<div style="text-align: center;"><a class="postlink" href="https://creativefreedomrpg.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&amp;t=47878">[OOC]</a></div><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"Good evening, Midnight City! How we all doing tonight?"</span><br/><br/>9:30 p.m., New York. The day was ending for a lot of folks, and the roads were alive with activity. Concrete highways rose in levels above the ground, coiled around buildings that made skyscrapers look like shacks. The sky was clear, as much as it got in a big city, not a cloud in it. The lower levels bustled with the same intensity as the roads. Crowds moved in busy masses, and cars traveled in packs directed by the traffic lights. Above them, billboards shone with bright neon-shaded holograms, washing the city in a brilliant contrast of shades. Pink and blue stood out amongst the dark backdrop of asphalt and cement.<br/><br/>Parked outside a small diner on the ground level, a black car rested still. The windows were shut, and only a slight muffled sound could be heard outside of it. Within the vehicle, the radio played, the dim lights of the controls and the dashboard the only illumination besides the lights of the building entering through the driver side window. The radio's screen showed the station's name, Midnight FM. The announcer was among the more distinctive of broadcasters. A vocal augmentation gave him a distinct mechanical twang to his voice, much like that of a vocoder.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"It's been a long, long day for all of us, I know.  Workin' hard or hardly workin', life throws its punches and never holds back. Now a lot of us are going back home, back to those important things, ready to kick back and relax. But to those of us whose days are just started, this one goes out to you."</span><br/><br/>The announcer's voice went silent, and a<a class="postlink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsGWurRzaEk">song</a>began to play. During the slow buildup of the introduction, a tone came from the dashboard, and a feminine, but clearly artificial voice spoke.<br/><br/>"Incoming call from: Anne. Do you wish to answer?" The voice asked. An AI built into the car's systems that aided with navigation and communications was quite standard these days. With one that was good enough, a person could essentially mark a destination and relax while their car drove itself.<br/><br/>Jack, the driver, slightly adjusted his seating and leaned forward. "Yeah, put her on." As the call was taken, a projection was displayed on the interior of the windshield. A picture of the caller, as well as other relevant information such as connection quality and locations. "Heyo," He answered, making a slight wave towards the portrait.<br/><br/>"Hey, Jack. Work news." Anne was seated in an office at the police station, calling through her watch. The earpiece functioned as both incoming and outgoing speakers, while the screen displayed information similar to that on Jack's windshield.<br/><br/>"Which CEO's kid did we arrest this time?" Jack sardonically asked, tugging a box of cigarettes out of his shirt's chest pocket. He plucked one out of the pack and placed it between his teeth. He then raised his right hand, the top of his thumb's metallic casing shifting apart. From the tip, a lighter apparatus shifted forward and out. He made a motion similar to snapping his fingers, and with the small flame that now sat on the tip of his finger, he lit the cigarette's end and shook out the fire, encasing the lighter in its resting position again.<br/><br/>Anne smiled a bit at that. "Nope, not that this time. You know those shootings that have been going on? Turns out another one went down, and we've got footage this time." A string of mass murders had taken place across the city, normally targeted at criminal gatherings. Vigilante work, if she had to guess. Helpful, but not something they could allow to continue. "Chief wants you to see it. They're putting some more officers on the case, us included."<br/><br/>"Finally something we can go off of. Alright, be there soon. Any news on who those officers are?" Jack turned the key by the steering wheel, starting the car properly. Before pulling out of his parking space, he took a moment to secure his seatbelt. The call information shifted out of the way as the vehicle began moving, sticking to the bottom and sides of the windshield projection instead of the whole thing.<br/><br/>"Nothing they couldn't tell you better. But hey, they're apparently pretty good. You should be able to get along with them just fine," Anne responded. "See you soon."<br/><br/>The call ended, and Jack's car turned onto a highway ramp. The information projected onto the windshield vanished, and the bright lights lining the road illuminated the signs above it. It would be a bit of a drive, but he had absolutely no complaints about that.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Elsewhere, a test of some homemade gear was about to take place. Atop an older apartment building, only about four floors tall, a young woman adjusted a series of straps holding something onto her. A backpack-styled piece of equipment with four cylindrical extensions took some preparation and positioning to get on. Once it was in place, she pressed something on the belt strap, and four plugs in the pack screwed themselves into augmentations lining her torso.<br/><br/>A light on the back of her neck augmentation glowed, confirming the connection was successful. The cylinders segmented, and extended to a length of about five feet each. They began to move around, as if each was constructed with hundreds of joints, in a smoothly flowing motion around her. "Okay, looking good. Let's get going." She spoke to apparently nobody, and after tightening the strap of the bag that was currently hanging off her hip, she broke into a run towards the edge of the building.<br/><br/>Taking a jump right off, the mechanical limb on her upper right shoulder shot forward, the segments stretching further to increase its length to ten feet, just enough to grab the edge of the next building. The other three changed position as well, moving forward to catch the impact against the wall rather than let her smash into it. The first limb began to retract, and the others moved her up the surface with a walking motion until she reached the edge. She directed them to lift her directly onto the roof, at which point she glanced back over her shoulder.<br/><br/>A silent message was sent through her nanomachine communicator, directed towards the only person she was synched up to.<span style="font-style: italic">"Come on, Juzo. I thought parkour was your thing?"</span>She was very much only giving some good-natured banter, but being in the lead was always fun.<span style="font-style: italic">"Don't drop your bag, that stuff was expensive to put together. C'moooon."</span>She turned forward again, and made her way towards the next building, propelling herself forward with the two lower limbs extending from her back. They extended to full length to catch her fall on the shorter building's length, and after impact, they slowly began to retract until her feet touched the floor.<br/><br/>She moved them out of the way, curling the limbs behind her back to give her space to remove and set down her bag. Placing it on the floor, she squatted next to it and opened the zipper, taking out a variety of objects. A few small drones, some disk-shaped objects, and a dark green full-faced helmet. A few brushes of her hair aside on the back exposed a plug augmentation, which she lined up with a USB-like device on the interior of the helmet as she put it on.<br/><br/>The visor lit up for a moment as an HUD was projected onto the interior. The drones that had been set on the ground activated, and began to float around her as they moved into positions that she directed them into. It was just about time to get the testing started, and since she evidently had all the time in the world before her partner finally caught up, there were plenty of preparations she could make.