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[LP CYOA] 傳
- Thread starter treave
- Start date
a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
BA for now.
CA kill dickless now, or he'll kill the harem.
Nevill
Arcane
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- Jun 6, 2009
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- 11,211
If I learned anything about zhang manxing, it is that you don't go after him with an intention to kill him. Disable him, and he will crawl away in an even more pathetic state than he came in.
His luck grants him a cockroach-like vitality, but it does not protect him from humiliation and making a fool of himself.
That was before he became a zombie, though.
His luck grants him a cockroach-like vitality, but it does not protect him from humiliation and making a fool of himself.
That was before he became a zombie, though.
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Baltika9
Arcane
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a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
This. Oh, so much this.
This is what I've thought of him since our encounter in the woods (actually, I had my suspicions before that), but I didn't want to say anything because I get called "meta" for arguments like that. *cough* hypocrite *cough*
But seriously, everyone who has outright tried to kill him has failed and suffered for it. When we did it we failed, took that rep hit and exposed our WQS to Bai for nothing. When Bai did it, she failed and then she had to be "saved" by Jing. Edit: and had we tried to go all out on him just now, we would have gotten that pink powder in our face for our trouble.
I think Shun was the first to realize this peculiarity about him. Hence why he sent him to compete in the arena when we first met him. Shun realized that the best way to deal with Zhang is to let someone else deal with him.
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Absinthe
Arcane
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As far as I can see this is just bait to lose precious training time: AB. Jing is already in a damn bad condition. Lets not push our luck, shall we?
In that case, between the monk draining and this latest 100 frenzied men drain, do we have enough draining experience to go up a rank in absorption now?
That's GM speak for "it's not going to matter much by this point, so OK, have this tiny, tasty, morsel."
a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
Notice he didn't say what we were better at draining.
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Well, you can drain faster now, but it still falls under 'moderate' in the description. 'High' means you are approaching Yang Xue's level at the technique. That's not something that can be attained easily with just a couple years' of experience, if you don't have someone to mentor you.
Nevill
Arcane
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Lambchop, bro, you misunderstand. This argument of mine predates even Qingcheng disaster. Actually, it goes back to our decision of whether or not we should have searched for manxing in Dukezhong after successfully kidnapping the Tufan princess.
A meta argument is the one that our character has no way of knowing about. Such as, you know, everything DEMONZ-related?
This one, however, is fully within Jing's capabilities to understand. We wanted to kill him in cold blood ever since the moment we've met him, but we were never given a perfect opportuniny. Not at the tournament, where the negative consequences were obvious. Not after the tournament, where trying to find him would only waste our time and hurt Cao'er. Not in Qingcheng, where we paid dearly for our attempt. Not at the gourge, where we wised up enough to let Bai Jiutian handle it (and we paid yet again for pursuing the choice to ensure his death, even though most of the voters didn't care about him all that much by then).At this point Jing has to suspect that something is going on with the man, if he is still standing after all of the abuse we've dealt him between ourselves, Qilin and Bai Jiutian. It is not just my paranoia - it is a trait that should be apparent to the characters in the setting itself.
That said, going after zhang is probably safe. It is trying to murder him that always gets us in trouble. Merely defeating him is fair game.
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a cut of domestic sheep prime
Guest
Because Jing knows Zhang's LUCK stat? Bro, pls. The only way Jing could rationally suspect something is if he was being really paranoid (like we are). A few lucky breaks aren't enough to make a reasonable man think someone has some sort of luck-based superpower unless you are aware you are playing a character in a fantasy LP with luck-based superpowers. So far, Jing seems to simply regard him as incredibly tricky - eg, his reaction to the powder, or the wording of the choice "there’s no telling what other tricks he might have up his sleeve.".A meta argument is the one that our character has no way of knowing about. Such as, you know, everything DEMONZ-related?
Good point about our rollback at the gorge - though Jing would have no way of knowing about that either, MetaBro.
OT and IMHO: The demon is actually something Jing SHOULD know about or at least suspect. He was fighting a demon and then it asked him a question. If we realized it, and Jing could have realized it if we had answered "Nothing.", then Jing should have been able to realize it in his other answers too. But this is a decision treave made and it is his LP, so I am content to roll with it.
Nevill
Arcane
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Does Jing knows BJ's AGI stat? Bro, pls.
Does Jing know that BJ is fucking fast, faster than he is?
Does Jing see that manxing lives through things that no man should be able to? Do luck, karma, blessings of the Gods and other supernatural occurences exist in the setting?
Just off the top of my head, from our last meeting alone:
Is Jing the one who keeps thinking and hearing these things, or is it just a wind in his ears? Bro. Pls.
No, you just need to be less
about these things. Jing have acknowledged that manxing is unnaturally 'lucky' long ago.What klind of 'trick' carried manxing through the gorge and delivered him from the 'beast'? If it were anyone else, Yang Xue would have ate them. But not him. Probably because he tasted like rotten meat already. Eww.
Yes, he could have realized it if we did, and we didn't. Therefore, he is oblivious to it, since we are his brain when we are making those choices (poor boy!). How SHOULD he know about it? Where is the evidence, empirical or otherwise? Is there something happening that defies the laws of nature or logic in a consistent manner?
No? That how WOULD he know or suspect it?
Esquilax
Arcane
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- Dec 7, 2010
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- 4,833
Yes, it makes perfect sense that Jing doesn't notice the twisted intent that has now enslaved him. Look at it from his point-of-view: he's locked in a life-or-death battle against the Sword Demon, who, unbeknownst to him, poses a question to find some weaknesses in Jing's psyche that he can exploit, and Jing takes the bait. He remembers only a bloody, adrenalin-fueled battle that he barely made it out of in one piece, because from his perspective, nothing seems amiss, because the demon had already tricked him.
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I could have written a lengthy, life-or-death battle against the Sword Demon which would end with most of you having nothing more than the slightest suspicion that something may be off. But as it turns out, I'm a lazy and impatient git, so... yeah.
Still, here's what I think - up to this point, I figure you guys would have mostly picked the choices you made with or without the 'demon's influence', or knowledge thereof. It changes little. Because the question asked 'what was most important', giving a serious answer meant that you'd be providing a logical rationale (to you) for why Jing has acted the way he does thus far, and why he would continue to do so in the future. If it makes sense to you that he's the sort who acts for the people that need him, why would him exhibiting that behaviour suddenly begin to trigger suspicion, whether it is from himself or those around him?
Sure, you might say that he ends up being a drama queen and attention whore thanks to the subversion of this trait and that's really sketchy as hell, but that's also really quite far off in the future.
Still, here's what I think - up to this point, I figure you guys would have mostly picked the choices you made with or without the 'demon's influence', or knowledge thereof. It changes little. Because the question asked 'what was most important', giving a serious answer meant that you'd be providing a logical rationale (to you) for why Jing has acted the way he does thus far, and why he would continue to do so in the future. If it makes sense to you that he's the sort who acts for the people that need him, why would him exhibiting that behaviour suddenly begin to trigger suspicion, whether it is from himself or those around him?
Sure, you might say that he ends up being a drama queen and attention whore thanks to the subversion of this trait and that's really sketchy as hell, but that's also really quite far off in the future.
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- 11,370
Oh yeah, we had a sample for Yog-Sothoth, now here's a test sample for Hobo Rider.
***
Hobo Rider Rides Forth
Another day… another morning in the dumps.
Literally.
I open my eyes to see a mangy stray dog expressing his – unmistakeably his – keen interest in my face. Grumbling, I slap him away before he decides to actually act on his interest. He limps off, whimpering. “Go get a bitch to settle down with!” I yell. If I were the C-rank hero, Furfagg, perhaps the dog would have understood my advice, but I’m not and as such, my outburst is met with a howl that I can only imagine to be one of frustration.
“Doesn’t that mean you look like a bitch?”
The cardboard walls of my little hand-made hut shimmer as the projection wakes up; I had left it on standby last night. A red-headed girl – devastatingly cute but exceedingly annoying – pops up on the screen.
“Hello, Miss Sara. You’d know about bitches, wouldn’t you?” I reply with a sing-song voice. “Isn’t it a bit early for you to check in on me?”
“It’s almost noon,” she states flatly. “Anyway, it’s not like I wanted to check in on you. There’s a job from the Association.”
Well, that’s unusual. Usually I had to go fighting crimes by myself, sending in reports in return for a measly stipend. As a F-ranked hero, I was not allowed to take on the more lucrative missions – I spend most of my time helping old ladies cross the street and discussing the nature of concrete with gentlemanly young punks. “Go on,” I say.
“Hm…” Sara taps something on her side, and looks up, her green eyes flashing. “It’ll be quicker if you just switch to the news right now.”
Sighing, I make the gesture, commanding my home program to go to the news. The display changes – Sara’s image shrinks, while the background is replaced with the latest and greatest happenings in the city, as told by a newscaster dolled up in a plasticky way.
“…and in other news, the progressive activist group CHANGE have continued to accuse B-rank superhero, the Chameleon, of dismissing trans-gender lived experiences as he persists on identifying as being male despite having the ability to change his gender. They are now demanding that he spend equal time as persons of all races and genders in order to promote equality as a superhero. The Chameleon is yet to give a statement on this accusation, and in fact has not been spotted at all ever since the #GenderChameleon tag began trending on social media.”
The news then moves on to other, more interesting stories – these I can tell by how many teeth there are countable in the newscaster’s grin (the more, the better) – like the recent scandalous affair between the C-ranked Widowmaker and the A-ranked Topcrusher, both of which are married to other people. I met them once… wouldn’t want to repeat the pleasure. Sighing, I wave off the news with a gesture, and Sara’s image fills the projection again. I frown at her quizzically. “Chameleon? He’s a B-ranker. You do know I don’t fit in well with those circles.”
“You could if you would take a bath and clean up once in a while.” She never stops trying to get me to groom myself. I think it’s a woman thing.
“Clean water doesn’t come cheap.” It comes cheaper than access to the internet, but I have always deemed a working connection more important than hygiene. It’s one of the reasons I am not a more popular superhero. Besides, I now smell like the city, making it easier for me to sneak up on villains with a more discerning sense of smell.
“There’s always the river.”
“I’d be immersing myself in the sewage of half the city’s homes if I ever took a dip in there.”
“Excuses, excuses. Anyway, the Chameleon job. Do you want it?” Right down to business, it seems.
“Let me tell you how suspicious I am right now about-“
“Do you want the job or not?” she says exasperatedly.
I give in. Any job is better than none, and the Association rarely passes on an assignment to the lower-ranked heroes. “Fine. What’s it about? I can’t see why the job has been passed on to an F-rank hero like me.”
“The Chameleon’s missing.”
“Yes, it was on the news. I know.” Thank you, Mistress Obvious. I don’t say it out loud, however. She holds power over your stipend – I get a feeling that she enjoys the occassional verbal jabs with me, but I’m always careful not to take it too far. Nowadays, at least. The last time I did it…
“No, I mean, he’s really missing. He hasn’t reported into the association for a week now.”
“I only report in once a month,” I point out. “No one comes looking for me.”
“You’re Rank F. No one cares.”
“Thank you for the honest truth,” I say acidly. “At any rate, if it’s a missing persons investigation, Detective One-Eye is A-rank and a lot better at this than I am.”
“We wouldn’t mobilize him to just check on the Chameleon. For all we know, he’s just laying low until CHANGE finds some other target. It’s a simple job. Go over and break into his apartment, report back with any clues you find.”
“…that’s illegal. Don’t we have the cops for this?” I have a rather niggling suspicion that I was picked for this precisely because it is illegal.
“The Hero Association takes care of its own. Getting the police involved would be embarrassing,” she explains.
Ah, yes. Political power plays. The rise of the Hero Association as a force for Justice! and Peace! has not been met kindly by the police. I’ve heard that the chief of the Association and the city’s police commissioner have nearly come to blows at recent reception parties more than once, after one cocktail too many. It’s no surprise; with the superheroes around – and the subsequent escalation in the form of superpowered crime – the police had found themselves steadily being forced into irrelevance. I think it’s the budget cuts that irks them the most, though. Their shrinking waistlines and frownier faces is testament to that.
Sara’s voice drops down low as she continues, as if afraid of eavesdroppers even though our communication is conducted via lines encrypted by Fenrir Corporation’s state-of-the-art technology. “This isn’t part of the official briefing, but I also hear that the top has an interest in this case.”
“The Association’s chief?”
“Further up.”
“Ah.” That can only mean one person. The elusive head of Fenrir Corporation – some Scandinavian bastard with a fetish for collecting ancient Sumerian antiques. If he’s ‘interested’, then this case might not turn out to be so simple after all.
Still, a job is a job.
“Got it,” I say. “Anything else?”
“The usual. Stay safe, Hobo Rider.” The line cuts out before I can reply, as usual.
***
For a superhero with the name of ‘Hobo Rider’, the only ride I can afford is the public transport. I get off the bus, followed by the foul looks of the good, law-abiding citizens whose noses I so callously offended. They’ll have to deal with it: one good thing about being as superhero is the free bus rides, courtesy of Fenrir Corporation. I’m not about to give that up just because some middle-class folk need to hold their breath for a while.
The Chameleon’s apartment is not hard to find – it’s the one picketed by dozens of protestors demanding that he change his gender. I slip into the alleyways behind the building with ease. It’s time to get to work.
Every hero has a power, which usually determines their rank.
Even amongst the F-rankers, however, I am different – I have the misfortune of not having any power at all. The cheap, generic implants and genemods did not take, and I didn’t have the marketability to have a company sponsor better hardware. I’m forced to make do with what meager talents I have.
To be honest, it all started as an accident anyway; this was definitely not my chosen career pathway.
But when your memories seem to have gotten started only in the last six months, there isn’t much choice. You take what you can get.
In this case, I settled for being a hero. Amnesiac I may be, there are some things that still stick in my mind.
How to lockpick a door quietly, for one.
I gain entry to the apartment with ease, the door swinging open invitingly as I finish jiggling the wires.
I can also assemble explosives, gut things expertly with a knife and shoot someone in the head with a pistol from fifty metres away, but I (wisely, in my opinion) didn’t advertise those skills to the Hero Association.
Sometimes I do wonder just what sort of crazy mess I was involved in before I came to this city.
I walk through the rooms of the Chameleon’s apartment. His taste in décor is stunning. Garish colours are splashed all over the ceiling and the walls in unfathomable designs, and the floor is a blinding red and black checkerboard pattern. With such a brilliant gamut of clashing colour rewarding my eyes, you can understand why I had to trip over the Chameleon’s cooling corpse to find it.
His skin has taken on the same pattern as his floor: red and black squares. This is his power, a type of shapeshifting. I shake the body once, but there is no response. Not that I was expecting any. Placing my gloved hands under his armpits, I haul him onto the puke-green leopard-spotted sofa, where his checkerboard pattern stands out enough for me to take a look.
It takes only a second to identify the cause of death.
His brain had been fried by the virtual reality gear he had jacked into his spine. I remove the machine covering his eyes – another fine product of Fenrir Corporation, which had been steadily expanding into everything these days, including pattiseries. Apparently they make some really good pastries: Sara swears by it. Shaking my head, I look back at the VR gear. There’s something strange about it – I have not seen this model in the market before. I wonder if it is a developer model… it would not be out of the ordinary for the Chameleon to have one; he had been using his gaming hobby to promote himself nowadays. I turn the gear around in my hands, peering closer.
There it is.
Black market sensation mods.
I check the time I have left: there’s still a few hours to go before the bus I need to catch. I have the time to spare. Sitting down on a lush, neon-purple carpet, I unroll the bag of tools I always have by my side. There’s a trick that I’ve forgotten where and who I learnt it from, and it involves a spinal jack like the ones used in these VR gears. If the corpse is relatively fresh – and from the looks of it, despite being missing for a week, he hasn’t been dead nearly that long – I should be able to replicate the last bits of information stored in his retinas.
The last light – the final thing he saw, in other words.
I fiddle away until I am satisfied, and when it is done, I plug it in.
A hazy image comes into focus gradually as I tune the visuals, shifting and rotating the Chameleon’s dead head by his ears like an antique TV antenna.
A… ring?
No. A serpent, biting its own tail. The first thing that comes to my mind is the tail-swallowing serpent, Ouroboros. Ouroboros. Jormungandr. Fenrir. Is there a connection there? I stare at the symbol intently. A ring of fire, like a halo, surrounds the serpent’s body. Different from the other ouroboros reliefs that I am familiar with, this snake has only one eye – the other is a simple line, as if depicting a scar. This is not a symbol that I have seen before. I hold my phone in my hand, contemplating whether to relay this information and seek help from other sources. The symbol had something to do with the Chameleon’s death, and I highly doubt that CHANGE is behind it…
***
A. I get into contact with Sara and report my findings to her. She knows people in the Hero Association and has the rather useful ability of keeping a secret while finding out information at the same time. Besides, this is a job that she passed on to me; it’s only right that I work through this case with her.
B. I have a direct line to the CEO of Fenrir Corporation, though I had contemplated deleting it on many occassions. Perhaps now is the time to use it: if he truly has an interest in this case, he might know more than I do right now. Then again, he might actually be the mastermind and proceed to try and silence me. I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, no risk, no reward, right?
C. I recognize the black market mods that the Chameleon installed – though I don’t know who sold it to him, I know a man who might have a lead for that. Foul-Mouthed Cheung, from Xianfu Street down in Chinatown. We’ve crossed paths before – the man is a true connoiseur of illegal circuitry. If he doesn’t know, I doubt anyone in this city does.
***
Hobo Rider Rides Forth
Another day… another morning in the dumps.
Literally.
I open my eyes to see a mangy stray dog expressing his – unmistakeably his – keen interest in my face. Grumbling, I slap him away before he decides to actually act on his interest. He limps off, whimpering. “Go get a bitch to settle down with!” I yell. If I were the C-rank hero, Furfagg, perhaps the dog would have understood my advice, but I’m not and as such, my outburst is met with a howl that I can only imagine to be one of frustration.
“Doesn’t that mean you look like a bitch?”
The cardboard walls of my little hand-made hut shimmer as the projection wakes up; I had left it on standby last night. A red-headed girl – devastatingly cute but exceedingly annoying – pops up on the screen.
“Hello, Miss Sara. You’d know about bitches, wouldn’t you?” I reply with a sing-song voice. “Isn’t it a bit early for you to check in on me?”
“It’s almost noon,” she states flatly. “Anyway, it’s not like I wanted to check in on you. There’s a job from the Association.”
Well, that’s unusual. Usually I had to go fighting crimes by myself, sending in reports in return for a measly stipend. As a F-ranked hero, I was not allowed to take on the more lucrative missions – I spend most of my time helping old ladies cross the street and discussing the nature of concrete with gentlemanly young punks. “Go on,” I say.
“Hm…” Sara taps something on her side, and looks up, her green eyes flashing. “It’ll be quicker if you just switch to the news right now.”
Sighing, I make the gesture, commanding my home program to go to the news. The display changes – Sara’s image shrinks, while the background is replaced with the latest and greatest happenings in the city, as told by a newscaster dolled up in a plasticky way.
“…and in other news, the progressive activist group CHANGE have continued to accuse B-rank superhero, the Chameleon, of dismissing trans-gender lived experiences as he persists on identifying as being male despite having the ability to change his gender. They are now demanding that he spend equal time as persons of all races and genders in order to promote equality as a superhero. The Chameleon is yet to give a statement on this accusation, and in fact has not been spotted at all ever since the #GenderChameleon tag began trending on social media.”
The news then moves on to other, more interesting stories – these I can tell by how many teeth there are countable in the newscaster’s grin (the more, the better) – like the recent scandalous affair between the C-ranked Widowmaker and the A-ranked Topcrusher, both of which are married to other people. I met them once… wouldn’t want to repeat the pleasure. Sighing, I wave off the news with a gesture, and Sara’s image fills the projection again. I frown at her quizzically. “Chameleon? He’s a B-ranker. You do know I don’t fit in well with those circles.”
“You could if you would take a bath and clean up once in a while.” She never stops trying to get me to groom myself. I think it’s a woman thing.
“Clean water doesn’t come cheap.” It comes cheaper than access to the internet, but I have always deemed a working connection more important than hygiene. It’s one of the reasons I am not a more popular superhero. Besides, I now smell like the city, making it easier for me to sneak up on villains with a more discerning sense of smell.
“There’s always the river.”
“I’d be immersing myself in the sewage of half the city’s homes if I ever took a dip in there.”
“Excuses, excuses. Anyway, the Chameleon job. Do you want it?” Right down to business, it seems.
“Let me tell you how suspicious I am right now about-“
“Do you want the job or not?” she says exasperatedly.
I give in. Any job is better than none, and the Association rarely passes on an assignment to the lower-ranked heroes. “Fine. What’s it about? I can’t see why the job has been passed on to an F-rank hero like me.”
“The Chameleon’s missing.”
“Yes, it was on the news. I know.” Thank you, Mistress Obvious. I don’t say it out loud, however. She holds power over your stipend – I get a feeling that she enjoys the occassional verbal jabs with me, but I’m always careful not to take it too far. Nowadays, at least. The last time I did it…
“No, I mean, he’s really missing. He hasn’t reported into the association for a week now.”
“I only report in once a month,” I point out. “No one comes looking for me.”
“You’re Rank F. No one cares.”
“Thank you for the honest truth,” I say acidly. “At any rate, if it’s a missing persons investigation, Detective One-Eye is A-rank and a lot better at this than I am.”
“We wouldn’t mobilize him to just check on the Chameleon. For all we know, he’s just laying low until CHANGE finds some other target. It’s a simple job. Go over and break into his apartment, report back with any clues you find.”
“…that’s illegal. Don’t we have the cops for this?” I have a rather niggling suspicion that I was picked for this precisely because it is illegal.
“The Hero Association takes care of its own. Getting the police involved would be embarrassing,” she explains.
Ah, yes. Political power plays. The rise of the Hero Association as a force for Justice! and Peace! has not been met kindly by the police. I’ve heard that the chief of the Association and the city’s police commissioner have nearly come to blows at recent reception parties more than once, after one cocktail too many. It’s no surprise; with the superheroes around – and the subsequent escalation in the form of superpowered crime – the police had found themselves steadily being forced into irrelevance. I think it’s the budget cuts that irks them the most, though. Their shrinking waistlines and frownier faces is testament to that.
Sara’s voice drops down low as she continues, as if afraid of eavesdroppers even though our communication is conducted via lines encrypted by Fenrir Corporation’s state-of-the-art technology. “This isn’t part of the official briefing, but I also hear that the top has an interest in this case.”
“The Association’s chief?”
“Further up.”
“Ah.” That can only mean one person. The elusive head of Fenrir Corporation – some Scandinavian bastard with a fetish for collecting ancient Sumerian antiques. If he’s ‘interested’, then this case might not turn out to be so simple after all.
Still, a job is a job.
“Got it,” I say. “Anything else?”
“The usual. Stay safe, Hobo Rider.” The line cuts out before I can reply, as usual.
***
For a superhero with the name of ‘Hobo Rider’, the only ride I can afford is the public transport. I get off the bus, followed by the foul looks of the good, law-abiding citizens whose noses I so callously offended. They’ll have to deal with it: one good thing about being as superhero is the free bus rides, courtesy of Fenrir Corporation. I’m not about to give that up just because some middle-class folk need to hold their breath for a while.
The Chameleon’s apartment is not hard to find – it’s the one picketed by dozens of protestors demanding that he change his gender. I slip into the alleyways behind the building with ease. It’s time to get to work.
Every hero has a power, which usually determines their rank.
Even amongst the F-rankers, however, I am different – I have the misfortune of not having any power at all. The cheap, generic implants and genemods did not take, and I didn’t have the marketability to have a company sponsor better hardware. I’m forced to make do with what meager talents I have.
To be honest, it all started as an accident anyway; this was definitely not my chosen career pathway.
But when your memories seem to have gotten started only in the last six months, there isn’t much choice. You take what you can get.
In this case, I settled for being a hero. Amnesiac I may be, there are some things that still stick in my mind.
How to lockpick a door quietly, for one.
I gain entry to the apartment with ease, the door swinging open invitingly as I finish jiggling the wires.
I can also assemble explosives, gut things expertly with a knife and shoot someone in the head with a pistol from fifty metres away, but I (wisely, in my opinion) didn’t advertise those skills to the Hero Association.
Sometimes I do wonder just what sort of crazy mess I was involved in before I came to this city.
I walk through the rooms of the Chameleon’s apartment. His taste in décor is stunning. Garish colours are splashed all over the ceiling and the walls in unfathomable designs, and the floor is a blinding red and black checkerboard pattern. With such a brilliant gamut of clashing colour rewarding my eyes, you can understand why I had to trip over the Chameleon’s cooling corpse to find it.
His skin has taken on the same pattern as his floor: red and black squares. This is his power, a type of shapeshifting. I shake the body once, but there is no response. Not that I was expecting any. Placing my gloved hands under his armpits, I haul him onto the puke-green leopard-spotted sofa, where his checkerboard pattern stands out enough for me to take a look.
It takes only a second to identify the cause of death.
His brain had been fried by the virtual reality gear he had jacked into his spine. I remove the machine covering his eyes – another fine product of Fenrir Corporation, which had been steadily expanding into everything these days, including pattiseries. Apparently they make some really good pastries: Sara swears by it. Shaking my head, I look back at the VR gear. There’s something strange about it – I have not seen this model in the market before. I wonder if it is a developer model… it would not be out of the ordinary for the Chameleon to have one; he had been using his gaming hobby to promote himself nowadays. I turn the gear around in my hands, peering closer.
There it is.
Black market sensation mods.
I check the time I have left: there’s still a few hours to go before the bus I need to catch. I have the time to spare. Sitting down on a lush, neon-purple carpet, I unroll the bag of tools I always have by my side. There’s a trick that I’ve forgotten where and who I learnt it from, and it involves a spinal jack like the ones used in these VR gears. If the corpse is relatively fresh – and from the looks of it, despite being missing for a week, he hasn’t been dead nearly that long – I should be able to replicate the last bits of information stored in his retinas.
The last light – the final thing he saw, in other words.
I fiddle away until I am satisfied, and when it is done, I plug it in.
A hazy image comes into focus gradually as I tune the visuals, shifting and rotating the Chameleon’s dead head by his ears like an antique TV antenna.
A… ring?
No. A serpent, biting its own tail. The first thing that comes to my mind is the tail-swallowing serpent, Ouroboros. Ouroboros. Jormungandr. Fenrir. Is there a connection there? I stare at the symbol intently. A ring of fire, like a halo, surrounds the serpent’s body. Different from the other ouroboros reliefs that I am familiar with, this snake has only one eye – the other is a simple line, as if depicting a scar. This is not a symbol that I have seen before. I hold my phone in my hand, contemplating whether to relay this information and seek help from other sources. The symbol had something to do with the Chameleon’s death, and I highly doubt that CHANGE is behind it…
***
A. I get into contact with Sara and report my findings to her. She knows people in the Hero Association and has the rather useful ability of keeping a secret while finding out information at the same time. Besides, this is a job that she passed on to me; it’s only right that I work through this case with her.
B. I have a direct line to the CEO of Fenrir Corporation, though I had contemplated deleting it on many occassions. Perhaps now is the time to use it: if he truly has an interest in this case, he might know more than I do right now. Then again, he might actually be the mastermind and proceed to try and silence me. I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, no risk, no reward, right?
C. I recognize the black market mods that the Chameleon installed – though I don’t know who sold it to him, I know a man who might have a lead for that. Foul-Mouthed Cheung, from Xianfu Street down in Chinatown. We’ve crossed paths before – the man is a true connoiseur of illegal circuitry. If he doesn’t know, I doubt anyone in this city does.
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