|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:48:57 GMT -5
AMIN'SOLAH KI WESTBRIDGE NES'ARA DRASSA
Aliases: CyclicMetastasis, Rabidogen01, Rassana Jasperidan, Dez'Lazoch ki Nightingale nes'ara Midwave
Affiliation: Mercenary, Jimmy
Species: Redworlder (Female)
Birthplace: Westbridge, Cloneston
Birthdate: August 3rd, 1288 (OSC)
Height: 6' (1.82m)
Weight: 150 - 160lb (68kg - 73kg)
SUMMARY
Daughter to a Space Looney. Child of the streets. A redworlder raised on the web and mixed into the mercenary life. Amin's the definition of a young hacker; a spunky, snappy, sassy girl swirling with cyberwarfare skill. She's the definition of what senators in Cloneston want; an alien with talents, experience, and not a whole lot of ambition. All she's after in life is money and a good time. She's just managed to flip the bird to just about every top player in the city.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:49:07 GMT -5
APPEARANCE
Amin'Solah is the product of a spacer mingling with a terrestrial. Her Sakazzah heritage turned her out with grey skin, black eyes, and pupils so bright she's got to warn people to break eye contact. Her planetside parent shortened her down to 6' even and gave her a head of raven hair - which she's always kept down to scalp level. She's got a face just like her mother's; thin, hard-edged, and about exactly alike with most people she's got any relation to. She's got a smooth, scarless body that's easy on the eyes and free of cybernetics - so far as anyone knows.
As nice as she looks, Amin isn't exactly the peak of fitness. She's slow on her feet, feeble to a fault, and only ever coordinated behind a computer. The only thing she has going for her on the physical side is her endurance. She's swallowed up gunfire women twice her size couldn't come close to. She's had everything from fingers to femurs shot out of her without so much as breaking her stride. She doesn't even get puffy when she's around pinkskins. Word has it that she's even had her neck snapped before and came back with nothing but a headache. Rumors always say she's got an equipment edge on the inside. The truth is that Amin just has a will to live that's never come up short.
Out in a combat zone, that's about all she usually has going for her. On most contracts, she's squeezed into a skin-tight Tanner House A15N pressure suit, glossy black and wrapped around every curve. It doesn't leave much to the imagination. Covering up her suit's upper half is a custom-tailored tailcoat, sleeveless, black, and edged with bright greys. Paper-thin ballistic plates fill the chest and back. Equipment pouches and pockets line the outside. Her pressure suit ends at a pair of orange wristbands, masking the small gaps between the suit and a pair of white-palmed black gloves. Her feet are usually covered up in either a pair of light boots or running shoes, depending on the level of footwork she's expecting.
The highlight of Amin's wardrobe is a complex feedback suite, consisting of a helmet, underlying hood, and back unit. She's never once been seen without it. Her head is covered up, chin to nape, in her helmet, rounded with a broad visor and black as her suit. Inside her helmet and covering her neck is her bright-orange hood, sealed to her pressure suit. On the interior of both is a series of electrodes and biometric sensors. It all connects to four black cables jutting out from the back of her helmet. Those cables lead out to a hazard-orange-streaked processor pack, lofted high on Amin's back. On most days, she keeps a few spare batteries and repair tools hung underneath it.
The hood and helmet work in concert to create a precisely-controlled environment around Amin's head. Inside, she's proofed against everything from the ambient noise on a tram to the concussive shock of a grenade. The sensors, electrodes, and other gadgets keep track of brain activity, muscle movements, and even pheromone traces. Other devices supply feedback directly to her central nervous system. The end result is that she can work with just about any computer, hands-free, with nothing more than thought alone. Meanwhile, none of it is part of her body. She can drop her pack, toss her helmet, and rip off her hood without a single drop of blood.
Amin's only ever kept one weapon for direct fighting. Most of the time, she just lets Pedro do the work. When she's got to get her hands dirty, she's armed modestly with an SCAW 104S submachine gun. For the most part, she keeps it bog-standard - on most jobs, it's not even the same gun. On the few occasions she's taken to tooling it up, it's been nothing more than holographic sights or networked optics. Special ammo, custom tweaks - Amin's not for any of that. Most times, she doesn't even bother to unfold the stock.
Amin's electronic access is done almost entirely through smirks, squints, and blinks. Most of the time, she's up to something inside that helmet, but no one can see it. When she's willing to deign to others and open a window to her thoughts, she does it with an array of multi-colored holograms. Her helmet, belt, and processor pack all feature small holographic projectors with an eye-popping level of detail. She can even stream straight from her own memory - even if the detail's a bit non-Euclidean at times.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:49:29 GMT -5
BEHAVIOR
Even at the ripe old age of 24, Amin'Solah is the picture of a young hacker. She's bouncy, jumpy, so full of energy at times it's a miracle she can keep her fingers straight on a keyboard. She's snappy, too; a quick temper and a vocabulary that'd make Gregor Chuikov blush. Amin's the first to complain, the first to speak her mind, and the first to come up with a new idea. She's just never had much initiative to back it up. She'll tell you what you're doing wrong, but she's not going to fix it until you're yelling louder than her.
Online, it's a different story. Amin's deep into the deep web. She's the mind-mother of about a dozen hacker heists daily. She's got her ears to every AI core in Cloneston. She's broken into Unity Station's internet for fun. She's Pedro's favorite girl, the queen of every clone she's ever met. Go up against Amin with anything more complicated than a screwdriver and it'll be throwing exceptions at every bend in the road. Signals intelligence, cybersecurity, social engineering - if it'll get her into a system, she knows everything about it.
Brute force is where she falls short. She's had her marksmanship courses. She's picked up hand-to-hand fighting skills. She's even learned basic demolitions for a few jobs. It all doesn't count for much. Her skills in a shootout end where her training does. Up close, she's even worse - being tall and weak doesn't do much to keep her on her feet. Most of the time, Amin's banking on hijacked clones to keep her safe. She's not much of a fight when she's cornered and alone.
Amin isn't the typical redworlder. She was born and raised - mostly - in a town of humans. She grew up as an outcast from her own kind. She lived on the streets, online, and just about everywhere her own species wasn't. Amin might not look the part, but she's a human on the inside. English is her native tongue, Russian and Spanish just a bit shy of competent. She's even got a Californian accent. Qashanish is a second language she's always rusty in. Mercenary life's warped her perspective a bit, but not much more than Cloneston's already done.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:49:43 GMT -5
GOALS- Some kind of help for Drassa - or whoever's still alive back there. Most people figure Amin's a human with grey skin, but she's still a redworlder in there somewhere. Drassa might've hated her, but she's still a redworlder in there somewhere. People don't deserve what the Enclave got. If she can help without getting near the sticky stuff, it's the first - and only - act of charity she's ready to commit to.
- Solah's been hungry for a while. She knows what she wants. Gregor Chuikov's head, well done, no onions - nasty allergies with onions. Amin knows she's not exactly going to topple a senator on her own, but she's bold and angry. If she can hurt Sheffield & Chuikov, she'll put herself to it. She was there for TransUrban. She wants to be there to see his last AI core burn.
- [ ! LOCKED: ...until it's gone. ]
- Money. Just money. Amin wouldn't mind having a gilded palace on top of a cloud-surfing plate. Nothing much out of the ordinary, but being a mercenary in Cloneston makes it a bit more relevant.
- [ ! LOCKED: The high life. ]
- [ ! LOCKED: The big secret. ]
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:50:07 GMT -5
RELATIONSHIPS- Amin might be putting on a convincing impression otherwise, but she's still a grey. Family is everything to her. She's not clear on who her father is, but she knows her mother. She's still not sure whether to call her Yari'Solah or Niza'Narun, but she loved her all the same. Amin's stepfather was Jaiz'Narun, but he was dead before she was even conceived. Her half-sister is Ves'Narun, one of the only direct relatives she's got left - and that's a complicated subject. Her cousin Raki'Sakazzah was her closest friend before the RIP Smokeout - and that killed just about every blood relative Amin had.
- Amin's never met a Looney in person, but they hate her. She's managed to break into bunker comms a few times in the past. She's had engineering teams in panic mode before she was even 18. If she ever shows her head to any of the bunkers around Cloneston, you can rest assured there'll be fifty railguns waiting for her. Amin doesn't care much herself. She's never met a Looney in person - and she's not interested in changing that.
- The Space Loonies have heard about Amin, but they've mostly kept out of her way. She's tapped and intercepted Space Looney communications before, but never anything serious. Even still, they're not keen on her. She's a hacker mercenary, daughter of an exile, and a Cloneston native. That's enough to keep her grounded. Amin doesn't care much about the Space Loonies, either. She's met a few. She's only ever liked one.
- The Cult of Meat knows next to nothing about Amin. If they found her, they might call her sacred just because she's a redworlder. That'd be the extent of things. Amin saw what the Cult did to the Drassa Enclave first-hand. She might've laughed before. Now, she's honestly terrified of what they could do to the rest of the city.
- Species bias doesn't exist for Amin. She's a humanized redworlder who's grown up in a city where the colors on your clothes are more important than anything on your skin. She giggles a bit over the idea of working with unionites and groans whenever a sorassan's nearby, but that's it. She's even willing to give clones their due - assuming she doesn't need them for anything.
- The city of Cloneston knows about Amin. Online, her user handles are household names. She's got famous fingers. She's a star in the deep web. Offline, she's not quite as popular. Ordinary folk are ambivalent. The average mercenary's not happy to see her. She's hacked the bank accounts of just about everyone in the city. For Amin, it's all just business as usual. Cloneston's her home. She's not going to change it.
- Outside Cloneston, Amin's mostly an unknown. She's never fled the city, not even gone out into the wastes to hide. Up in orbit, her name gets around about once a month. She's done enough damage for spacers to give her dirty looks. A few networks up in Unity Station hate her. That's about all there is. Amin's a bit curious to see what life in orbit is like, but she's got no intention of staying there. She's not keen on ever leaving the city.
- Beth has a hit out for Amin that's worth more than a few hundred million baldybucks. She did something the senator didn't like - saw something she wasn't supposed to see. There's going to be blood. The city's smooth operator won't have it any other way. Amin knows it's serious, but she could never take it seriously if she tried. To her, it's a compliment - one she doesn't really understand all that much.
- It's not much of a surprise, but Jimmy is Amin's favorite senator. He's about the only one who hasn't screwed her - as far as anyone knows. These days, she's living the high life; she's on a long-term contract and surrounded by Jimmies daily. The clown prince himself, on the other hand, is a bit on the fence. On the one hand, Amin's always been a good employee. On the other, she's always been trying to crack open his Jimmies to see how they work.
- In the past, VANDAL was Amin's second favorite. He's now hovering somewhere around the bottom with traffic control AIs and half-finished clones in the badlands. She was one of the first to know about VANDAL's part in the Fair Hand's end. If she could launch a war against the AI, she'd do it. VANDAL's not all that upset. For him, it was just business.
- Gregor Chuikov occupies a very special place in Amin's heart. He's the thing she hates the most, out of everything on the entire planet. It's a vendetta she won't let go of. It's a fierce and fiery passion she's going to die with. It's about appropriate, given Chuikov feels the same way. Amin was one of the things he hated the most about the Kalav'Lees. If he gets ahold of her, pain doesn't even begin to cover what's going to happen.
- Amin's past with Damsel Center is rocky, to put it lightly. She was a one-time employee that just narrowly dodged a place as a pincushion. Even with all her youth, skills, and alien sex appeal, Damsel's so livid about it that it's ready to make a bonfire out of her. The girl herself won't talk about it. She's still got most of her dignity left. She just doesn't want to remember what she saw back in Wyvernkeep.
- Raki'Sakazzah used to be one of Amin's best friends. That was up until the Red Bonfire happened. After that, and after the Cross-Cloneston Rampage that brought him back, she put the relationship through the guillotine. There is no redworlder on this Erf that Amin despises more than Raki'Sakazzah. For Raki, it's nothing of the sort. He's happy to know Amin's alive - and not working for Damsel Center.
- If you value your life or belongings, don't ever bring up the Dough Man to Amin. She does not want to talk about it. She does not want to acknowledge its existence. She does not want to be near it. She does not want anything to do with it, ever, at all. Ezimat's not that grumpy. Maybe Amin's a hard target, but she's always been his friend. Sort of.
- Once upon a time, Ves'Narun was the blood relative Amin hated the most. After Raki came back, things changed. With the Fishbowl in her new top spot, and Ves gone out into Set's wilds, Amin's finally made peace. More than just that; she actually misses her, even if only just. There's a bit of the same somber sympathy from her sibling, too. Ves finally made peace herself - at precisely the moment that she realized she couldn't go back.
- Amin's been around Pedro Fives and seen him work. He scares her. He's a clone she can't crack, a monster of mayhem the city can't stop. He might be Jimmy's action hero, but the fact that someone like that exists - that's terrifying to a clone-jacker. Pedro sees Amin just the same way as Jimmy and the city do. He's just a little on edge about the whole "cop-stealing alien" thing.
- Amin's first introduction to Commissioner Ironbrains was him strangling her in a highrise whorehouse. It might not have played out how it sounds, and it might be something she's trying to forget, but things have improved. Nowadays, she's comfortable around him. She's ready to work with him on Jimmy jobs. She even treats him better than most of the city could treat a clone.
- Allie Markell didn't play a big part in Amin's life when she was in Cloneston, but she was in on the job that got the girl out of Wyvernkeep. For that, she's tried to stay in touch with the spacebound cyborg - even if it's mostly been to see how far she can piggyback into orbit. Her relationship's been as long-distance as it gets, but she's tried to keep it friendly.
- Ashton Winters wasn't part of Amin's big breakout, but he was one of the stars in the Cross-Cloneston Rampage. Amin's tried to stay in contact since - which has been tricky with her reputation up in orbit. Some of it's been par for the course with Space Looney expectations. Most of it's been an honest attempt at online friendship.
- Finnigan Waterpipe is an odd part of Amin's life. He was there in the Cross-Cloneston Rampage, and that's the only way the two know eachother. She's not all that crazy about him, but she's tried to keep connected either way. Ask her why, with Jimmy's blessing, and she'll tell you straight; she wants him to find Ves. She's convinced she didn't make it out of the wastes - just as always. If she's got to get in touch with a specialist to bring her back, that's just what she'll do.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:50:35 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:50:50 GMT -5
SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM
Amin was born to a single mother; Yari'Solah ki Drassa nes'ara Westbridge. She was delivered in the Alandra Cassiner Memorial Hospital, at around 9:46PM on August 3rd, 1288. In a way, her arrival into the world set the tone for the rest of her life. Surrounding the sickly newborn was a crowd of human doctors and nurses, desperately pretending to look like they were involved. By the end of it all, Yari and her still-unnamed child were out the door before anyone could even figure out what was wrong with her. Yari ended up with an infection so bad she was almost dead by the time her daughter was two weeks old.
Still, she was tough. Her daughter was tougher. Yari's home was in Westbridge, a human community of about 300. On top of that, it was a slum of the worst kind. The whole town was carved out of dead tram cars, loose sewage pipes, and whatever garbage fell down from the plate above. No one even lived up on that plate. It was just a skeleton of a project that was never finished, built on top of a half-operational clone networking hub. Surrounded by all that disease, all those dull-eyed biohazards, Yari's daughter shouldn't have made it past her first year.
She did, and she kept growing. When it finally looked like she was around to stay, Yari named her Amin. That was about the end of her involvement with her daughter. From then on, it was slurred screaming and sober sobbing. Yari had a long history of near-death experiences. She'd been shot, stabbed, run over a couple times, and sick more than she could count. When she wasn't doped up, she was in constant pain. She was lucid enough to remember how miserable her life had been. Things in the Solah household were less than ideal. Surrounded by all those pills, all that heartache, Amin shouldn't have made it past her third year.
She did, and she still kept growing. By around 3 or 4 years old, she had enough locomotive independence to wander out of the house. To her neighbors, Amin was just a sideshow, "that thing" wandering out from the local alien's hovel. To her neighbors' kids, she seemed a little more like a person. They weren't put off that much by the glowing eyes, funny fingers, or broken English. At the end of the day, the grey girl's story didn't sound a whole lot different from theirs.
Amin wasn't exactly the neighborhood's kid, but she had a sort of upbringing with the neighborhood's kids. She learned English from the ones who started talking early. She took in how the city worked from the older ones. She picked up on how to work around her mother from just about everyone. It wasn't the greatest way to get started, and she probably would've turned out half feral if it'd gone on, but it was better than nothing. Amin was safe with them. The kids in Westbridge looked out for eachother. No one else was going to.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:51:14 GMT -5
FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF
There was some kind of half-hearted effort to get rid of Amin when the parents of the town found out, but it never went anywhere. There weren't enough of them who had the patience or genuine concern. The kids covered for one of their own just like any decent gang would've. That trend kept up as she grew up. When Amin was 7, she and a few other kids started playing around in the network hub upstairs. It wasn't just happenstance on childish impulses; they were making repeat burglaries look like kids goofing off. The older ones pulled apart valuable computers while the younger ones fooled around up front. When the clones came to play, they had to navigate around kids that were too tiny to shoot.
They had to navigate around Amin, too. It didn't take long before the pint-sized neighborhood watch figured out that the clones were having trouble with her. Whenever they showed up and Amin was on the scene, Pedro couldn't figure out if she was a wall or a house pet. Some even registered her as a tank with infantry support and pulled out right away. The savvier kids helped teach her how to identify and dismantle the stuff their parents could fence. Soon enough, she was pulling solo heists right in front of armed responders. The only time she was ever caught was when there was an actual human cop with the team - and he had the sense to just send her home.
Amin hadn't paid her mother much mind while she was growing up. At 6, she was trying, in some way or another, to shape up and keep her daughter safe. She was able to work her into an online school, but that was about it. Everything else was an overdue attempt at asserting authority - then she turned up dead. Age 9 hit with a crisis and a revelation. Even today, no one knows how or why. Amin's refused to talk about it no matter how it's been phrased.
Amin wasn't exactly on great terms with her mother, but her mom was still her mom. She was the only other redworlder in the town. When she wasn't trapped in bed by damaged nerves or stoned on the floor somewhere, Yari was actually someone Amin liked. A month went by. Grief crept up on her. Shock and horror went with it; with her mom dead, she was the only one of her kind left in Westbridge. She hadn't even hit her double digits and she had to figure out how to survive in a town where everyone else's food was poisonous. The neighbors' kids were there for her - Amin's story wasn't new. Even then, she was still an empty-eyed husk by the time someone came in to take Yari's place.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:52:54 GMT -5
SAME OLD, SAME OLD
There was just a little problem; Yari'Solah wasn't Yari'Solah. Her real name was Niza'Narun. She had another daughter out there. About a month after Niza died, Ves'Narun showed up. She was exhausted from months of searching and a few gunshot wounds' worth of bad leads. Amin came home one day to find a strange woman in her house with those same bright eyes she always expected from her mother. By the time she even registered what was going on, Ves had stolen her halfway across the city to the Drassa Enclave.
It was like something out of a nightmare and a soap opera all at once. First the light had gone out of her mother's eyes, then there were a few hundred more dots staring back at her from every window and street corner. Amin couldn't handle it. She didn't want it. She wanted to go back to her friends, even if it meant starving. Only a few feet into Drassa, she ran. She didn't know where she was going, but Amin wasn't about to give up her independence then.
It didn't last long. Drassa's Self-Defense Committee tracked her down about a week later in a back alley somewhere. It was exactly what the young girl didn't need; a gang of militiamen grabbed her like a stray cat and dragged her off to Ves. When she got there, the sympathy was all for her older sister. All Amin got was a finger-waggling. Meanwhile, she'd ended up in just the same kind of situation she was in before. She was stuck in a shanty with her mom gone and most of the neighborhood looking at her like a little monster.
Amin might've been in redworlder territory, but she had a problem with settling in. She couldn't speak the language. She wasn't educated in the traditional kind of way. She was about as much an alien to Drassa as she was to Westbridge. Even her wasteland-born big sister had trouble figuring out what was wrong with her. If she wasn't missing every cultural cue and adverb people expected out of her, she was stealing from places that looked abandoned. Usually, that meant it was an SDC supply cache.
Ves wasn't really much of a replacement for Niza. A third of the time, she was busy grieving over her mother. Another third, she was trying to force Drassa down Amin's throat. The rest of the time, she was stressing over bills or working sixteen jobs at once just to break even. Parenting didn't factor in much. Friendship was out the window from the start of the arrangement. Until she was 12, Amin didn't even believe Ves was her sister. It was just the same as Westbridge. Whenever Ves had her back turned, Amin was sneaking out to find people her age to help. She just couldn't find them; Drassa's kids were all just like their parents. She couldn't even find any humans, clones, or raging gunfights. The whole town didn't make any sense to her.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:53:49 GMT -5
LET'S START OVER
Most of it, at least. In a funny kind of way, Amin found Westbridge again. When she hit 11, she stumbled on one of the rare, tiny hotspots of human influence in Drassa. It was about a half hour's drive from home and didn't really have a name, but it was finally somewhere she could fit in. The people there had all met a redworlder before. They'd all picked up the immunological grit and cultural acclimation to blend in. Everyone knew how to speak English in some way or another. Meanwhile, Amin was the kind who could fit in. She wasn't part of Drassa's big family, didn't turn around when some old lady hissed at her on the street for talking to a pinkskin. If she was comfortable anywhere, it was with the wrong species.
Those little slices of the real Cloneston were where Amin spent most of her time. It was a funny kind of no-man's land. Humans in Drassa knew who was going to get the blame if a redworlder got shot or stabbed on their watch. Clones couldn't get too far into the place without being hijacked by the SDC. Gangs had trouble starting up in those areas thanks to all the extra patrols. Amin was as safe as could be. Every place she went to pointed her to more and more enclaves inside the Enclave. She spent most of her teen years on a big, weekly circuit of every human bastion in Drassa.
Even before then, Amin was learning more about how to make Drassa miserable. All her time spent pulling apart clone hardware and computer parts woke something up in the young girl. She had a knack for machines, but it was something more than that. When she hit Drassa, started taking regular schooling, it blew up. Straight away, she decided to start studying electronics. When she got bored with hardware, she moved on to software. When she got bored with software, she went up another step - from practice exams to live-fire training courses.
Amin learned fast enough that, by 12, she was already jury-rigging custom viruses. She was planting keyloggers and packet sniffers in just about every system she could get access to. She'd hijacked her sister's bank account so many times that Ves had to learn cyberwarfare just to keep her mercenary money safe. Deeper still, all that terror Amin was stacking onto Drassa's cyberscape was bleeding off onto Ves. She was supposed to keep the little monster in check. She wasn't doing a good enough job. Ves just did what the wasteland taught her; she went deeper into her mercenary career and practically fled the Enclave.
Amin followed suit. She pushed deeper into her own specialty. She learned more and more tricks on the internet to pull off bigger and bolder things. In 1301, she was responsible for changing half of every electronic sign in and around Drassa to select parts of cross-species anatomy. Early in 1302, she'd started pulling together a botnet built on clone tactical nodes. Late in 1302, when Ves came home half-dead and limp in the arms, "GREAT JOB GREG!" popped up on digital billboards across the city. People had no idea what it meant. They still don't - and yet the joke's managed to hang on since.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:56:56 GMT -5
PLAY STUPID GAMES
1303 rolled in with a grander scheme. Amin had built up a small, diehard group of followers on everything from social media to cybercrime sites in the dark web. About half of them were in the Enclave, most of them humans. She wanted more. She wanted more marks and more accomplices. She wanted more patsies to tap for a bigger, badder botnet. She just wasn't all that sure about how to go about it. Amin started first by trying to hack her name into popular music videos, but that didn't go very far. She tried again with another billboard offensive, but that'd been done thousands of times before.
She found what she needed on complete accident. Amin's third attempt was a massed spam of discussion boards across Cloneston's internet. The spam itself didn't get much attention, but it drew in just who Amin needed. A rival hacker by the username of FredMixer500 launched a retaliation, trying to shut her down. Neither of them got very far; Amin couldn't track him and Fred couldn't track her. A few months of quiet feuding went by that drew in other hackers. At the time, she went by the handle Rabidogen01, and most people knew her as the spam queen of the south.
Even with a few botnets and clone cybercrime divisions piled up against her, Amin held strong. It'd gotten so frustrating for Fred that he gave up on taking her head-on. He went straight to the dark web forums with a final demand; "show me your fingers". It took about a week before anyone realized he was serious. Amin still didn't, but popular demand obliged her - twenty bystanders backed the request. She posted a picture of a single digit. A few people had a hearty chuckle over it. Fred had a cackling fit.
For a little while, anyways. His original plan was to do a comprehensive scan of the photo to analyze fingerprints and other biometric data. Digital details on the photo's file structure and network handling were all he needed to help round off whatever he couldn't get. Supposedly. It didn't work out that way. In Fred's case, the photo was perfect. It provided a full fingerprint and joint data for Amin's right index finger. There was a small problem. She was a redworlder who'd never once seen jail time. He was expecting a human with a rap sheet.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 11:58:21 GMT -5
WIN STUPID PRIZES
Fred was at a loss. No one's sure what made him do it, but he followed up. He asked for more finger shots. Amin continued to oblige. Fred was doing everything in his power to link Amin's fingerprints to someone - to anyone - but it was simply not working. It snowballed out of control. Whenever it wasn't Fred asking for fingers, it was someone else. Amin was just the kind of celebrity she was trying to be. Her fingers were everywhere on the web - in a way that was so literal it had to be seen to be believed. No one even found out she was a redworlder until she hit 16.
Somewhere along the way, FredMixer500 got lost in it all. He didn't matter anymore. Amin had everything she needed to start getting into the meat of cybercrime. She wasn't just swiping bank accounts or playing with ransomware. She was ready to pull off virtual heists. She was ready to start hijacking clones. She kicked off her opening moves right away; she took over Westbridge's networking hub and sold it off to the highest bidder. She continued on with a few low-key cyber-burglaries on nearby banks and shopping centers. She wasn't just financing hobbies anymore. She was making money.
Things didn't go so well after that. Drassa's Self-Defense Committee turned a blind eye to heisters - when the jobs weren't happening on their turf. Soon enough, by the end of 1303, she got a visit from a few angry militiamen. Fred might've never been able to get Amin's face, but the SDC knew it better than anyone. If she were older, she might've gotten away with a broken jaw and a few choice curses. Instead, she got it worse. Anything and everything that could have been connected to the internet was taken out of the house and confiscated. Ves came home to find out that half of her work equipment was missing. Things did not go so well after that.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 12:00:01 GMT -5
WILD RIDE
In one way or another, it was a scar that never quite healed. Amin's first big break ended in a little bit of spending cash and a lot of lost data. The rift with her sister tore open wider. The weekly shouting contests started getting complaints from halfway across the Enclave. Amin couldn't quite quit the cybercrime game, but she scaled back hard. She swore off high-level heists and stuck to small-time identity fraud. She buddied up with Drassa's clan of crackers and clone hijackers every once in a while, but that was it. The young ambition was gone.
For a while, anyways. If anyone was a role model for Amin, it was Raki'Sakazzah. He wasn't all that popular on the internet - had the smarts to keep himself hidden where it counted. In Drassa, he was a celebrity. Amin heard about him early on, when he was running as Sevex. He was one of the only reasons she was ready to admit Ves was her sister; it meant she was cousins with one of the top redworlder hackers in the city. She even let it slip when she shuttered Rabidogen01 in 1304. People all expected her to be some 40-year-old species-indifferent cyborg with golf balls for eyes. There was a bit of an awkward silence on the internet when they found out she was a 16-year-old girl who'd only just hit puberty.
Raki was a touch surprised, too. He'd heard enough to know Amin was a terror back in Drassa, but he'd never quite connected her to her online persona. To top it off, it was at just the right time. He'd just come off the South AVALON Rampage and was ready to start putting together his own crew. Amin found out from her older sister around the same time Raki hit up the Enclave. Ves turned him down, but Amin leapt right at it. Sakazzah saw her coming a mile away. Talented or not, she was still only 16. He turned her down in a heartbeat.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 12:02:07 GMT -5
KEEP IT ROLLING
For the job, at least. The Fishbowl had an eye for talent. He'd gone shoulder-to-shoulder with Vincent Le DuBuon, been one of the heavy hitters of the city's heisting trade. Amin was still only 16 - and fast on her way to turning out like Raki. She just needed some way to break into the advanced skills - combat cyberwarfare, programming clones on the fly, the works. That's where Raki came in; he didn't give her the job, but he was ready to bring her up to that level. Maybe she wasn't running five-star heists yet, but it was a major win for Amin.
She shoved it in Ves's face every chance she got. Most times, she didn't even have to. Raki was in and out of their apartment at least weekly, sometimes with other up-and-coming Drassa hackers. It wasn't some quick, month-long crash-course, either. It went on for a year of regular education, culminating in about half a year of field trips out to abandoned parts of the city. Amin kept pace. She was beating career criminals at their own game. Drassa was terrified at the prospect; their biggest nightmare had been given the blessing of their biggest star.
In the background, Raki was sizing her up. The improv college was as much an extended audition as it was a learning experience. Even by 18, Amin didn't have the build for much more than cyberwarfare. She had a problem with discipline and following orders - even the Fishbowl was learning new curses. What she had was a whole lot of skill and a whole lot of creativity. She could handle machines, clones, computers, and all, up close or halfway across the city. She could think on her feet in a shootout - maybe not shoot, but she could get where she needed to be. If you could get her on an objective, it'd be done fast.
One of her best traits, as far as the Fishbowl was concerned, was her loyalty. Amin didn't fit in with Drassa. She didn't want to be around her sister. Meanwhile, as far as she was concerned, Raki was a charismatic icon of everything she wanted to be. He was a celebrity, a mercenary legend, and someone who wasn't doing their best to avoid talking to her. He was her ticket out of Drassa, into something better. She wasn't going to turn on him. Maybe there were a few communications hurdles involved, but Amin wasn't going to do anything Raki didn't tell her to do.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 12:03:16 GMT -5
MAKE SOME NOISE
The Fair Hand popped onto the scene in June of 1306 with a big truck robbery on the Samedi Commercial Plate. The Fishbowl's big plan had come together. It was a little absurd, all things considered; all redworlders, about half of them with Sakazzah blood in one way or another. Amin wasn't all that happy about it. She was livid; instead of her showing it off to the world, it was Ves and a bunch of people she didn't know. She had a sort of bitter vindication when it didn't go to plan, but that didn't make her any happier.
Amin took it to her tutor. She wanted in. She was still 17, but she'd cleared just about every challenge Raki had put her up against. She was as ready as ready could be. It took some doing - and the birthday Sakazzah had been holding out for - but Amin got something big. It wasn't the average heist. It was something deep down; a raid on an AI core in a cloning lab at the bottom of the city. It was the central facility for XDTero, a fresh arrival on the stage with a penchant for custom clones. It was the perfect test of Amin's abilities. It was even on contract for Jimmy. It all seemed too good to be true.
When they finally got down there in November, that was just how it turned out. Raki was on one team, Amin was on another. The idea was that they'd break past the defenders, get into the cloning lab, and tap a hard port to start overriding systems. The two star hackers were the key assets for everything. They had all the skills, gear, and intel they needed to take the place over a dozen times in a row. If anything, the guns and guards they had following them in were just for show - if it wasn't for the mutant horde nobody knew about.
|
|
