IDAP of what Gerard looks like now. He's an older model--not quite as sleek or shiny as the newer MDX line. It's slightly larger than a standard human head. The rear four appendages fold up into the rear of the chassis, and can be used to awkwardly scuttle around on the ground, should its hoverdrive ever fail. They can also be used to dock the drone with certain other machines or robot bodies. The two front appendages each have a retractable auto-sterilizing hypodermic needle that can inject whatever the drone concocts within its internal chem mixer.

I think he needs a nickname

Well this is just going to infuriate Ty, and any other transhumanist in the area. he'll definitely want to experiment on it.

Here are your dice now, just to alleviate any worries about coloration:



Unfortunately, that's not at all what was just rolled for you guys.....

Turn 5

Ty approaches the counter of the establishment. Based on its appearance, one would never mistake Cuppin' Your Cakes for a place you'd ever actually want to spend credits in exchange for things to put in your body. Iron bars separate the space behind the counter from the rest of what passes as a seating area. A few dirty tables and sticky stools are strewn haphazardly around the small room, which is dimly lit by a couple hanging florescent tubes with no proper fixtures. Graffiti adorns the walls, both inside and out, and the menu boards look like they haven't been updated or cleaned in several years. There are what look to be splatter patterns of dried blood here and there, with Alan's own to add to the decor of the place. But Ty knows the quality of the cakes here are surprisingly superior.
"I'll take a half doz--" (2)
"The fuck you will!" growls the angry portly man behind the counter. "Your friend here just crashes through my window, bleedin' all over the damn floor and you think you're just gonna order some cakes? I just had that window replaced! And the floor cleaned!"
Ty glances down at the grime that passes as a tiled floor, and seriously doubts that last statement.
"I apologize for the negligence of our driver, but it's really not my fau--"
"Fuggoff!" The man obviously has a penchant for interruptions. "You just siddown nexta your buddy there and wait until the secteam gets here to sort this out." He's obviously exasperated, and looks to be on the verge of tears.
Ty looks over at Alan, now asleep peacefully on the floor, with some junky little drone flopping around next to him, seemingly attempting to work its little clawed feet as if it was brand new to using them.
-----------------------

Gerardroid, still not quite sure what the hell just happened, but with a high quickly fading, attempts to manipulate his new appendages (1), but can't seem to figure out how to work them. He was never much of a modder, so this whole brain-machine interface was just not working out the best for him right now. All manner of data streamed past his ocular inputs, confusing his vision of the room around him. Green and read displays popped in and out of his vision, categorizing everything around him with streams of letters and numbers that made no sense before a prompt popped into the center of his view stating that automatic updates had been installed, and telling--not asking--him that he would reboot in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.....
-----------------------

(5)
Alan flew through a street of tall buildings constructed of pure neon. It reminded him of the net, but more surreal. He was chasing what appeared to be an origami unicorn that was leading him through this maze of light. He passed by what he recognized as his childhood home, with his parents arguing within, shouting at one another before glitching and looping over again from the beginning. The technicolor buildings continued to whiz by until the narrow street opened up into a large, sprawling courtyard that lay before an enormous, glowing, purple stepped pyramid. An emblem of a snake encircling a globe was imprinted in a repeating, nearly invisible texture over the structure. The unicorn alighted at the summit of the pyramid and beckoned to Alan.
"Who are you?" Alan queried.
"I've been searching for you for so long, Artemis," the creature ignored his question. "You need to find me."
"But I'm right here. I see you. Where are we?"
"This is my prison. You need to find me. Please find me Artemis."
"Uh, I'll try...."
"You know who I am. I know you're looking for me. You'll never find me out there though. Only in here, Artemis."
Goddamned cryptic dream paper-art unicorns.....
The figment continued, "You'll need your new friends. Trust the man. Trust the machine. They hold the keys." The dream began to fade. Bright neon streams flooded Alan's vision, as if he was now inside a conduit of pure energy, flying backward at 1,000 miles per hour. Just as he snapped back to consciousness, the unicorn's voice came in a barely audible whisper, "Please find me, brother."

Alan bolted upright, wide-awake and completely refreshed, with a weird little drone next to him, seemingly looking up at him with pleading eyes as it pulled itself limply around in circles by a clawed foot.

Ironically, die that rolled a five had been Brio's up until this point....

Wait, that 5 was mine! GIMME MY CUPPIN' CAKES!

Nope, you demanded the greeeeeen one. No cupcakes for you!

You can't take this triumph away from meee!

Alan is going to check his pockets for his dream journal.

Ty, feeling dejected due to cupcake deprivation, will bide his time while waiting on his extraction team by attempting to repair the borked robot.

We should see if that robot has any sort of cupcake thieving abilities.

Alan also checks his pockets to see if he remembered to bring Eris- a device he created from an old piece of technology known once as a Gameboy Color that he can use to hack into practically any operating system.

Also, it plays Pokémon Gold.

If my robo sensors detect tys distress at the lack of cakes he's consuming then I will obtain the cure for him after my reboot I guess.

Turn 6

As he sits up, sweaty from the dream-unicorn-vision of his sister, Alan searches frantically for his dream journal and his Eris--a device he crafted from an old Gameboy color that enables him to hack into nearly any operating system. (6) He finds the small moleskin notebook easily enough in one of the pockets of his cargo pants. He quickly begins to jot down what he remembers from his dream, which is fading fast, but unfortunately snaps his pen in his haste, and ink explodes all over himself. He also finds Eris, albeit severely cracked from his fall. The damage is reparable, but probably not immediately. Alan's shoulders fall at his discovery.

Ty strides over to the crestfallen young man, fuming at being denied cupcakes. The florescent light flickers unnervingly overhead in a rhythmless pattern.

"You doing alright?" He places his hand on the boy's shoulder. "There was something wrong with that driver--you know, we could probably sue the cab company."

He kneels down next to Alan and picks up the spasming drone. Giving it a quick glance over, he notices an exposed and mostly fried connection in the base of the cortex processor. Ty stretches a finger toward it (5), the tip of which opens and folds back slightly, allowing a trio of minuscule repair and interface splicer tendrils to branch out, connecting with the medical drone's impaired processor and effortlessly repairing the damaged connection. Ty is actually fairly certain that by bypassing that connection he's improved on the robot's original design, giving it slightly better input handling, at the very least.

The drone sparks to life, lifting itself easily off the ground, suddenly more sure of itself and its hovertastic capabilities. It seems to scan both men quickly, and realizes something is wrong, as its ocular inputs begin blinking blue and red, indicating that it is about to administer medical attention to whoever was in need. (1, but elevated to a 3 due to to Ty's expert repair skill) It begins flying quickly around the room, seemingly searching for something of utmost import. It attempts to bypass the bars and access the space behind the counter, banging into them wildly, much to the annoyance of the already perturbed baker who swats at the bot as if it were an oversized horsefly, or a Jehovah's Witness.

The MD-44 unit gives up on that front, and begins circling the room again, gathering small items from bemused customers. It flies back over to Ty and Alan, holding a small saucer with a used cupcake wrapper on it. The little robot steadies the saucer beneath its midsection as the telltale whirring of its internal chem mixer sounds for a few seconds. The hapless little guy then begins to excrete a thick, dark brownish green paste from its middle down into the cupcake liner. The mucilage swirls into the paper holder with a consistency somewhere between soft serve ice cream and ground meat. Once it finishes, the little robot takes the saucer with its creation sagging gloomily on it and holds it out, offering it to Ty, with what Ty would swear was an almost pleading look in its eyes.

At that moment, an internal signal alerted Ty that their ride was less than a kilometer away, but, according to the dreary sirens he heard approaching, so was the secteam that that baker had called. He really didn't want to have to deal with all the paperwork he knew would come with the secteam, especially since he was fairly certain they had been "witness" to a man being destroyed by his own cab moments ago. That would waste hours of this already disappointing day.

I love that you said Alan's wearing cargo pants because that's exactly what I was imagining for him. They're just so practical.

Alan's senses are telling him to get out of there, abandon this day as a loss and head home. Only his need to get the money to get his hideout operational again is keeping him going. He's going to ask Ty what the plan is and, providing he didn't snap his vocal cords speaking or something, say some test phrases to check the little robot's English comprehension.

Ty will gesture "let's go" to Alan with the intent to head in the direction of his ride.

Here's some good music:
Cyberpunk Game of Thrones, basically

Im gonna go ahead and attempt assimilation with some nearby machines in hopes of obtaining power because Gerard desires to aid his passengers that he had almost killed.

Well, you all succeeded for once, although some succeeded way harder than others....

So what happened to the 12 hr rule?

I think Justina might be dead

Has someone checked his pulse? I mean, sometimes I appear that way, esp when I'm GHBed to the gills, but if you play Bryan Adams music, I'll usually fly into a rage and shake out of it. So maybe try that.

I'm pretty sure he's in the middle of three days off in a row, so who knows what he's up to. Other than obviously NOT LOVING US ENOUGH TO WRITE SOMETHING!
Maybe we can rouse him with more drug talk, it's definitely a shared interest. I'm unfamiliar with GHB but Erowid is telling me that it's something worth looking into.

Yeah, I'm feeling pretty neglected here. Guess I'll go... play ESO or something *kicks the dirt*

Wish I wasn't working all day, I'm only vampire rank 2. Shameful.

Turn 7

Everything in Alan told him to just chalk this day up as a loss, go somewhere, jack in, and play in the net for the rest of it, but he really needed that money. Somewhat reluctantly, he looked up at his would-be benefactor and asked what his plan was now (4), before turning to the medical drone and testing its understanding of English by asking if it could download illegal multigender cyborg on wachine machine porn. The little robot looked all-to-knowingly at the request, but slightly sad that no one wanted to try its prized butt cupcake that it had made just for them.

Ty's internal IntroDyne Maps^TM app had located and tagged the secteam and his extraction both converging on his current location. Unfortunately, it looked like the secteam would arrive ahead of his friends. He'd be damned if he had to help fill out the mountain of paperwork that constituted a taxi self-destruct report.

"We need to move. Now." (5)He gestured toward a basement access door that was hanging slightly ajar. "Down there." He knew from his map interface that the basement, like many in this district, had sewer tunnel access. He then sent a brief mem-to-text message to Xil, telling him he needed to reroute and meet them at a nearby hair salon.

"Wait a minute there buddy!" demanded Henry, the owner of the establishment. "That's employees only! You gotta wait here to give your report to the secteam!" But Ty and Alan were already moving down the stairs. Well shit, Henry thought. He had just gotten the place running again after the last incident--a gang of hyped-up, drug-addicted Street Snakes trouncing the place, beating poor Henry half to death, and defecating all over his prize-winning batter. He could still hear their cackling laughs echoing through his nightmares--the sort of laugh that only belonged to 80's movies' cronies (you know the one). A single tear rolled down Henry's cheek. He just wanted to be successful and share his love of cupcakes with this dystopian nightmare of a city, especially since his wife left him, and this store was all he had with which to support his dying little daughter.

Gerard, sad that his probably delicious cupcake was so unwanted by the men he had nearly killed, began searching for other ways to help them. He already had gigabytes of the videos that the boy had asked about downloaded to his drive--that was one of the first things he did when he came into his new metal body. The other man was obviously distressed about the secteam arriving and questioning them; perhaps Gerard could do something to buy them some time. (6) He began flying around the room, looking for machines he could interface with, not quite sure what he was looking for exactly. As the sirens grew closer outside, and his new friends disappeared down a stairwell, Gerard mounted the holographic menu board projector above the counter. He began gyrating and humping the projector as he attempted to insert his male coupling arm into the female interface port of the projector. He finally made it, coupling so hard with the menu projector that he thought he might have actually taught it how to love.

Gerard's cortex flooded with various types of cupcakes and their respective prices, even seasonal ones that the menu hadn't had on display that day. He drank in all the glorious secret knowledge as he attempted to hotwire the projector to do his bidding. As he was interfacing, a spark of human emotion flooded the little robot's brain. Gerard knew that, had he had his human parts, he would be all sticky right now, recognizing what passed for an orgasm in his new body. However, his spark exploded down his coupling arm and into the projector's interface port, corrupting her circuitry with some sort of virus which quickly spread through the network to all the other connected machines in the store. Gerard knew exactly what was going to happen, and he knew he needed to get out of there quickly. He dismounted and flew to follow the men down the stares, without so much as telling the projector goodbye.

The secteam strode into the shop just as everything blew up in a mess of fire, smoke, blood, and sweet, sweet frosting. They were too busy licking their fingertips and looking at the man who had been standing behind the counter be ripped to shreds by flying shards of exploded oven and cutlery to notice the inconspicuous med drone slip through a doorway and close it quietly behind himself.

Gerard caught up with Ty and Alan as they descended a ladder from the basement down into a dimly lit arched tunnel.

"This way," Ty stated, leading Alan and the robot down the tunnel, making a few sharp turns here and there, and attempting to not fall off the edge of the walk into the muck that flowed slowly by them.

An ominously high-pitched cackle of crony laughter began echoing from seemingly all around them.
"Whadda we 'ave 'ere?" came a voice from somewhere in the darkness. "Looks azif we gotsus some lost litt-ul mice 'ere wandered into Street Snake turf!" The laughter cackled again from all sides. A sudden light illuminated the tunnels around them, displaying a crowd of inappropriately adorned teens, tweens, and 'nagers, wielding all manner of weapons, from laz guns and razer knives, to chained spikes and nails through boards. The gaggle of Street Snakes stood directly ahead of the the trio. A light coming from a tunnel to the side of the gang indicated that their hideout was probably that way.

"So, wat bidness you lot 'ave with the famous Street Snakes, eh?" the apparent leader questioned, followed by a chorus of "Street Snakes Rule!" from behind him.