2. Back At The Ramen Shop

Good thing I ran into the edgerunners as Tease was bringing them back. I’ve been working alone for a while now, and frankly it gets boring after a while. So this is good, I am lucky. I like this. I also feel like Tease doesn’t like my presence anymore, which hurts tbh.

Anyhow, Tease has promised the edgerunners $3000 each for finishing the job. One of the guys, Alvin, I think, (the Nic Cage poser), also insisted that Tease protects him and makes sure no harm comes to him. Frankly, yeah, I get that. Money can only offer so much protection.

They are an aggressive bunch though. I wouldn’t recommend aggroing Tease all that much, but hey, it seems to have worked out for them. The kid, Jimmy, tried to calm things down and give things structure a little, but I feel like that’s exhausting for the poor kid.

Anyway, the deal was made, and next they needed a vehicle and someone to drive them back to the ramen shop to start their investigation. So I volunteered, or they asked me. I’d like to think I volunteered. But before we could head out, Jeep caught up with them and asked them to sign their NDAs like good lil’ edgerunners.

Before long, we were back at the ramen shop. I had to leave for some business, so the next part is all hearsay. On the drive back from the ramen shop we had plenty of time to catch up and they explained the whole thing to me.

So Edge, being a man of intense honour, apparently decided to cremate Master’s body in the ol’ fire pit behind the shop. Before he could do that, however, they took a look at the poor man’s body. See, I didn’t know this, but Master was heavily enhanced with cybernetics. Bones, organs, all kinds of things. Just how old must’ve been that guy! Kinda jealous, tbh.

Oh and they’ve seen the tattoo as well. Master’s usually very modest about that little thing. Never asked though. Thought it would be rude.

Next, they went inside the shop. Turns out, Jimmy was actually living in the shop’s basement. I guess Master just took pity on the guy and decided to give him a home. So Jimmy has built himself a nice little workshop where he kept a whole bunch of cyber-equipments. He insisted that we help take all that stuff back to the HQ because he thought it’d be useful.

He also took Master’s terminal with him, because they weren’t able to get past the password encryption. I’m sure that’ll figure itself out at some point.

Last, while checking out the dead grunts, they found a note on the decapitated one. Implicating Blackhand – one of the Warlords. So it seems like the next stop is going to be Blackhand’s warehouse by the old mountain, y’know the garbage one.

So now we’ve just come back to Tease’s HQ so that the gang can re-stock. Kush Bomb the rockerboy and Jimmy decided that they need to acquire some weaponry, so I took them down to the acquisitions office to check in with Cad and Phil.

Meanwhile, Alvin and Edge went back up to have a chat with Tease. I’m assuming Tease is not going to give them any sort of backup in the form of more soldiers. (Considering the NDA and all.) But they might be able to get blueprints or something.

Imagine Edge, being the son of a rich corpo, failing to read the blueprints on his first try though. That would be fricking hilarious. What a disaster that would be, boy I’m laughing right now as I’m writing this. Or imagine if he calls someone for help and then ends up becoming MORTAL ENEMIES with them. That’d be, also, equally hilarious.

So next up is the warehouse, I suppose. I wonder if they’ll let me come with them.