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.