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 Rigger side of it saw him use a lot of rotordrones and remote-controlled explosives, the latter of which would become his signature. He also used the van that’s so typical to many Running Riggers, though while the Freddiemobile is a totally sweet Bulldog, BB’s vans tended to be… old and scummy and rusty and the sort of thing that you call the cops about if you see within five hundred meters of a school.

A typical Buzz Bomb ride

The thing is, though, he really was pretty bad at what he did. I heard about one run that he was involved in before he first crossed paths with us where he was trying to extract a target that another Runner team was going after. Not only did he not get the target he was after, but he also nearly got murdered by his psycho partner, had his van trashed and wound up wrapped around a tree. Or another time when he was hired to find a missing person; not just did he end up having to kill them instead, but he never told his employer about it and, as such, was still on retainer from them. What a jerk.

We first encountered Buzz during the highway chase incident where he was working with the Ancients. I can’t imagine why, given that they’re big enough to hire someone competent or useful if they need to. That little mess resulted in BB getting his drones and van trashed, but the Ancients also being out for our blood. because of the number of them who got killed or hurt in the process. Bad start.

The next time around was when Me and Freddie were invited to a road race (this is where I met Alphoso, so rawr to that) which he had also entered. Why is beyond me, as I can’t see anything that one clown in a crappy van would add to the proceedings, but then I wasn’t the organizer. To make matters worse, there was an Ancients Biker called Bat (or something; it was in Sperenthiel and I don’t actually speak a word of it) who made it pretty clear to me that she was out for my blood. So not just did I have to win the race, but I also had to watch my back and make sure that Buzz Bomb didn’t accidentally kill me with his stupidity.

Turns out I was right to be worried about one of those. See, Buzzy had seeded the course with his signature remote-detonated explosives in order to ensure that he’d win or, at the very least, not come dead last. Which, by the way, he was, having been left in the dust by the entire pack. So he decided to let off at least one of his bombs whole someone was convenient, and wound up blasting Bat off her bike. This left her on the ground, unconscious and, by the way, in the path of an oncoming truck.

Now here’s the thing. I could have just gone on to blaze my way through the race. After all, Batgirl there had made it clear she was out for my blood. But on the other hand, it would have been a really ass thing to do, especially as that bomb was probably meant for me instead. Plus, for all that, she hadn’t actually made any hostile moves against me so far. So instead I turned around, sped back, put my bike on Auto and then leaped off it, grabbing Bat and pulling her out of the way before she became road kill.

Next thing I know, I see Buzz-Bomb’s van coming, the creep having managed to advance two places by knocking one of them out and the other giving up her lead to rescue them. So I did the only logical thing I could do; I leaped into his van and basically drop-kicked him out of it and onto the pavement. Then I took control of it and, despite nearly being crushed by the aforesaid truck, managed to cross the line in third. (True, the rest of the field had been eliminated, but hey). It might have also caught fire after I was done.

His screw-up, he eats the consequences, right? Sadly, no. A few days later at our Firehouse hangout (which I need to tell you all about some day) here’s Freddie minding his own business and cleaning the Van when blam, he get shot by a sniper rifle. He goes down hard, and I manage to drag him out of the line of fire, whereupon Benny does his best to patch him up and keep him alive. Between Me, Wraith and Neon we managed to find the source of the attack; in this case a sniper in one of the old crappy buildings across the street.

Me and Wraith headed out to take care of them, because the last thing any of us wanted was to be shot in our own home. Using the best cover we could, we made it across the street and inside, only to find that the place was full of explosive booby-traps. Sound familiar? Splitting up, we managed to make out way through the mess and find the sniper on the roof. Or, more to the point, we found a remote-controlled tripod-mounted rifle, and disabled it.

It’s at that point that Neon reported she’d found a Flying Eye drone with a bomb strapped to it which had powered down after it lost contact with its controller inside the Firehouse. Oh, and her own hacking confirmed that it belonged to Buzz Bomb. Dull surprise.

That was a declaration of crossing the line right there and then. It’s one thing to come to blows with another team because you’re at cross purposes on a run, but trying to geek them in their own home is another matter all together. We put the word out of what had happened and that we were looking for him, and managed to get some surprising results. The good news was that we got a lead on his location; he was using an old warehouse as his new garage. The bad news was that, despite being broke from replacing two vans and a whole mess of drones, he’d somehow come into enough cash to get some new Rotordrones, two Steel Lynxes and a fragging Ares Mobmaster.

Not a typical Buzz Bomb ride

Clearly, we wanted to take him down in some way that didn’t mean tangling with a fragging APC. So instead we came up with a plan that involved infiltrating the site whole he was at home and using jamming to either neuter his drones or, at the very least, make them somewhat less effective. It did work; while Freddie and Wraith dealt with the Lynxes, I was able to get into his APC and take him out before he could get it going and start rampaging or whatever else.

After making sure he couldn’t get his drones or any other nasties back under control (Protip: shoving a screwdriver into a datajack works wonders) we decided to get some answers. It tums out that his new gear had been provided by our favourite Crazy Digital Murder God in order to help Buzzy with the whole people smuggling thing that he had going on. Figures, right? I mean, who’d suspect Buzz Bomb of being a part of somebody’s elaborate master plan? The guy's so stupid you’d think he couldn’t even do that right.

So we walked off with his APC and one of the Lynxes that we were able to salvage (complete with a amounted MMG, bonus!) while also getting rid of a threat, so in a weird way this worked out well for us. As for Buzz Bomb, we handed him over to the Ancients as a peace gesture, figuring that they’d be very happy to see him after he almost got one of them killed. And while they didn’t do what I expected (I had my money on either ‘dragged behind a motorcycle on the highway’ or ‘wound up in a Bunraku parlor wearing a dress’), it was a suitable amazing fate. They carved some racial epithets into his chest in Or’zet, and threw him into the Ork Underground. He didn’t last long.