Lost Rain
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Outrun - Chapter 226
🕑 Added 2025-03-19 22:04:01 +0000 UTCI rubbed at my new eye, looking around my speakeasy as I moved to the back workshop. Everything was as I left it. No sign of any intruder. One less worry on my shoulders if this place was still safe.
The eye would take some getting used to. It was slightly worse off than my normal eye, but still far better than my vision had been back before the system. After the surgery, the interface had mutated the cloned flesh, applying all my Perks to it. It likewise had an amber core in the pink iris and changed to a vertical pupil. It'd been unbearably uncomfortable, though I managed to not react and keep it relatively well hidden.
The eye itself felt a little weird like it was heavier or something. Maybe since I just got it? I could feel that the clone flesh eye wasn't natural just the same as when I had chrome. It would take some getting used to.
I also stopped by Nael's on the way here and got a checkup. He fixed up my chrome, including the datajacks at my wrists. That'd been a process and half, and I was glad I had him around to help out.
Before doing anything, I dumped kerosene onto the silver Crystallization Array and started the tedious process of making Crystalized Fire. It could run in the background while I did some other stuff. I had a feeling I’d need a lot of it, especially with some ideas I had. It was time to put the molotovs to rest and make some proper fire grenades.
First things first though, I needed to repair all my gear. I started with my backpack. The ash and soot weren’t hard to wash out, and the glass shards I shook out easily enough. I covered a few holes with patches, making the whole thing look more rustic. I could probably sell it as a designer item if I had to. Just getting a new backpack wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I really didn’t want to reintegrate the Drop Chutes and Blackout into a new one.
The Drop Chutes themselves were still in good enough condition, though I went around and fixed a few minor dinks and some messed-up wiring. Blackout’s focusing lens was broken, so it also needed a replacement. Simple enough to do. I also threw the battery on the charger.
I hammered my shock gauntlet back into shape and repaired the wiring. Then I rooted through my scrap chrome for more pieces to make another one. I’d have to print some parts to make it capable of shocking again, so I just made the basic shape, set up the SITCH to make the microelectronics, and then moved on while I waited for the printer to finish.
My poncho was gone, unfortunately. I spent a while on the company’s website messing around with designs and different options before I finally ordered a new one. Of course I went with the climate control, which had been particularly nice. With fall coming up, and later winter, climate control would be extremely important for staying warm. Winters in Aythryn City were brutal.
This time I opted for a five-preset chroma. I went with the same basic urban camo, desert camo, bright white, and the two new options were a forest camo and a Blue Crusade pattern with the shield and laurel emblem on the back. The forest probably wouldn’t get much use, but I was finding myself in more and more situations where I was surrounded by greenery these days. The Crusade one was so I could wear it over my Crusade gear more comfortably.
They had so many cool options I wanted to get too, but they jumped up the price significantly. For instance, electrokinetic tassels that shocked anyone who touched me, psychedelic graffiti mode which could daze and confuse opponents, reactive ballistic weave that could stiffen to resist small arms and knives, and dozens of other options. They even had a whole line of magical effects I briefly glanced through. Most of them required being an Adept or Magus to get any use out of though. The more advanced options started at twenty-thousand Rayn.
Seriously impressive how far Poncho Unlimited was pushing poncho technologies, though the only other feature I settled on was simple EMP shielding. It was a kind of tech that could minorly help resist a Netrunner and fully protect against EMP and microwave-type attacks. All in all, the price was way higher at four thousand Rayn compared to the fifteen hundred last time.
I checked my First International Boswan Bank account: eighty-three thousand, three hundred and four Rayn left. I’d already used about a fifth of what I earned from the job with the Crimson Company. Granted, most of that was spent buying explosives, chemicals, and gear. And I wouldn’t have to worry about rent anymore. My poor apartment.
The first batch of Crystalized Fire was just finishing up, so I pulled out the red glowing crystal and started the next one. For now, I just left it off to the side while I continued work on other things.
Next up on the list… gear upgrades? I guess? Or the wrist guns… let's go with upgrades first. I started with the Scouters. I fully stripped the design to its basic parts and reworked the entire blueprint. I got rid of the Hibisen slot since I hardly used it, slimming the profile down even more. It was now about the size of an eye.
The camera also got a massive rework. It went from a frankly low-quality cam to a high-quality one with a night vision toggle incorporated into it. I even threw in some micro mics upgraded and adapted from my Listeners. I wanted to add some thermal imaging into it too, but the battery wouldn’t be able to hold up with all the features. I set the printer to start working on Scouter 3.0’s electronics once it finished the gauntlet parts.
My turrets also got an upgrade, though it was just the targeting software. On top of that, I added manual kill switches to every single piece of my tech just in case. I’d hate for a Netrunner to hijack something and use it against me. Especially one of my turrets.
With the upgrades done, I moved on to the wrist guns. The parts were already all printed and ready for me to work on, so I started putting it all together. The targeting arrays that were supposed to be built into them were useless at the moment since I had gone with a flesh eye this time, so I skipped them for the time being.
I ran into a few issues with my new toys, though they were relatively minor ones. Half the design was modified from Sentinel’s stuff, so it was really just my adjustments and modifications that caused hitches. There was a reason they made theirs the way it was. The biggest issue was in making the thing so slim that some of the parts came out extremely weak.
Once I finished the first one, I loaded it up with point twenty-twos. It was a hefty piece of tech even without the sixteen shots. Just holding it while fully loaded weighed my arm down. My next variant would need some serious adjustments to the weight, but for now I could just- just get used to it, I guess.
I went down to the Underground, back to where I set up a temporary firing range. I wasn’t gonk enough to test it out while wearing the gauntlet. I just regrew my hand and I’d rather not have it blown off again. Instead, I set up a string to fire it from safety.
I ran several tests, most of them missing the target horribly as I worked out a few kinks in the mechanisms. The biggest issue was the drum mag design. It just- it wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be. It was a cool aesthetic, but, like… aesthetic wasn’t worth my life?
It was bulky, heavy, and had serious jamming issues. I could hardly get two or three shots off before I needed to manually adjust something. And it was noisy. The components inside jiggled around quite a bit, which could complicate things considering my usual MO. I could try to fix it, but I wasn’t even sure if it was worth the effort.
Back up in my temporary workshop, I reworked the schematic slightly after prepping another batch of Crystalized Fire. Chopping the heavy drum mag entirely, I went with a belt feed instead. It would be far lighter, easier to store, and less restrictive on my wrist.
I set the new parts to print, this time using my old printer since the SITCH was busy. While all that was going on, I sat back and started working on something entirely new on my sketchpad.
AOE and power were my biggest issues by far. No matter what situation I found myself in, I never had a good solution for taking out multiple enemies quickly. Frag grenades were simple and easy, but they were lacking in their own ways. And, on the same note, I still didn’t have anything to take out large opponents.
The Blaze rounds were cool, but Aether Imbued bullets needed more investment before they could pull off the large, serious damage I wanted. The only reason my current set of Blaze rounds worked was thanks to their good effect on the human body. Getting hit with what was essentially thermite was a terrifying prospect.
A simple solution came to mind, one that I’d been putting off for several reasons. Cost, experimentation, weight, bulk, and in-combat deployment time were a few of the problems why I’d been shoving it off.
Weight and bulk could be fixed with a few methods, and the in-combat deployment time wouldn’t be as big of a problem as I originally thought it would be. Recent ventures had proven that my typical style was good for buying time and repositioning. I just needed a heavy hitter to help me get by.
The simple solution was a big gun. Simple, like I said. Some kind of grenade launcher or heavy-caliber rifle would do the trick. Even both depending on how I set it.
Of course, making a system that could fire both heavy calibers and toggle for a grenade launcher would be very complicated. And honesty, probably not worth it. Carrying both would also not be great considering all the added weight. An under-barrel grenade launcher would work, but I had a different idea.
If I shifted focus onto a non-conventional weapon platform, my main issues were solved. For instance a coil gun. They were rarer than conventional firearms in the modern age, mainly thanks to being harder to produce, maintain, far worse durability in rugged locations, harder logistically, and way more expensive. Oh, and most coil guns weren’t automatic thanks to the limitations of the tech.
That isn’t to say they weren’t around though. I did some research on coilguns as I thought about the design. Most of the time they’re favored for specialty options. Snipers in particular liked them, as did corporate operators.
As for me, a coil gun would make a good secondary weapon to have, though I’d save it only for situations where I needed AOE or my main rifle lacked damage. It’d give me that umph that my current kit lacked.
All that being said, they were complicated and the battery would be a slight issue. The design itself wouldn’t be too bad to set up though. Electromagnetic weapons were one of the main research branches of Sentinel, so I had a dozen different designs stored away in my memory.
Sentinel worked on everything from rotary-type miniguns to assist rapid fire to micro pistol-style coil-guns. There were options for everything from non-lethal shotgun pellet designs to high-powered flechette snipers that could auto-adjust for wind and other factors that would affect the shot.
Then there were the highly experimental specialty-type electromagnetic guns. Things like the ‘Hurricane’, which absorbed incoming shots using a projected magnetic field, then shot them back in a maelstrom of pure destruction. The Hurricane required a mounted exoskeleton or to be anchored on a vehicle though. Or the ‘Singularity’ which supposedly used overcharged Gravitic rounds to create temporary localized gravity wells. Each round would be insanely expensive if it used Gravitic, though a localized gravity well would be highly destructive.
Sentinel was cooking up some terrifying weapons, and that was just on the coil gun side of things. Their rail cannons were even more horrifying. There's a reason most of the stuff was experimental though. The Hurricane had severe friendly fire issues and the Singularity exploded frequently according to the research notes.
A favorite feature of their blueprints was togglable Whisper mode, which fired at the perfect velocity to be entirely silent. Perfect for me. And they had a bunch of different variants of non-lethal modes for riot control purposes. They also had some micro-battery designs, but they needed stuff I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on. I could copy their lightweight micro-capacitors though.
I thought through the stored blueprints one more time, pulling out any key features as I started designing something to fit my purposes. It’d be a rifle, one lightweight with the capability of firing a bunch of different calibers without issue. Built-in toggles to adjust projectile velocity too. I pulled out dozens of design elements, throwing them together and working on a beast of a rifle. It’d take time to get everything set up though. It looked to be the most delicate and complex build I’d ever taken on.
Unfortunately, I didn't feel like I’d have time with the way things were going. For the time being, while I worked on the coil gun’s design, I started printing a fairly simple grenade launcher. It’d give me some better firepower for now while I worked on other things. I copied one of the blueprints I stole from the Night Market down exactly then queued it to print.
I also set the printer to start working on grenades to be fired from it. They were based on things I saw in the Night Market. The first was a basic frag. The second was essentially a molotov. I could print the shells and stuff for now, though I’d have to prime them manually later.
With all my machines running and printing parts for the future, I left the speakeasy and called a taxi. My next location was the Crusade apartment I'd been given. It was incredibly late and I was more than ready to sleep the night away.
Comments
Lost Rain
Thank you! It's fixed.
gedas
Thx, was bugging me. On a different note: "All in all, the price was way higher at four thousand rain compared to the fifteen hundred last time." Rain->Rayn?
llenay
You could also retcon the upgrade condition a bit. But just delaying it should work, too.
Lost Rain
Yes, but to a lesser extent than when she started. Now it's mostly just Net traces that she's worried about since Master of Disguise takes care of most of the in-person tracking stuff. Leaving means paperwork, which would give a reason for someone to go look at her original sign-on stuff and see a discrepancy. And the Inquisitor. Really, mainly the Inquisitor. Meta reason though: A lot of people really like the Blue Crusade setup. When I originally started writing it, it was going to be a two or maybe three off, but it got a lot of love. And the wacky Crusaders are fun to write, so it's a win-win.
gedas
"And now I was actually getting paid, so it really wasn’t that bad of a job. Or, at least, that’s what I told myself to make it sting less that I couldn’t leave." OK I'v been wondering this for a while, but is there any reason she can't just quit whenever she wants to?
Lost Rain
Yeah, having a delayed system upgrade would be a good middle ground for the two.
Findell
For the longest time she tried to minimize contact because she wasn't a "real" employee.
Findell
I am not sure how magic you want to make it but a magic based laser-ish type beam weapon sounds better then a coil gun throwing magic bullets.
Gardor
Oh like, she hits level 12 after the pursuit, so she can take advantage of her new Perk or whatever during the raid, and a new subsection appears on her status sheet "upgrade system Y/N?". I was gonna say that the upgrade was dependent on reaching level 12, and it seemed like an automatic update to me, but you're right I guess that would be a pretty good compromise if she actually had some time between hitting 12 and the upgrade. Not sure how much agency she has with regards to system mechanics tho. Or if the upgrade is going to feel like an immediate reward.
llenay
You could give her the level 12 after the pursuit, and the interface expansion after the ship battle. I was disappointed, too, when she didn't get level 12 after the pursuit.
Lost Rain
Smart
llenay
You can just copy the code from an existing similar page and modify it. I should get a notification and will look over your changes.
lenkite
Shiro should first ask the Blue Crusade what they have for Squires for armament. Pretty sure she can get her hand on explosives if she can show she can handle them.
Lost Rain
XD I picked Outrun because it was a one-word title, which I've found I really like for some reason, and it kinda matched the vibe of Cyberpunk. Originally, I was going to have her past play a much bigger part throughout the first hundred or so chapters. Something like 'outrunning' her past. That- uh, that didn't really go to plan. Future plans, as of now, have her past come up more. Might be a bit late to be 'outrunning' it though. Maybe a resurgence of some old memories and the like after the Circle arc ends. To be honest, I'm really looking forward to the Circle stuff ending in the next 10-25 chapters. Its been slowly building for almost a year IRL.
Gardor
Well, now that we've put that on the back burner, let's talk about something actually important: why the fuck is this story called "Outrun"? Did you just pick a word at random? This is the first time she's been chased the whole story, and I don't think she's ever ran. Booooo I'm gonna give a bad yelp review.
Lost Rain
I played it a bit when I was young, but that was like seven years ago. Unfortunately, I have the memory of a goldfish. The issue with a typical revolver is that having variable sizes means you have to have variable barrels to fit. Coilguns could levitate the round down the barrel though, so it gets past that for a true variable experience. The speed loaders and stuff would be really cool though, with different chambers for different sizes.
Lost Rain
XD Yeah, it's tricky. Kinda shot myself in the foot. I'll think a bit more about it and decide what I want to do. Big Upgrade and power level after the final fight feels like it'd be right. But going into battle with upgrades would also be cool and a good way to cement her growth. Gear upgrades kinda do that, but not to a super great extent.
Lost Rain
I literally just looked at that like an hour ago XD I'll try helping out when I find time, but I'm not very good with setting stuff like that up.
Findell
Not sure you ever played borderlands but they had all kinds of silly guns with revolver chambers and of silly sizes like 2 or 3 rounds as well so they could have giant calibre rounds.
Gardor
Gonna be honest, i read that and just assumed "oh this was chapter 209". I am also not the sharpest spoon in the shed
Gardor
Hmmm, tricky. Since she only levels after things are "done", she can't really level mid battle, so you'll have to chose one of these events to make her level after. And thematically it should be after the hunt through the city, but it does feel strange to give her the system rewards pre-final arc battle. Doing it after is usually a good wrap up, the denoument where we see her rewards for everything she's suffered. But it doesn't seem like it'll be as big a deal to her personally as the swat squads trying to kidnap her, and I ALSO want to see her go into the final battle with all possible upgrades. I've got no idea, writing is hard, good luck.
Lost Rain
Also, I'm a bit stupid. When I said 207, I meant 224. I just uploaded 208 on RR so it threw me off.
Lost Rain
Unfortunately. It directly leads into the final acts of this part. No, the interface isn't dependent on Cyberware. Thats something I need to retcon. In the first place, it didn't really make sense considering its technically magic from the Aether.
Lost Rain
Shotguns don't really fit Shiro's vibe, I think. Its why I kinda faded it out of the story. She's more ranged and careful than breach and clear if you get what I'm saying. I was thinking about doing a revolver when I wrote this chapter. Someone on RR said something about it too, but to be honest, Shiro has kinda low-tech weaponry at the moment for being a 'tech' focused character. She's using simple throwing knives and a basic pistol/rifle. It's why I wanted to go with a super high-tech electromagnetic gun here to use the imbued ammo. I do really like revolvers though. A revolving coilgun could be pretty cool.
Gardor
And my idea of doing the yacht raid BEFORE her attempted abduction is just a non starter? I'm assuming there's something more final that happens during the boat attack that makes that impossible?
Lost Rain
I'll definitely go back and add some levels to Chapter 207 for four or five of her Skills. I was already thinking of doing that when you commented. I was saying I could write a new chapter 208 where she spends her level 12 Perk Point. And the character-centric climax was the pursuit. You're right, it matches her character perfectly throughout the entire thing, so it would be an ideal spot to hit level 12. I just can't decide if that should be when she hits twelve since she's using everything she's learned since the beginning there, or if the final fight should be when she hits level 12 since it'll also be the arc climax. I might make a poll.
Gardor
I guess my main thought was: is anything she does in the yacht raid gonna be as in line with her build, and with the same level of threat to her, as this mad flurry through the city by herself? Avoiding the abduction attempt truly seemed like the perfect situation for ALL her skills to shine, this REALLY seems like it should have been enough to get her some levelz. Tbh, i don't really understand what your revamped chap 208 level 12 push means (like, does she just think "oh I can feel in my bones that skill is close to level 12"?) and I also don't know what character centric climax you're talking about as she raids a corporation while working for another corporation under an assumed identity. I'm sure whatever you decide to do will be great, this is just me whining about not getting my "numbers go brrrrr" fix.
Lost Rain
[ Spoiler Warning for the entire conversation below !!!!!! ] - - - - - - - - - - - I was thinking about going back and adding skill-ups after the chase for some minor Skills. It was lacking a bit at the end... So, the next chapter is going to be the final setup, then the Supercarrier raid, and then a battle to wrap up the arc with the final push to twelve happening then. And of course, leave some hints and cliffs for the wider world. I could instead retcon this chapter to be chapter 209, write a new chapter 208 with level 12 push, then do something like [upgrade in progress] with the interface being down till after the final fight to line up with the rest of the plan. That way it'd have that character-centric climax and then the rest of the arc would be the falling action or whatever its called.
llenay
Hi! I set up an Outrun wiki: https://outrunlitrpg.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page It would be great if a few people were willing to help me fill it.
Gardor
Alright, I saw you say that her recent brush with the Circle wouldn't get her over the 11->12 hump, and that'd be resolved after...I dunno the boat raid, or whenever the circle arc is done. I kinda feel like her scrambling through the city, alone, hunted by the cult of an evil mana god, should be the climax of the arc (and thus, what she gets the big system rewards for). Her taking part in an official crusade raid just doesn't have the same character weight to me. A plucky street kid scrabbling for any advantage she can get while professional hit squads hunt her down seems more in line with her backstory than a somewhat unconventional soldier for a police corporation performing a sanctioned paramilitary battle. Not sure if the Circle would have the numbers to coordinate their attempted kidnapping AFTER they get destroyed, of course. Plus I don't know your plans for the yacht attack, and I'm sure there are other things I haven't considered, I'm just floating the idea of swapping the scenes around. She could also do all these gear improvements after the raid. Granted, the only reason I thought of this was my litrpg fan boy anticipation of numbers going up, and being disappointed by a throw away reply of yours, so take this nagging with even more grains of salt than my usual whining. System numbers are definitely not a priority in this story, and I don't know why I refuse to accept that. (Plus, what's up with her system interface, can she even check it right now? Is it still dependent on cyberware?)
Findell
One thing I never understood that when she had the shotgun it was a single round load? Why not get a shotgun with a magazine or something they would be perfect for special rounds and normal rounds? But like the other way to go is with an oversize under-powered revolver type thing like the guy used in Hellboy so you can do you wacky magic shots and not have it hurt your wrist. And then you could have a couple different speed loaders setup with different bullet types and things for fast reloads or swaps like a magazine does.
