Alex and Alexis made their snide comments towards them and left. Katie and Claire both outright insulted them both. As I was next to them as this was happening, I shut all of that down. The clan members got a bit miffed, but they had high enough opinion for me that they dropped it. We spent the rest of the evening together. For the next few days, we went about our daily businesses. I was wandering the streets when I saw some of the Phobia syndicate members. I decided to follow them. They went to the local scrappers and gave them some better gear. It seemed that a big deal of grief was going to be coming on. As a human, I was going to be fine either way. I turned and was walking back down the street when one of them called out to me. Because of the negative opinion, they were very aggressive. They got in my face and insulted me. All I could do was back down if I did not want a fight. Thankfully, doing so gave a small positive buff to opinion. You did not have to fight everything in your path. That was when we heard a very girly yell from far down the block. That got all of our attention.
Being that it was so close the 3 Phobia members and I, we rushed to see what was going on over there. It could be really important. The police were beating the shit out of a low level reprogrammer. Erin and Finian were the ones leading the brutal assault on the guy. We rushed over and got in the way. "Woah woah woah there. He's had enough already!" one of the Phobia members said. I agreed. "Get him in the car. He's not resisting anything that you're doing anymore." I said. Since they were in my clan, they had to do what I said. They lowered their hats in shame as they lifted the young man into the car. He would be taken care of by the police. Now that it was all done with, the syndicate members gave me a last dirty look before leaving me. I was free to move on with my day. Seemingly, the hunch I had was correct. There was a cooldown for the mission we did. Multiple Players could influence the direction of the world. Of the few Players on this server, it was split down the middle who to support in the continent's power struggle. It was about 43% for the PEP units and 45% against.
The others playing the game here just were using the cyberpunk setting of the world to play around. It certainly was their right. Whether by being doctors, athletes or treating the world as a personal dating simulator. I knew the feeling. I was still sending my kids out for the local gymnastic meets. We had a spot in place for all the high ranking cyborgs to meet for the so called "Next Stage". There were also back up plans. We had up to Plan G. That meant 7 possible places. They were placed in order of mission completion. I was not shocked that my area was the primary location. It was also the most guarded secret. The Players on the other side were doing everything they could to stop the mission to be completed. All you needed for the questline was to find 5 PEP units that allied with the Libra Force syndicate. Once there were either less than 5 PEP units that fit that criteria or after a full real world week, the mission would end. This part was for us to play on the defensive. Next week was for us to go on the attack. Now we had to stop the Players against the PEP units. They were the threat.
Finding out all of their locations would spell doom for us. We needed to prevent that by any means. That would of course mean protecting PEP units from the various government agents and the rouge reprogrammers. While any PEP unit could give clues to the locations, those in Libra Force could spill what the "Next Stage" was if captured by a hacker of at least level 20. Phobia was a syndicate that was the main antagonistic force against Libra Force. You could kill all of their guys and make sure the Libra Force PEP units went into hiding. You could also go to the main cities and assassinate all the agents and high leveled reprogrammers. Paul and Brett did not care about the search and rescue mission. Now that they were aware of the importance of this part of the questline, they were going to do that. What was the point of being Devils if they could not flex their power once in a while. I took Sunny, Lucy, Maroon, Ryder and Cecil with me. The others wanted to help them out too. Claire, Alex and Alexis went with Brett. They were very pleased that they could be useful for the clan.
