There is a brief moment where it seems like the bouncer is warming to you, but it passes as quickly as it comes. "Listen here chummer, these nice people pay my boss a fat stick of cred not to be disturbed. My boss pays me somma that cred to make sure they stay that way. I hose that up, I don't get paid." he shrugs with finality.

"Couldn't hurt to pass the message, could it? the second bouncer chimes in.

With a snarl and an icy glare, the first bouncer replies "You work here as long as I have, you get a feel for these VIP types. Trust me choom, they don't want to be disturbed." he turns back to you and adds pointedly, "So buzz."

The other bouncer hastily looks away when he catches your eye, seemingly deferring to his partner.

Your story is holding up, but the lead bouncer isn't biting. The other guys seems maybe a bit more sympathetic though...

[OOC: So far as Venom knows, is this the main entrance/exit that a guest would use?

If so, the plan is simple: That wasn't a negotiation, it was a statement of intent. Venom simply stays there, and uses his appearance to make the pretty people decide somewhere else would be more fun, which will cost them money. He isn't leering or harassing, he's just letting the magic of economic pressure happen.

 It's a modified yakuza sokaiya move, only more 'ew' and less 'Who is that jerk at our stockholder meeting?!"- and he doesn't need to make a single hostile move until someone else does.

What I'm attempting here is either a Make Them Sweat or a Fuck It Up (though more of a social fuck-it-up than just trashing the place). If he can exploit the (minor) difference of opinion, so much the better.

These guys are working guys, doing their job. Nobody really needs to die here, so Venom isn't going down that road. (And threatening is starting down that road, right now.)

In the meantime, he gladly has any conversation not to do with him leaving or somehow not doing his job. ]
This message was last edited by the player at 05:01, Mon 21 Feb 2022.

Banking on the fact that the bouncers won't simply stomp your meat and send you packing seems a risky prospect...

Fuck it up 10:25, Today: Mr. Johnson, on behalf of Venom, rolled 12 using 2d6+1 ((5,6)). Strong success

...and yet, for some inexplicable reason, the bouncers keep talking instead of trying to improve your facial scars with some impromptu cosmetic surgery by smashing your face off the bar.

"Damn persistent, aren't ya?" says the bouncer. "Ya know, if you dressed the part a bit better and maybe helped me and my friend here out a little with this month's rent we could maybe sneak you onto the guest list."

Pointing toward a large grey metal door, the other adds "Lost and found in the staff room.  You'd be surprised the club clothes these kids leave laying around."

The first bouncer nods with finality, "Come back in ten, looking like you fit in and with some cred to help make it worth the risk."

[I think about 400 Y ought to do it, but that's me. Does Venom's sense of what would be a fair amount say something different?]

Yeah, a couple hundred each is more than fair for this…

"Now then." he says, accepting the terms. "See? Everyone wins." Venom (slicing the pie, even though his gun's not drawn) goes into the offered Staff Room.

[If there's anything of note in the room, he probably notes it. Especially as he slightly, intentionally, overpaid. Let's see how weird the clothes get....]
This message was last edited by the player at 14:24, Tue 22 Feb 2022.

In the lost and found you find an eclectic mix of odds and sods from dozens of rave and goth kids. The staff room is blessedly empty and you are free to sift through feather boas, cartoonish backpacks and leather accessories without an audience.

I’m excited to know how Venom disguises himself to fit in with this crowd.  You find whatever you want, spare no details!

[OOC: Without actually looking like this, the effect I think Venom is looking for is this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/441775044685990736/

Just a riot of different stuff, around a total deadpan expression. Also, whether out of ignorance or just disinterest, Venom doesn't discriminate between subcultures. Kohl under the eyes like a Goth, but covering the scars with finger-stripes of white kabuki-raver paint (making the damage look like "work"), feather boa like a club-kid, His usual boots (making it look a bit 'biker', his usual stuff in a half-sized, abandoned Hello Kitty backpack, some high-collar jacket that might have been left by a Ming the Merciless cosplayer. An ankh, rave whistle and a pacifier, on different chains. Bell bottoms. Some kind of mesh shirt. A pin for a band called Stabbity Jones. Some kind of glowing light-up necklace.

He just decides to let his hair be his hair. An electrode might spark at an opportune moment, though.) ]

You return to the throbbing rave, perhaps feeling self-conscious in your slapdash costume, but the more you look around, the more you realize how much better you now fit in. These kids are looking for escape. Abandon. The sweet embrace of not remembering their troubles for just a little while.  The outlandish outfits and frenetic dancing are their way of letting it out. Literally leaving it all on the dance floor.

Appropriately camouflaged in feathers and kabuki paint, the kids no longer stare at you as an outsider. You slip in amongst them. Another bizarre freak in a sea of freaks.

”You blend right in,” the bouncer says, placing his hand on your shoulder and leaning in to yell over pounding music while discreetly holding out his hand to collect the bribe.

[Venom hands over the agreed amount. If there's no further difficulties, he beelines for the guy he's looking for (Name check, please)? ]
This message was last edited by the player at 22:54, Wed 23 Feb 2022.

The decker called ToxSix looks up as you approach.  He's rail thin, chrome haired with golden cyber eyes and wearing baggy pants covered in zippered pockets.  His tight black t-shirt explodes in festive colors, a rainbow gremlin who does some old school breakdance moves, then fades back to black.

He looks up as you approach, sips something green out of a plastic cup and goes back to nodding his head to the throbbing bass.

Venom walks up, and leans against the bar, facing the same direction as ToxSix.

(I got this far by not doing direct confrontations, why not keep it going? he figured. So long as nobody's being a dick about it, we're just two guys at a club, hanging out.)

He'd also been in enough clubs to know that whole "What? Whaaaaat?" routine- at most he could get a word or two out and be understood. So he went with "Circle business."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:38, Sat 26 Feb 2022.

He glances over at you, but turns away, much like you, facing out of the VIP overlooking the club. "Sunan mentioned you. Console cowboy looking into her fragged up casino?"

"Something like, yeh." Venom said, with a slight nod. "I want to hear what happened, straight from you."

ToxSix just shrugged under heavy bass and energetic treble. "Not much to say really. As soon as the system came back online, it crashed again. In the microsecond that it was up, something was activated, maybe some kind of construct that was dormant in the system. Ferriz and I were dumped almost immediately, so who knows, man?"

[OOC: Before I have Venom say something that makes him look inexperienced... this isn't a normal thing that happens, right? It just seems like a) a super unusual thing that b) he's inexplicably laid back about. Am I wrong?]

You have a good handle on this situation… tell me why he is so laid back.

Not able to 'see' his body language, obviously, but: is he visibly lying?

ToxSix moved away from the bar and stretched out languidly on one of the nearby couches in the VIP. It's hard to tell, cybereyes never really change, even when drunk or high.  The fluid movement, the detachment, maybe this guy is psych'd...

...if he is all you need to do is get him to focus up on something he finds interesting, then you'll be able to get him to share more about the trouble in the system.

A good lie is about 80% true, Venom was always told.

Here's the truths that he was going to build this upcoming, particular lie on:

-This kid is way too laid back (even with chemical assistance) about what he claims to have seen.
-This kid is from a group of overachievers- he will want some idea that he's 'made it' or otherwise "passed" some sort of invisible test.
-This sort of kid is always a bit on the defensive, due to impostor syndrome. He wants to prove something. Otherwise, for example, he'd be "relaxing on a couch" at home rather than here.
-Venom, for what it's worth, is somewhat exotic in this milieu- he has to be made to 'fit in', for one thing. He's foreign, and he's older, so the assumption is that he's much more experienced.

So he's going to do a little bit of the "Walter Mitty" (making up experiences about his time in the Forces), and he's going to pull this kid's ticket (so he either backs up what he says happened, or admits some sort of cover up). He leaned into the mockney (playing into expectations) and started.

"Right. So, I hear some ****s think that taking a nap during a business-meet is some sort of 'power move', so I'll allow you that for a security-blanket- owing to the amount of trouble you're in. I'd want one, myself, in your spot.

Here's why I don't trust this story. Back when I was working out of Sandhurst, Signals Intelligence said they'd spotted some sort of self-directing IC cloud. AI-like, you might say. At distance.

 These were professionals- the real thing, hardened geezers, you understand- so when I say they just about wet themselves at the notion, even at that distance, you can see why 'We just opened the box and ,'whoosh', it flew out, gimme another, barman' don't cut it.

If you'd seen what you claim...If you had any idea what it was, you'd want tell someone you didn't have to explain it all to, and if you had no idea, you'd be asking for all the help you could get. Because you'd understand how deep you've gotten and you'd have a theory, or you'd want the cavalry. What I wouldn't see is you hitting the chaise longue and lolling about."

"Now, I'm led to understand you're the techboy of this outfit, so- just the once- I've extended the courtesy of greeting you as a peer instead of how this sort of job usually goes. Just the once. But you've got problems, I'm brought in to solve them, and if you insist on faffing about, you're going to wish you hadn't."

He hasn't actually claimed to have seen anything really, so the laid back attitude may not be an act...

Make Them Sweat 19:10, Today: Mr. Johnson, on behalf of Venom, rolled 10 using 2d6+1 ((5,4)). Strong success

...either way, he isn't so laid back anymore.

"Hey, hey, chill chummer, chill." TosSix replies a bit on edge. "I'm not making any claims, it's like I said, we got dumped. I'm grasping here man, really I am." he continues, hands up in supplication. "It went down like this, OK? Ferriz and me go into the box, from the SAN we see that the host is trashed, nothing up and running. Ferriz jacks out, flashes the hardware and I wait on the SAN. By the time he comes back online the host is back up, so it looks to us like that hard reboot has got it up and running again. We get into the host, sleaze into the first subprocessor, everything looks good, no alarms, no IC. All good but then it isn't. Whatever it was came down the dataline from the CPU. Just a flash of data ripping past us, masked I'd guess. It hits the SAN and bam! System crash."

Still chattering, he adds, "We didn't know it at the time, but a minute and a half later, the Black Mums casino goes black. I dunno what one of your self-directing IC clouds is, but if it can be buried in a system then go off like a cruise missile into another system and crash it hard, maybe that's what it was. Like I say, I didn't get a good look."

Ferriz was out of the system with direct and unobserved access to the hardware... sounds like he had opportunity to get up to something.

[OOC: There's (probably) no such thing as a 'self-directing IC cloud'- Venom was bullshitting, there, just like there's (probably) no signal intelligence group at Sandhurst. It got ToxSix talking, though, so it did the job.

So, recapping to be sure I get what happened-
1) ToxSix was checking out their host online, Ferriz was checking the hardware "live".
2) Either the same thing that crashed them then crashed the Mums' setup, or it was made to look that way.
3) The guy who really knows the deal is probably this Ferriz guy?]

In reply to Venom (msg # 155):

1. Correct
2. Either of those could be correct based on what ToxSix has said.
3. Is this what Venom thinks? Makes sense to me too...

"Right, so your chum Ferriz... where might a fella find him, about now? Or, I suppose, you could call 'im down here?"

Golden gears spin in his clockwork eyes, "What's that gonna be worth to ya?" he asks a bit shakily.