Deck-Con report, days three and four

Strictly speaking this report ends at the end of day two with the visit from the Jonson who had hired us asking for our status check. She also bought in a small surprise in the form of Abbey who had been added to the roster with her own brand spanking new fake SIN complete with VIP access and paycheck. So that was good, as we now had an extra set of eyes that had the advantage of being absurdly sneaky which would doubtless come in handy for dealing with what was ever increasingly looking like a pre-staged assassination.

Day three rolled around and we were now in action, as this was the day that De La Mar was supposed to arrive, give her keynote address and hopefully not be assassinated. (Well, hopefully for us. Not so good news for the Shadow community, but a job's a job, right?). Today we were in full swing with our plans, keeping a close eye on her schedule and movements throughout the con, as just about anything could be a clue as to what was about to unfold. Protect the VIP apparently means being pants on head retarded paranoid after all.

The first thing that we found interesting was a number of names on the guest list that were matched to very familiar faces. First and foremost was Mark Hawkins, alias Very Enthusiastic Ares Johnson. Second was Shahira Sabry, our Tir Prince's assistant who seems to generate a massive crapstorm of trouble wherever she goes. Third was Asya Cozi, being the Azzie Ms Johnson that we once tried to kidnap and has since been working her own agenda. Discovering her name was even more fascinating, as it turns out that her husband is Brandine's Baby Daddy and, so far, she remains unaware. That could be useful to know in future.

But the most interesting was number four, being Nobosuke Yamura, better known as the Renraku Johnson who had been behind the whole Pierce plan and also had tried to hire us. I admit, as soon as I found out that he was there, I was looking at options to geek him. Unfortunately, that also would have been very counter-productive as we were here to stop that sort of thing from happening. So I put that on the back-burner and focused on the job. On the upside, at least now we have a name, which could be handy for future use.

Cruising the crowd we confirmed that both Blindsite and Livewire were on the floor and doing their jobs, protecting whatever principal they were there to look after. I did, however, also spy the red-haired mage from yesterday, the one who had nearly killed me before escaping under cover of invisibility. I immediately deiced to tail her while letting the others know, figuring that she was still on the job despite the rest of her team being detained. After all, if she pulled it off, then she'd get all the money herself. Unfortunately, she was able to give me the slip.

The rest of the team were also on specific jobs. Captain Cancer was checking out the Astral part of the convention, trying to find any trace of the mage. He did find that there was a Watcher Spirit over the place, and was able to confirm that it was Livewire's work. Abbey in the meantime had secreted herself in the ceiling space of the main auditorium to keep an eye on things and watch for threats. Freddie was parked outside in the van, having seeded the place with Fly-Spies and with the rest of his drones on standby. And Neon was stealing Matrix access wherever she could.

The sort of ride that says "Yes, I am a Corp Suit, what of it?"

From where he was, Freddie confirmed that De La Mar's assistant arrived on schedule for a meeting before the main show. That told us that so far, everything was going to plan and there were no clear problems. I went back to cruising the floor, waiting for the start of the main show while also trying to find that elusive mage again. After about an hour of nothing, Freddie confirmed that De La Mar's convoy was pulling into the car park...

...only to be immediately ram-raided by a pair of jeeps filled with heavily armed goons. Freddie immediately swung his drones into action, while Captain Cancer and I rushed out to respond. The goons were already on foot and spraying the convoy's SUV's down with assault rifle fire. While they were armoured, they couldn't hold out forever and we didn't want to risk a stray shot getting through and killing our target.

Generic goons are generic

Freddie's Rotordrones got their first, and did a great job of hosing down both jeeps and scattering the goons, easing the pressure on the SUVs. I was next, charging at them even though, for cover reasons, I only had my Agent Special loaded with Stick-and-Shock rounds. Using the concrete parking barriers as cover, I was able to pick off a couple of them.

Meanwhile, Captain Cancer had responded to this urgent situation by... going back to the van to get his gear. What the hell? You're a freaking mage, Cap. You're better equipped than any of us to deal with bad guys while unarmed. I'm running around in a dress armed with a light pistol. Why the hell do you need anything else?

Okay, besides the fact that I look better in a dress then he does, but...

Realising they were in trouble, the thugs pilled out their backup, in the form of a Steel Lynx drone armed with a Panther Cannon. They also set up a machine gun on the back of one of their jeeps that was able to take down one of the Rotordrones as they tried to deal with the Lynx. Fortunately, the three that were still operational were able to unleash a grenade volley that blew the Lynx apart, while Freddie's own Steel Lynx riddled the two jeeps with machine gun fire.

At this point, the attackers were all disabled or dead, their jeeps and drones were wrecks and security was on its way, so we felt that it was a safe time to pull back. Freddie kept a Fly-Spy on the proceedings no less in order to confirm that De La Mar was safe. She was, albeit after a fashion, as the fact was that the 'assistant' who had made a very low-key arrival earlier was in fact De La Mar herself in disguise. The SUV had a decoy drone that was made up to look like her. I'd applaud their ingenuity if we hadn't all nearly gotten our arses shot off saving her body double.

We were quickly back inside and in the queue for De La Mar's keynote address, even if I did have my eyes open for the red-haired mage's presence, A quick astral check told Captain Cancer that the watcher spirit was MIA. He checked around, only to find that Livewire had been knocked out and stashed behind a stand. He was able to revive her (after nearly killing her, I might add...) but she had no idea what had happened or who had attacked her. This meant that there were no astral watchers to make sure that nobody was using magic inside the convention center...

Colt Agent Special. A light pistol for very generous
definitions of "light"

...which means that Abbey was the only one aware when one of the guards began to start twitching and moving towards De La Mar during her address. She quickly sent me a warning and threw an ARO tag on him as she started looking around for the source of the spell. I instantly leaped into action, drawing my gun and shouting a warning as I pumped several Stick and Shock rounds into him, knocking him down before he had a chance to fire.

Abbey in the meantime had found the sauce of the problem. The Mage was hiding at the back of the room, invisible but still as clear as day to Abbey’s Astral Perception. She leaped down and drew a bead on her, only to be nearly fried with a manabolt spell. Recovering, Abbey quickly pumped a Stick and Shock round into the mage, which seemed to floor her. Abbey checked on her only to find that she was dead, the round having apparently gone up her nose or something.

So job well done, De La Mar was saved form an assassination attempt at the designated time and place and we were all relieved. And then S-K security rushed in and arrested both Abbey and I because, what do you know, we'd just engaged in some lethal gunplay on the convention floor. The rest of the team beat a hasty retreat to lie low until things got resolved, one way or another.

The good news was that our new fake SINs clearly were holding up under scrutiny. The bad news was that S-K security weren’t buying that Nicole Carmine, the investor from New York, was loaded up with combat-grade augmentations, which made them think I had a fake SIN which is very grossly illegal (even if you did just save a high-ranking member of the corporate court). I would imagine that Abbey wasn’t faring too much better, given that she'd been hiding in the roof wearing a sneaksuit and all.

And then we got a break, of a sorts. In came the commander of the S-K security team, in the form of the same Johnson that had hired us. She explained that Ms Nicole Carmine's medical records indicated that she'd suffered severe neurological damage which required her to have Wired Reflexes installed; an explanation that was both completely true and utter crap at the same time. She then thanked us for our time and our bravery in protecting De La Mar, and sent us on our ways.

So in short, the Johnson who had hired us was also running show security. And, while we had no proof, the theory was that this had all been done to make S-K look good in a very public way. Of course, given that this is the same company that's run by a freaking Dragon, who can tell? They're very mysterious like that

The other thing that turned out to be interesting was that we IDed the now-dead Mage. Her name was Nightshade, she specialized in illusion and control spells and she wasn't a Seattle native. Rather, she usually ran in New York. Coincidentally, while S-K has a rather small presence in Seattle, their North American headquarters is also in New York. Funny that.

There was also some collateral damage to all this. My face was rather visibly on all the news feeds as Nicole Carmine, woman who heroically saved Danielle De La Mar from an would be assassin with her quick thinking and the like. It also means that right now every Decker (and Technomancer, I'd imagine) on Lightspeed's Data Server hates me because I just saved Matrix Hitler. Great. I mean, I can claim "it was a job," but again, Matrix Hitler does kind of cloud people's perceptions

On the other hand, day four of Deck-Con was... Quiet. Neon finally got to cruise the floor and do all the things she'd wanted to do all along, although with the drawback that since it was the last day of the con, most of the good stuff was already gone along with all the interesting guests. Ah well.

Afterwards I headed to the Skeleton to blow off some steam and hopefully not be hated by everybody there. I did run into Blindsite again, and the pair of us spent some time chatting while we were dancing and gratuitously flirting with each other. He explained a bit more about his abilities and especially the cool amulet he wore; apparently it was a Centering focus to help him with certain actions. He also admitted that right now he was dirt poor and living in a squat in a burned-out apartment that he was sharing with a bunch of devil rats. Yuck

In the end, he wound up going back to the Firehouse and spending the night with me, because he is kind of cute in a 'struggling student' kind of way. And while he was there, Abbey did check him out astrally because it's what she does. And while he does seem to be on the level about his Adept abilities, his amulet was anything but what he claimed. In short, it was a Sustaining Focus for a spell.

So first night together and he’s already lying to me. I'm beginning to see crushed testicles in his future, although he doesn’t have a car for me to set fire to at least.