CyberNinja Quest #3

Archive: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=CyberNinja%20Quest
Twitter: @DeathMatch_QM

Sorry for being gone a few days, turns out running continuously for two weeks is a little straining even with a slow pace.

>1) Try to de-escalate before the building gets demolished and one of you ends up dead
>1.2) Call it even, try to get her to leave
Naoko lunges at you with the sword, changing angle to follow you as you dodge. You slap the blade away and circle to her side. "Stop it. It's over. There's no point in continuing."

She follows the blade, rotates and comes at you with a slash "Giving up then?" You bend backwards under the slash, she adjusts into a downward angle, and you kick up into a backflip, knocking the blade away with your foot and landing in a crouch.

"Neither of us is getting anywhere. The only thing we're doing is wasting time."
"Wasting time?" She pauses for a second, frowning, and then her smile returns "Oh, I see. If you're too busy to start the mission I'd be more than happy to help you with whatever's keeping you! Please, enlighten me, your wish is my command!"

This is bad, she's going to stick to you. You need to get away from her. Excuses won't work, you need a distraction, something to explain your behaviour. It can't be a matter of pride, you just stopped fighting. What will throw her off the scent? You could decided to start that mission afterall, but it might be suspicious now, and you need time to figure out what to do about it anyway.

Wait a minute, think. Right after you go to meet Sugiyama, Naoko shows up at your apartment and demands you immediately come with her on a mission. It could just be the actions of a belligerent partner who hates you, someone trying to come up with an excuse to kill you and take your job, a suspicious partner who wants to keep an eye on you, or maybe someone trying to figure out whether Sugiyama gave you any missions you don't want Yutaka knowing about.

There are three scenarios. First, you don't have any assignment from Sugiyama, meaning you have nothing better to do, and no reasons save for personal dislike and/or distrust to not go with her. Second, you have a mission from Sugiyama, but it's one you plan on telling Yutaka about and/or sabotaging, and thus you would tell her to get rid of her. Last, if you had a mission from Sugiyama that Yutaka couldn't know about, you'd have to divert suspicion by making up a fake mission, or pretending you had nothing better to do.

Of course, every possible response leads to her sticking to you. She has absolutely nothing to lose by staying and nothing to gain by leaving. Likewise, any continued struggling just leads to increased suspicion about Sugiyama's assignment. No matter what, it doesn't look like you'll be getting any sleep.

>1) Tell her about the tongs, hide the real reason behind the job
>2) Look deeper into Yutaka's mission, maybe you can find a way to do both jobs
>3) Writein

>>1282136
>2) Look deeper into Yutaka's mission, maybe you can find a way to do both jobs

>>1282136
>2) Look deeper into Yutaka's mission, maybe you can find a way to do both jobs

>2) Look deeper into Yutaka's mission, maybe you can find a way to do both jobs
There's still a way out of this, Yutaka's mission potentially overlaps your own. It's possible you can find a way to spin it in your favor. Doing it while Naoko's watching you could get complicated, but you can handle complicated. You walk back over to the printer tray, pick up the sheaf of papers again and start reading.

There's a lot of information, names, dates, locations. It seems that this mission is a lot broader than you thought. The only stated goal is an assassination, but it's more like a coup. When the head of the Golden Eight is killed, there will be an election of sorts, and a new leader will be selected form the current district executives.

It seems like there's no real clear frontrunner, alliances between districts have been made, factions have formed, and currently there's a massive amount of capital being moved around to deal with a sudden influx of competition from local gangs. The entire organization might collapse, or come close to it, and there's a veritable army of sharks eager to jump in at the first sign of weakness.

Yutaka's made inroads with one of the factions, it seems that three of the western executives don't like their current leader either, and have expressed their willingness to back any attempt to get rid of him. What their problem with him is, how exactly they plan to depose him, and what arrangement with Yutaka they have, if any, isn't included. Either Yutaka doesn't know, or he's decided not to tell you.

This is heading for a bloodbath. But what's Yutaka after? He's never had to deal with the underworld, he has his own connections. Disrupting the city will only hurt him, at best he'll come out the other end in the same position he's in now. Then again, not everyone is Yutaka Iwao, most of his competitors deal with the Eight, and if the Eight falls apart, so do they. An interesting move, but you don't believe it. Yutaka doesn't care about money anymore, he's got his eyes on something bigger. But what? Putting that aside, this mission has a gigantic surface area, pretty much the entire city is going to be affected by the end, there has to be a way to set things up to fall in your favor.

From what you can find, Pretty Boy seems to be pretty tightly aligned with the current head, which might explain his interest in helping you kill Yutaka. Anyone who's planning to take out the leader is going to have to go through pretty Boy, so the western executives are probably already trying to weaken him. They're probably connected to the tongs, that might be an example of how Yutaka is connected to them.

--continued--

>>1286178
A plan is forming, it's not solid, but it could work. You need to know the identity of whoever's in charge of the tong in district four, the western executives probably know. You could get that information from them, and "assist" them with Pretty Boy. He won't be happy about you moving against him, but getting him the leader, and information on a factions trying to overthrow his boss could make up for that. In addition, Pretty Boy has a lot of favor with his boss, if you could connect Yutaka to an attempted coup, you could potentially get a lot more than a district executive on your side.

It looks like contacting the western executives should be your first move. But which one of them? You have contact for all three, and each one of them has their positives. If they're planning on a coup, which one of them is going to seize the throne? And do the other two agree?

The head of district five will have more connections to Pretty Boy, the tongs you're supposed to be helping him kill, and Yutaka.
District six seems to have the most resources of the three, cash and otherwise, large amounts of the information in this document came from him.
You're in district seven right now. It doesn't have much going for it besides the view, but the executive of this district, "Shocker" has quite a reputation. Apparently she got her current position by killing the last district head, and four others who came after her for revenge, personally.

>1) Contact District five: "Wire"
>1) Contact District six: "Locust"
>1) Contact District seven: "Shocker"
>4) Writein

>>1286184
>1) Contact District seven: "Shocker"