[Crossbow]

Guiles grins at your moxie, "Your math seems a bit fuzzy my friend, unless you have picked another two and a half teammates I don't know about.  Since I don't see a dwarf among you, I will assume you were trying to ask for more money.  I can be a reasonable man, since I am taking you out of your comfort zone, payment wise I will do 2300 each, but there will be no advance."

"If you are thinking to refuse or counter, consider this.  Christy and Pandora are very good friends, so if this footage got out, and Pandora found out that you had a chance to stop it, the gravy train you are riding might come to an abrupt end." the grin turned mean and oily.

[farothel]

Sammy had kept quiet since Torvey was doing quit well, while she was checking out what she knew about Andre Guiles, both professionaly as well as the gossip.  She also checked out his Pito profile.


celebrity gossip 3 + intuition 3 =6 Horizon media 2 + logic 4 =6 (6d6.hits(5)=3, 6d6.hits(5)=3)

[Thvor]

Sam shook his head slowly as he stood up. "I wish you the best of luck, Mr. Guiles. But I'm afraid that, as I stated, we do not work on spec. For Ms. Daee's sake, I hope you find someone who is able to help you out--but, honestly, those in our line of work who are willing to take full payment on completion are generally the ones who haven't been around long enough to learn better. You do get what you pay for." So saying, he turned for the door.

[HydroRaven]

Clementine got up to follow Torley. She didn't like backhanded threats, and didn't like Guiles' negotiating tactics, but more importantly, she had a bad gut feeling about him. Something told her he was a snake that would backstab anyone to get to where he wanted to go. If the terms were not perfectly in sync with what the team wanted, she therefore had no problem walking away from this without an afterthought. She looked at Sammy and simply said "We're done here" as she passed by her, expecting the former sim-star to join them.

[Crossbow]

Guiles is somewhat surprised by this turn of things, but he recovers well.

"I have worked with deniable assets before young man, with exactly these terms, so maybe it is you who don't know how things operate here.  Don't allow your ego to draw on an empty credtick."

[farothel]

Time to interfere, Sammy thought
"Can you give us a moment to discuss things, sir," Sammy said to Guiles, "we'll be back soon."
As soon as they were outside of his hearing, she adressed the others.
"Guys, why don't we accept these terms," she asked, "when we get the recording, we can easily make a copy and if he doesn't show with the money, the copy 'accidentally' get's released on the matrix.  I'm sure Snow can easily arrange that.  And I know the guy, not personally, but he's a combination bodyguard/personal manager.  When he says he knows how the shadows operate, he's not lying.  If he screws us over and word gets out, he's going to have a hell of a time finding other people to put out the bush fires all those celebrities create all the time."

[HydroRaven]

Listening to Sammy, Clem couldn't deny her reasoning. If the recording was that sensitive, they could easily make a copy in order to secure themselves against any eventual refusal of payment.

She hated to admit she had acted too quickly, and her pride didn't allow her to say it, but she simply nodded to Sammy. "This is your world, so you know this environment better than I do. If you think this guy is the real deal, then let's go. But I want to go on the record saying I don't like his negotiating style, and I don't trust him one bit."

With her mind laid out, she deferred to Torley, waiting to see what he had to say about the situation.

[Thvor]

Sam frowned. "I don't like it. You may not have noticed, but he wants the tape in his possession, not destroyed. He's collecting leverage. He's not trying to protect Christy, he's using her. And he's trying to use us. The difference is, she's a long-term tool for him; as long as she's big, he's set. Us? We're extremely disposable--other than Sammy, none of us know anyone down here. I'm not worried so much about not getting paid at all as not living much past delivery. We can't threaten to release the video if we're dead."

[farothel]

"And have it be know all over the Pito that he kills those he works with," Sammy said, "I don't think that will help him a lot.  Besides, I think there exist system that you can release something on the matrix on a timer.  If you don't access it within a certain time, it gets distributed.  We can also have only one person deliver the footage to him, with the rest keeping watch somewhere.  And as to that leverage, Christy has a very clean reputation, which means that he has done these kind of cover-up ops before.  So if he wants leverage, he already has it, I'm sure of it.  Thirdly, these kinds of jobs are the bread and butter of this town.  If you don't want those, you won't have much work here.  And here we are asked to remove evidence, you could also be asked to plant evidence of something, as happens quite a lot in this town."

[Thvor]

Sam didn't have to ask who the delivery boy would be; there really was only one option, and he didn't like it. "All over Pito? We've got what, three viewers? The only way that's going to help us is if we get a lot more visible, and if our feeds let on who our employer is. We can't do drek about the first, and he's not going to be happy with the second--remember, he wants this to be swept under the rug. We let it be known who we're working for, we're out of a job--at best."

[farothel]

"We can do the same as with the footage," Sammy said, "recording, but not yet broadcasting.  Actually, he probably expects us to do that.  Everybody does here."

[HydroRaven]

"Yeah, my Pito has been on since I walked in here actually" said Clem, as-a-matter-of-factly.

[farothel]

"As has everybodies normally," Sammy said, "but that doesn't mean everything is broadcasted on the me-feed."

[HydroRaven]

Clem looked at Sammy with a puzzled look. "The what feed?"

[farothel]

"the me-feed," Sammy said, "you know, that thing I asked everyone to put on a two-minute delay.  It films what you see and broadcasts it for everybody on your network to follow."