Ravensdagger_Kittypunk_Cyberpunk_Kitrpg

Chapter Ten — Gloryless

Chapter Ten — Gloryless I found myself in a... predicament.All my years of personal training, facing challenges, testing myself, and succeeding where others had failed... it all amounted to nothing.This was it.This was how I died for the second, and maybe the last time.Without glory. Without dignity."Baroness Biscuitblanket?" Sharp asked as she entered our shared bedroom.I wasn't even sure I wanted to call out to her, but needs must. "I'm here," I grudgingly admitted.There was a shift as she climbed onto the bed, then I saw her above me. She stared, then started to smile."Don't laugh."She failed to listen, which really brought to question her abilities as a pupil if she couldn't even follow such simple instructions. "You're stuck!" she said past some giggles. "How did you even get squished in there?"Sharp reached down and grabbed me. Somehow, while sleeping again, I'd ended up rolling a little and then fell down between the bed and the wall. There was nothing to grab onto once there, just a slippery wall and the bed's mattress, so I was stuck with nothing to do but wait."I suppose I move in my sleep now," I grumbled. "What time is it? Is your shift over?""Yup. Just finished. I should get changed, huh?" She placed me down, then tugged on the front of her shirt. "Do we have plans for today?""We should always have plans," I said. The more time Sharp spent training, the stronger she would become. "We don't quite have enough for some of the ideas I've cooked up. We might want to do another lost and found run. The walk across the city would make for good observation practice and cardio.""Oh!" Sharp said as she seemed to suddenly remember something. She leaned way to the side and tugged something out of her sock. It was a small phone. "I found this in the lost and found today. Look, it's got no lock, and it had internet. I think it's a burner, like the one Jenny gave us."She set the phone down and I padded over to it. She was right. It was a pre-bought burner phone. Nothing too special, the kind of thing that could be picked up at any number of kiosks across the city and preloaded with a few hours or days worth of service. This one had a quarter battery charge left and a weak internet connection."Good find," I said.Sharp smiled. "Thank you!""Do you know how to use this kind of thing? It could be a way to level up your Tech stat.""I do. I never had a phone of my own, but the orphanage had a weekly secretarial studies class. It was all about net safety, using word processors, emails... how to turn a computer on and off. That kind of thing."That seemed... like a pretty decent set of basic skills to have, actually. It was like teaching someone to drive a car. Not the depth they'd need if the car was ever broken or if they needed to drive in a precarious situation, but good enough to get from A to B. "Another initiative to turn you into good workers?""Yup!" she said.I nodded, then tapped the screen with a paw. I managed to open a web browser, then cursed and mumbled my way into entering the name of a site in the search engine."What are you looking for?" Sharp asked."It's an old forum client," I said. "For tech support for modems that came out about twenty years back. They're quite common, and get a lot of issues, so the forum is very active.""Oh," Sharp said. "Does this have anything to do with us?"I glanced up to her. "So, you know how I wasn't always a cat.""Uh-huh," she said."Well, I had a job before all of this." I hadn't yet gone into all of the details about what that work entailed. I think Sharp suspected I was some sort of edgerunner, which was fine. "My last job ended in my... demise, but I was still successful, which means I should have been paid."And I found it, right on the page it was meant to be on.Thread Title:[Help Needed] Modem keeps resetting randomly — Model: LinkSurge 500Original Post:Posted by: TechTurtle123 | Posted on: 2111-09-23 14:32:09Hey everyone,I've been having an issue with my old LinkSurge 500 modem. It keeps resetting randomly every couple of hours. It's been fine for years, but now it's really getting annoying. Sometimes it works fine for a day, then out of nowhere it'll start resetting again every 15-20 minutes.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.I've tried the following so far:Power-cycling the modem.Factory reset.Checked for any firmware updates (none available).Nothing seems to be helping. Could this be a hardware issue? Any advice would be appreciated!TechTurtle123Reply #1:Posted by: ModemMaster98 | Posted on: 2111-09-23 15:04:37Hey TechTurtle123,The LinkSurge 500 has a known issue with overheating over time. Check if the modem is getting too hot to touch. If that's the case, you might want to open it up and clean out any dust that's accumulated inside. Sometimes the thermal paste on the chip dries out, and that can cause random resets.ModemMaster98I scrolled down, which proved to be a pain to do with paws which didn't have anywhere near the same dexterity as a human thumb.Reply #17:Posted by: RhymingVerse4578 | Posted on: 2124-03-03 15:04:37The modem is confirmed down.Good work.I'm going to hit the gym until it's ready to work again.And there it was! A little more conspicuous than was ideal, but the message was clear. The cash was at one of my dead drop locations. "We have something to do tonight," I said."We do?" Sharp asked. "Uh, does it have to do with modems?""No, not at all. It has to do with picking up the earnings of my last job. And perhaps hitting the gym. How much money do you have now?""Uh, just a little over two hundred dollars!" Sharp said. She sounded proud of that.I tsked. The gym was in the northern end of Cambridge, close to the edge of the city. Mostly it was there because I could drive into the city, pick the dead drop up, and be off to my home in just a couple of hours. Less if I scheduled things just right with the train or a hover car service.Not that I was stupid enough to pick up my own dead drops. That was an easy way to get nailed. I usually hired a respectable courier service to do that for me, they'd move it to a bank who'd take care of things for me. The more steps the better, really, and I wasn't usually in a hurry to get paid.Each dead drop location was different, but there was a code to it that was easy enough to follow. In this case, the numbers in the username pointed to the district, and the hint about a gym filled in the rest.Right... two hundred might get us to that end of the city and back. It wouldn't pay for a subscription to the gym though. And what would Sharp even do with a duffle full of cash? Get mugged, probably."Damn, we are not ready for this," I said."Ready for what?" Sharp asked."To cross the entire city for a moderately-risky task. I think we're going to need to raise more money.""Aww," she said.I tilted my head to the side a little, then glanced down at the phone. This thing would let me communicate to others. Which... might mean calling in a few more favours. I owed a minor one to Paris already, but as soon as I had access to my accounts again I could wire her a few thousand and it would all be well. Who else would be willing to help if I asked?"Sharp, did you like that delivery job?" I asked."It was okay, for the most part," she said. "My legs still hurt a little."Grinning-or the closest kitty approximation to it I could manage-I hopped onto the phone and started to navigate the web again, this time to an entirely different forum. Soon, I was creating a temporary account in one tab while working through the other siteSharp kept watch as I mistyped the same things over and over. Eventually she started to help by typing for me. "So, we're sending a message to a delivery company?" she asked."A courier company," I said. "It's different. And we're passing ourselves off as me.""Uh...""Don't think about it too hard," I advised. If we got a reply quickly, then Sharp would have a second job, one that was guaranteed to pay significantly better than being a waitress. And if that job was a little bit more dangerous, then that would just mean more opportunities to grow some stats, wouldn't it?The phone buzzed as we received a reply, and I got to practice my cat smiles again. "I guess that means we're heading out again."

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Chapter Eleven — Brooklin Woes

Chapter Eleven — Brooklin Woes We were in luck. The office I wanted to visit was in Brookline, which was just to the west of Fenway. Sure, we were in the eastern end of Fenway, but the office was equally in the eastern end of Brookline, so all we had to do was cross the district and walk for twenty minutes.Brookline was the primest, most proper part of Boston Two. The buildings here were old, turn-of-the-previous century. Often restored and kept in their original state.There were the usual mega buildings and skyscrapers interspersed around these, of course, but a lot of Brookline was built into the Brookline Skyway, a complex set of bridges and connecting buildings above the old suburbs.We were on the street level, though, and entirely out of place.Brookline was clean. Almost unnaturally so. Street sweeping machines were humming by almost constantly, often followed by BPD armoured cruisers there to keep law and order. The people of Brookline, the natives, were well-dressed men and women in suits and with fedoras or with summer dresses and wide-brimmed hats.We crossed more than one digital poster screaming about the virtues of the HOA, the local gang that ruled over this part of the city and which likely wanted to rule over the rest."This place always makes me feel dirty," Sharp said."That's not too unusual, I think. Keep in mind that the cleanliness here is mostly surface-deep. You won't find more people willing to kill their neighbours anywhere else in this city."I'd gotten my share of contracts from this area. Not to say that it was dangerous. To the common person who kept their head down and made some effort to fit in, this was probably one of the safest places in all of Boston Two, which was saying something when this city was otherwise so dangerous.Still, if you failed to conform, that illusion of safety was quick to disappear.Fortunately, we were tourists here, just passing through in a hurry with a clear destination in mind. As long as we didn't cause trouble or loiter, we should be fine."Hey!" A man in Hugo Boss-esque uniform with a truncheon and a badge on his lapel that read HOA called out. He was pointing that stick of his right at Sharp... no, right at me. "Do you have a permit for that cat?""Run."We gave him the slip three alleys and a detour later by entering a parking garage and coming out on the other side. I had Sharp turn into another alley and discard her old jacket. It was a ratty thing, and we could pick up better in the lost and found at the bar. The coat had changed her silhouette and was more noticeable than the rest of her. We just had to hope that the incident didn't merit the HOA looking into their electronic surveillance for us.Eventually we made it to the office we'd come all this way to get to.It shared a building with a few others, one of those ground-level red brick buildings in the middle of a street so old that it wasn't able to handle street-side parking. A few signs hung next to the door, for the various offices within, but it was one in particular that caught my eye. Malcolm and Weiss — Intracity Couriers.Sharp pressed a buzzer next to the door, and I could faintly make out a ringing inside. A small shutter, with a faux-wood cover, moved aside and a camera stared down at us for a moment before the shutter closed.The door clicked and unlocked."I guess this is it," Sharp said. She tugged her blouse straighter, then worried at a stain on the front of it for a moment before giving up. "How's my hair?""Still blonde," I said.We'd have to do something about that. It was too obvious. Dye? It was a cheap option. Tech hair would be better in some ways, though it was also subtly worse in others. Oh well.The inner office was little more than a corridor with several doors leading into the various spaces rented within. The office we were looking for was up a flight of stairs and around a corner. The door was all glass, with the company's logo, a motorcycle with a large package on the back, all done up in bright blues and pinks.Sharp knocked.There was movement behind the frosted glass, then a man opened the door and eyed her up and down. I noticed that half of him was out of sight and reaching for something off to the side. "Carter sent you?" he asked.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it."Uh," Sharp replied smartly."Tell him that yes, Jacline sent you," I said."Yup! Jacline sent me," she said as she perked up.He eyed her for a moment, then stepped back. "Come on in. I'm Mark."Mark was a tall enough man, broad shoulders in a plain unmarked T-shirt. He moved deeper into the office, then pulled out a seat behind a desk. I checked to the side, where a large plastic plant was indeed hiding a shotgun on a hook next to the door."Sit," Mark said as he indicated the chair across from him.Sharp rushed over and sat, then she fidgeted in her seat.Mark rubbed at his chin, where he had a short, well-trimmed beard. Mark had always striked me as a consummate professional, but he looked a little worse for wear at the moment. Dark bags under his eyes, a five-o'-clock shadow... it added up to the look of someone not at their prime. "So, the mysterious lady herself let me know that she needed a favour. I don't have time for this kind of thing, and yet I find myself disinclined to refuse something like that.""Ah, okay?" Sharp tried."You ever done courier work before?" he asked."A little," Sharp said. "I've done deliveries in South Boson. Ten of them in all." She very carefully didn't mention that they'd all been on the same day and for the same client."Have a car?"Sharp shook her head."Bike? Any transport? No... damn. Cyberware to move across the city quickly? Magic of any sort? No, well, that's fine. No parkour experience, right?""Uh, no," Sharp said instead of shaking her head yet again.Mark eyed me for a moment, then returned his gaze onto her. "Good. I lost too many new couriers to that shit. Kids think they're hot shit because they can jump a rail or do a flip, and next thing you know I need to retrieve their lost package from the alley where they splattered themselves. It's a liability.""I'll try not to learn that, then!" Sharp said.Mark chuckled. "Fair enough. Look, I'll lay it straight here, kid. You're not an appealing prospect. You look... underfed. I'm sure that'll let you get by in South Boston without raising a fuss, but we deliver across the city here.""Oh," Sharp said, sounding suddenly quite depressed. Then she sat up. "Let me prove myself," she said. "I can be sneaky, and fast. Challenges only make me stronger, I promise."Mark leaned onto one elbow, his head resting on a closed fist as he eyed Sharp. "Alright. One job. I'll pay you the full rate, but it'll be your hide if you lose the package.""Okay," Sharp said. "What's the... ah?"Mark was shaking his head already. "We never ask that. Details about the weight and size are fine. Never the contents. Just where to pick it up, and where to deliver it. You'll have to wear one of our surplus coats... what time are you free?""Right now?" Sharp said. "And I guess every evening? I have a job at the Bloody Bat during the afternoon.""Do you now," he said and I cursed Sharp's flapping tongue. "Well, well. I'll keep that in mind. Come back here tomorrow, as soon as you can manage it. I'll have something lined up for you."Sharp grinned, wide and innocent and definitely stupid. "Thank you!" she said.Mark nodded, then waved us off. So Sharp stood and scampered out of the otherwise empty office.She regrouped herself right out of the door, then made a little dance that involved a lot of hopping around and almost throwing me off. That ended when I deployed my claws. Purely to hold on, of course. "Ow ow ow ow!" She hissed as she tried to free me from her arm."If you don't want the claws, stop bouncing around like a maniac. You know he probably has cams in this corridor, right?""Oh, oops," Sharp said. "But we got the job!""We might have gotten the job. We'll see tomorrow. But if we did, this is a big step up. Courier work pays well in this city. It's a hard gig to get too. You're lucky to have me.""Yes I am. Uh-huh, yes I am!" she said... in baby-talk while rubbing at my chin.I smacked her hand back... even if it did feel a little nice.

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