soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovmGT35Tyg

Night City
Combat Zone
Aug 17th, 2045
0134 hrs

Cash is cash and some gigs are better than others.  Some are worse.  And some are just boring until they're not.

Kenji Takanori sits at the corner of the bar nursing his fourth club soda of the evening, eyes glued to the bio-readouts flooding through the optics of his smart glasses.  So far, every one of the six "adults" he's here to babysit are bouncing between the green and the yellow.  Corporate offspring celebrating Candy's 21st birthday with a run to the combat zone to see how the other 85% live and get a little bit of excitement in the slums.  Away from mom and dad's prying eyes.  Or so they think.

While they dance and take pills on the crowded dance floor of the converted bank oblivious to their babysitters, Kentucky watches their vital signs.  He's waiting for that inevitable moment where someone does something stupid.  The DJ in Collateral keeps the volume up to somewhere around the point where an inner ear willingly gives up the ghost and commits suicide in a small, if not bloody, "pop."  When the bass really gets going, the polymer glasses on the bar shake in time with the beat.

The solo that has been tasked with making sure Candy and her crew make it home relatively intact gives Kenji a shrug from the other end of the bar.  She's new blood on the street, if not cute in a punk princess kind of way, but Kentucky hasn't seen her in operation yet.  Hopefully the fixer that put this gig together has.

With the slight acid sting of the club soda sliding across his tongue, Kenji blinks.  Then blinks again.  Candy's biosigns go red.  Then Johnny's.  Then Magdalena's.  Then the other three.  Heart beats go above two hundred.  Internal temps climb sharply.  A warning pings across the smart glasses:  Foreign chemicals detected.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:15, Sun 20 Dec 2020.

"Amateurs," Kenji sighs. He takes a last sip of his club soda, sets the glass down a little harder than he should. The bartender doesn't notice but the solo does. She gets paid to notice things. Kentucky flashes her an apologetic smirk, glances back at the dancefloor, calmly raises a hand to signal, "no problem."

He slides off the barstool, weaves through the undulating bodies on the dancefloor, takes Candy by the arm firmly but gently.

"Come on, sweetheart," he has to shout over the throbbing base and neo-techno beats. Her folks are the ones signing his paycheck; the other trust fund babies will just have to wait. He guides the unsteady woman to the private booth the party has rented for the evening, sits her down, slides in beside her. She's sweaty, glassy eyed, her hands are shaking.

"I told you kids to stay away from that cheap whiz," the freelance medtech admonishes, opening his satchel. Candy looks over at him dumbly. These corpo yuppies usually get high on designer shit, but slumming it properly entails acquiring and doing street drugs- risk being the primary allure of a night out in the Combat Zones. He quickly finds what he was looking for, covert medkit organized for the gig, with this particular contingency right at the top of the what-could-go-wrong list.

"This'll sting a bit, but then you're gonna start feeling a lot better real soon, OK?" During the three second delay between his reassuring words and Candy's tentative head-nod response, Kentucky presses the Airhypo nozzle against her jugular, injecting a dose of benzodiazepine. He pockets the Airhypo, reaches for the bottle service champagne bucket, pulls it over, grabs a handful of ice. "Sorry 'bout this," he says, dropping the first handful down the back of her dress. The second handful goes down the front. She's still too out of it to protest much- the benzo hasn't quite kicked all the way in yet. "You're fine," Kentucky soothes. "Suck on this", he adds, gently shoving an ice cube past her slack lips. "Just sit here and chill. I'll be right back." Kenji winces at the unavoidable pun, stands up and heads back out onto the dancefloor to shepherd the next tweaking corpo spawn to the makeshift triage station.

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This message was last edited by the player at 17:49, Mon 21 Dec 2020.

The dance floor crowd doesn't help Kenji.  At all.  With everyone jacked into their own experience, their own high, their own reality, the sober medic is at a distinct disadvantage in choosing straight lines of travel.  A pair of Moxes and their clients part just enough for Kenji to dance through the gap earning himself a scowl from some working class hero blowing through six months of fun money on a night with a Mox.  For her part, the joytoy laughs, uses the moment to jar loose some jealousy to make her client want her even more, and runs her hand across Kenji's neck in a soft caress.  It's enough to make him pat the pocket where his wallet sits.  Still there.

A blinking red icon leads him to Magdalena.  With the vital signs of his clients being more or less identical, the red head gets the geographic go ahead.  She's not hard to spot.  Short silver dress, designer chosen red hair blazing, perfectly sculpted facial features.  At 19, she's got more cybernetic design in her features than some of the combat veterans Kenji pieced back together.  Laying on the floor with her arms straight and rigid against her side, her wrists start to turn, driving her fists out.

She's about to seize.  Kenji realizes.

About that time the info clicks into his brain, a shadow detaches itself from the crowd and leans over her form, rooting around where her arm meets her dress.  Street chic.  Male.  And motivated to find...something.

When it rains in Night City, it pours. Where the hell's my deadbeat partner, Kenji wonders, as he snakes his way across the dance floor towards his next charge. Still at the bar busy trying way too hard to look chilled, must be. Isn't the neopunk-rawk solo chick here expressly to deal with too-forward locals? Yes. Yes, she is. And she's getting paid the same as I am? Kenji's temper starts to rise.

He closes the distance to his objective as quickly as he can, takes a knee beside the seizing redhead, opposite Mister Handsy, poised and ready should it become necessary to lay the groper out. Much as he'd liked to have just kicked the gonk in the head and been done with it, for now, the former combat medic is trying not to escalate the situation.

"Hands off, playboy. She's with me," Kenji shouts over the music, applying the Airhypo to Magda's pretty neck. "Now, fuck off," he growls, the words dripping with menace.

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This message was last edited by the player at 01:08, Thu 24 Dec 2020.

As if summoned by sheer willpower, Kenji's solo materializes out of the crowd, seizing Mister Handsy by the wrist and wrenching him to a standing position.  A short scuffle unfolds that the medic pays very little attention to as he's monitoring the decreasing seizure activity of Magdalena's muscles.  The bio-monitor feed goes from flashing red to a steady state red indicating that while the system isn't happy, it's not positive she's going to die anytime in the next two minutes.  Two more of the bio-monitors in Kenji's feed start to flash, tilting into crises mode.  Probably more seizures.

When the medic stands and starts to move toward his next patient, he feels the solo's hand on his arm, stopping the movement with gentle pressure.

"Mr. Shithead has something he'd like to show you," the solo says.  Or at least that's what Kenji can put together between her lips and breaks in the beat coming over the sound system.  She's clutching the kid by the throat with her left hand, right somewhere behind his back, presumably jabbing a weapon against his vital organs.  A trembling hand holds up a derm-peel flatpack.  Eight little squares that should hold patches of flesh colored synth-skin, maybe 4cm by 4cm.  All eight squares blank contents applied to skin somewhere in the club.  A folded up patch has been wrapped around the edge of the flatpack;  if Kenji had to guess, the derm patch that had been delivering whatever happy fun drug Magdalena had chosen for the evening.

"How many, asshole?" Kenji barks at him.  "How many in the club?"

"Twenty four," he chokes out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kenji watches two strangers hit the floor and start to seize.

The solo's eyebrow twitches in a look that translates roughly to: You want I should waste this guy?

Time to really earn that paycheck, Kenji thinks at his partner. He juts his chin at the arm the solo has cranked behind the douchebag dealer's back, without affect says, "Break it." He doesn't bother to ask the gonk what's in the derms. He's felt as well as seen the effects of bad whiz before.

Kenji turns his back on the pair, makes his way to the next patient, hoping that his patron's peers throw in some tip money for saving their own trust fund babies from brain death. The dealer's scream easily pierces the industrial-strength noise of the dance track. The dancefloor is noticeably less crowded now. The half-dozen clubbers flopping around on the floor got the exodus started; the dealer's pitiful wails add an air-raid siren effect that rapidly accelerates the process.

Kenji pops another benzodiazepine cartridge into the air-hypo, hopes he has enough doses for the entire corpo kinder club.

Next?

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This message was last edited by the player at 05:33, Sun 27 Dec 2020.

It doesn't take long to have a make-shift aid station set up on the club floor.  Kenji has certainly done more with less in various hot spots that whatever corporate war cropped up in.  A bouncer materializes at his shoulder, one radiating a bit more brain that the regular muscle.

"Would prefer if you could keep Trauma Team out.  Only good for the wrong kind of business."

"Workin' on it," Kenji tells him.

"Right.  You need anything, tell me or one of my guys.  We appreciate the help."

A couple more of the bouncers start dragging twitching patrons to dry areas of the floor.  Despite the commotion, the volume of the music only declines by twenty percent and more than a few of the partygoers refuse the leave the floor, still downing their drinks and dancing around the action.

A flow state settles on Kenji as he moves from patient to patient, Air-hypo at the ready.  After an indeterminate amount of time, he regains full awareness to find a few fresh packs of benzodiazepine in one hand and his six charges coming back to life, vital signs firmly in the yellow.  Between drugs, ice, and ripping the derm patches off, the medic has managed to keep everyone in the club alive.  No small task in the Combat Zone.

"I'll get'em out of here," the Solo tells him from his side.  "Got the car coming around now.  You're clear for the night as soon as the car door closes."

As she starts packing up the precious darlings of the corporate world, Kenji starts putting his kit back together.  "Excuse me," a voice behind him says.  The medic turns to regard a thin man with his black hair tied back in a pony tail, an easy grin on his face.  The synth-leather coat he wears barely conceals the pistol hanging under his arm pit.  Behind him hovers another man, this one almost beautiful and moving with the grace of the heavily cybered, his own long blond hair hanging loose around his face.  The muscle Kenji realizes.  He vaguely recognizes the pair as having been standing near the bar most of the evening.

"Solid work medic," the first man says.  "I'm Jasper.  Consider myself a talent scout."

"Black Jasper," the blond man half cackles, "You always leave out the first part."

"That's what I have you for," Jasper responds, without turning his head.  "You interested in some work?  I'm always looking to put crews together for various...projects."

At the edge of the floor, the solo escorts Candy and her entourage from the club.  Spotting Kenji, Magdalena lets out a throaty "Thanks for ruining my high, asshole!" before disappearing out the door.

Jasper smirks.  "She'll make someone a lovely middle manager someday.  What do you say, want to send me your deets?"

Magdalena's sour kiss off suggests that a tip probably isn't in the cards. What do they say? The customer's always right. Just another lame excuse to stiff the working man. Looks like he'll have to line up the next gig sooner rather than later.

Kenji reaches into his interior jacket pocket, slowly, pulls out a business card.

"Kentucky," he says, by way of introduction as he hands Black Jasper the slim rectangle of translucent plastic containing his professional contact info.

Slinging his medical bag, Kenji makes his way out of the club just in time to see the armored limo pull away from the curb, leaving him stranded in the combat zone.

Waving sarcastically at the departing luxury vehicle and its load of hungover yuppies, Kenji mutters, "Thanks for the ride home, assholes."

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This message was last edited by the player at 02:30, Mon 28 Dec 2020.