The Brat

So I’ve been rather distracted given all that’s happened of late. It’s hard not to be, what with Bug Spirits, Crazy Digital Murder Gods and other such crap. This means I’ve been overlooking something in my journal here which I should have gotten around to long ago.

She's not a kid, and she'll point it out every
chance she gets

Neon is our team’s Decker. We first met on the first run that Me and Freddie worked together on, which in retrospect was the start of this whole Dr Akabe revenge plan/Crazy Digital Murder God/Whatever else mess. Don’t get me wrong, she was actually pretty damned useful on that one run, barring one problem that, in all fairness, she really couldn’t have planned on in advance and definitely falls under the “things that Johnson should have told us” list. Of course, given who the Johnson was and why they were organizing that run, the omission might have been deliberate.

The thing is, though, Neon’s really good at what she does. She’s a master of sneaking around the Matrix and does a lot of things that helps the team. I mean, there’s the usual stuff of stealing Paydata or erasing records or whatever else that you need a Decker for, and that’s pretty wiz. But there’s a lot of other Stuff she does, like messing with security systems, faking passes, bypassing locks, shutting off cameras and the like that’s insanely helpful on a run. Wraith is really good at finding ways to utilize her skills, often thinking of something creative for her to do in support of whatever our objective is.

She’s also done great work with Freddie. The pair of them form something of a brilliant team, often working together to do all sorts of stuff via the Matrix, his drones and whatever else. From carjackings to shutting down other vehicles or even just making sure that nobody messes with Freddie’s drones, they’ve worked really well together. Hell, in the same run they managed to both carjack another vehicle that the target was in and also shut down Buzz-Bomb’s van in the middle of a high-speed firefight. See, that is awesome.

Added to this, she’s got a surprising amount of knowledge of how the Matrix works for someone as young as she is. As a good example, she was the one who was able to find an access to the Foundation of the Callivard Research Facility’s host, and throw in an anchor there so she could get to it again. That’s what allowed us to take the trip to Spookyville in order to get the data we needed to find out what was going on and what Pierce was and how to kill him. (I just wish it could have been the zero-gee space hamster ball nightclub foundation instead…)

In order to do all this, Neon’s got this really complicated sertup going. She has a custom Cyberarm that’s packed with all sorts of gear that’s pretty much her entire Decker toolkit in one go. It has her Cyberdeck built into it, which means she can never be caught without it, and can’t have it readily taken off her, and also has all she needs to do her Matrix stuff wherever she goes. The Deck itself is also insanely customized (beyond just the whole ‘built into a cyberarm thing’) which makes her pretty damned powerful once she gets into the Matrix. I don’t know the exact specs, but I’ve gathered that it’s good.

Added to that she has a concealed gun built in there, as well as a shock hand for if she should ever get into a firefight. This I admit is something of a sore point’; the kid simply has no tactical sense whatsoever, and is a lousy shot to boot. There’s been several times when I’ve had to throw myself at her and drag her out of the line of fire in order to keep her alive.

The only other problem she’s had with it is the whole ‘single point of failure’ thing. In our first run, her entire arm was bricked by Dr Akabe, which left her literally dragging the dead weight behind her. Since then, she’s gotten a few backups to ensure that, should it happen, she’s going to be able to keep going. Hell, she can even make up for the whole’ dead arm’ thing if needs be; she’s got a quick release mechanism which allows her to swap the custom matrix-fu arm for a more natural-looking one for those situations where it would be more suited

There is one other downside to her; she’s total brat. Seriously, even her mom calls her "the brat,” although it probably doesn’t help that Lightspeed is pretty much permanently cranky 24/7. A part of it is justified; she’s the youngest member of the team by a not inconsiderable margin. It’s also not helped by her tendency to loudly protest “I’m not a kid!” in a, well, kidlike way, complete with angry pouting. And she does so many kid-like things too, like wearing a neon-pink trimmed hoodie when in the field. Or, for that matter, fluffy pink pajamas when she’s getting her weekly does of sleep.

Plus, well, she’s kinda adorably cute as well. Freckles and chubby cheeks and the like (which look even worse when she pouts, trust me) which really does make her look like a kid even more.