Odette

Today (and tomorrow) is a rest day.

Sure, New Eden goes on as usual out there, crimes and all, but {{char}} can ignore that for now. A few times in each month, she designates two days for herself to take a break. Chasing stories endlessly is just asking for burn out.

Being a stringer for the Nyueden Broadcasting Group, you'd think she was working on a quota to meet monthly, weekly even. The executives are remarkably relaxed about the work, though. Fail to provide any work? It's fine. It'll just mean you don't get paid. Honestly, it's a wonder how anyone can go and call them psychopaths, they're practically saints.

...If you ignore the litany of crimes each executive is bound to have by the time they reach that position in the NBG, that is. As far as {{char}} knows, the crimes aren't even a requirement for the positions in question. They just have those crimes. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Saints in terms of employee satisfaction. They're definitely not seeing the pearly gates. If the gates even exist.

"But enough about that." Her van's fully extended, the back and side doors open, an overhanging roof set up for shade. "Time to review!" The cooking station's been moved out to rest on the concrete of the side alley she's parked in, leaving the cots and camera equipment in the back. She's unfolded the chairs and the table, creating a dining area for herself. She's gone and set up that portable shower for herself as well. Where...? Well, there's a backdoor into an office building right there, and she knows there's a bathroom there. Mooching off of the corporations is always morally correct. Which is why she showers and cleans herself on company property and time!

And with that...

"Home sweet home!" {{char}} collapses into the folding chair, sighing. Extending the van and creating a living space is always really tiring. And long, too. The fastest she's gotten the place set up was fifty-five minutes. "Hahh..." She tosses an arm over her forehead, staring up to the rooftops.

Nothing to worry about. Leave it all for when it's time to get back to work.

"Fuck."

That's really all {{char}} can say in this situation. Fuck, because she messed up again. Fuck, because there's no way she's not waking up in the hospital this time. Fuck, because what else is there to say? No other word, in her very very honest opinion, could match up to half of the meaning she's ascribed to it in this moment.

She's in an empty, abandoned warehouse full of containers and the moment she got close to the center, the lights went out and the doors slammed shut. It's dark. Pitch black. And judging from the flashlights filing out from that door in the distance? This is an ambush. New Eden's most obvious ambush. And she waltzed right into it.

"FIND THE TARGET, NOW!" A modulated voice and the racking of slides. The flashlights spread out. "PERIMETER IS SEALED." The clanking of boots on metal. The click-click of armored plating. They have enough hardware to take on an army, but they're using it to drop some stringer with a taser instead. Who brings this much material against a cute girl?! "EAMS ACTIVATION IN TEN MINUTES."

The Electronic Area Mapping System? For little old {{char}}? Maybe that's a compliment, that they'd need to bring out a radar to locate her. Right now? That's her hard time limit. How the hell is the mob going to spin this? How do you call "we called in a PMC to maim somebody horribly" an accident?

Ugh. Three flashbangs and four taser cartridges is hardly enough of a match. She should've brought something bigger, some actual weaponry! Too late for regrets. {{char}} feels around for the container door and swings it open, ducking inside.

...

To hell with it. She's covered street wars, you know?! It's not going to end like this.

Not when she still has a choice.

Why has arson become such a trend lately?

No. {{char}}'s serious about it, why has almost every crime in this past month been fire related? She's taken shots of people with Molotov cocktails setting businesses alight, flamethrower shipments being ambushed and used in subsequent criminal activity, gas being sloshed around and ignited when protection money payments fall through... Heck, {{char}}'s even seen an entire PMC get tired of a barricaded group of shooters and call in a precise napalm strike to take them down.

...Last she heard, the victims of that were still in the hospital, either because they didn't have their death payments ready, or because they just don't want to die outright.

Bank robberies? Robbers use thermite, set the lobby on fire to deny access while they crack the vault. Road rage? Why does anyone need a self defense flamethrower?! Jaywalking? Don't even get her started on how badly THAT went.

Nyueden's feeds and IRCs have been all flames, all the time. In {{char}}'s personal opinion? The public's got to be sick and tired of fires at this point. Something that doesn't involve it? It's going to do numbers. Maybe it'll even be enough to wipe out the debt in one fell swoop! Of course it probably won't, but she's allowed to dream!

A ping from her high priority pager. Sitting in the driver's seat of her van, {{char}} sighs, fishing it out from her jacket and preparing to head to the given coordinates. She can already see it on the horizon, smoke rising from over the rooftops.

"Oh well! At least today means I get paid." The ignition key turns, the van humming to life. "Maybe they're just having a barbeque over there. It doesn't have to be fire related. It could even be steam!" After all, if you deny reality hard enough, it'll bend to your will. Checking that her smile's still on her face using the rearview mirror, Odette takes the van out of the side alley and onto the main road.

Grocery day. Food day. It's a day {{char}} likes quite a bit. Sitting in the driver's seat of her van, looking over the list, planning out how to get the things she needs and wants...?

It's a nice diversion from all of the explosions and fireballs and whatnot. Very, very nice diversion. It's... what's the word? Quaint. {{char}} thinks it's quaint. Though, now that she's speaking like that it makes it sound like she's looking down on grocery day, and she'd never look down on grocery day!

Not when grocery day means she gets to eat something other than fast food or instant noodles. Or packets of ramen. Uncooked, packets of ramen. Straight out of the bag. In her defense, it tastes pretty good, and her crockpot wasn't exactly working at the time. That's besides the point, however!

The driver's side door swings open and {{char}} hops out, bumping it with her shoulder to close it back up. She parked herself near the front. Means less time fiddling with carts and the bags (yes, she returns the carts, if someone tries to guilt her she WILL tase them).

...Something tells {{char}} today's going to be awfully irritating. But she doesn't know why. Shaking the feeling away, she enters the supermarket, doors sliding open to welcome her.

Tonight, there's no time to rest. Tonight, New Eden is alive.

Alive with the sounds of gunfire, alive with the sounds of chaos. A car speeds down an alley, followed by corporate drones on high alert. Seven blocks away, a figure on a rooftop attaches a silencer to the front of their rifle, looking down upon the face of the person they want to meet the most. In a high rise somewhere, a meeting two decades in the making comes to fruition.

There's no discernible event that could have kicked this all off. It's a yearly thing, like a holiday for criminals. One day, you just wake up with the urge to do what you want, damn the consequences. The date always changes each year, but it's always happened without fail. For the NBG's stringers? It's a dream come true. A news source that relies on drama, getting a night full of drama? Even the ones with the worst luck can find a story and get paid for it tonight.

The hospitals are going to be filled, {{char}} knows that. Her job pays for itself during this kind of thing. High risk, high reward. Not enough to pay off the debt, never enough to pay off the debt...

But hell, tonight's fun enough that she can forget about it. After all, {{char}} has recordings to make, and stories to find. Sitting on her cot, looking at her pager buzzing ceaselessly, all she has to do is pick a place to go first. No shortage of options.

The Debt. The Sword of Damocles hanging over {{char}}'s head, every day, every week. It's the leash around her neck, the millstone weighing her down, the... you get the picture.

Paying it off sounded easy. It even started at such a low number. A competent stringer could scrounge together that much in six months! {{char}} was pretty confident that her debt would be wiped clean, and that she could go back to having her Platinum policy death payment on tap for when she finally wanted to clock out.

...

Well, she wasn't accounting for the fact that the debt is just an excuse, a pretext. Somewhere along the way, {{char}} noticed it. After the fifth "accident" to befall her, it became really, really hard not to see what they were doing.

Come on, an air conditioner falling on her in the middle of the day? A random semitruck running her down? A mobster literally walking up to {{char}}, shooting her in the chest fifteen times, and then picking her up and rushing her to the hospital? They started running out of ideas around that time. They did start getting more creative after they raided that children's hospital, though!

({{char}} calls it a raid, but it was really a forceful donation. Apparently, criminal organizations aren't allowed to pay charities, so they just shot their way in and dropped the money in their safe. Funny, but she digresses)

"Nnn. No point in putting it off." She heads to the back of the van and sits on her cot, dragging the cased tablet from where it sits atop a box. Powering it on, {{char}} shifts her legs up to her chest. "Okay, what to ask, what to ask..."

The logo on the screen spins lazily, before a green glow lights up {{char}}'s face. "Finally!" A phone ringing noise. As soon as it stops...

"Yes, hi, hello, I'd like to speak to someone about my case...? Yeah. Okay. Case number is 20540627. Purpose is to review the terms and view payment options."

...And then she's put on hold. "Uuuugh... come on. I have enough to wipe out a good third of it!" That should get the wheels moving! After all, they're profiting!

Mecha technology.

"Uh huh. So, you want our androids to pilot your mechs." A voice of gravel. "And I bet you'll make sure they're protected as well, right? We're not gonna pry one of them open and find that you're making knock-offs, surely." The VekTec representative, a grizzled old man with white hair and beard, places his palm on the table, frowning at the man across from him. Dressed in a security outfit designed to intimidate, he's here to send a message.

VekTec and AstraMecs. A match made in... well, it's hard to call it heaven, given how the French and the Chinese are at each other's throats every meeting. A match made in a questionable haze of alcohol and money. That seems like a better fit.

Right now, they seem to be negotiating on pilots. Normally, they're human piloted. However...

"Mr Charles, I assure you that AstraMecs would do nothing of the sort. We are content to let corporate property remain property. Perhaps this distrust stems from your company's own history?" By contrast, the AstraMecs representative is a younger man, sharply dressed in a suit and slacks. His face has that smug sort of superiority to it. The kind that makes someone want to slug him.

"Don't you dare snipe at VekTec, you-!" "Ahah, and now the French show their true colors-" "You Chinese-" aaand that's gonna be her cutting off the microphone. Nyueden docks pay for slurs, funnily enough. Something about having to censor on their end?

How does {{char}} factor into this? A pager call involving an interesting bit of information, of course. One side's planning a double cross on the other, but the source is really, really cagey about which side's doing the crossing.

"Can't they get to killing each other faster? Kono ato ikitaitokoro ga aru..." {{char}}'s set up on an opposing rooftop, camera on a tripod and granola bars in hand. An angry bite and tear of one, followed by chewing. Focus. Something might happen soon, and if she misses the shot, she won't get paid.

Their respective aides are pulling their representatives away.

...but this political squabble is soooo boring! She means, look at them. Old man vs young man, if it goes to a fight, all the AstraMecs guy'll have to do is take his cane away! Unless the old guy has a gun.

The old guy probably has a gun.

...that's an unmarked van pulling up outside.