Street Legends and other lies

One of the reasons for our break was due to the death of our regular Johnson. I liked Ares Johnson, but I really didn't know what was going to come next, especially given the mess that lead to his demise. So when a new Areas Johnson just walked into the firehouse (I just realised that I haven't written anything here about the firehouse. I should, because it's pretty amazing) we were rather surprised for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is we have no idea how Ares knew were we lived, so holy crap what the hell security.

New Ares Johnson. He's... enthusiastic

Anyway, the new Johnson was... Enthusiastic to restart our working relationship, to say the least. Actually, he was pretty damned excitable about just about everything full stop, which is one of those traits that can be good or bad in a Johnson. To get the ball rolling, he offered us a simple job; tunes out that our old friends the Rusted Stilettos have been getting their hands on shipments of factory fresh Krime weapons as well as a fresh supply of drugs, and he wanted to find out how and why. It seemed a little odd - we couldn't immediately see his angle in this or what he was getting out of it - but we took the job regardless because hey, money is good.

Filler post is Filler

It's been a while, I know. I would say that I’ve been busy with Runs and stuff, but the truth is we've been on a bit of a break after the whole Pierce fiasco and the fallout from it. More than a little of that has been focused on what to do about that Reraku Johnson who was behind it all. We've come up with several plans, but most of them amount to 'snipe him while he's on the deck of his boat', 'blow his boat up with him on it' and 'snipe him while he's on the deck of his boat and then blow it up to be sure', but they all have common issues of getting the chance to kill him and also making sure that Renraku don’t come after us too. The good news is that they haven't taken a shot at us so far either, but while this guy is out there, it's hard to feel completely safe.

I also remain broken up with Alphonso. He's taken to asking his mechanic (Dave) to ask Freddie to ask me to call him. Not gonna work. You had your chance, chummer, and you blew it big time.

Digital Apotheosis

Nothing to do with anything, but I broke up with Alphonso. Turns out I wanted a stable mature long-term relationship and he wanted a trophy Shadowrunner girlfriend he could show off to all his racer buddies. His loss.

So that aside, let's talk Pierce. Thanks to Neon's efforts, we know how to kill him. Disrupt him in the Matrix, then take out the device that he uses as his refuge when he flees there to recompile. Of course, that means fighting a Crazy Digital Murder God in their native environment as well as then walking into what was doubtless going to be a well-prepared, well-defended secured facility that would be on alert and ready for us. Easy, huh?

This outcome is probably inevitable

So we have a plan to kill Pierce, and I mean kill-kill him. Disrupt him in a way that means he can’t recompile or bring himself back or the other things that Crazy Digital Murder Gods do in order to keep themselves from dying. And it needs to be done, While we’ve disrupted his operations, cost him his allies, killed his crazy bug cultists and ruined their ritual and all that, he’s still active and functional and out there, and he’s still a threat. Killing him is the only way to stop him from coming back and trying some other insane stunt in the name of Dr Okabe’s mutli-stage beyond the grave revenge plan.

The theory is simple. We know where his ‘safe haven’ is, where the device is that he’s designated as a place to fall back to if he’s ever disrupted and needs to recompile. The idea is that we disrupt him on the Matrix and damage him enough that he has to fall back to it, and then once he has we bust in there and destroy everything so he can’t come back at all. That’s it, end of story, no more Crazy Digital Murder God out to get us all or blow up the city or whatever else.

Crimson Dawn (part 4)

Deep breath

Clam

Relax

Remember where you are and who you’re pretending to be

This is easy. You can do this

“Welcome to Vendor Mammoth, my name is Ashley. How can I help you?” The stock greeting had all its usual false cheer and enthusiasm, but a perceptive customer, one who’s assessment of her didn't just begin and end at ‘cute Elf girl’ would have noticed an edge to it, one that was at odds with the attempt to greet the customer, create a friendly atmosphere and encourage them to spend their hard earned money on cheaply made, low-quality products.

Those perceptive individuals might have observed just a hint of resentment, a touch that suggested that the cheer was just as superficial as everything else in the store. They would have been able to tell that her feelings towards the customer wasn’t just the usual bland indifference born of a greeting that was spoken not out of any desire to show them kindness but a requirement of her continued employment.

So stupid he's dangerous

He is the Anti-Sexy

There’s a saying that a man is measured by the quality of his enemies. I’ve never got that myself; in the Shadows, it’s best if you don’t have any personal enemies at all, so how’s someone supposed to measure you by that standard? But there’s one other reason as to why I don’t like that turn of phrase, and that’s because one of our own enemies is a pretty low standard to measure anyone by

Buzz-Bomb was ugly, greedy, cowardly, petty, vengeful beyond all reason, incompetent and, above all else, pretty damned stupid. He also became our enemy largely because of his ability to not leave well enough alone and instead make a bad situation even worse by whatever means possible. If there was a way to dig himself into a deeper hole, then he would find it.

He was an Elf Rigger, but I must admit that I have my doubts on the first pat. I mean, he was ugly, with a nasally voice and weird teeth and the like. That’s not very Elf-y to me, and I should know, right? Personally I’ve always thought that he was a poser, which meant that he paid good money to end up looking like this. It would fit if only because it would make him that extra bit lamer.

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.

Crimson Dawn (part 3)

The Redmond Barrens were rarely quiet, even in the dead of night. The streets were usually just as lively after sundown as they were during the day, echoing with the sounds of life on the edge. More than just the usual hustle of day to day traffic, there was so much more that could be heard.

The roar of engines, the blare of music, raucous arguments, the distant wail of sirens, honking horns and, more often than anyone from Seattle's better districts would be comfortable with, the sounds of gunfire.

In among the cacophony that was Redmond, there was one rather odd noise. The irregular but at the same time almost rhythmic sound of wood striking wood, punctuated by cries and shouts. This odd sequence was coming from the roof of a run-down apartment block, one seemingly otherwise no different from the numerous others of its kind around it.

Diplomatic incidents

The last few days have been complicated, to say the least. A lot of things happened, and we’re not entirely sure of what’s going to come of all of it. In fact, to be honest, our team has either achieved a major breakthrough or is completely screwed and under somebody’s thumb, and it’s hard to tell which.

How we got to this point is complicated to say the least. Following our trip to the foundation, we found a whole pile of useful information on Pierce and his crazy plans as well as his insane Bug Shaman allies (They’re Bug Shamans, of course they’re insane) and their own goals and how they were going to execute them. This also came with a bit of good/bad; the bad was that their intended sacrifice/host for the bug queen was Snow Fox, the daughter of a major Salish tribal leader and also Wraith’s fiancée (or something). The good was this meant we had a way to find her.

Data Dumpster Diving

So I said that I'd talk about what we found in the foundation. One of the reasons why I hold off adding it to the last post is because, well, there's a lot of it and a lot of it ties into other stuff that we did, and that last post was already as confusing as all get out. So here we go.

No good can ever come of this

The first run where Me, Freddie and Neon worked together had the three of us head to MCT's Cavilard Research Facility to take out one Dr Shin Okabe. This was not an extraction or anything; this was all wetwork and ensuring that he was dead. However, in retrospect, it seems that was what got the whole damned ball rolling and started us on this mess that has gotten us where we are now, fighting a Crazy Digital Murder God and his Bug Shaman allies. No, really.

In order to explain things a bit more, I need to quickly cover a bit more about Dr Okabe. See, the Doctor was not only an expert in computer software design and development with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and behavior, but he was also a Technomancer. (Geez, this sounds good, doesn't it? Read on, it gets better). But before that, he was one of those creepy-as 'Otaku' guys. Oh, and he used to work for Renraku. Oh and guess where he was during the late 2050s. If you answer involves a certain arcology that was taken over by a Crazy Digital Murder God, then you're correct. I told you it got better.

Sim Hell

Stylish early 20th century Me

I’m going to start this by assuming you know what the Foundation is. If not, go ask a Decker like Lightspeed or Neon and they’ll explain it to you (even if that explanation is ‘blah blah blah blah blah nerd stuff’) then come back.

So now that we all know what it is, let’s give you some background. We’d discovered that Pierce was a crazy digital murder god, and we discovered that he had some crazy long term plan. We didn’t know the full details of said plan, however, only bits of it. Added to that, we had no idea where Pierce was hiding, which meant that if we ‘killed’ him in the Matrix, he’d just run off to his safe haven to recompile. Above all else, to this, Pierce himself had deleted all the data we needed on his creation and function down to the point of destroying the research facility host.

The good news was that in theory it survived in the Foundation of the research facility where he was ‘born’. Added to that, Neon had been able to drop an anchor into that Foundation’s Portal Node, which mean that in theory she could get into it again. Unfortunately, we could only do it by jacking in through a friendly host’s foundation and then jumping across from there. The upside is that we know somebody who runs their own data store that we could use. And so Lightspeed joined us on this crazy little trip, which proved to be very useful.

I realised that I've been mis-spelling Abbey's name all along

She also often wears a mask, but that doesn't make
for as interesting a picture

Okay. Time for me to talk about Abbey.

Um... actually, I don't have much to say about her, really. We've only worked together a few times, and it's really hard to get a read on her. She's quiet and elusive, and definitely likes it that way. I really don't know much about her beyond ‘human’ but there's a whole bunch of stuff that I've figured out or that I’ve heard from various other sources. Oh, and apparently Abbey is not her street name, but like Freddie, she hasn't had much luck in making something stick.

So let's look at the things we know and what that means for the team. The first thing is that Abbey is an awakened adept. However, she's not the typical 'run around screaming and leaping off stuff and punching people and making them explode' type that you often find in Runner circles. Rather, she's actually more about agility and stealth then anything else, and has a number of tricks that make hr really damned good at it.

I am a fragging motorcycle ninja

Me on my bike. It's fast enough to keep up with me

So a lot of runners have different definitions of what constitutes a "good" run. Some say it's one where you never have to engage in a fight at all, and nobody ever knows that you're there. Others think it's when you reduce the place to rubble and leave nothing but dead bodies and burning wreckage in your wake. I think if you asked any two runners, they'd say completely different things.

Now what I think was one of the best damn runs I’ve ever been on was definitely on the more colourful, loud and public end of it. But all things considered, it worked out pretty well for us. Not only because of what happened on the job, but because of what we got out of it in terms of fringe benefits and other things. Even if there was one catch.

Wraith: he's like a boss

There's two things you need to know about Wraith. The first is that even though he's a Runner, he's actually a pretty good guy. The second is that he lies all the time.

This is the best photo you'll ever see of him

Now with that being said, let's talk about the guy. He's very camera shy for reasons that might become obvious, but he does cut a distinctive figure to say the least. He's pretty buff, clearly of NAN extraction and he has this really weird hair. Like, it's silver down one side, copper down the other and braided in the middle level weird. He claims that it's natural, but then again he's also given any number of other explanations as to how it came to be this way. Like I said, lies all the time.

Oh, and he also has these really cool tats; possibly even cooler then mine. A Ghost Wolf on his forehead, and then a second one running down the length of each arm and more on his back. At various stages he's claimed that they used to be magical or that they're his spirit beasts or something else. Like I said, lies all the time.

And while he doesn't actually hit on me (or neon, or Abbey), he definitely likes having lots of Elf ladies around him. Guy's a total horn dog, I swear. He once joked that if we get a mage on the team, it should be another woman while he was eyeing Cinders.

Dangerous Aquaintences

So beyond the team, there's a bunch of people we know one way or another. These guys are more or less allies, although this being what it is and our doing what we do, there's plenty of ways that any given ally could be tomorrow's deadly enemy. It's the way things go.

Lightspeed. Yes, she always looks this grumpy

Lightspeed was a runner in the 2050s, but since she's an Elf, it doesn't really show. She used to be a decker back in the Old Matrix and had the good luck to survive crash 2.0 which drove her into retirement. Nowadays she's more of a consultant and info broker and is rather well connected, even if many of her contacts are other old fart ex-runners. She definitely knows her stuff, and I suppose the fact that she lived so long as a runner means that she knows what she's doing. Her network has been very helpful to us in a number of ways, not the least of which is getting us some more recognition. She also apparently runs her own Data Store which serves Seattle area runners.

While she hasn't said much, I got the impression that most of her old team were dead or retired now. The few times she's mentioned them, she didn't seem to have many nice things to day about them.  Lightspeed apparently has a lot of her old pre-Crash cyberdecks, although they're utterly useless now. She turned one of them into an Ant Farm.

We jokingly call her "decker mom", although it turns out that she actually is Neon's mom (and, incidentally, refers to Neon as "the brat" a lot). Apparently, she didn’t know that Neon was an active Runner for some time, until someone 'outed' Neon in front of her. On the other hand, it explains a lot about where Neon got a lot of her skills and knowledge from.

Cluster-fragged sixteen ways to Sunday

Calling today a complete clusterfrag would be an understatement. The worst part of it was that we lost one of our allies, that rarest thing in the shadows; a Johnson who is good to the team and doesn’t try to screw you over.

Ares Johnson, RIP

Ares Johnson (We call him that because we never knew his real name. But that’s the rules) was good to us from day one. We didn’t initially know that he was from Ares, but he sent subtle signs. Like the fact that he was clearly a grizzled veteran. Or the cowboy accent. Or the fact that he liked to meet the team at steakhouses where he’d buy us all massive steak dinners (One of which was the first time Abbey had ever had Steak!). That sort of subtle sign.

And as we did more jobs for him (all of which paid very well), we managed to get ‘in’ with him as we found out more about what was going on. It was a complex mess involving a MCT AI research facility, a plot by elements of the Salish-Shidhe Council to engineer an incident that would allow them to annex Seattle, Bug Spirits, illegal street races, fire drakes, jumping out of hotels and fighting helicopters, the assistant to a Tir Tangire prince, stealing weapons research without hurting anyone in the process, the deaths of Wraith’s old team and, above all else, a Crazy Digital Murder God (I’ve heard the preferred terms are ‘AI’ or ‘Xenosapient’, but I think that this is more accurate) who was involved in manipulating all of the above in order to improve MCT’s market share. I am not making this up.

The fast and the Freddie

As I mentioned before, Freddie's the first of the team that I worked with (Okay, him and Neon, but one profile at a time) and as such, I've known the longest. He’s also in many ways the most open of the team, so I have a lot to say about him.

Orks with 'staches are apparently not that
common. Freddie makes up for that all
on his own

First up, he's an Ork. As mentioned, he Goblinised during puberty, something that I've gathered doesn't happen very often any more. He's in his late twenties, but that's a human late twenties, not an Ork late twenties, for whatever that means. I really can't say much else on the physical looks side of it beyond his moustache. It's actually rather impressive, and I can tell he's proud of it and takes good care of it. Combined with his love of driving caps, it gives him a bit of a dapper, old-world look.

Aside from that, though, he's got this whole "farm boy" thing going for him. I know that he's from rural Tir Tangire, although the "rural" part definitely shows in everything from being mostly laid back to the fact that his Matrix persona is a scarecrow. He speaks Sperenthiel, which Wraith finds kind of amusing given that I don't. Also, going towards the 'country bumpkin' thing is the fact that he can't tell a lie to save his life. It's painfully obvious when he tries.

Technologic

As I mentioned before, if you wanted to call me any one traditional type of Shadowrunner, then I'd say that I'm a Street Samurai. Usually, the definition of which (and I know that if you ask for such a definition it causes fights on the matrix) is a heavily augmented mercenary combatant, which I'd say fits me perfectly. Of course, in order to do this I had to replace a good chunk of meat with 'Ware, but the results are pretty damned awesome if I do say so myself. I'm faster and more agile then any Metahuman ever could be. I dance between bullets, I leap across the landscape and I do the impossible every day.

A diagram of somebody's 'ware. Not me, actually.

They key to all this is a combination of Wired Reflexes and Reaction Enhancers. These two systems, both working together, mean that I'm blindingly fast. Both of them are above normal grade 'ware; I recently got a new set of Betaware Reaction Enhancers, so I'm running quality stuff and not your average street grade junk. The pair of them throw in a whole bunch of adrenaline stimulators, neural boosters, replacements of key vertebrae and other such big-time changes that rewire my body to give me lightning fast reactions and agility. Added to that is some Bioware in the form of Muscle Toner which gives me just a little bit more of a boost while preserving my natural (sexy) physique. Blink and you'll miss me.

(Of course, it doesn’t hurt at all that I was already pretty dammed fast and agile to start with. I was the star of my school's junior gymnastics team, but that's neither here nor now. Back to the 'ware)

Crimson Dawn (part 2)

The Run had gone to complete drek. And for Slicer, that was Wiz.

Who are these guys?
And why do people feel old
when I mention them?

He and his team had been trying to get into a Fuchi research facility to steal the specs on some nova-hot new piece of ‘ware they were developing. Instead, security had been far tighter then expected, which should have left them all completely fragged. Instead his team were bringing the hurt to the corp goons, and hitting them hard.

A burst from Stomp's Kalashnikov put down another of the Fuchi guards, the man disappearing behind a barricade in a spray of red. The goon next to him tried to make a run for it, only to be cut down by a storm of gunfire from Stump's Rotordrones. Billy Blaster added to the noise, yelping out a high-pitched warcry as he opened up on another one of the stragglers, forcing them back.

"Any idea how long Normie needs?" Stump called over the communicator. "It's getting hot here." The Dwarf may have been running his drones from their getaway car, but he could still get a good idea of what was going on through their sensors.

Captain Cancer

So we seem to have picked up a mage. Not gonna lie. He’s a weird one.

Snappy dresser, horrible personal habits

I’m calling him Captain Cancer for the moment for reasons that are going to become obvious. I don’t think he’s picked a Street Name for himself, and I suspect that it’s going to be one of those cases where the nickname that somebody gave him sticks. (One day, I’ll tell you the story of how I ended up as “Crimson”. Okay, it’s probably obvious, but hey). There’s a good reason for that, and it’s obvious if you speak to him for more then a couple of minutes.

CC is a heavy smoker. I mean, heavy. He seems to have a cigarette in his mouth all the time, and pretty much lights up a new one as soon as he’s done. He also drops his ash and stubs them out wherever he can, which means that he’s already gotten on Freddie’s nerves for smoking in the Bulldog. I mean, Feddie insists we wipe our feet before we enter. Of course he’s going to freak out when someone drops ash in there. Besides, he just put in that nice carpet, and it’s got synthleather seats, not the crappy cracked vinyl like every other Bulldog.

Added to that, he hates being anywhere that he can’t smoke. Seriously, the first time we met, he lit up as soon as he was out of the store. Hell, he lights up underneath “no smoking” signs. Yeah, that’s an addict all right.

And this is why I hate going to Stuffer Shack

Sometimes you get people who decide to find the most complicated solution to a problem that they can. Today was one of those days. (Okay, it was yesterday now, but bear with me)

Misery in convenience store format

Benny needed Pizza at 2 AM and I got sent to Stuffer Shack to get him some. Why? Because nobody else was available to or something. At any rate, that was the first indication of just how badly things were going to go. I mean, Stuffer Shack was its usual nightmare of horrible people – the clerk who wished that he was somewhere else, the woman with a crying baby, the guy licking the tubs of ice-cream in the freezer, the hobo asleep in one isle and the like. Some of the many reasons why I hate that place.

Oh, and there was also this one other guy there. He was buying cigarettes and trying to (no, I am not making this up either) use magic to get out of playing for them. A part of me thinks “just how desperate and/or lame do you have to be to use magic to get out of paying at Stuffer Shack” and then the other part of me thinks that “hey, at least he can magic. That’s a useful trait, right?” I mean, Wraith has been mentioning that we need a magic person on the team for some time now. Abby doesn’t count as all she does is punch things and run up walls.

Crimson Dawn (part 1)

2074

"Welcome to Vendor Mammoth, my name is Ashley. How may I help you?"

The customer gave the red-haired Elf girl at the front of the store the barest minimum of acknowledgement, managing to miss both the strain in her voice and her obviously forced smile. Instead he headed into the store, losing sight of her quickly in among the shelves. For her part, Ashley spared them only the minimum of glance before returning her attention to the door.

A metahuman store greeter seemed like an incredibly anachronistic element in the 2070s, especially to a chain that primarily stocked cheaply made items designed for and marketed to those that couldn't afford better. However, there was actually a certain logic to it.

With the advent of Matrix 2.0 and AR, Vendor Mammoth had originally commissioned an entirely virtual store greeter, intended to guide them to the items they were after, notify them of current sales and other offers and above all else, provide an illusion that the company actually cared at all about them. And while it had been a great idea in theory, the actual application had been problematic.

Dangerous Acquaintances

So while we're here, let's talk about the team I usually run with. I'll say now that they're kinda hard to define as a team; they come and go, and its rare that we'll do a run with everyone. More often than not, it's kinda situational and based on who's available at the time. Hell, I think I'm the only person who's actually been there for every job we've done so far (And that is because I'm awesome, of course) unless the others have done jobs together that they didn't tell me about.

Anyway, in no real order, here they are

Check out the 'stache

Freddie was the first of them that I worked with. He's an Ork, but apparently one of the rare "goblinized" variety that were born human and changed at puberty. That doesn't happen much anymore from all I've heard, so that makes him kinda cool in a way. He's ex-army, and picked up a lot of his skills from there, which is also what got him his start in what he does. The way I hard it, he’s originally from Tir Tangiere. That’s kinda crazy, huh? Only Ork on the team's from the Tir, but neither of the Elves are. Added to that, he speaks Sperenthiel, and I don't. Freddie's apparently his real name, but all efforts to get a street name have failed to stick. He just looks like a Freddie

Om the runner side of it, Freddie's a Rigger to use the conventions of the Runner world. He's got a control rig that he uses to run Drones and his Van (more on that to come!) remotely which makes him super-useful. He's great at recon (fly-spy drones which can get anywhere and are easy to hide because they look like normal bugs) and fire-support with his two Rotordrones, both of which pack assault rifles and grenade launchers (Boom!). He also recently came into a Steel Lynx drone with a MMG, but hasn't had a chance to use it as yet.

My name is Crimson, and I am a runner

So let's start by talking about me.

This is me (In case you hadn't
guessed already)

First up, my Street Name's Crimson. I'm not giving out my birth name, but the best thing I can say is that it's probably buried in a corp's "Missing person" database (no I won’t say which one) with a pretty low priority. I've been living for several years under a fake SIN with all that comes with it.

Okay, so let's look at some of the basics. I'm an Elf, for starters. I’m twenty four years old, but thanks to the Elf thing, I’m going to look like this forever. I love it. I’m 180 centimeters tall, and while I've got a sorta athletic, sporty build, I'm also a lot heavier then I should be for various reasons that we'll get to below. My looks are pretty much natural and again will stay like that forever because, well, Elf. I have long red hair that, thanks to my metatype, is pretty much perfect all the time; I wear it in a ponytail most days that just happens to show off my ears. My eyes are green, though they're semi-realistic looking cybernetic ones. The real ones were green anyway.

Oh yeah, I've got a few tats. No, you don’t get to see 'em.

What I do is the really exciting part. I'm a Shadowrunner, a part of that massive grey industry of freelance espionage, sabotage, assassination, extraction and whatever else that's vital to the functioning of the Megacorps that run the world. I get paid to perform criminal acts against specified targets by whoever's willing to pony up the yens to get it done. I’m a solder in the Cold War between the Megas, the Governments and whoever else is interested. Though if you're reading this, then odds are you know all this already, so hey. I'll skip the details.

Why do I do it is another matter. I'm not one to talk too much about it, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that I don't like the Megas and what they do to people. They're control freaks, pure and simple. They press down on their employees, taking over their lives, turning them into slaves by any other names. And the worst part is, those people accept it. They trade their freedoms away for security, safety, jobs and a roof over their heads, knowing full well that they'll never have to worry about anything as long as they slave away ten outs a day, six days a week or whatever else for their entire natural lives without ever knowing just how little freedom or control over their lives they actually have.

I hate it. I don't want to be a part of it. I want to be the opposite of it. And by being a runner, I fight against it in my own way.

There's a lot of different types of runners, and I know that they hate to be pigeonholed. Me, I'd call myself a Street Samurai; a warrior of the shadows who blends chrome and flesh to become a super-solder, far more than any normal metahuman could be. I've augmented myself extensively with cyberware to make me stronger, tougher and above all else faster than anyone else.

Also me

The latter's my big area of specialty; through wired reflexes, reaction enhancers, boosted senses and a few other tricks, I am blindingly fast. I can go form nothing to full-tilt faster than you can see, and take people out before they even know what's going on. The lucky ones get a quick blur of motion and then boom, they’re gone. Many others don't see me coming before there's a shock glove on their shoulder or a sword in the back, or maybe a burst of gunfire. And in the off-chance that a fight lasts longer than that, I’m fast enough to dance between bullets as I take down the survivors.

I am a dead sexy killing machine.

Although as awesome as I am (Even if Abby complains that I’m too “Pink Mohawk” for her. What does that even mean? I don’t have a Mohawk and my hair’s not even pink), there’s also certain realities. You try running on your own, more likely than not, you're going to end up getting yourself killed. So I do have a team that I work with. More on them to come.