Vamp had never been a heavy sleeper. Not since That night. So waking up feeling she had been deeply asleep was a very unusual sensation. She was sore and felt like she was getting over a bad flu bug. "Did anyone get the tags of the lorry that hit me," she said through a mouth that felt like sandpaper.

Then the v-trodes she didn't realise she had on kicked in and she started to see just how deep the rabbit hole went. As she watched little sparks of electricity danced about her hands. "Kuso no hōhō wa arimasen," she said, falling back into her native language without thinking about it. Once the sim ended she sat up and looked at her hands, watching the electricity arc between her fingers. She raised a hand and looked for something, settling on an empty bunk. She pointed her hand at it, raised her wrists and smiled as a bolt of lightning shot from her hand to the bunk.

"This is bloody amasing," she said, looking at the charred spot she left on the bunk before reaching down and grabbing one of the water bottles she had left on the floor before settling in and passing out.

Nikola's sleep was so deep that it took several attempts to fully awake.. she opened her eyes several times to close them again and go back to sleep, back to her dreams... and to mumble words such as "Inktomi", "Niatha"  "Earth grandmother", "Pacha mama" "Spider mother" etc

It was a sign that she was dreaming of spiders as the carbon plague started to change her organism and form the insectoid appendages out of her body.. at first her dreams were terrifying nightmares but during the night her mind started to confront and accept the fear produced by her body reacting to the plague.. as her mind associated the image of spiders with native american legends that she learned in the past , fascinated with an idealistic view of tribes that were more in sync with nature and saw a postive figure in spiders.

Finally she woke up in peace, as if the carbon plague had just unlocked something...something that was already inside her.. maybe already inside many, and as she took a deep breath she was ready to accept it.

When she raised her upper body and looked at her palms and the thread coming out of them and connecting to a sort of technoorganic spider she understood she had dreamed about it.. and that part of those dreams were real.. she rememberd being able to see the room and feel through those things coming out of her, even though her eyes were closed as she was asleep. Although she was no fan of how spiders looked in the past she was not freaked out  now and with her will she comanded the probes to walk back to her hands,, where she observed with fascination at the techno organic "creatures"... IT FELT NATURAL! and with a thought, it climbed up near the elbows using its legs to firmly rest there while the thread ended up softly tied in her forearm.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:09, Wed 06 Oct 2021.

Minerva jolts awake when Vamp shoots the bed, nearly falling out of her chair.  "Oh, hey, you guys are up, and you made it!" she says almost as though she had doubts.  "You're probably starving, it's been..." she looks at the clock on her monitor.  "It's been about 23 hours since you arrived.  Did the sims help?  I programmed them to kick in when you woke up, but I guess I fell asleep," she yawns stretching a bit in her chair.  The 'living' area of her bunker is a bit tight with so many juvies standing up.

Jai looked around, though his head was still too fuzzy to attempt a proper headcount.

"We, uh... lose anybody?"

Shin-Ji had already had a ration bar or two: they'd been a part of his sim. But he still felt like he could eat a horse.

"I feel so weird.

My entire balance is off. I can't believe my hands and feet are.. that stuff."

Vamp was on her second ration bar and had finished the bottled water and was up looking for more. "Looks like we all made it but Sleeping Beauty here is going for a lie in," she said, nodding her head towards Val.

"Looks pretty brill. You've gotten more bulky. Not fat but not all lean muscle; like you've been doing strength training."

"Except that it isn't muscle." The sleeveless gi showed arms that got increasingly more obviously metalic as they descended towards the hands.

"I'd turn my hand into a knife or something, but I'm just too tired and hungry. Apparently, if I don't eat every couple hours I'll turn into a statue, so if you see me like that, just feed me.

Shin-Ji wondered if they'd draw on his face if that happened. Fair enough if he was silly enough to let himself starve like that.

"I'll make sure you get fed but not before we all draw on your face," Vamp said, giving him a smile and tossing him another ration bar. She grabbed another one, tore it open and started eating as she pulled out another water.

"The sims helped. I am, according to what the sim said, a Bolter. I threw lightning at one of the bunks. Give me a hammer and blonde hair and I'm that God of Lightning guy from those old movies."

Nikola stood up slowly and with careful steps got closer to the other ones as they ate their food
"Thank you for taking care of us Minerva, im starving so i'll accept your offer, funny thing, the Sim seemed to interact with my subconcious mind and who knows with what else inside of me"

She showed her arm with the thread and the spiderlike cybernetic to the fellow Juves."Did some of you get something similar to this? I can only remember legends"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:47, Mon 11 Oct 2021.

Tailgate nodded at the idea of eating, a hunger gnawing at him a bit. But first...he looked over at Val's seemingly-asleep or unconscious body. He frowned a little as he tried to concentrate. He tried to filter out other noises from all around, one by one. He focused on just seeing if he could hear her breathing in the noisy room. His eyes were closed as he tried this, blocking out other senses and just listening.

"For you," Minerva says looking at Shin-ji.  "You'll need to cover those arms and legs when walking about, the Feds and the cops will zero in on you like mad," she says.  "I've got a friend working on a project that may help in the mid term, but it will take a few days or weeks to go," she adds a bit cryptically.

She looks wide-eyed at Nikola.  "Wow, you're a scout then?  Is that what the sim said?  I've never seen one before," she watches the spider-like thing in fascination a few more seconds before recovering her senses.

"When you are all awake, fed and ready, we'll talk a little more serious.  Big question is, what now?  You've got these neat powers, powers that will mark you for the hunt if the cops find out, but you can do a lot of good with them also.  I'm going to the little girls' room and when I get back I can answer more questions," she says getting out of her chair and heading to the fresher.

Jai watched her go, staring at the speech bubble.

"Wizard? I admit, this does feel like magic. But I don't think the hat with stars is my style."

He looked around at the assembled crew, paying special attention to those with outward expressions of their new abilities.

"So what are we thinking? I mean, I could just walk away, settle things with Uptown Girl. Not all of us ended up with all of this stuff confined to our heads, though. She-"

He nodded his head in the direction of the bathroom.

"-seems to have some kind of org lined up. I think I should at least pay it forward."

Shin-Ji's eyes were hard.

"Too many dead friends. My giri to them, and my sensei, is clear.

He spent a few seconds gathering himself. Was his friends deaths only two nights ago? It seemed so much longer already.

He took a deep breath and buried his anger.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:00, Tue 19 Oct 2021.

Vamp sat down on Val's bed and slapped her face. "Oi, wake up. Bloody layabout having a lie in whilst the rest of us are figuring out what the hell to do now."

She looked at Shin and gave him a grim smile. "I know how you feel. As far as I know my entire crew, my band, my friends, are all dead or in the nick. Those pigs didn't seem to care about the fact that they were popping off rounds in the middle of a club catering to juves."

She held up her hands and let electricity arc between her fingers. "I want to do something with this to get a bit of payback."

When Vamp slapped Val's face, Tailgate spasmed hard at the exact moment and clapped both hands over his ears. "ow! fraggit!" He twitched a bit more before finally lowering his hands.

He let out a breath in a noise that was both angry and pained. "I was...listening to make sure she was still breathing, that we hadn't lost her to the sickness." He winced and shook his head, then seemed okay.

After Hearing Minerva, Shin-Ji and Vamp Nikola moved her eyes inconsciously upward and from left to right as she pictured diferent scenarios in her head

"Well definitely i want to achieve something good with this new abilities, although leaving might sound interesting i think we might need help later, to abandon now will most likely reduce our chances in the future. So i vote to hear what Minerva has to say about the things we can *accomplish*, hopefully we can bring some justice to this planet"
 Nikola looked at Vamp and then to Val to see if she was fine

Minerva comes out of the restroom tying her hair back into a puffy approximation of a pony tail.  She looks down at Val and addresses the others.  "Is she okay?  I mean, I didn't see anything wrong during the change," she asks taking her seat at the computer and folding her legs beneath her.

As dreams go, it was too tangible.
As nightmares go, it was just bizarre, not horrible…
And as afterlives went, it did feel like she had died, but at the same time…

Thwack.

Something hitting her face. Something not in virtual, something more tacticle than the…

Thwack.

Her eyes shot open, but milliseconds after her hand shot up, instinctively grasping the other hand before it could smack her again. And the first thing Val could see as she came to was Vamp’s face – suddenly contorting with pain.
She was as puzzled as the other girl, for a split second. And then she felt it, the electrical current flowing through her body, and via the conductors on the palm of her hand, delivering an electric shock to the Goth.

“Frack,” she whipered, letting go of Vamp’s hand, too confused to apologize.

And there was something else… a certain… halo? Around the Goth’s head, quickly changing hue – the muted color of nonchalance, misted with impatience, ever so slightly tinged with worry – suddenly bleeding to the pulsing shades of pain and rage.

“What the frack is…”

She looked around, her neck clicking.

Tailgate close by, his halo sort of similar to Vamp’s original one, but touched with a little vibration that she couldn’t quite place, between embarrassment and thirst; Nikola and Minerva, with subtler and softer shades of preoccupation…

So it's true. I can... scan? People? What the...

Val sat up, self-consciously pulling up the neckline of her corset.

“It’s very creepy to wake up like that, with all of you weirdos watching me sleep,” she said, voice still coarse; she cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey. Did I miss anything?”
This message was last edited by the player at 10:43, Tue 02 Nov 2021.

Vamp was somewhat startled by the speed in which Val grabbed her but she had noticed her own perception and reflexes had been enhanced by the change. She was even more startled when she zapped her which she felt disperse throughout her body, seemingly giving her a slight boost.

"Bloody bitch!" She snarled before grabbing Val's arm and delivering a zap of her own before letting go and standing up.

"We were watching you because the rest of us have been awake for a bit whilst you took your damn time. Next time we'll have a film crew here to incentivise you."

She none-too gently tossed a protein bar and water at Val before stalking back over to her own bunk and sitting down with another water. "Trust me when I say there was plenty wrong with her before the change."

Jai rubbed his right temple, exasperated.

"You got the sim, right? I'm not sure what your particular... situation is, but hiding is going to be more difficult for some of us than for others. I'm gonna stick around, I think. Pay it forward for her help for a while, anyway. Can't really speak for anyone else."

"What did you miss?

We're all weird genetic freaks now. Some more than others. The powers are pretty preem though."

Shin-Ji had to stop himself from staring at his weird metal hands now. He'd wondered about getting augmentations, but had never seriously considered cybernetic replacement. If he'd been forced to it, he'd had probably gotten something that looked human.

He'd been putting away ration bars like there was a sale, stopping mainly to down water and energy drinks: those things were dry. Normally ration bars were something even he could barely put up with: right now they were frakking ambrosia. He'd never been that hungry, nowhere close.

"Well, okay..." Minerva says, not exactly sure how to handle the love/hate thing going on.  To Shin-ji she says, "not genetic freaks, the plague is a nano machine construct." She lets that sink in for moment; the carbon plague was created.  "The Feds and NCPD buttoned up the Obelisk outbreak pretty tight, I'm actually impressed.  I'm still trying to get a list of everyone that was there.  Not many got out, but there are not a bunch of missing persons reports either," the screen behind her puts up a bunch of scream sheets from the last couple of days and there is nothing.

One very short article says there was a gas leak near the Obelisk on the night of the raid, and the authorities cordoned off the neighborhood for a few days to lock it down.  The article says everything is back to normal and school will re-start tomorrow.

Shin-Ji scratched his temples. This had implications he just couldn't deal with right now.

"Ok, wow. That's.. I was thinking it did stuff to our genetic code. But I guess it's just like the nanobots that they use to implant cyberware and heal people? Only about six zillion times as advanced?

Let me pop the 60,000 nuyen question, I gotta ask.

Do we have the slightest idea who the hell might have created this thing?"

Seriously. He didn't know that much science, but he'd studied how he might get some augs later to improve his performance: what self respecting athelete or fighter DIDN'T consider it at some point?

He knew enough that the stuff he was doing was wildly beyond anything.

Something else occured to him, though.

"Another question. So this stuff.. I've functionally had my arms and legs replaced with full cybernetics. Does anyone ever go psycho from this?"

It was worth asking. His sensei was a solo, and he'd been quite frank about the unwritten perils of augmentation when asked. He knew his students that kept to the life would eventually want to know the ups and downs of getting chromed.

Nikola got distracted with the conversations regarding Valeriya being finally awake, the comments of Shin-Ji made her head start coming up with some new "hypothesis" ... and decided to join the conversation between him and Minerva  adressing Shin Ji first.

"This carbon plague is so mysterious.. as Minerva said it does look like completely artificial but i can't help to think that it might awaken some hidden nature in us....
for example as a martial artist you trained a lot with the goal of being stronger.. so i wonder if that influenced the fact that the plague made you mutate this way...but also the fact that there are specific mutations, like easy to identify stereotypes also makes me think that this is so artificial.. I mean, as you said Minerva .. there's a name for what i am now: a Scout, and it could be that my beliefs or hopes make me fall into confirmation bias...

And the fact that the corporate government hides what happened at the obelisk makes me wonder of their objectives.. is it just to prevent panic and economic crisis? or do they want this to silently continue to have people like us?.. do they plan to use juves like us?.....Speaking of Juves... Minerva.. would you like us to search for other juves affected by the Obelisk incident?"
This message was last edited by the player at 16:34, Mon 08 Nov 2021.

Jai's brow furrowed in thought.

"I don't know, I wasn't really a tech guy aside from what I needed to know to boost product. Never interested in software or programming or any stuff like that.

Anyway... if it's designed, then I think the best bet is that, yeah, it's to make use of us. Like Shin-Ji said, these are the kind of upgrades you used to need to go pretty deep into augmentation for. And the first places you saw that kind of tech back in the day were government and corporate spec ops. Could be we're a byproduct of the newest spin on that same process."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:51, Tue 09 Nov 2021.