The Motherboard and the Wicked City

Leaving the Umbral movie theatre, they fall out of the Umbra into Hong Kong, just in time to see Demons of Iron and Violence come bursting out of Pearl Paradigms' building with HITMarks in hot pursuit. One of the demons runs away with something. All the combatants clear out at an invisible siren--the New World Order is on its way. Alison taps into a Technocracy frequency, and they listen to a report that "the motherboard" was stolen. The Technocracy is locking the whole city down against any escape.

Ambrose points out that their resonance will be noticed, falling into consensual reality so close to the crime scene. Faris takes them to Dreamsoft's Hong Kong offices to lay low for a couple of days till the Technocracy calms down, and he fills them in on Pearl Paradigms, which is a joint operation between the Syndicate, Iteration X, and the Progenitors. Some kind of R&D firm, obviously; an outlet for new technologies the Technocracy wants to unveil to the Masses.

From Dreamsoft's high rise, they can see the Technocracy is having problems with a rift in reality. They get it sealed after messing with it for a little while, but the pack gets a glimpse of the Wicked City's skyline before it closes.

After a while, the Technocrats seem to catch on that it's the escape route for the thieves, and apparently decide to re-open it, fussing with some equipment they bring out and set up. Ambrose is curious about the desperation such an attempt represents. The Technocracy could barely want this back more badly. His friends head off to find better ways of entertaining themselves, but Ambrose decides to hang around and observe them from his vantage point for a while. There's something about the way they're setting up their equipment that doesn't sit quite right with him...

...And he realizes just what a bad idea it is right about the time the whole setup explodes, dropping Hong Kong through a sudden lack of Gauntlet straight into the Wicked City.

Oh, well done, Technocracy!

The radio snaps back on, with scientists and agents screaming imprecations, then Iteration X cuts in to announce they're taking over by situation protocol. For once, Ambrose is all for it. This is what the Technocracy is good at, and somebody needs to protect the city's residents. Agents are deployed to herd citizens to safe zones. The locals don't seem to quite have noticed what happened. They seem to think it's terrorists or a tidal wave or something.

And apparently somebody else stole some blueprints while the Technocrats were chasing whatever the Demons of Iron and Violence stole. By reports, it sounds like the Monkey Girl. Ambrose can find her. He takes Lady Alison, RF, and Jonas with him.

They find her riding a HITMark with five more chasing her. She's got some kind of remote control joystick hooked up to its head.

Ambrose whips out a disintegration grenade--field test! It destroys the cohesion of unliving matter, wiping out about half a HITMark. The other half keeps on coming, but, well, it's stuck in a hole where the pavement used to be. RF clobbers another HITMark with a car. Jonas clubs one, and Aila rips up a phone pole as a melee weapon. Hey, it worked great last time! The Monkey Girl looks thoroughly entertained. Ambrose waves at her. "Hey! they have chain guns in their chests!" Thrilled, she starts pushing buttons.

The damaged HITMark takes a swing at Ambrose, who ducks (good thing it's half-wrecked!). He fires up his etheric gauntlet and grabs some exposed wires, giving it a good hard power surge. RF is winged by his assailant, and pile-drives it into the ground in retaliation.

Having held back to wave her wand around and chant, Lady Alison now fires a tiny glowing ball at a HITMark, which embeds itself in metal and starts spinning. She calls it the Blooming Flower of Abyssal Flame.

Aila crushes a HITMark with her phone pole. Monkey Girl's chain gun caps the remains of the rest.

Ambrose spots the small Technocracy tank bearing down on them, leveling a plasma cannon in their direction. It's also got two guns that fire quintessential discorporation rays (in other words, Flames of Purification, beams that eradicate even the underlying essence of whatever they hit). Outside consensual reality, the Union is bringing it's big guns to bear. He lobs another of his matter disintegration grenades at the tank treads, but misses. The grenade is booted back out of a shop window by an irritated and confused shih.

The Garou, with their fighting blood up, mob the tank, flipping it over to maul its underside a bit. Ambrose, on the other hand, just wants to clear out, now that they've got who they came for. Finally getting the gleefully destructive werewolves to finally listen and back off the tank, he spots IXers on Mirage motorcycles coming in from the other direction. "Awww, come on!" he cries in frustration. The Garou tear over to take those apart, since they're blocking their preferred escape route. RF smashes one bike by swinging another into it.

Then the tank turns into a giant robot. Ambrose advocates running. Since their escape routes on the street are blocked, he suggests going up and over the buildings.

At Dreamsoft, Sonya figures they could use some backup.

Ambrose asks Lady Alison for some turbulance to hold that robot off. She needs a minute to draw some circles, so he sonically disrupts the air currents behind the robot's jet boots in order to gutter the thrust. It crashes into the building's side. Checking on it, he spots a team of Asian Technocrats pacing them from the ground. They're not the usual agents; look like some kind of strike team. The shih they saw earlier is running along the power lines.

Lady Alison hands Ambrose two plates with sigils on them. "I need these attached to either side of its head." He rigs his bracer crossbow and some magnets and fires them at the robot while the Garou smash things. The robot dislodges itself from the building. The shih throws paper strips at the strike team.

Climbing out of the masonry, the robot falters...and Aila realizes it's thinking for itself. Alison gave it sentience! A sentience that doesn't like Technocrats. It spits out its Void Engineer passengers, and turns to mess with other pursuers that are moving in.

It's definitely time to split, before this gets any worse. As they vacate, they discover the robot following them. "Do you want to come with us, big robot man?" Aila asks it. Getting it to turn back into a tank, they give it a spot to park at Dreamsoft.

Finally back in safety, they greet the Monkey Girl, who still won't give her name. Aila wonders about that shih they saw. Ambrose notes the aforementioned is perched outside the window, and goes to let him in. Monkey Girl shows them the blueprints she stole: a motherboard that traps an Incarna. It's meant to be slaved to a greater machine, and Ambrose realizes it was designed by the Computer.

"That's it. They've lost their minds," he announces, throwing his hands up in perplexity.

Aila asks what Iteration X actually is. The mages talk about it, but they've never described it. Ambrose explains that they're a Convention of mages who have merged themselves with technology as the next step in human evolution, and they've all plugged themselves into a single central Computer, which they allow to coordinate and control them. "Okay," Aila finally interjects. "You said they were crazy, not CRAZY."

So. Mikaboshi now has this board, which is meant to trap an Incarna. That'll need to be addressed. Can they get it back? Monkey Girl thinks it's probably still in his mail room. He's all about the bureaucracy and procedure. Any package entering his tower first has to get processed through the mail room on the lower levels. They can sneak in by pretending to be delivering something, and then search for the package. Ambrose says it's Technocracy tech; it'll probably stand out in there. He thinks he can track it. Sonya, Ambrose, Monkey Girl, Aila, and Jonas will go.

They're given a pass for their package and are allowed in. Ambrose detects the package 150 floors up, and then finds them a priority elevator.

Retrieving the package is no problem. Getting out with it, on the other hand, is. The trap door in the elevator ceiling opens and a gas grenade is tossed in. Ambrose throws it back up. RF reaches up and grabs the IX girl, who sends an electric charge through the elevator.

Ambrose soaks it, then drops her through a hole in the floor. The elevator speeds up and alarms go off. "We gotta get off!" Aila declares.

"There's a hole in the floor," Ambrose replies. They jump out; Monkey Girl produces a parachute. The IX girl grabs the package with a black tentacle that emerges from her eye socket. Sonya partial-shifts and grabs it back, yanking on her eye-tentacle. "OwOW!" the girl yells.

The group clears out of the elevator shaft on the ground floor, running straight into five Demons of Iron and Violence. "There's a crazy girl trying to steal our package!" Aila tells them. They stare. She shrugs. "Figured it was worth a try."

Jonas uses Turtle's Elemental Gift to tear up the floor and make a path through the monsters. They run and get chased. Clearing out of the tower, Monkey Girl hauls out a jade key and uses it to separate the worlds.

And then they run smack dab into that police tape. Ambrose skids to a halt, seeing a veritable army of Technocracy vehicles and personnel.

Rey takes off from Dreamsoft with the robot, heading to the rescue. Faris puts him in a Voltron outfit. They swoop in to strafe the tanks.

The mages start invoking anti-magic. the Garou shift and brace themselves. Ambrose wonders wistfully if that Matter Paradox spirit is lurking around here anyplace. He hears the distinctive sound of ARC planes swooping in. "Least there aren't any Vaders," he mutters.

"Yeah, there are," Mark says. Oh boy.

Then he realizes everybody he's seeing is Iteration X. There aren't any NWO agents here. He suddenly develops a suspicion. "Are you guys being naughty?"