Yellow tinted windows on the top floor of the studio apparently were good vantage points for assassinations. Missions were missions. Some targets would just wander on by us. Others were much further away. That was what scopes were for. There were several types of sniper rifles that we had down in the weapons lab. I was totally fine with them all using the room. We were able to kill certain targets from there. Not having to leave the studio was great for us. We did not have to put anyone vulnerable in danger. It did mean that we had to wait a bit for the perfect shot. If the window was gone, we would have to leave for a full day. Coming back, we got the job done. That was why our best shots got the first crack at every hit while they were pregnant. Other than that though, Wild Child needed to decline most of the mission offers given to them. The transmission hub did a whole lot of things. As a strong Player, I could take them all on. Missions were usually not a big deal in the town anyway. There were still homeless PEP units that failed. All the others in the clan were free to do as they wished.
Incidentally, I realized that there were some PEP countermeasures in the town. The government forces decided to place a squad of 6 androids in the police department. I was concerned about them. They were identical looking to me when it came to the facial features. They had red-orange eyes and purple hair. The only things that varied were the hairstyles and the skin tones. They were pallid, rosy, olive, tan, sandy and ebony. The hairstyles were long and curly, emo bang, fade, braids, undercut, mohawk respectively. Androids were the purely robotic counter to the PEP cyborg menace. The ones stationed in town all looked like 16-year-old boys. I had the unfortunate luck of getting involved in a scuffle. I was walking towards the hardware store to talk with Owen. I had nothing important to say, so I was going to just hang out with him. I was 5 blacks away when a van squealed down the block and stopped near me. People jumped out and tried to snatch a pair of homeless units off of the street. One was able to slip out the hold and run towards me. "Help!" she said. The other was totally nabbed.
Not one to look the other way, I took out a shotgun and blasted at the van. 4 of them got out and started to return fire. I tossed the incendiary shotgun to the PEP unit and used a rifle that shot toxic bullets. The PEP unit did not do so well and got shot up. She was leaking blue blood from the chest and legs. We killed them all and the driver came out. So did the one in the passenger seat. He had a rocket launcher. We gave him some headshots and he died before he could fire it. The driver was killed too. A good random encounter in the world. With that over with, we went to the van and looked inside. The terrified PEP unit was unscathed. We took her out of the van. Their clothes were ratty and kind of smelled like filth. It was not a sweaty stench though. The one that got shot was the same way. Neither of them were humans, so they were not going to be sweating here. I got a notification that I had to check the menu. I had become involved with Syndicate business. Sixteenth Notes was now on a slightly negative stance with Phobia and slightly positive stance with Libra Force. They competed.
Phobia was a syndicate that were robophopic. They did not like enhancements, cyborgs or even androids. They wanted humans to embrace purism and snuff out the mechanical. They had some scrappers, reprogrammers and some ex-military members that hated the PEP units. It was a shared discrimination. Whether or not they used parts from a PEP corpse or destroyed them completely varied from member to member. They simply wanted them all dead and gone. Libra Force was a separatist syndicate that was anti-government. They wanted to form their own autonomous anarcho-capitalist state where humans and PEP units could live and trade freely. PEP units did have access to a lot of cool stuff. If they were competent in completing certain missions, that is. Hackers and government dissidents of all walks of life helped the PEP units and got to get some cool items and weapons out of the deal. It was not as if a human could pilot an X-frame after all. PEP units were happy for the help and shelter. Libra Force was considered a dangerous terrorist group and enemies of the state.
