: "I wouldn't want to fake it."
Victor: "I wasn't gonna fake it."

[All the events of the day took place around 6:30 p.m. Which means...]
Pat the GM: "So, 9 p.m. Time for work."
Everyone Else: *laughs*

[BrainStorm has a few drinks to take the edge off the evening.]
Julie: "BrainStorm doesn't have a problem with blood, per se. She's a surgeon; she sees blood all the time. Seeing it on the ceilings of her hallways, however, is a bit unnerving."

[BrainStorm calls the Don to complain about what happened.]
BrainStorm: "Are we sure this isn't going to happen again in my clinic?"
Don Marcuzi: "I can't promise that."
BrainStorm: "No, you can. The whole point of all this, of me having a legitimate, honest business and all those grand promises that you made me at my wedding, is that this sort of thing wasn't going to happen. Because I can't run a legitimate, honest business if people are shooting at my patients!"
Don Marcuzi: "Are you done?"
BrainStorm: "...For now."

[Don smoothes things over and offers the body-sized tube as a 'gift' to BrainStorm for safekeeping.]
BrainStorm: "I don't want this gift, Don. Give it to someone else."
Kyn: "Oh, you do not refuse a gift from the Don!"

[BrainStorm needs to figure out where to put the body-sized tube.]
Kyn: "They're cleaning up your place. A fake wall takes all of two hours."
Tony: "Kyn has obviously never done renovations."

[BrainStorm returns to her apartment to find that her husband -- Jonny Two-Fingers' brother -- has been tortured and killed. Victor tries to get into contact with Jonny, who is out on a bender mourning the anniversary of his wife's death.]
Jonny: "What do you want? It's my sad day."
Seb: "It's about to get a whole fuck sadder."

[Victor tells Jonny what's going on.]
Victor: "Your brother is dead."
Jonny Two-Fingers: "Yeah, so are your jokes!"


And with that, the session ends. Tony's dead, BrainStorm's in shock... and I'm missing the next session so I'll have no idea what happens next. Probably drinking will be involved.