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Let's play Invisible, Inc: Isaac Baltimore's final mission [Expert Difficulty]


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Mission 8

 

Spoiler

 

WLEKTJOEISJTEISJEISJTLIESJRLIESHRILES”NF”LISDJFLS”EJFOESJG”SITJES”LGES”TJE”TYYYYYYYYYYYEYEEEEEEEEEAAAAUUUUUUOOOOOOOOGH.

FUCK.

SWEET TITTYFUCKING FUCKFACED FACEFUCK FUUUUUUCK.

...Ahem. ...Sorry.

What I was trying to say is...

We're fucked.

Quick recap: Immediateley after jacking out of the system after composing my last neuro-journal entry, I walked up to Central, expecting to hear that she and Monst3r were less than two hours away from pinpointing the big scary mainframe.

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What I heard instead was... not that.

She informed me that the search will take three more fucking days.

My response probably wasn't that much different from what you're imagining you'd do.

I spontaneously collapsed on the floor in shock and stumbled directly into a pile of Incognita's used power cubes, under which I proceeded to spend the next Twelve hours, coordinating a session of the most claustrophobic sliding block puzzle in the history of humankind with my face pressed right up against one of the used power cubes, gifting me with the delightful knowledge of what those things smell like up close after Incognita's chugged through them.

For the record, the answer is burnt fucking condoms.

And of course the major humiliation of being overpowered by a bunch of cubical inanimate objects really put my foolish little “hope” I've had for getting out of this alive into perspective here.

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...What the hell was I thinking? Getting all cocky and nonchalant about this shit just because I managed to put together a competent and well-equipped team in three days? Feeling good about my chances because I'm good at commanding stealth missions? Reveling in confidence every time I ordered Nika to shove a guard's head into a wall?

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I'm not Nika.

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I'm not Internationale.

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I'm not even fucking Decker.

I'm a pasty-assed nerd with a fancy computer and a chip in my brain, who's barely moved his legs in three goddamned days. The very instant this room I'm sitting in ceases to be corp-proof I am fucked. I'm dead weight. I can coordinate a stealth mission, but I can't do one. If for even one instant I have to leave this room and actually get away from these guys in real-time, I'm fuuuuuuuuucked.

Oh, but yaaaaaaaay, we've got a tiny little reprieve on that hour of reckoning. Turns out some idiot somehow accidentally misplaced a bunch of good power cubes inside a pile of used ones, and my little accident wound up revealing them, and now we have enough for approximately one and a half more trips. Upon being informed of this, Central asked what the best next target was, and I, with my face still pressed against a cube, mind, told her to set a course for Beirut.

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Because sure! Why the fuck not!? If I'm going to die a horrible and painful death at the hands of corporate goons, might as well spend the last few hours of of my miserable life doing a good deed, even if in the long run it accomplishes nothing but assuaging the guilt of my miserable cowardly soul!

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WHEEEEEEEEE! INTO THE FLAMING MAW OF HELL!

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...Ugh. ...Gotta calm down. Gotta focus. Losing what little semblance of a cool I have left helps absolutely nobody, least of all me.

Right, better assess my surroundings.

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OH GOODIE.

And look, there's one of their newer fancy guards! A flak guard, with armor that reactively hardens and gets tougher and tougher, infinitely, every time he's rendered unconscious or put on overwatch.

...Well... at least none of them are spec ops?

...Right, calm down, this just means fewer guards elsewhere if we can get past this.

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Better have Internationale get by the door because she's currently the slowest. I have the camera and the camera database parasited, and the camera's been lockpicked so that it'll be ours next turn. This incoming guard will walk right past us without seeing anyone, and then... well... we'll work that out from there.

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...Well, the exit's here. That might make our escape more dangerous, but maybe not.

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Anyway, I have Decker use the stim III. We'll need all of the AP we can get to properly map out how to navigate this room.

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Okay, after crunching the numbers Decker supplies to me, I work out that there are thankfully a few hiding spots that none of the guards will notice on their patrols.

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I then move Decker to check out the door closest to a comfortable hiding spot, only to discover the room's crawling with turrets, the northernmost one of which has an unidentified daemon on the power supply. Which means...

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...Wait...

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...Whaddya know, Decker? Looks like your augment's actually gonna be useful.

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I have Decker double back and hide by the console first, just in case somebody comes into that room unexpectedly. Then I send Internationale to hide in the corner so she can scan the next room for devices, and then I have Nika abuse peripheral vision to hide behind the camera database. Next turn, the southern turret will power down, I'll have Decker scan the daemon on the other turret's power supply, and then I'll have him go to scan the daemon on the daemon database just to be safe.

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Turns out the one on the power supply is Felix. Good, I can hack away.

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Now with the camera database hacked, I know that's not a camera watching this space. It's probably a stationary guard, which I should be able to sneak past thanks to the positioning of the daemon database, but I'm going to watch this room for a turn anyway just in case there's a nasty surprise coming through those doors that I need to watch out for.

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Meanwhile, Internationale steals the elite security's keycard, but not his money, since Decker will be able to find a little more on the guy with his superior stealing, but only if Internationale leaves the main amount for him to steal.

Don't ask me how pickpocketing can work like this, it just does.

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Internationale then, before going back to her hiding place, unlocks and peeks through the door and confirms that yes, it is a stationary guard. Also, it looks like one of the guards also experienced door-desynching or something...

...Wow. Craziest thing. I spent the last seven hours getting sandwiched by burnt-out batteries with pointy corners and contemplating my impending doom, and yet here I am, all calm and relaxed again.

...Well. Can't say that's not a good thing here, but still... it's, uh... well...

...I guess it just goes to show... no matter what thoughts plague me in the real world, when I'm in here, commanding missions, I just... feel at home. Like there's no bigger picture, just the mission, and all I should worry about is what's going wrong right now.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't always that way. It was always hard to think about my ever-mounting troubles whenever I was playing my strategy games. Low grades at school due to sheer unmitigated laziness? Trouble getting a job? Living in my parents' basement? The world around me steadily sinking further into the shit while the only skill I had to my name was with, as my mom always said, a “fuckin' video game”?

It's so easy to forget about all of that when you're playing. So easy to tell yourself it's all going to work out.

...Well... I was right. She was wrong. I really did have what it took to go the distance. I wasn't just some idiot talking hot shit, I was one of the greats, and I actually managed to pull it off. And here I am. Eight years later. Doing what I love for a living. Accomplishing shit. Being as much of a somebody as it's possible to be in this shithole of a world. Meanwhile Tiffany swallowed her pride, abandoned her dreams about showbusiness, got that stupid cyber-engineering degree, and got a job with Sankaku in Tokyo, where she hasn't once written, called or visited in five damned years, developing new models of drones to help Sankaku “maintain order”, and every time I do a mission in Sankaku territory I'm absolutely terrified one of our agents might run into her there and I won't even be able to recognize her after all of the being dead inside she's been doing.

...Yeah. Yeah, take that Mom.

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...Let's just reposition Nika a bit so she can be closer to the doors.

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Looks like these doors are clear. Time to sneak in and check out this area.

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Looks like the heavy armor that's weighing him down means he'll take an extra turn to get there. Good. That buys me more time to explore. Good. Now let's see what's guarding this thing.

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OUCH. Decker, for the first mission ever I'm actually glad you got that augment. Paradox is nasty, especially at this stage in a mission. If we can't find a good opportunity to safely infect ourselves with that, Decker just might be on scanning duty this mission.

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I don't like to do this, but I'm hacking the turret rather than the power supply, because the power supply has an unidentified daemon I can't identify until the turret's no longer a threat. Guards aren't patrolling in that room, so I won't have any blood on my hands for doing this, but still, it makes me nervous.

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Nika heads in here to get this safe, but then I remember that felix is just about to be installed, it has an unidentified daemon on it that could be siphon a turn before we need another fusion, and it's right by the exit so there's no rush whatsoever. Oh well, it's not like I could've headed into the other side of this room this turn, the guards' lines of sight are blocking the door.

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Bright side: Found the laser panel power source! But it looks like I hacked that turret for nothing since there's nothing else in here.

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Decker uses his stim III again to scout the areas that the distracted heavy armor guard has left unobserved while Internationale goes through the security door to watch this room while his back is turned to make sure this room is secure.

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Right, despite the initial scare, we're making pretty good time.

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One of the two rebooting cameras can see Nika, which gives her one more reason to retreat. They'll be under our control the turn after next.

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Meanwhile, Decker and Internationale determine that the nanofab has authority and discover safes 2 and 3, respectively. Authority isn't too bad, especially since we're not at the safe-looting stage just yet. I'll trigger it immediately to get it out of the way, and also so we can have whatever's in the nanofab as soon as possible if it's any good.

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I can't justify buying another volt disruptor III, even with another agent incoming. There's no cooldown, so getting another one wouldn't do Nika any good, and giving it to a non-fighter just doesn't make much sense, especially since wildfire only barely makes one of them spammable in emergencies. Titanium rods would be nice, but Nika's about to get that KO bonus anyway when she maxes out strength in one level, and she needs to hold out for more armor piercing on the off chance we get that.

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This, on the other hand, is going to be really useful for Decker. He just needs one more level in anarchy and then he'll be able to seriously aid in our hacking efforts if he can get up close to the devices. Especially since it synergizes not only with his torque injectors, but with, amazingly enough, his neural networking personal augment yet again. We're nabbing it.

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We just caught a glimpse of the facility's pulse drone. I had heard it for a while and was wondering when I was going to see it.

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Just some general moving forward.

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Our new cameras reveal safe #4, the large one, and Decker finds safe #5 and the detention center. That's everything.

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Central isn't kidding. That's Agent Tony Xu. Suddenly the fact that we haven't hacked any of these safes has become an incredibly wise choice for saving pwr, because this guy can bust into them for free by just frying their circuitry for a turn with an EMP in his arm, bypassing firewalls and daemons. And it's not just safes, he can use it on anything, including cameras, power supplies, and even drones. He's unfortunately a little slow because he has to lug around a power supply augment inside his body, but we can deal with that problem as it comes up.

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Anyway, Nika's getting ready to reunite with the rest of the team so we can get all of the safes and bust out of here together.

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Decker searches the guard, then puts a shock trap on the exit door to buy us some more time when he wakes up. It'll take a few turns to get all of these safes, even with Xu's EMP since it can only be used once a turn as an attack.

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Let the looting commence.

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There. Now all that's left is to get the one with the daemon by the exit, take out the guards near the entrance and loot them, then get out of here.

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Nika's standing by, ready to do just that.

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And since the only worthwhile mainframe device we want hacked can now be taken out by Xu's Emp, time to use wildfire.

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Alright, everyone's in position, let's take these guys out before the guards back up north start waking up.

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With Decker's help, Nika neutralizes the guards. Internationale helps keep them down long enough for Decker to loot them while Xu runs for the safe.

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A new guard arrives, too far away and too late to do any damage.

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Everyone's been looted, bringing us to a pretty impressive sum considering that subtracting purchases made here we started with about 500.

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...Plenty of credits for training to help us face the inevitable hellstorm that awaits us when we get back on the jet.

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What's there to say? Flawless victory. Nothing went wrong, I stayed plugged in, we got everything, and I didn't even KO any guards before I specifically wanted to.

It went perfectly.

And yet unless Central and Monst3r come up with something literally right fucking now, it's all going to amount to nothing when the corps find us.

It all comes down to what the next words I hear out of Central's mouth are. They will literally mean the difference between life and death.

But what can you do? I'm going to fight either way. As if I could do anything else with the last hours of my life.

 

 

 

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On 2017-6-16 at 10:17 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Out of character comments:

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I've noticed that there's been a marked decrease in interesting worldbuilding stuff Isaac's been talking about. I've been kinda drawing a blank on that as the missions have gotten harder. I have something planned for the next mission, but for later ones, is there anything you guys would like to hear Isaac talk about?

 

I am honestly enjoying just reading through the mission and decisisons. But maybe, Isaac can talk about how he got roped into invisible? Has he already talked about that? I can't remember.

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6 hours ago, SlayerX said:

I am honestly enjoying just reading through the mission and decisisons. But maybe, Isaac can talk about how he got roped into invisible? Has he already talked about that? I can't remember.

Sort of. He summarized it in the first bit, the introduction in the OP.

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Mission 9

Spoiler

 

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THANK YOU, MONST3R!

 

 

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Here, I'll fucking buy whatever you're selling, I don't even care what it is, words cannot possibly convey how much I owe you, you magnificent son of a thousand fire-breathing whores!

...As I said before, a volt disruptor on anyone but Nika isn't really that viable, but screw it, now I have armor piercing for everyone, and it was at a discount anyway. Moving on, I decide to go all out on upgrading my agents, especially since Monst3r informs me he has an augment that lets him buy stuff from nanofabs at a discount, so the odds of not being able to buy everything useful we find are pretty low.

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Nika gets her strength maxed out, which means she can carry 7 items unencumbered, drag enemy bodies with ease, and also KO enemies for one turn longer. The last one is the main reason I've been getting her strength this high, as I have a funny feeling that we'll need all the KO power we can get.

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Decker gets the anarchy needed to use the buster chip III. When I get more credits I'm probably going to just go all-out and get him to level 5 since we'll be doing this for longer than anticipated, and finding hidden gear sounds extremely useful.

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Xu gets some much-needed speed, putting him up to 9 AP instead of 7.

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Internationale's the odd one out and doesn't get any boosts, mostly because there's no urgent need to get any of her stats up, and we're out of credits.

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Well, this is it. This is the bone Monst3r's thrown us. A K&O facility a few hours away working on a project that might be able to keep Incognita functioning long enough for us to find that damned mainframe. No time to waste, we'll barely have half an hour left when we get there to get the damned thing as it stands, no sense in making that number drop from further hesitation.

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Let's go.

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...Y'know what? I'm not even mad.

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That just means we've got two facilities to rob blind.

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Internationale immediately uncovers the daemon database, which I immediately have Decker identify just in case. I don't want any surprises on this mission.

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THANK FUCKING GOD I DID THAT. Okay, no database for us. That's validate, the single most dangerous daemon around. It summons an enforcer into the facility when hacked. Yeah, we're not doing that. Not right now. Not unless the situation somehow demands we hack that thing. Which it almost certainly won't, because Decker's augment is inexplicably becoming more and more useful the further into this crazy adventure we go.

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After Decker uses his stim III to scout as much as he can before retreating back, Internationale moves up and exposes a bunch of devices to hack, including a safe with a daemon on it, which looks like it's going to be a job for Xu.

Nika watches the door in case a highly-armored guard comes through, and Xu and Monst3r make sure there aren't any doors hidden in the corners of the room. And speaking of Monst3r...

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Just as he said, 15% discount on nanofab purchases, but also, he's packing some pretty serious nonlethal heat. He can take out armor 3 guards just like Nika can, and at range to boot, though at a cost: apparently whatever it uses to recharge such a powerful propulsion device so fast winds up infecting our system with a daemon after each firing. That's not ideal, but it's nice to know we have another option for taking out heavy-armor guards, especially since we're at K&O. Wherever Nika goes, Monst3r's gonna go with the other group.

...If we even get a chance to split up. Holy shit, imagine if this mission doesn't give us that option like with mission 3? Trying to cram five agents through a series of narrow hallways? That would be a nightmare.

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The pulse drone passes through our vision, so I lockpick and parasite it to make sure it comes under our control inside territory we can't already see, to let it cover more undiscovered ground with its two turns.

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...Yeeeeeaaaahhh, something tells me I was right to question the wisdom of rescuing another agent. At least it turned out to be Xu.

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The drone, now hacked, finds two more guards and a bunch of extra rooms for us to explore, while Decker finds and hacks a safe with his buster chip before getting into cover to hide from anything on the other side of that western door.

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Internationale gets as close as she can to the turret to expose the power source and just barely makes it in time to step back and peripheral-abuse the guard.

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Quick heads up: these lamps are another sort of thing that isn't really cover. I mean that should be obvious just looking at the things, but you'd be surprised what a skilled agent can hide behind. But no, despite what tactical view says, you can't hide behind these lamps.

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Anyway, Decker, Internationale and Monst3r are going west, while Nika and Xu are going east.

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Safe #1 found. Looks like we've got our way past that laser fence, but even once the turrets are disabled, that's a pretty open room to run through. I'm not sure if anyone but Decker's gonna be able to manage it in any timely fashion.

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Fortunately, Decker's right here, stim III at the ready for next turn.

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The stationary guard, unfortunately, turns out to be guarding a safe and the nanofab machine. I don't see any way into that room without violence.

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I'm not going to overthink it. With there not being much for Monst3r to do, I think I'll just have Nika cloak into that room, take out the guard, and then have Monst3r come in to sit on the guard and stand by to buy stuff (if anything's worth buying) once we get the credits. So I move Monst3r in to do that. This does mean that in the event of a level 3 armor guard on Decker and Internationale's side we're more vulnerable, but I'm confident enough in my stealth ability and Nika's ass-saving skills that it won't be the end of us even if that happens.

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In the process of doing that, we find the transport pad, but it looks like there's something more we need to do before we can access it. Ah well, not like we were going to leave right away anyway.

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I get the stim ready for Decker, but it looks like there's something else in the room. Hoping it's a camera I can hack immediately, I have Decker get to work.

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First Decker pickpockets the guard while he can, taking just the money and leaving the stuff anyone can steal for Internationale, since she'll need both. That stim might come in handy while we have it, though I'd never actually buy a stim I.

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Next he rushes in. As I suspected, it was a camera, which I hack to give him the all clear.

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Next he buster chips and loots the safe before ducking in through the door into the other half of the laser panel room...

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...to discover there's absolutely fuck-all there. Damn it. Well, there are other doors, and they need exploring as well, and from here he'll have a better shot of getting in them.

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Internationale takes the rest of the stuff from the guard and hides. Good, looks like we'll be able to make it so both halves of our team can quickly get to the transport pad when it's time to run.

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The auxiliary cameras unfortunately are in really inconvenient places for everyone but Decker, so I have to move everyone out of the rooms they're in.

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Nika takes out the guard with her cloak (I hate using it in non-emergencies, but I'll just have to be careful), and Xu ducks into the nearby room to discover another console, the laser panel power source, and a safe.

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Internationale unlocks the door with her card, returns to her hiding spot, and then drops the card because it's encumbering her and there's currently no evidence we'll need it anymore.

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Decker just moves up in preparation to investigate those two doors.

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Remembering that Monst3r has better hacking than anyone else, I have him hack this console so we can deal with this inconveniently-positioned pulse drone before it screws everything up.

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I take a chance on the daemon on the nanofab and luckily just get chiton, which shouldn't be a big deal pre-escape-phase. Let's see what we have here...

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...Oh damn it. This thing is so useful, but so expensive, and there's no off-switch on it. If you have the pwr, it will always use it to make Decker invincible, and with how rapidly he can use stim IIIs, that would put an intolerable drain on our pwr. Internationale could make use of it with her new stim I, which would put way less of a strain on our pwr, but she doesn't have any free augment slots, and even if she did, that would still be an unpleasant price to pay at times when I can't use wildfire... especially when you consider that in terms of inventory cost, it's like having a slightly-slower-to-charge cloak II and paying 5 pwr to add 4 AP. Not worth it.

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Anyway, Decker finds one of two security switches that have to be activated simultaneously. That... makes me nervous, since the fact that the whole facility on the eastern end has been explored suggests to me that the other security switch is in that other room by Decker, so we'll need to get somebody else over to where he is.

Unless...

...Well it's worth a shot while we get Internationale over anyway. But I'll save that for when the time comes.

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As the door opened when the guard walked out from this room, Decker spotted a support guard, which is a guard armed with flash grenades. They'll knock out a guard even from behind cover, but the thing is that sometimes some of them have defective security chips and can be safely stolen for our use, which can be quite handy. I'll have to see if he'll have any when I loot him.

Unfortunately, given the guard's position, it's becoming clear that Nika's going to be needed to take care of this safely. I'm bringing her over as soon as possible.

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Internationale also heads over, using the soon-to-be opened shortcut through the room with the laser panel.

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Remembering Xu's EMP, I have him loot the large safe in the room he's in, netting us another stim I.

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As suspected, here's the second switch. And with that, the whole facility's been explored. At first I thought this place had too few safes, but I miscounted, all five are here. This second switch has a daemon on it, but it doesn't matter what it is, we have to get it, because we need that switch activated to get out of here. I've got a plan to deal with this inconvenient guard, but first I have to get his attention and get him out of the room. Decker then immediately closes the door and retreats back into the room with the first switch.

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Reinforcements with nothing better to do come in to assist Decker just in case.

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Shoot! My plan was foiled! I was planning to have Decker sprint-sneak this guard while the other guard in that room walked a safe distance away, but this guard moved first and didn't move out of the way for his friend, leaving him stuck inside just out of view. Meaning Decker would get the attention of both of them if he tied sprint-sneaking now.

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Screw it, Nika's on the way, time to brute-force this. Just need to wait a few turns for Chiton to wear off, pwr to build, and parasyte to hack the switches.

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The daemon is thankfully nothing too dire. It just means one random device in the building will go back under corporate control with 1 firewall.

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And it turns out to be this turret's power supply. Nothing major, no need for that to be under agency control this very moment.

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Alright, everything's hacked, time to break out wildfire.

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Let's do this. Decker's disruptor won't use pwr, so might as well use that. Even with wildfire, with this much armor everywhere this could get ugly.

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Done. The guards are all pinned and Xu's going for the safe. Time to test out my little theory. I've never seen these simultaneous-access relay switches before, and for the sake of increasing my knowledge for future reference, I want to test this. They say simultaneously, but... how simultaneously?

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Evidently not that simultaneously. No need for an agent to actually stick by the switch after pressing it. Good to know. It just has to be the same turn. Now to have Decker search everyone, then get the hell out of here.

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Excellent! The support guard has an unchipped flash grenade. I hand that to Nika, who has plenty of free slots to carry one around just in case. This thing is an armor-bypassing AOE KO weapon. It's disposable with only one use and only lasts 2 turns, but it could seriously save our asses somewhere down the line.

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That's the last safe. Now to rob the guard by the teleporter and the KO'd guard Monst3r's babysitting, and get out.

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The new reinforcement guard is definitely going to go on high alert seeing all those unconscious guards, but he shouldn't be close enough to be a problem.

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Almost done.

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Aaaand we're in! Alright, ancap scum, let's see what you've got guarding our liferaft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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...Huh. This isn't... one of the Big Four? I mean normally I'd be relieved to hear that. FTM, Plastech, Sankaku and K&O aren't the only corps with big enough pocketbooks to bully the plebs, but they are the four most powerful, and the ones that actually own whole countries. So usually hearing that we're dealing with something else means something much lower-grade. Not enough credits to justify spending precious time robbing them in our current situation, but certainly easier to get out alive.

And yet...

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Something about this place... it seems off. This does not look like we're dealing with the sub-top tiers of D&A or Medigen or the like. Actually, if anything, dare I even fathom the concept, considering what this place is supposed to be guarding, the budget seems...

...bigger than the Big Four. How that's even possible, well...

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...the name on that logo puts a rather ominous suggestion in my mind.

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That control panel with the console in the center provides perfect cover for four agents if we stuff them all in so no guards can fit inside, but we have five agents, so one of our agents will have to hide elsewhere, either behind those white pillars (not optimal) or around the swiss cheese walls of the teleporter chamber (terrible).

Looks like this is a job for Decker and his trusty stim III to scout ahead and see if at least one of the doors won't have any major threats heading through it.

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He winds up finding no guards, but a civilian scientist two rooms away and not headed anywhere near us. Now civilians, while they can't shoot our agents, will scream and alert any actual guards nearby, so I'll still want to avoid them anyway. They won't alert guards while they're making a break for the exit, but still, I want to get a feel for what exactly this facility's going to throw at us before I make any serious gambles. Anyway, Decker then retreats behind the cover of the nanofab with its little walls surrounding it to see if its daemon is something we can afford to take.

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Shoot. Rubiks. That description is a tiny bit unclear. Castle raises the firewalls of one random object by 2-3. Rubiks raises every firewall in the level by one. Picture wildfire but without the pwr bonus. Not ideal, considering for all we know this place could have insane firewalls on the stuff we really need to hack. Looks like we'll have to do our shopping on our way out. And hey, it'll be perfectly primed for wrench 3 once alarm level 2 kicks in and...

...And...

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...The fuck is this?

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..THE FUCK IS THIS?

These guys have different security protocols. Nobody has different security protocols. Nobody! Not the Big Four, not D&A, not Medigen, not even fucking Kellogg's! In an age of rapid, rampant and unregulated technological progress, those things have been the absolute and unquestioned gold standard since before I knew not to shit on the floor! And these guys came up with something better!?

According to Incognita, at alarm level 1, all of the guards are going to switch up their patrols, putting every guard's behavior into unpredictable flux and making exploration far more difficult because it'll become impossible to tell which rooms and doors are secure until they all find their new spots.

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And yet even so, I am not cutting corners with safety. For all I know the guards here are ten feet tall and breathe plasma, and I am not letting any of my agents get caught out in the open when one of them arrives. Into the perfect safety bunker the rest of my agents go. At least now I know no matter what comes out of there, none of my agents are going to get caught. They might make a guard suspicious if they walk right up to that console, but they won't be able to get close enough to get a proper look.

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...Well... they're not 10 feet tall, and they don't breathe plasma.

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But still, shit that's some tough armor And it looks like he's not even slowed down by it. Even Nika and Monst3r are just barely powerful enough to take this guy out if necessary. If his armor got even one bit stronger...

I have a bad feeling. This weird, inscrutable feeling deep in my gut. And however much my training has taught me to disregard my misguided instincts primed for living in the jungle, when they get this strong, they haven't once been wrong yet. And they're telling me something very bad is going to happen if I don't do something extremely reckless.

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But first, better steal this guy's credits and card.

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At first my blood nearly froze at the sight of this guy, but he seems to just be an upgraded version of the FTM barrier guards, just with eight firewalls instead of 3, and an AP bonus for higher firewalls. Parasite should take care of that before I need to worry about taking him out. That will make parasite 1 pwr more expensive for eight turns, but I've dealt with worse.

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Alright. Here's the plan. Monst3r's too slow and, aside from his high-drawback gun, too ill-equipped for me to be comfortable sending him out into danger, so I'm going to have him stay by the teleporter.

Babysitting the OMNI soldier I'm about to have Nika take out.

I know it seems completely unnecessary, but... but that new alarm system... I've heard some funny rumors about certain new methods of applying daemons...

...And besides, this mission is going to get really crowded if we have five agents sneaking around one facility.

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I am hearing a disconcerting number of footsteps concentrated in these two general areas, but mostly in the former. Just how many guards does this place have?

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Here's what unlocking that security door nets us. A (currently) empty room and two more doors, one of them locked.

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Xu and Internationale find the drone (I say the drone; for all I know this place has eleven of them and they all speak fluent Klingon) and a camera, both of which are in the process of being hacked by parasite and (since we currently are in danger of overflowing and wasting pwr) a lockpick each, and will be ready next turn. Nika moves up to take out the soldier when he comes back out...

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...While Decker gets ready to investigate what's behind this door.

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Shit. We found another crazy new type of guard with armor, advanced monitors, and extended patrols (meaning that watching a room for a turn isn't even a safe bet now), and another OMNI soldier. Am I going to take out both on that gut feeling?

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Better decide quick, looks like before the patrols change I have a perfect opportunity to do so.

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Screw it, using the dragging trick, Monst3r can restrain two guards as effectively as one with a little brief assistance getting them into the hiding place, and seriously, I know it's hard to get this across, but I have a really bad feeling about these OMNI soldiers.

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Decker finds another OMNI protector behind this locked door, and he'll figure out what's back here next turn.

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Unfortunately I got a bit overzealous with pwr and won't have enough to take out this guard without using Monst3r's gun until next turn. So for now I just have Nika lure him into this room before hiding somewhere where she'll have a clear path through his blind spots to knock him out.

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Joint searching by Monst3r and Decker reveals that this route blocked by security doors is largely a waste of time and that Decker should sneak through the northern path, especially considering our pwr situation.

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Xu confirms that this western area crawling with guards is thankfully a total waste of our time and can safely be ignored. Unfortunately, how much longer the guards are going to stay there is questionable.

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Bracing my anus.

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This is what I can gather about the new patrols. Thankfully it looks like we'll have enough time to stow the unconscious guards with Monst3r, but still-

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I FUCKING KNEW IT!

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In a scant 5 turns these OMNI soldiers are going to be impervious to everything we have except for a clumsy shock trap and a one-use flash grenade. I am so glad I took those guys out while I had the chance. I hope Nika can get one more penetration scanner before we come anywhere near something like this again.

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Alright, guards almost secured. Meanwhile Decker prepares to scout this area.

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It's one of two remaining areas – along with this one our drone found before rebooting – that could house our target. I'm hoping it's this one, but either way, we're not getting them out of here early.

Also, unfortunately, it looks like this place doesn't have any safes at all. If there were any, we would surely have come across them by now, and we haven't.

So be it. Our mark, if it's here (please let it be here), is all the treasure we need.

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SHIT SHIT SHIT. If he had been just one step closer to that door...

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Thankfully things work out, even with a scientist coming in the other door as well.

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YES! THANK YOU! IT'S HERE!

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Both the case and the security console have daemons, but it doesn't matter what those daemons are, we need to hack those things, so let's do it now.

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...Well... that could've been a better set of daemons to get. I used wildfire to get them up to 3 firewalls so I could wrench 3 them immediately, but then Rubiks happened and they went up again, forcing me to use lockpick as well.

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Thankfully the lockdown is timed precisely with fusion, so it's not going to screw with our pwr besides not letting me use wildfire, but this does mean that that drone's going to have to stay rogue for now and we won't be able to find out what's in that room back there.

Not that it much matters right now anyway. There's no money to be gained here except for what we can loot from the guards, and I'm not taking my chances with that any more than is safe. We're getting out of here as soon as we can.

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It... looks... like we'll be safe, especially for as long as it takes to get Incognita out of lockdown so we can actually fight.

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Decker makes it to the security console and prepares to nab it next turn.

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It's next turn, Incognita's back online, and we've got the quantum reservoir. Decker's heading back to the teleporter.

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But since we have a ridiculous amount of time to kill, a long road ahead of us before we're ready to take on the mysterious mainframe, and every reason to believe that more gadgets and tricks will be needed to take that place on, better stop by the nanofab and deal with its now-meaningless rubiks daemon.

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And I might as well have Monst3r do it while he's with us.

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I THOUGHT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO STAY OUT OF THIS ROOM FOR LONGER THAN THIS, HOW THE HELL DID I SCREW THAT UP!?

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...Yeah, this is an... unfavorable scenario I'd rather not have to deal with. I could get out of this with Nika's cloak and wildfire for her disruptor, or just using Monst3r's or Internationale's gun, but... really...

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...Damn it. Here goes.

AHTIOEJOIJIOFJESOJFIESJOFEJSIOFJEOJFIOEJFIOESJFOIESJFOIESJFOISEJFOSEJFESJFESIOFJIOSEWHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?

...

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...Much better. A quick tip: Whenever you can, do as much as you can before “rewinding”. Take any risk, discover any new rooms you can, observe guards, anything, because then when you go back you can take all of that knowledge back for free. That's not really relevant in this case since we already know everything we need to, but in case you somehow find yourself in my exceedingly unlikely position, keep that in mind.

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I completely forgot about the OMNI protectors when I used wildfire. Well, that's easily remedied by way of wrench and lockpick.

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Anyway, time to go shopping.

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It reaches alarm level 2 again and as I hack this OMNI protector's barrier I notice something interesting. Apparently their firewall barriers and the chiton daemon don't stack, and they only get the +1 armor when they don't have any firewall armor. Good to know.

Alright, let's see if there's any point in bringing Monst3r across this room.

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Another buster chip III. Interesting, and a possible candidate. And then...

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Oh this sounds insanely useful, especially since it sounds like we'll be spending longer in missions from now on thanks to needing to collect battery packs for Incognita.

...The problem is the only candidates are Nika, who needs to hold out for her second penetration scanner, Decker, who would have his unexpectedly fantastic effectiveness as a scout undermined by having lower AP for those crucial first two alarm levels, and Xu, who's already dealing with an AP penalty to begin with. Internationale doesn't have a spare slot, and Monst3r's leaving and tells me he plans to purge any augments I give him after he leaves for the sake of his health.

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...But you know what? I'm buying it. It's fairly cheap and Monst3r makes it even cheaper. I'm sure I can find a use for it. And I'm getting the buster chip III too. I've got the credits and it'll probably be very useful later down the line once I get somebody else trained up, and Xu needs gear.

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Alright, that's everything. Time to get everyone back to the teleport room and wait things out.

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I have Decker pass the QR over to Nika so he's not encumbered anymore, and Nika drops her keycard in the process. It's no longer useful to us. In hindsight I'd argue it wasn't useful to us at any point this mission, but at least it helped us explore more of the map for microSLAM creds.

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And then just for the hell of it I have him use his stim III to go over and steal from the protector.

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All that's left is slowly navigating everyone into the teleport room since the jet hasn't arrived yet anyway, and making sure to unload Monst3r's haul onto somebody who's actually going back to the jet.

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Alright, taking note: that's how alarm level 3 works with this new system. Good to know in the high likelihood we have to deal with it ever again.

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Nothing left to do but wait for the jet to arrive to pick them up, choosing Nika to be the one stuck outside of the perfect cover zone in case somebody actually gets caught here somehow and whoever it is has to fight.

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...Huh... seems I hadn't miscalculated how long this guy had been out of the room. For whatever reason, he's not doing his extended patrol anymore, He's just going back and forth between two locations every turn.

...Curious...

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...But not curious enough for me to not want to get everyone the hell out of here now that the jet's arrived.

Though I am taking note: Level 4 would have been an increase in KO resistance. Thank goodness I maxed out Nika's strength.

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Alright, back to the jet they go.

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...I'm going to be honest. While we didn't have too much trouble here with either the K&O front or the OMNI foundry lab, in the latter case that was mostly dumb luck. That was a lot of pairs of eyes in a large, labyrinthian, very heavily-guarded facility. If the quantum reservoir hadn't turned out to be right nearby and if 75% of the foundry lab hadn't turned out to be totally unnecessary to explore, this could have gone very differently.

I have a feeling that Central's right, as she usually is. I think these guys are the ones responsible for the raid, and I think they're the ones who are going to be guarding that mysterious mainframe. If there's anyone capable of locating Invisible, Inc., it would be these guys. We're going to have to deal with them again, and they seem to have extremely advanced tech, as if, as their name suggests, literally all four of the major corps are banding together like some kind of fucking ancap facsimile of the UN..

Now ain't that a scary thought.

I need to be more prepared than I was today. I need some more armor piercing on Nika so she can actually fight those OMNI soldiers even after alarm level 2, I need some more cloaking rigs, I need more training for my agents...

There's a lot of stuff I need.

Looks like that's next on the agenda then.

Until next time, this is Isaac Jonas Baltimore, signing out.

 

 

OOC Commentary (slight endgame gameplay spoilers):

Spoiler

Yes, I know you can nab Monst3r's gun and he'll come back with a copy of it anyway in the final mission, but frankly that feels like an oversight and kinda like cheating, and also I can't think of much of an in-story way to justify it, so I left it with him.

 

 

Edited by Alastor15243
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Oh I didn't know that about Monst3r's gun. Can you sell it back to him? That would be funny.

 

Anyways, Omni labs can truly be a pain. I got a generated one where the first room had 2 doors, and both led to rooms with cameras I couldn't quickly see and guards watching the entrance to those rooms. Along with pesky scientists patrolling around and a surprise visitor from the shielded dudes with the massive ap... That was a big pain and i really didn't think I'd make it to the 20 turns. Wish i had known of that perfect cover place. Will definately keep it in mind.

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On 6/19/2017 at 2:14 AM, SlayerX said:

Oh I didn't know that about Monst3r's gun. Can you sell it back to him? That would be funny.

Don't know, never took it so I've never tried. Always considered it too weird and exploit-y to try.

 

Anyway...

 

Mission 10

Spoiler

 

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...Right.

...So.

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...Let's get to work.

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Turns out this quantum reservoir is only a temporary fix for a much more serious problem: It seems that lack of access to a more conventional black market power source has been causing Incognita to slowly but surely slip out of its gourd. If current estimates hold (and we don't get any more heart-attack-inducing last-minute bad news), it should last just barely long enough, but until then it's going to be an uphill struggle to keep Incognita afloat, and and any task more taxing than scrambling corporate scans on our jet (such as, say, the hacking we do in a mission) will force it to recharge within the hour, so we have to keep charging it with special power cells. But as our extremely relative, callousy fickle and utterly-fucked up good luck would have it, nearly every corporate facility above a security level of 3 carries one of these things. So that's another thing we have to add to our to-do list every mission, and this one is mandatory.

Also... that new security system? It just went worldwide. We were apparently the last “beta testers”, and despite us getting away relatively unscathed, it's been deemed a resounding success. OMNI just released it to the market, and anybody who's anybody (read: everybody worth stealing shit from) is using it. While not having to deal with non-enforcer reinforcements mid-mission is nice, everything else can fuck right off.

On a brighter note, apparently the reservoir itself has expanded Incognita's hacking capacity a bit, and now it can carry one extra program. Hopefully we'll find something suitable at a secondary server terminal. I would hate to devote any of our precious 48 extra hours to another run in with the great and mighty /pol/cat.

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So the immediate question that should come to mind is where to head from here. The answer should be pretty obvious, but I'll spell it out: we're going to good old North America, FTM territory. Why? Because they have three missions right next to each other, one of which is an executive terminal that will give us even more missions. Right now I intend to do as many missions as I can, and have as many chances as I can to get more money and more equipment, because there are a few chinks in our armor that I would very much like to remedy. And the great thing about FTM territory is that not only do they have those mainframe machines we can strip for parts, but they're all focused in one part of the world. And that's important for a reason I'll explain when we get to the actual executive terminal. Pity it's 12 hours away, but after this the rest of our missions should be very close together for a good while.

Right, time to prepare.

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I've stowed the stuff I had Monst3r buy from the OMNI's nanofab for now until I can train somebody up to use the chip and find a use for the reactive moyomer, and I've maxed out Decker's anarchy and raised his strength by 2, for a total price of 1800 credits. I know this is going below my usual acceptable threshold, but getting more physical items to steal means Decker's going to need to be able to carry it, and since it's just a common nanofab that we'll be spending credits on it shouldn't be a problem, especially now that payouts from missions are getting higher.

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I also spent a piddling 300 credits to raise Internationale's strength by 1, because I've kind of been neglecting to improve her, and also so that now everyone can carry at least one extra item they didn't bring in with them without being encumbered. Again, we should get all of the money we need this mission.

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And with that...

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...let's go.

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The hiding spots aren't ideal, especially for four agents, but let's see what we're dealing with outside.

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No major cause for alarm. A stationary camera drone to the west, which I hack immediately, and an empty room to the south. The room is small enough that I'm going to put Decker on guard against any possible incoming guards, but I think we're safe.

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And with the help of our new robot buddy, we located the security router on turn one! Again!

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It also helps us find a barrier guard and a security camera, and we have just barely enough pwr to parasite both. I should probably upgrade Internationale's hacking skill when I get the chance; it would help if consoles gave us a bit more pwr.

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Exploring so much on turn one tempts me to take my agents beyond the first room, but I need to make absolutely sure these rooms are secure, and I haven't seen everywhere a guard could come from.

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Looks like the cunning bastards had the brilliant idea of installing two security routers in this facility. While that means we'll have to actually deal with the effects of one, that's 300 more credits we get from Monst3r.

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...Nevermind, looks like we got the second one early too. Looks like there's a stationary guard right in front of the door guarding it. Time for some distraction techniques.

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Meanwhile, up in the northwest, I use wrench 3 to hack the second barrier guard's firewalls immediately rather than spend 1 pwr less to do it in 3 turns and jack up the price of parasite further. Also, the drone uses its last turn under our control to discover a rather unfortunate bottleneck that appears to have absolutely no cover in it. This is almost certainly going to be a job for Decker once he loots the router.

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Which will only take another turn.

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Up here, Xu prepares to search the southern door of the room he just snuck into, while Internationale uncovers a safe in the room blocked by the laser grid, the one with its power supply cunningly hidden ten feet away in full view.

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...Well, they did give it a daemon I suppose. And I'm not prepared to learn what it is the hard way, so it stays unhacked for now. I could simply walk through it; this isn't the K&O brand where it's lethal, this one will just advance the alarm tracker, but there's always another way around, and advancing the alarm tracker now would just bring us closer to the moment all the guards start wandering the facility.

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Xu finds the exit, although admittedly the power cell would've been a better find right now.

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Decker, meanwhile, loots the guard and the router before a nice old-fashioned stim-assisted exit the hell out of Dodge.

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Then Nika nabs the other router's goodies, checks if there's any reason at all to hack this camera (there isn't), finds safe #2 in the process, and retreats to hide behind the disemboweled router.

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Ordinarily I would consider this unfortunate, de-synching these two guards accidentally by putting the camera drone near them so it distracts them when it reboots (though I didn't know there were two guards to de-synch until I put the drone there).

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However, the patrol paths are about to change, making that irrelevant in the long run, and I need to get a few of my agents into areas with half-way-decent places to hide while the guards walk amok throughout the facility.

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Which means I may have to do something very dangerous. Nearly all of the area I have explored so far is extremely scant on hiding places. My only hope of real hiding places for most of my agents is getting past that laser grid, but I neither have the pwr to hack the power grid, nor can I afford to take the risk with that daemon even if I did, and I can't afford to pass straight through it myself either, because then the guards will change patrols immediately and I'll have no time or room to adjust my plans to their new patrols. Thankfully, there is another way to get past that laser grid: by having a guard stop in the middle of it, which causes it to temporarily switch off until they leave. This usually done with hacked drones, but a properly distracted guard can do the trick as well. The problem is that this cry baby is too powerful and may very well bring that guard who investigated the hacked drone over here. If he does, and if he comes this way as I suspect he will, that could very well make it impossible for Decker to follow Nika and Internationale into the next room next turn. However, he shouldn't have a good enough view to see Internationale, so she and Nika will be free to advance. I'll work out what to do with Decker from there.

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Excellent! Better than I could've hoped for. Internationale and Nika both went unseen as I suspected, and Decker has a clear path through the second guard's peripheral vision to sneak past without getting fully spotted, even without his stim III, as well as hack and loot the safe with his buster chip from his hiding spot.

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I unfortunately failed to realize that the guard actually took the crybaby, so I'll have to nab that back later. But otherwise, total success.

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It looks like these guards are going to miss Xu entirely as well, so he's safe and can make a break for it once they pass his door.

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We also found the secondary server terminal and the daemon database, both of which I'm going to check out, though the later won't be hacked until Decker finds out what daemon's in it.

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...Why did I consider his augment useless, again?

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Internationale found safe #3 and the camera database. The safe has a daemon on it, so Xu's probably going to be the one to unlock it.

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Thanks to Nika we're up to 2 hacked, 3 found.

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...Yeah... looks like that was not wise.

I took a gamble that nobody would get to an angle to see her since everyone who had heard the noisemaker had already checked the place and now had new orders, and a guard I wasn't counting on happened to run into her while she was in that somewhat vulnerable spot.

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Now three guards are alerted, two of them with weapons trained on her. She can get out of this, of course, but it's really bad for stealth, and I'd prefer to at least have another chance at doing this quietly. It's jack-out time. But first...

Time to make the best of this blunder.

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Here's what I got Decker and Incognita to figure out of our surroundings with the consequence-free turn of liberal hacking, item usage and reckless door-opening: the two remaining safes are up ahead, as is the executive terminal. The nanofab is over to the north, and it looks like the only place the power cell can be is back beyond the last two safes. And the secondary server terminal has...

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...Oh goodness.

The first one is daemon sniffer, which is fairly useful for determining daemons, but the thing is, I've been getting great mileage out of using Decker for that, to the point that using an entire program slot for it seems impossible to justify. Especially when the other one is, well...

Holy shit.

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This is charge. What charge does is increase the cooldowns of all of your programs by 1 in exchange for making them all cost 2 less pwr. And before you even ask, yes, yes this applies to fusion too. It makes fusion objectively better, turning it from 5 pwr down for a 7 pwr net gain over 4 turns into 3 pwr down for a 12 pwr net gain over 5 turns. And in exchange for only being able to use them each once a turn, my three hacking programs become basically free. The only thing that's giving me pause about this is that it'll nerf wildfire and make it only usable once every other turn, which means my emergency combat pwr will actually decrease from 135 over 20 turns to 98 over 20 turns. It will also mean I can't emergency-splurge on lockpick and I'll have to think in advance if I really want something hacked. But the sheer benefit this has to my actual stealth pwr use more than justifies this, especially since once Nika gets another penetration scanner, she'll be able to use her cheap volt disruptor for almost all enemies and even a nerfed wildfire should be able to cover her pwr use then.

So yeah, I'm definitely getting this when it comes time to buy it for real. I'm just hoping that there's not anything ludicrously expensive and important in the nanofab too.

Now where was I?

...Oh yes.

Human flash drive.

Mind-searing pain.

Sigh. One moment please.

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SEIJFOEIGUESOUEGUBS:GUBES:OFIAW:FHAEFHEAULFIAFHA:DFHAW:FHJAO:FHAEIO:AEIFAEH”FOHHHHGODPLEASEMAKEITSTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOOOOOP!

...

...Let's try this again, shall we?

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Decker is the one who nabs the safe's contents, with the help of his stim so he can get to safety before that guard comes closing in.

Internationale then exposes this camera and the camera database again so we can quickly hack it to get both cameras parasited...

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...And accidentally press the “wildfire” button. OF COURSE. THE NATURAL COURSE OF ACTION.

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...Well at least that makes most things vulnerable to wrench 3 until the alarm level after next. Sigh.

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A last-minute incoming guard ruins Xu's opportunity to run for it. I may just have to let Xu sit this mission out if this continues.

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Decker identifies the daemon on the safe as siphon, which is really not something we want one turn before we need another fusion dose. I elect to have him buster chip the nanofab next turn instead and see what it's got for us.

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Nika re-locates the executive terminal, and I wrench 3 it. Internationale then moves up after hacking the 3 pwr console to get us 4 more pwr.

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Aaaand the nanofab is hacked. Let's see what it's got for us...

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The only thing of note is this set of torque injectors. I might get that for Xu, but we only currently have one item that really would be helped by it that Decker isn't using, and that's the spare buster chip III. But I do plan to use that, so... I'll think about it.

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Judicious use of the freshly-re-hacked drone and Nika's extra available AP shows that these three guards have stabilized into normal patrol patterns that we can easily deal with. In fact, this one in the hallway Xu's trying to get through is easily setting himself up to be pickpocketed by our newly-graduated grandmaster thief.

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And now Xu can finally get in on the action and loot that daemon'd safe.

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...As well as this one. I had forgotten it had a daemon too. And if Central is correct, he can also open the power cell case as well, meaning I should get him over this way right after he gets that first daemon'd safe.

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Yoink!

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Scoring a security card and approximately 200 credits as well as a stim I that he immediately uses and then sells for another 200, I'd say that was a good haul from just one guard.

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Also, forget about the detour into the nanofab room for Xu. A better solution has presented itself, as I shall explain in a moment.

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Right, alarm level 2, now only Nika and Internationale can fight a few of the guards on the level. No big deal.

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More importantly...

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Oh good heavens! Not siphon! Whatever will I do if I lose ALL ZERO OF MY PWR!?

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Aaaaand Xu gets the big safe.

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Decker swings by the secondary server terminal to purchase charge before hiding behind the console in preparation for a little stealing spree while the others clean up.

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And now that it's free, I can use lockpick to make sure this safe gets fully hacked by the beginning of next turn.

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We're now primed to leave at any time, but I want to give Nika a bit of a head start so she can help Decker with the guards he's going to be robbing.

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There. That's one more guard picked clean.

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I'll give it one more turn before we commence the hit and run.

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Also, seeing how thanks to charge it's now free, I see no reason not to use unused programs for this turn to finally hack this camera.

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Right, time to get the site list and get out of here.

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Here's what I was alluding to before: for whatever reason that first mission we did that was an executive terminal mission didn't have this function, but usually we get the option to pick one of four facilities, knowing nothing but the type and the territory. The thing is, FTM has all of its territory localized in one area. While Plastech has South America and Africa, K&O has Europe and Australia, and Sankaku has the massive continent of Asia, FTM just has North America, meaning that when you take an FTM executive terminal mission and see them offer another FTM mission, that means you can be guaranteed it's just a quick flight away, which will save valuable time.

...Unfortunately they don't seem to have that, so it looks like I'll have to just pick the best option from these.

K&O vault? We have vaults on the map already if I'm not very much mistaken, and with Decker's help we're doing pretty well with money so far.

Sankaku executive terminal? I definitely didn't see another executive terminal mission on the map, but on the other hand, Sankaku... and while drones aren't too much of a nightmare anymore now that I have a full hacking loadout, there are certain emergencies I'm now no longer fully equipped to deal with there, like needing to spam a bunch of lockpicks to make sure a drone gets hacked. On the other hand, I have two buster chips which are basically like drone neural disruptors in Decker's hands...

K&O chief financial suite? I'm fairly certain we have some of those too, closer than any K&O territory, in fact.

Plastech security dispatch. Ew. Never, ever, ever do security dispatches if you have more timely options. They're locked up tight as a drum, with two layers of security behind the target (a laser grid and a locked door), and oftentimes you'll find what you get isn't even something you want.

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I'm going with the Sankaku executive terminal. Now let's get the hell out of here. I've elected not to buy those torque injectors because there's no guarantee I'll have enough items acquired by the time of the final mission to justify the augment slot when we might find other useful augments, especially when for a while it'll be just as effective to just give the useful cooldown items to Decker until he runs out of room, meaning we'd need a lot in order to justify another.

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Looks like this should be simple with Nika's cloaking rig and some help from Decker. Then we can rob them all in one fell swoop and make a break for the teleporter.

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And I didn't notice before, but one of them is a support guard, with flash grenades! I forgot that FTM staffs them too. Hopefully we can get a flash grenade out of this.

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In and out, quick and (mostly) clean.

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And away we go, leaving no proof we were ever there except for a trail of beatings and humiliation.

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A good mission, if I do say so myself. We did have a bit of a stressful beginning, and I did have to jack out, but after that there were no major problems. We've filled out our program list, so that's one thing off our checklist, no psychotic ironic-not-ironic nazicats required. Now what's left is to generally improve stats and get Nika up to a natural 2 armor piercing so she can handle most guards with her cheap personal volt disruptor and take out OMNI soldiers with chiton active with the III one.. Thankfully we should now have enough missions to choose from that we can cram a bunch of useful and productive work into the remaining 36 hours.

Here's hoping.

Here's really, really fucking hoping.

 

 

Edited by Alastor15243
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Mission 11

Spoiler

 

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The plot thickens.

I guess.

Admittedly it's a little difficult to be interested in trifling matters like massive intercontinental corporate conspiracies while I'm devoting most of my energy to make sure that we all get out of this mess with the same number of buttholes we entered it with.

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On that note... bad news. Turns out the executive terminal didn't have a single FTM mission in it anywhere, so our stay in North America is only going to be for the next two missions, which will take 7 and then 5 hours, bringing us down exactly to the final 24. After that... it looks like our best bet is Sankaku territory. A 12 hour flight to the closest one and then we'll be able to do either 2 or 3 missions after that depending on the exact distances. So we have 5 or 6 missions left before there's no more hiding.

I intend to make all of them count.

Neither of the FTM ones are ideal, I'm really only doing them because they're the closest. The first one is a vault mission, which while still worth the time isn't as good as it would have been if we had a keycard left. The next one is a... shudder... security dispatch.

...Hey, if the item we get is good, or if there's anything remotely worth buying in the shop? I'll have no complaints. But the trouble is that there's a whole lot of stuff that can be in those cases that's nothing but merchant fodder. And even when you do find something good, at this high of a security level we run the risk of things being... too good.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but there's a fourth tier of certain items. These have significantly better effects than tier III items, a significantly higher jump than between the previous tiers. The catch, however, is that the things can only be used once a mission before having to be recharged with charge packs or on the jet. Now, corporations, which have incredibly easy access to the things, well, I can totally understand why they'd consider those things powerful and valuable enough to keep in their highest security facilities...

...The problem is that, for anyone with a somewhat less than bottomless checking account, the damned things are nearly useless. Which, might I add, is incredibly inconsiderate to the poor people robbing the joint, who have quite enough shit to put up with already thank you very much!

But I digress. It's a building and it's close, so we're hitting it up. But not until after the vault.

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Since we're going to a vault there's not a huge need to keep our 1000 credit buffer, but I'd like to take advantage of this vault to try to get myself up to a 2000 buffer; I'd like our last mission to be one of the nanofab vestibules just to give us one last big chance to get some good gear if we're still short on anything. So I only spend 2000 on upgrades, mostly to speed my agents up.

I know I said that I was considering boosting Internationale's hacking, but you can forget about that now unless we get a tool that uses hacking, because now that we have charge, it's going to be virtually impossible to not max out pwr and keep it up there without liberal use of volt disruptors. We hardly need consoles anymore, so I'm not wasting my limited credits on making better use of them.

I also changed my mind and put one of Decker's buster chips back after this picture. He'll bring both into the Sankaku missions we do when there's dones in need of “melee combat” and fewer guards with stuff he'll need his inventory freed up for.

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Looks like from here on out there's going to be nothing but big scary fives and sixes when it comes to security levels. Best be on our guard. As if that's news.

Alright, time to set a course for San Francisco. Signing out.

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...Right, let's see what we have here.

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Internationale's wireless scanner came back with significant results, and the camera will be ours next turn.

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...Great. This place has two routers again, and it looks like our luck isn't as good this time. Ah well. I suppose it could be worse. You know, it's odd, they're supposed to have another mainframe device that's arguably even more dangerous, but I haven't seen it so far during this whole incident.

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...Well this seems like an ominous situation. I'm quite certain I didn't hear any footsteps, which means these guards are either stationary or far away (the distance of their FOV suggests it could be the latter). The fact that the wall placements mean I can't see any of the sources of these FOVs is frankly a bit worrying, though it shouldn't be anything a good corner peek can't solve.

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Alright, looks like one of the guards is moving, the other isn't. Hopefully what's behind this door will offer an easy solution.

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Thankfully one of the routers has been located.

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Also we found a drone, which thankfully has 3 firewalls so it can be wrench 3'd immediately.

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So... so far we've found 3 of the safes, one of the routers, a secondary server terminal we almost certainly won't need, and the vault. We're making pretty good progress here.

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This seems like a fairly simple patrol to sneak around.

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Alright, with some help from Nika and Internationale, we've finally worked out what's going on here. Frankly I think our efforts would be wasted trying to get past these guards before the upcoming patrol change, so let's just work on finding some good places to hide and getting some of those cameras hacked.

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Since guards don't get suspicious when drones open and close doors, I exploit this to let Decker peek inside to get a full view of the room for next turn.

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Okay, so, there are two guards patrolling this area, both barrier guards, and judging by the fact that the one who went down south had four, I think I know where the second router is.

But first...

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I don't want to find out the hard way what daemon is in this power supply, so I have the drone disengage the laser panel and have Xu enter the vault. He can disable the power supply directly and leave any time he likes as long as he's here to disable it. After Decker's done with his scouting of the south, he'll stop by to determine what the daemon is. If it's minor, we'll hack it and Xu will help search the facility after the guard shift. If it's major, he'll stay here, ready to rob the vault and then bolt when it's time to escape.

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Decker starts his stim-III-assisted scouting and discovers the daemon on this safe is Jolt, which merely reduces the KO timer for all currently KO'd guards. Utterly meaningless at the moment, so he hacks it immediately with his buster chip.

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We've got a security card, which I intend to send off to Internationale so she can make use of it back in the starting room once the patrols change. Guards can unfortunately tell when you open the door directly behind them, but Decker will be long gone by the time he turns around to check.

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Unfortunately, wonky angles with FOV meant that I assumed the fact that the space of the door was unwatched meant that Decker's space would be unwatched when the door was opened. I was wrong, and a camera spotted him. Thankfully I have time to have Decker hide.

Anyway, we've found the second router and the nanofab, and the former was right where I thought it would be.

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I have Nika standing by the door in the unlikely but scary event that this gets ugly, because that camera spiked up the alarm level by one, and the patrols are going to change one turn early.

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Thankfully it doesn't get ugly. The guards aren't going in Decker's direction.

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It also doesn't seem like there's anything majorly dangerous from the guards we can't see, and all of them will have to come to us through places we're watching, so we should be okay for now.

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This “three hacks a turn” thing is taking some serious getting used to. It feels slower than I know it really is, since what I'm doing every turn would've cost more power than I'd be able to supply. The fact that I have so much power and can't use it is probably what's giving me the impression of slowness.

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Aaaaand the routers are history.

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With a little help from the newly-rehacked drone, Xu disables the daemon'd safe I forgot about before returning to work guarding the vault.

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Decker passes the security card to Nika to give to Internationale before hiding back behind the safe in preparation for exploring the south.

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...I don't quite understand what happened here, reader. I moved to have Nika leave this room in order to pass off the keycard to Internationale, and then this happened. Somehow, in defiance of all known physics and logic, not only could the guard, despite not being able to see an agent hiding against a wall, somehow see the movement of the door she was hiding against, but also somehow, despite the copious amounts of obstructive material between her and the guard, NOT HAVING THE DOOR BEHIND HER MAGICALLY MADE HER COMPLETELY VISIBLE. I don't pretend to know what the fuck is going on here, but it doesn't matter. I've been sighted. How I proceed depends entirely on whether or not other guards have been alerted. It didn't sound like it, but I need to make sure.

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...Yep. They know. Fuck. Jacking out so soon is... unfortunate. I'd say that I'd be sure not to make that mistake again, but it's hard to learn from your mistakes when your mistake was having faith in the basic stability of reality.

Hnnnng...

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IJHOWEIFHEIOSHFIOES:HFSIEFHJ:FJO:ADJF”EJFOPEJ”FOOJA:FJAEO:IFAHE:IOFHAE:FHEAXXXXXXXXXIREGRETEVERYTHINGANDITDOESNOTHINGTOSTEMTHEAGONYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

...FUCK that stings. You never get used to that.

...Anyway...

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In the process of using the turn's hacks, I forgot about the router, so I'll have to deal with it longer than before. Damn it.

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This time, since I know Nika doesn't need the AP since she can't cross into Internationale's room right now, I have Nika move in to pick up Decker's card so that Decker can use his AP to better explore the south.

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Finally I get around to hacking the daemon database, so now I know what daemons there are. And it looks like the power supply one is nothing to worry about. I'll hack it when and if I have the time.

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The safe contains a measly 100 credits and yet another stim I, making this big safe worth only slightly more than small safes, unfortunately.

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Thankfully, we've found the power cell. Decker uses the cheap stim he's almost certainly going to sell to get to safety without having to use his big stim, which he'll need to use to loot the power cell, pickpocket the other guard, visit the shop, take the router guts, and get out of there.

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In other news, this guard came dangerously close to spotting Internationale, but thankfully nothing happened. I'm preparing Internationale and Nika to go through the locked door.

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Decker gets the power cell and loots the other guard, getting a low-grade emp I intend to have him sell, then goes to the nanofab.

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He sells the emp and stim for a cool 450 credits and then reports back that the stock is mostly unusable. The only thing remotely useful is the thermal disruptor, which is essentially a fusion of a neural and volt disruptor that, in exchange for having both a cooldown and a pwr cost, has high armor piercing for its tier and has the pwr cost scale proportionally to the job it needs to do.

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I decide to buy it just so I have another agent capable of piercing 2 layers of armor. Going around with 1 armor piercing isn't so great anymore now that that damned permanent chiton daemon goes online at alarm level 2.

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Internationale gets the card and she and Nika advance into the starting room.

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This guard unfortunately blocks Nika and Internationale's advance by just barely being able to see the security door out of the corner of his eye, but that should be resolved next turn.

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Decker's next job: to steal from these other two guards.

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And here comes the armor.

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The drone confirms that this is a dead end, meaning the exit must be to the northwest, where Nika and Internationale are headed. The two remaining safes and the SST (just in case something amazing is there) mean we'll still have to go over there though.

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With the power supply finally hacked, Xu goes over to take Decker's burden to help him do his pickpocketing job.

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Yep. Found the exit. That's everything, now we just have to grab all of the loot and get out of there.

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Score! The support guard had an unchipped flash grenade!

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Decker hands that off to Nika and then prepares to loot the next guard.

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Nika in turn passes the flash grenade on to Internationale because it's unlikely we'll be using both of them at once and having them spread out to increase our options is ideal.

Looks like we're in a good position to clean this last area up. I'll hack the vault turn after next and then we'll be out of here once these last two guards are pickpocketed and the router gets gutted.

...We really need to get some more strength on Xu and Internationale. I think everyone's going to be encumbered by the time this is over.

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After passing the power cell off to Nika, Decker guts the second router and checks out the SST.

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Nothing worth giving anything up for. Bless makes daemons last for a shorter period, and emergency reserve gives you 5 pwr if it's off cooldown (has a 3 turn cooldown) and you have 3 or less pwr. I'm only going to buy a new program if I get a better and more expensive hacking program than one of our existing ones, like, say, lockpick 2 or parasite 2, since I can afford to be using a little more than 1 pwr per turn, obviously.

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Shit. Decker got caught. I miscalculated the guard's FOV, and now the other support guard threw a grenade. It'll explode next turn, and I do not want anyone around there when it goes off.

Time to go.

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Xu hacks the vault terminal, and as I feared before, there's a silent alarm. Gotta get Xu out of there quickly. But more importantly...

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...Thanks to two watchdog daemons with 1 more turn remaining each, only Nika with her volt disruptor III can do more than 1 turn of KO damage. Thankfully we have plenty of pwr for that, because we can't stick around to pin these bodies. The grenade's about to blow.

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Nika then uses the ludicrous amount of AP she got from combat to loot the last remaining safe and prepare to assist Xu in fighting that enforcer in case things go sour.

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Internationale retreats back behind the door to shield herself from the blast...

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...And Decker loots the guards before doing the same. His inventory is entirely maxed out and so he has to leave the tech behind for now. I'll have somebody pick that up later.

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Xu loots half of the vault before hiding behind the vault terminal.

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Firewalls go up...

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...The enforcer goes down...

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And everyone makes a break for it.

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Nika lightens Xu's load because he's slower already and she has a lead on him, while Decker and Internationale keep the guards pinned.

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Nika refreshes the guards' knockouts just to be safe...

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...And we're out of here!

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...Not the most graceful of infiltrations, I will admit. I made two mistakes, though one admittedly shouldn't have been a mistake, but the second one I have no excuse for. Thankfully I've done a good enough job teambuilding that I could recover from it with ease, but still, I might not be so lucky next time. At any rate, we got everything but the inner vault, which we had no hope of getting our hands on. Though in hindsight I should've at least peeked into it to get more microSLAM credits.

Next stop... ugh... Vancouver.

...For a security dispatch.

Onward. Fucking. Ho.

 

 

 

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The sight on guards is sometimes really broken... I don't know how they coded the game, but vision could be a bit more polished. The door thing really didn't make any sense.

BTW, what do you think of the program shade? I came across it and really thought about it but decided i'd be fine with just wisp for my expert plus playthrough (i could have afford it, just decided to save money). 

Also do you have any tips for Expert plus? Not being able to see watched spots unless you see the source is a huge pain... It has already caused a lot of restarts in the first few missions.

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3 minutes ago, SlayerX said:

The sight on guards is sometimes really broken... I don't know how they coded the game, but vision could be a bit more polished. The door thing really didn't make any sense.

BTW, what do you think of the program shade? I came across it and really thought about it but decided i'd be fine with just wisp for my expert plus playthrough (i could have afford it, just decided to save money). 

Also do you have any tips for Expert plus? Not being able to see watched spots unless you see the source is a huge pain... It has already caused a lot of restarts in the first few missions.

I mean I get how it mechanically works; when the wall itself doesn't completely break line of sight and just serves as a cover object, when you open the door there's no more cover object. It's just that it makes no goddamned scene when you think about the actual real-life mechanics of it.

I've never used shade. I've never gotten it, or at least not in a situation where I was at liberty to buy it.

The biggest things about expert + are as follows: First, you don't want to peek through closed doors anymore. Before it let you tell if a door would be noticed if you opened it to do the full peek, but now it tells you nothing of the sort, so you want to skip that step and open doors, making sure that when you do so you do it from the side and there's AP left to run to cover if a guard sees it, and be sure to peek around corners so you don't run straight into an unseen guard's line of sight, an in fact move into unexplored territory one space at a time if you can remember. The second is that while combat is still extremely useful (to the point that even with the consciousness monitors on every guard I still consider Nika to be the best agent in the game), you really need to make sure you ambush since you can't KO guards from the front anymore, you really only want to use combat for emergencies and escapes, because otherwise those lost turns before the big 6 really add up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Right, sorry for the week without updates, bit of a busy schedule last week and had some stuff going on. Here you go!

 

Mission 12

Spoiler

 

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Well that certainly isn't ominous at all.

In any other situation I'd probably freak the fuck out and wonder what the hell that could possibly mean, but quite frankly I can't afford to concern myself with anything else other than getting us prepared for the mainframe raid.

Ah well. Such is the never-ending maelstrom of bullshit that is life.

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I postponed my plans to get us to a new threshold of 2000 credits in the name of getting the rest of our agents properly up to speed. Nevertheless, we still have plenty of credits for the upcoming mission. I sold some of the excess loot we got our hands on, including a flash grenade after making sure we had one left for each agent who didn't have a solution for getting caught out in the open by a guard (meaning anyone who wasn't Nika or Internationale).

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I decided against giving the anarchy training and buster chip to Xu since he has that EMP of his, so Internationale would be more likely to face a situation where she'd need to use it. There. Now we have more carrying space and the annoyance last mission isn't going to happen again.

Now then, on to our destination...

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...The Vancouver security dispatch.

I swear to god, if there were anyplace closer by...

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...But it can't be helped. Right now quantity matters. It's possible the dispatch item will be useful, and at any rate, this is one more nanofab, one more shot at a penetration scanner, and we need that penetration scanner. If not a penetration scanner, than a ventricular lance, or anything that will give Nika the ability to take out armor IV guards.

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Jacking in.

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Not the worst starting location we could've gotten.

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After exploration we discover an incoming guard, but nothing they can't hide from. I'll have vision on the room behind that locked door at the beginning of next turn, and I'll have this guard looted for possible access by the end of it.

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...Right, well, I was wondering when this damned thing was going to show. Here's the second (technically first) special FTM mainframe device: In addition to a router, they've got a scanner here. Every time the alarm level goes up, this thing is going to detect one of my agents and send a guard to investigate. As if we didn't have enough to worry about at alarm level 1. Thankfully it's not one of the alarm level 5 or 6 pinpoints and the guards won't go into alert mode, but it can still be really annoying.

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In happier news, we've found the drone. What makes this particularly useful is that if we don't find the scanner in time, if we have a drone hacked, there's a chance that the scanner will detect the drone instead of an agent, meaning it'll be no worse than if a guard catches a drone rebooting. But that's pure luck and with this team size it's only a 20% chance, so I'm not counting on it, and in fact I'm not going to try and time the drone's hacking with the alarm level. I'm going to take advantage of alarm level 0 as much as I can by hacking this thing immediately.

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Internationale loots the guard and prepares to investigate this area once it's cleared up in a few turns. The plan is to use the crybaby I traded from Nika to her before heading out. Incidentally she also locates the router, which I will disable soon. I'm tempted to use Wildfire to be able to use wrench since the firewall boost later will take it to 4 rather than 3 and having access to wrench might speed things up, but I'm a little paranoid that that router's daemon is rubiks, which would screw me over royally if I did wildfire too, so I'm going to wait until I have that hacked before deciding anything.

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Decker loots safe number 1 with the assistance of his stim III, then tries to peek through the southern door, only to find it has weird walls that make a window peek impossible, so he retreats back behind the column to hide from the incoming guard.

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The next room turns out to be watched by what is thankfully a level 3 firewall camera that can be taken out by wrench 3, revealing it to be the same as the room with the router in it. The nanofab is located, as is a laser grid I really don't want to activate this early on.

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Thankfully it turns we don't have to, as this other door, which I almost forgot about due to its angle, bypasses the laser grid and any other obstacles completely.

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Which means of course I send all of my agents down this way so as to avoid the stationary guard and the laser panel. But I'm still keeping Decker here to loot this guard when he comes in and then check out the daemon on the nanofab when he leaves.

The router is hacked, and the daemon comes in.

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...Needless to say this is unfortunate. Good thing I have everyone at good speed and have some stims.

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...Our drone finds our target. See that door? The one that's locked and has a laser grid in front of it? That's the door that has the item locker behind it.

That's part of why these missions are so annoying. We're dealing with (comparative) experts at security with far better protection for what they'r guarding, and their gear often isn't even that useful to us. We have the card, but we still need to find that laser grid power supply in order to get in there unless we want to advance the alarm tracker.

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Decker loots the guard and safe...

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...Internationale finds safes 2 and 3, as well as the scanning amp...

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...Which we immediately hack with lockpick and wrench 3...

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...And Nika heads in here, taking a slight risk in the name of making the most of our precious zero-alarm time.

Xu doesn't really have much to do but advance slightly.

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Thankfully there is no guard guarding this area, so Nika's free to advance as long as she's careful about the event of this guard opening the door while he investigates the downed drone.

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The daemon turns out to be echo, so Decker's going to hack this thing next turn when the guard patrols shift.

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This guard has a lot of loot, but I can't afford to have Internationale take it with her loaded inventory while labyrinth is active, considering how the guard patrols are about to shift, so she doesn't take anything but the money for now.

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Instead she heads up here to scan this room, so we'll have a visual on this upcoming room next turn. Just in time for the patrol change. Whatever fun that brings.

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The interrogation room turned out to be empty. Sometimes they have prisoners we can rescue for a bounty, but no such luck.

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...Right, here it comes...

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...sphincters primed to pucker.

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Here are the new patrols I could determine, but there's still the matter of the one patrolling near the starting point. I'll have to keep my guard up and hope we get camera visual on him before he gets near any agents.

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Decker hacks the nanofab, rebooting a camera we quickly reclaim...

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...And it's got nothing. One imperial shitton of nothing. This fucking thing is useless except for unloading guard-looted vendor trash. I seriously hope that lockbox has something useful that isn't a fucking IV.

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Nika locates the way to the rest of the facility, as well as the daemon database.

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She then heads in because the door will be watched next turn and I'm fairly confident there aren't any guards back here. If there are, and she gets caught, I still have her cloak and one ejection.

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Turns out I was mistaken; there was a previously-stationary guard, but thankfully the hiding spot I picked saved her.

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Nika finds the power supply at long last, and what I think is the exit in the southern room that guard just came out of.

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The power supply thankfully has 3 firewalls and is hacked immediately with wrench 3.

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Xu then tracks these guards to help Decker navigate the room and avoid getting scanned by the drone that just rebooted.

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Next turn, Xu takes the safe with the daemon, making it 3 safes down, 2 to go. He then predicts the path of the guard who just came in from near the entry point.

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Internationale prepares to use her stim to rush the security locker room now that the laser grid's down, while my other agents lay low and wait for the dust to settle with the guard patrol patterns.

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One curious thing though: We still haven't found the power cell. Which is odd, because the only room left to us is the exit room, meaning I can only assume there's another room connected to it containing the power cell.

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...Looks like that's the case.

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Nika goes in to investigate.

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Internationale finds the lockbox and makes it into the room with her stim I, and I prepare to hack the locker next turn when she'll have AP to escape after the pressure plate is triggered.

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Decker moves to take the big safe and Xu grabs the scanner's tech. His next move will be to EMP the last safe up northwest by Nika.

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Alright... moment of truth... what did we come all this way for...?

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...Some money and... what the hell is this...?

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...Looks like FTM is harboring stolen K&O black ops weapon tech. Very high grade, very dangerous stuff. I will concede we... technically have a use for this. If we get sufficiently desperate or soulless. For one thing, this serves as a foolproof way to take out any guard we come across, basically no matter how well armoured. Unfortunately, this shit is lethal, and as if that weren't discouraging enough, the thing is so heavy it reduces the AP of whoever carries it by 2, no matter how strong they are.

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At any rate, no way I'm leaving empty-handed, even if it does cripple Internationale's AP. As much as I'd love to stand by my principles, give a really big “fuck you” to the corps, and just smash the thing and leave it, the fact remains that if I do something that stupid and arrogant and it doesn't pay off, I'm not going to be the Invisible member who dies for that.

At least not the first one.

Principles are great and all, and the whole “no killing people” one is high on the list, but I have one that's higher:

I don't fuck around and do stupid shit with the lives of people who trust me.

If I find a way to practically carry this thing, and if it comes down to either one of us or one of them, then I'm using it, end of discussion. I'm getting everyone out of this alive if it's even remotely within my power.

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Speaking of getting everyone out of this, we're almost ready to bolt. All that's left is to nab the power cell, open the last safe, and loot the guards with our expert looters. We're making excellent time.

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...Nika gets caught because I forgot that the guard was going to pick a random patrol spot and he walked straight in here.

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No problem, Nika has options out of this, and nobody else heard.

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I then use wildfire just so I can use wrench 3 to get this drone under our control immediately, and recover the 5 pwr Nika used to take out that guard. I really hope we can find another penetration scanner for her so she can go back to just using 2 pwr on these guys.

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Internationale loots this guard as he moves to investigate the pressure plate, and Xu prepares to run for the safe.

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Meanwhile, Decker gets ready to loot these guards back here, and Nika grabs the power cell before going back to pinning the guard while I decide when and if she should run out to assist with violence.

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Bingo. Lined up and ready to line Decker's pockets for him.

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Got some credits from one and stole those two items from before from the other. Together they're worth a cool 500 creds. For a moment I was tempted to keep the charge pack just in case since I now have something that uses it. But since they're so frequently looted from guards with expert looting... I decided I might as well just have Decker sell this one and wait until it gets close to being necessary before saving the charge packs.

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The nice thing about stims is that you can move the distance extra that they give you and still go sprinting as long as you still have your usual max AP after moving, so I managed to get Xu to sprint to this safe without risking alerting the guard who just checked out the lockbox. And with that, all that's left is to gut the router and get everyone out of here.

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Decker's going to sell the stuff he looted while Nika prepares to support if things go sour, as well as nab the router tech. Internationale will take Nika's place pinning the guard.

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I decide that since Nika's the one with the inventory space anyway, we might as well be blunt and get out of here more quickly since there's no more reason to be subtle.

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Tech secured...

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...And we're out of here!

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Not much to comment on. Only one real slip-up, but even then it was a risk I took with an agent I knew could get out of it. I only wish I had more to show for this mission than money and a gun I seriously hope I never have to use.

And with that, it's exactly the dawn of the final day, meaning we'll get more options for the next one, and I'll have an idea of how many missions I can cram in before the final reckoning is upon us.

Until then.

 

 

Edited by Alastor15243
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  • 1 month later...

HOLY SHIT HAS IT REALLY BEEN THIS LONG SINCE AN UPDATE!?

I'm so sorry, I didn't realize it had been this long, a combination of having a busy schedule and some other things caused me to put this on hold, but when I realized just how long it had been since I updated this I realized I needed to find the time to get one of these done.

So sorry I let it go this long without saying anything!

 

Mission 13

 

Spoiler

 

Well. Here we are.

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24 more hours to scrape together whatever we can to prepare for a life-or-death assault on a heavily guarded facility run by the combined might of the four biggest megacorps on the face of the earth. There will be tears. There will be blood. There will be torn out hairs and sleepless nights.

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BUT NOT TODAY.

TODAY IS A MOTHERFUCKING MILK RUN!

Yes, thankfully, our next stop is one of two cushy, comparatively easy 4-security nanofab vestibules, which not only means that security will be lighter, but the expanded-access nanofabricator is far less likely to be stuffed full of useless level IV dreck and more likely to have the actually useful level III stuff. I intend to visit both of these places before the day is out, and milk them dry of anything we can use. Most importantly, between the expanded capacity of the hacked nanofab and the additional normal-capacity standard nanofab the mission will still contain, each of these missions will grant me a whopping FIVE chances at getting another penetration scanner for Nika. We'll cram in some other missions if we can, but those two nanofabs are most important and I will not miss out on either of them.

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We came out of the last mission with way more money than I expected, but I'm not going to spend too much here because I want to make absolutely certain I can afford everything this nanofab might throw at me. Mostly I'm just going to expand strength where it's lacking or needed.

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And with that, away we go!

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...Well, let's see, three doors. Two of them are right across the hall from each other, and one of those has equipment blocking both sides, thereby rendering safe opening of it impossible should it be watched in any capacity.

Yeah, needless to say this isn't the ideal starting location.

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Thankfully it's not nearly as bad as it appeared to be. Two of the three doors lead to single rooms, one of them a total dead end, and the other containing a nanofab unshielded by daemons and a camera watching fuck-all. Buster-chipping the minor nanofab now.

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Trash. There's literally nothing here I have any use for.

I seriously hope our luck is better with the main event.

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And here is where our situation gets a tiny bit messier. I think it should be safe to open this door and not get more than noticed due to the fact that she still technically has a hiding spot, but I'm not prepared to risk that due to how much more complicated cover and doors turned out to be before. But he shouldn't be facing the door when he goes back to his current location after coming in here. I don't want to ambush him in case another guard comes in and watches the door, because I'd have to arrange the ambush right in front of the door to avoid Internationale being spotted.

On a happier note, we've found safe #1. It has a daemon on it though, so it's a job for Agent Xu once we get through there.

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We've found the exit, and the console database has given us some idea of where most of the activity in the facility is in terms of rooms, but unfortunately that room we're trying to get into has another guard. Here's hoping we can get through.

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We've started our advance. The second guard comes in through the eastern door and looks straight ahead, so we'll be safe, but navigating through here will get complicated.

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Thank goodness for stims. Agent Xu's uncovered the next room and shown me where the guards are headed. There's also a secondary server terminal in the next room, which I'm hacking just for the hell of it because why not? There might be a better program in there.

The daemon database I'm going to wait and identify with Decker before hacking.

...Unfortunately, the secondary server terminal was recaptured by one of Plastech's special guards, the Modded Mk. II. I'll give more info when I get a good look at the bastard, but let me be clear: these things are the banes of many hacking builds. Thankfully they're only slightly the bane of mine, but still... they're very decidedly not fun.

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For now, let's just rob this guard.

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There's virtually no hiding spots in this room, so I have to have Internationale advance. Thankfully she got a keycard from that guard, so next turn she can look through and see if we can start doing some serious exploration.

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...Oh.

Fuck.

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...Right, how exactly to deal with this? Now obviously I have several options. I do, as always, have the option to use the Russian War Machine to crush subtlety into a fine powder and snort it. I've no doubt, without even looking, that Nika could make it all the way over to take out that guard if I don't mind her knocking out another guard to do it, forcing Internationale to tranq a third one, and getting caught on camera. Buuuut... needless to say I'd rather avoid that. Another option, obviously, is to jack out and redo this, but I've got a good momentum going here, as long as I can find a way to keep Xu and Internationale from being discovered. No...

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...What I want is a distraction. One that will draw everyone's attention, but prevent them all from looking at the locked door so Xu and Internationale can advance.

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Perfect.

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Now we just have to hope that something catastrophically horrible doesn't happen.

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...Well, not exactly catastrophic...

...But yeah, I would've liked to have more options for where to move Decker and Nika now that the guard patrols are altered. Let's see what the damage is...

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NOPE I WAS WRONG THIS IS VERY MUCH CATASTROPHIC.

...Alright, focus, what can we do here...

...First, since this is preferable, let's have Internationale stop by the sever terminal and see if that camera can be uncovered for hacking...

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...NOPE! Found it, but unfortunately it can't be hacked at time since it's a firewall level 2. Damn it, this is one of the downsides of using charge with wrench 3 when nothing's at level 3...

...Wait... let's see if this terminal gives us any better programs to expand our options.

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I literally cannot conceive of a way that this terminal could increase my desire to burn it to the fucking ground.

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...Thankfully I wasn't putting all of my eggs in that basket. I still have Internationale's stim, and Xu still hasn't started moving yet, so...

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...There. Now all four of these guards are going to stay in here a little while longer. And if Xu and Internationale retreat to the east and hide behind the guard teleporter in case another guard walks in through that unsecured door... no, shit, that's nowhere near safe enough. If the guard doesn't walk through in just the right way, there'd be no way to properly ambush or hide... Well, first, let's see if there actually is a guard in there...

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AND OF COURSE THERE IS BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE IS.

AND IT'S THE FUCKING MODDED MK. II.

It would appear that I forgot the immortal, unassailable, supreme wisdom of the streets: There's no such thing as a milk run.

Now to explain why Modded Mk. IIs are such a pain: They have the power to recapture any hacked device near them once at the beginning of every turn. And to make matters worse, when you knock them out... their consciousness infects one of the devices in the facility as a daemon. You can't destroy this daemon with the hunter program without killing the guard and thereby boosting the alarm level, and if you decide to suck it up and hack the device with the daemon? He'll just move to another device. AD NAUSEUM. FOREVER.

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Thankfully he has no armor, so taking him out won't be a problem. But there go my plans to avoid using force until the end, and I dread to think what daemon problems I'm going to run into.

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Anyway, I don't even want to imagine what the quantum tracker's going say about this room full of guards next turn, so I stim Decker up and send him to recon with Xu and Internationale after robbing this guard.

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Well, my main team is separated from Nika, lugging around an unconscious guard, and trapped between pretty much every guard in the facility on one side and a bunch of security cameras on the other. Ugh... I really didn't want to have to do this, but frankly, at this point, it might actually be a good idea.

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First, hope for the best with whatever daemon that Modded Mk. II put in here.

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...Whew! This can be easily rectified with a simple refreshed KO, especially since it was done with a volt disruptor, which given my hacking loadout is practically free.

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...The bad news is that he picked the other camera to go into next. Nevertheless...

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On the downside, everything has another firewall, but on the plus side, this means that wrench 3, one of my three hacks a turn, is actually useful now.

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And luckily for us, the daemon was reversed (albeit basically useless). Sadly, he chose another camera for the third one. One that's already being hacked. But that is not an immediate concern.What is an immediate concern is finding a halfway decent place to hide from these unpredictable guards who still haven't settled into their new patrols.

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Decker gives us a bit of a hand with that, and now we know where they'll be at the end of this turn at least.

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Internationale robs the unconscious guard for a little extra cash...

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...and discovers there's a 90% chance this room is a dead end, depending on what's hiding behind that weird tower of cubes.

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But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, looks like Xu's got a good place to hide himself and the guard next turn with that console there.

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Nika's still cut off from the rest of the group, but let's see if next turn changes that. Of course, judging by the predicted paths... it's probably going to get much worse.

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And this is indeed a dead end. Great.

Now let's get this over with and see what the Modded Mk. II's third present is.

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LUST. MY JUCKING. FUCK.

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...Okay, thankfully this clusterfuck isn't nearly as bad as it appeared to be at first glance. In reality they almost never are, honestly, but this especially. We finally got a break, mercifully, with that fucking Mk. II daemon. It went into a safe, which means that we can EMP the safe with Xu and just leave it there. It's still technically unhacked, so the Mk. II's daemon is going to be stuck there until he wakes up, so our daemon troubles are over. Furthermore, Nika will be freed up next turn, and It looks like there might possibly be an opening for somebody to get through and check out the rest of the facility where everything we actually came here for is hidden. Furthermore, none of the guards are coming in here, so it's safe for Xu to ambush this enforcer in preparation to head up north to take out the safes. Internationale will stick around to pin the guards while everyone else works to get the goods.

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Xu confirms that the coast is clear...

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...then gets out of the way of the door while Internationale negotiates the two guards into the hiding spot to drag-pin them both...

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...and Decker makes a break for it.

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There! And now Nika's in too, meaning... Hm... just in case, let's take advantage of the spare AP Decker has to see what's in the next room.

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This is decidedly unhelpful, but oh well, no helping that.

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Decker goes in, reveals the drone, which I hack, and that reveals the power cell. Hm... why exactly... wait...

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...If all this leads to is the power cell... then where...?

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...HOW DID I MISS THIS FUCKING DOOR!?

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...Well! Now I know where Nika's headed.

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Xu diverts this guard so that he can get down to where all of the safes with daemons are.

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Speaking of which, I have Decker identify one of them with his spare AP. It's nothing major, but still something I'd rather have Xu deal with.

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Alarm level 2. Armor's up. We're making good time.

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Decker and Xu get to work on the safes, netting us 700 more credits.

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Meanwhile Nika rushes into what is definitely the jumbo nanofab room. Next turn we'll learn what, if anything, we came here for.

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Right, let's hack it, and...

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...Shoot. Alright, what's the damage?

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...A minor setback. This could slow us down a bit, but more importantly...

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...what's on the shelves?

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...NOTHING. FUCKING NOTHING. THE AUGMENTS ARE ALL EITHER USELESS OR THINGS I ALREADY HAVE, THE WEAPONS ARE ALL LOW-TIER AMMO-USING GUNS, AND APPARENTLY THE LOWER SECURITY DID NOTHING TO STOP THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED TOOL SECTION FROM BEING STOCKED WITH USELESS LEVEL IVS! THE ONLY THING EVEN VAGUELY RESEMBLING BEING USEFUL IS THE TITANIUM RODS AUGMENT, AND I CAN'T AFFORD TO USE HER LAST AUGMENT SLOT ON THAT THAT BECAUSE I REALLY REALLY NEED HER TO HAVE LEVEL 4 ARMOR PIERCING! WHY!? WHY!? WHYYYYY oh hey wait a second.

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Actually the level IV stims aren't half bad, if only because they grant you access to the ludicrous ability to have as many attacks in a single turn as your weapons can muster. I could definitely use at least one of them, even if I'd trade it for a penetration scanner in a heartbeat.

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Alright, fine, I'll take one.

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And of course, reboots incoming.

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Unfortunately, apparently not even taking the safe out with an EMP will disable the authority daemon's safe alarm. Gotta get Decker and Xu out of there.

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Decker grabs the power cell...

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...and Xu leaves the room.

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If this guard goes un-distracted, he'll pin the drone, and it won't be back under our control until after the firewalls go up by 2. That's not a huge deal since we're just about ready to head out, but I'd like to play it safe, so I have Xu sprint-sneak to distract him.

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There.

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And on further consideration, I have Nika grab the titanium rods for either Xu or Decker (probably Decker) since they both have an augment slot free and longer KO times are more important when you're not specifically built for combat.

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Nika keeps an eye out on the hallway. We're just about ready to bolt.

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Aaaand... go! Let's start by trapping the door with Decker...

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...then having Decker knock out this guard...

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...and finally having Xu loot this safe...

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...intentionally tripping the authority safe alarm...

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...and thus luring this guard in to get shocked.

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Perfect.

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Finally, Nika and Internationale move in.

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Now let's get our crybaby back, along with some more goodies...

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...and knock this guard out so we can get out of here!

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And with some looting and adrenaline momentum...

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...we're gone!

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...This mission was... I'd say... 75% a waste of time? I mean if I knew this was what we were going to find in there I probably would have gone to an executive terminal in the hopes of finding something else to do with my time, because aside from the increasingly less useful credits, the situational stim IV and a probably only mildly useful augment, we didn't really get... anything here. Certainly not what we need, which is more cloaks and some means of taking out level 4 armor guards. I do not want to have to rely on shock traps and grenades. And to make matters worse, we really only have 1, maybe 2 missions left before we have to go and fight Omni again. And I am not looking forward to facing them again with basically the same Nika I faced them with before.

...Ugh. Well... here's hoping we get lucky. I mean, it's just our lives on the line.

Clock's ticking.

Isaac out.

 

 

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  • 5 weeks later...

Oh I hadn't noticed you updated this thread. As always, I enjoy reading the comments of your playthrough. I look foward to watching you finish the game, even if it takes a few more months :P

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1 minute ago, SlayerX said:

Oh I hadn't noticed you updated this thread. As always, I enjoy reading the comments of your playthrough. I look foward to watching you finish the game, even if it takes a few more months :P

Yeah, unfortunately since miiverse is closing down this is postponed, as I need to get all the screenshots for Dakota's War Journal done before it becomes impossible.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 years later...

Alright. That tears it. I know it's been four years, but I've got less to do these days, I've gotten back into Invisible, Inc. lately, and I'm kinda sick of seeing this nearly-finished run perpetually taking up the first of my four precious save slots for this game. I'm finishing this. I'll read back up on the entries to refresh myself, and then I'll get started on it soon.

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Ayyyy welcome back to the LP scene!!! I'm new here myself so it's nice to see this area of the site become a little more active. Though I've never even heard of the game you're playing, it looks quite interesting! I'll read up on what you've done so far, hopefully in time for your next post. I hope you have fun with your playthrough! 🙂

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Mission 14

Spoiler

 

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…Christ, but this brain augment fucks with my internal clock. We’ve only been in here a few days, but it feels like it’s been years.

But yeah. Okay. Here’s the plan.

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We’re going here.

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Our ultimate objective is to obtain as many chances to get more gear as we possibly can. Especially a way to get Nika up to that absolutely critical 4 armor piercing. So obviously, one of our stops is going to be this nanofab vestibule. But if we go to the executive terminal first, then it’s possible that, depending on travel time to the financial suite to the north of the executive terminal and what targets that executive terminal brings up, we could have time to go to two missions (counting this one) before hitting that vestibule. That would be ideal.

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In the meantime though, we have a shitton of credits, a frankly psychotic source of income between my two max anarchy agents, and some serious room for improvement on a few agents.

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First off: Our two agents who weren’t at max strength… now are.

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Second, while I’m not interested in what Monst3r’s selling, I do have more than enough med gels, so I’m selling this one to make room in storage for whatever else I wind up finding out there.

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Third: I’m splurging to get everyone but Nika up to max speed.  I know I’m breaking my rules here, but given the amount of money and gear I’ve been able to steal lately, I need the stats more than I need the free credits.

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Here goes nothing.

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…Alright, Isaac, let’s see what you have to work with.

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Internationale uncovers a bunch of consoles, a daemon database without a daemon, and a nanofab vestibule with one…

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…And everyone braces for impact.

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…I heard a guard to the north, but otherwise nothing. And when I sent Decker to investigate, I didn’t see any sign of him. Incidentally, the nanofab has authority on it, which is meaningless at this early stage, so I have Decker go ahead and buster chip the thing so we can see what’s in it right away.

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…No luck on that all-important second penetration scanner, but I’m thinking this shock trap at least might be worth a buy once we get some more credits. That’s all though.

Fuck I hope we can find that second penetration scanner.

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Anyway, the turret will be disabled next turn, so Decker will be able to proceed from there. As for the other door…

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…Shit. Not good. I took a calculated gamble that a guard wasn’t watching the door, and one was. Good thing I prepared for that and left Xu enough space to retreat to safety, but… this is gonna keep me stuck in this room for several turns, squandering that precious five-turn period before the guards all wander around like mad.

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But what I can do is have Internationale hug the walls of this room and see if there’s anything she can see with her augment. Verdict on the north and west walls: fuck all.

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Last thing I do is get Nika in the room, since she won’t have the opening to do so next turn when the guard comes in.

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SHIT. THAT WAS A SPEC OPS. THOSE GUYS CAN SEE LITERALLY EVERYTHING IN FRONT OF THEM.

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And what’s worse, checking the southern guard’s patrol pattern made it clear he’s stationary, so I have to distract him with Decker to get some agents past him. I’m planning on sending Xu and Internationale down south, with Nika and Decker going north. I want someone with invisibility to handle the area with that damned spec ops guy. Christ I wish I stocked up on more of those things. I know I had the chance to buy at least one more and didn’t. "I don't need another level 2"!? Seriously!? Did I really think that!?

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Hacking the camera database has revealed… that this place has basically no cameras.

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But thankfully, we have an opening to sneak past this guard.

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…FUCK.

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A stim dose later, and he’s back to safety. But that infuriatingly competent guard setup means I don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting past there before the guard patrols change. And when that spec ops guy starts moving…

…Something tells me I’m gonna have to wait until the guards settle before I can do much of anything. Might need to hide in the starting room.

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…However…

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…At least I have a security card. I’ll give it to Nika since there’s a door up north, then have her retreat back into the starting room to hide.

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Hacking one of the whopping two database-revealed cameras revealed the exit. Let’s see how quickly we need it.

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Finally some good luck. Both the spec ops guard and the support guard wound up in full view of that camera when the time came to change up the patrols. Which means I now know exactly where these two guards are headed.

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The support guard is headed thisaplace by way of thataway…

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…And the spec ops guard is headed…

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…Right fucking for us.

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Alright, time to get ballsy. Nika and Decker are rushing into the hallway to check out the locked door that, obviously, none of the guards took into account when planning their routes to their new patrols. We can be 100% confident that no guard is going to come through this door to wherever they’re planning to go. This hiding spot is totally safe from the spec ops guard, wherever the hell his ultimate destination lies.

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Meanwhile, a guard we just caught on the other security camera is headed straight into the starting room, but Xu and Internationale will be safe in their hiding spots regardless.

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…Coast is clear. It’s safe to open this up and check it out for next turn.

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Looks like that support guard is planning on taking a very long route getting where he wants to go. That is… not good. But I’m pressing forward.

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I do some hacking on the un-daemon’d safe since there’s not much else I can do with my hacking this turn. Xu will deal with that portcullis safe, obviously.

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Decker found the way forward blocked by both a camera and a turret. That tears it, I’m using wildfire so I can start using wrench 3.

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…With our newly-wrenched camera buddy, we’ve found our objective…

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…And our meal ticket. Alright. Now to see what else we can get away with getting away with.

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…OF FUCKING COURSE THE WORLD WORKS LIKE THIS.

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I don’t know how, reader, but somehow, the spec ops guard found out that the security door opened, and updated his fucking route to his unknown destination, right past Nika. Not only finding Nika himself, but alerting no fewer than two other guards to her precise location.

Definitely justifies jacking out of the simulation.

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But first, let’s see what else we can learn from this dead timeline.

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Step one: I hack the turret power supply with wrench. Step two: after cloaking, Nika takes out the guard in front of Decker’s door. So let’s see what’s out here…

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Looks like this just loops around. There’s nothing in there but the power supply to that laser panel, and it has a fractal daemon on it.

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But why stop there!?

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…Alas, that’s why. This is as far as Nika goes. So much of the facility uncovered, and yet only two safes found. Now then…

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Let’s see what’s past this guy, shall we?

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The guards here don’t seem to have any special valuables as far as Decker or Internationale can tell…

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…But there’s a door here…

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…Behind which is this thing. Those can be an absolute pain in the ass… but duly noted.

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…That’s the whole facility uncovered except whatever’s back here, so it looks like literally every safe in the facility is in this one area. Guess that means that’s where Xu’s going. Alright, time to jack out.

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So, change of plans: this spec-ops guy is far too dangerous to be left conscious, so Nika’s going to see to it that he’s… not. Also, since I already know full well what’s off to the east, I elect not to send the drone that way, instead maintaining a better view of the more dangerous hallways to the southwest.

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Meanwhile, Internationale’s gonna come over to help pin the guard and maybe get that drone over to the exit.

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Of FUCKING COURSE the second guard can make it this far!

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Right, this has rapidly gone to shit. Time to take what we can and bail. First, I’m gonna have Nika cloak.

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Then Decker leaves the hallway to loot these guards for all they’re worth…

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…and give Nika room to ambush the heavy security to the south from the space he previously occupied.

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Finally, Xu and Internationale get moving. Xu’s headed for the saves to the south, while Internationale is gonna rob this guard blind before heading off to supervise that drone.

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I’m gonna have Decker grab the mission-important stuff to the southeast while Nika keeps this pile of guards unconscious for as long as she possibly can. And with the obscene AP she gets from doing so, she can also assist with escorting the drone out, so I don’t actually need Internationale for that at all. She can go with Xu to pickpocket the lower guard as well.

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…On the downside… I failed to consider the unfortunate angle of the surrounding terrain. She can’t pickpocket him until next turn.

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…So far, so good. Decker buster-chipped the power relay and is standing by to retrieve the site list when we can afford to mix up the patrols of the handful of guards we haven’t alerted…

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…Xu is standing by to loot the safes…

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…Internationale successfully stole from the guy (he had nothing but credits)…

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…And Nika exposed the drone to Incognita. She’s probably gonna use her stim IV at some point to make this back-and-forth more manageable at a crucial moment.

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Internationale and Xu are in position.

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…This is going… shockingly well. It’s almost like getting caught by the guards somehow simplified things.

…I should knock out multiple guards more often!

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On that note… I decided there’s little point sneaking around this guy, so I knocked him out to have free reign over the safes back here. And inside his pockets, Internationale finds…

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…Eh, creds are creds.

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Nika just barely makes it back in time before the guards all simultaneously wake up, and the droid is a turn or two away from being on the jet. I think we’re golden.

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One of the safes had a low-grade EMP pack I plan to sell.

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Internationale helps save a turn by using her buster chip on this safe.

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The firewalls go up right as this drone wakes up, but thankfully it’ll be doing its stationary search for long enough to be re-hacked with lockpick, parasite and wrench.

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Xu and Internationale are on their way out after Xu refreshes the knock-out on that guard.

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The drone’s on-board. Time to get everyone to the exit and to safety.

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Which means it’s lights-out for this guard!

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I decided to buy the shock trap on our way out.

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…Pretty damned loyal executive. 75% of his connections are in-house. I take the cyberlab, just in case.

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Everyone’s at the exit. We’re golden as soon as that door re-opens.

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…Better keep an eye on the hallway just in case it takes longer than I expect…

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…Nope! We’re golden!

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See ya, suckers!

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That went waaaaaaaaaaaay better than it had any right to. After getting caught, a quick cloak was all it took to put us on easy street, with three guards taken out of the picture in one fell swoop. I’d almost forgotten how useful Nika is, and this was a very, very welcome reminder.

…Now to sit in my tiny little corner of the jet while Central figures out if we have one pre-doomsday mission left or two.

…Aaaaaaaaand there it is. The perpetual existential dread creeping back in after the cloud nine of a resounding success of a mission.

Oh goodie.

Until then.

 

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