Luchadores make everything better

Well, I'm now officially broken up with Blindsite too. We both came to the conclusion that we couldn't trust the other, and we couldn't say things that would make us trust the other without compromising the jobs we'd done and, in my case, the rest of the team. So next thing I know we're both walking away and I did tear up more than a little in front of him.

Okay, and I might have ended up locking myself in my room and burying myself under my pillows for a bit as well.

While that little dramafest was unfolding, we got offers for two jobs more or less at the same time. Captain Cancer got a call from Ion about a job that was related to the whole Aztechnology Unusual Acquisitions thing he'd been looking in to. The Johnson in question turned out to be the head of Unusual Acquisitions (so the same guy that Abbey and I robbed, for those of you keeping track) who was looking to us to acquire something unusual (as one can imagine).

Even not awakened, she's pretty scary

Not too long after that, I got a call from Ms Azzie Johnson who wanted to have a meeting for a job ASAP. It seemed that things were more than a little ad-hoc, a suspicion confirmed by the locale of the meeting. It was on a public host, the sort of place that any idiot can access and has only the most crude and basic of security. In other words, the sort of thing you only use if you're desperate or in a hurry or whatever.

Her job was pretty straightforward, even if it would take a bit of effort to execute. She wanted us to head down to Tenochtitlan to steal an artifact from the Draco Foundation office there. The piece in question was a red leather mask called Mascara del Diablo Rojo (Mask of the Red Devil), which took the form of a simple, albeit well-worn and fragile, red leather mask. She was willing to offer us an awful lot of money to do it too, although we did hit her immediately with the issues of shipping all our gear down there. In a move that screamed 'I'm desperate to get this done,' she agreed to pay for having all our stuff (So my weapons, Freddie's Bulldog and drones, Neon's arm and so on) shipped down there.

After a bit of consultation we agreed, largely because the money was good. She was clearly relieved at the prospect, and said she’d make arrangements for our gear. That left us free to attend the second meeting, which turned out to be something of a surprise.

Our contact was Hayden March, the head of Special Acquisitions, who had a rather simple job for us. He wanted us to acquire an artifact for him from the Draco foundation office in Tenochtitlan. This artifact was, what do you know, a red leather mask known as Mascara del Diablo Rojo, funnily enough. He was offering us a pretty good amount of pay to do such and, while he couldn't transport our gear, was also offering a rather substantial expenses account on top of that.

So we had two offers for two jobs from two different Johnsons to steal the same thing. As a bonus, both of them worked for the same company, albeit from different departments within it. And so after a bit of a huddle, we deiced to do the only logical thing we could. We accepted his offer.

That's right, we were going to do both jobs and get the paid for both. As insane as it sounded, we actually were developing something that resembled a plan. Based on what we knew, Ms Johnson's met was likely so ad-hoc because she had heard about Hayden March's meet. Thus she was trying to scoop him on the same artifact, which gave us an idea.

We did some more research on Ms Johnson, finding out that she wasn't Awakened and, more to the point, was actually rather angry about it. She saw her 'mundane' status as being something of a glass ceiling within Aztechnology, and had been looking for a way about it. Mascara del Diablo Rojo played to that, as it was said to be a part of a ritual that would allow a mundane person to awaken. Another part of that ritual was a jeweled piece that, what do you know, was the same one that Abbey and I had stolen from March a while ago.

We were able to get a few good pictures of the Mascara del Diablo Rojo from March, which we used as the basis of our plan. We contracted a master leatherworker to make a copy of the mask, one that we would later rig up with a minor enchantment to make it seem magical, even though it did nothing. It would take some time to get made up, during which we would head down to Tenochtitlan to steal the real mask. Once we were back with it, we'd hand it over to March and the fake over to Ms Johnson. Our logic was that March would be far better equipped to verify it then she was, while at the same time, we'd leave Ms Johnson with only half of what she needed for this ritual.

Simple.

And so with our dupe being built we met Ms Johnson's contacts to hand over all our gear (and drones and Van) and see them on their way. From there we caught our own flight down to Tenochtitlan (Flying business class, thank God. I'd have probably killed somebody if we were in coach) and hit the ground running. Our gear would be a couple of days, so we were going to use that time to investigate and work on the actual extraction plan.

It was at this point that we realized that only one of us spoke a word of Atzlanner Spanish, being Neon. And even then she didn’t actually speak that much of it. Oops.

The first order of business was to scope out the Draco Foundation itself. Due to certain policies that were inherited from Dunkelzhan himself, they're all sorts of unpopular in Atzlan, so their presence in Tenochtitlan was rather low-key. Their office was in a converted warehouse in a seedy part of town (which by Tenochtitlan standards is saying a lot) and was relatively unmarked and plain. The other thing we noticed was that it looked like it had been attacked recently, though when asked, an employee there didn't seem to know much about it (or at least was deliberately evasive).

We did find out that they would have an open day soon, which could be an opportunity for us to snatch the mask. Otherwise, their security was rather low-key and unremarkable, with very little to report. The upside we figured was that if the worst came to the worst, the Tenochtitlan Polica (A subsidiary of Aztechnology, of course) wouldn’t treat the situation as the most urgent thing in the world.

However, while casing the joint we discovered that somebody else was also casing the joint. Some members of a local gang, the Horned Lizards, were clearly checking the place out, so we decided to have 'words' with them. What we discovered made our job both easier and harder at the same time. The gang had attacked the Foundation's headquarters and stolen the mask and were now seeing if there was anything else they could steal as well.

So now on the upside we no longer had to go up against the Draco Foundation's security. On the downside, we now had to find where this gang were and where they'd taken the mask, and hope that they hadn't one anything stupid with it along the way.

Luz's Mask

Some questioning revealed that they'd handed off the mask to some higher-up called Loreno. Unfortunately, the only person who knew who Loreno was and where to find him was a hustler by the name of Luz who worked out of a local town square. Heading there, we weren't sure what to expect, and even then we were surprised. Luz was a Luchadore, who would wrestle people for money as a part of an obvious scam set-up. Even given all that, we could see only one way we were going to get the information out of him.

So I climbed into the ring and challenged him, figuring that if I beat him I could use that as leverage. Well, that and it was something just plain fun to do. Hell, I'd always wanted to fight a Mexican Wrestler, so that’s one more thing off the bucket list. Captain Cancer, Freddie and Neon were in the crowd watching and keeping an eye on things for me, though CC laid down a massive bet on me just to be sure.

The fight was a total blast, even if I did wail on Luz for most of it. As good as he was, I was better, and there was no way he could keep up with my augmentations. So he decided to cheat instead and had his goons outside threaten my team. This backfired spectacularly as Captain Cancer was able to take them out, leaving me free to get a rather devastating win.

The Horned Devil's hangout. Kind of cool but also very drafty

Realizing just how much trouble he was in, Luz relented and told us what we needed to know. Loreno and a chunk of the gang were holed up in an old ruined church nearby with the mask, although he had no idea what Loreno was planning to do with it. Heading there, we were able to do a quick recon of the place, confirming the presence of a dozen gangers and several critters in there, while Loreno himself was in a separate office away from the rest of the gang.

On the upside, our gear was scheduled to arrive early the next morning, which meant that we could simply hit the place and get the mask (and likely get away clean, because again the Policia don't give a crap). The only drawback was that we couldn't be completely indiscriminate, given that the Mask was going to be rather fragile and thus could easily be destroyed if we were lobbing around grenades and the like.

A Chupacarbra. Horrible things

Instead my plan was a two-stage assault. Freddie would open up with a Rotordone neurostun assault on the main body of the church, hopefully knocking out the gang and the critters with them. Then he'd roll in the Steel Lynx with Thinman to clean up whatever was left. In the meantime, I'd sneak into the office and take the mask, and deal with Loreno as needs be.

Almost none of that worked. The first tip-off came from Captain Cancer when his astral recon, while confirming the presence of the mask, indicated that there was something wrong with Loreno's aura. The next problem was the critters; while the gang went down hard under the Neurostun Grenades, the critters were unaffected. This was because they were fragging Chupacarbras, a nasty form of awakened and infected Paracritter.

Mexican Vampire: Note, not like this

The third surprise was when I busted in on Loreno and found that he was a fragging Vampire. Whether this was normal for him or he'd been transformed by the mask was not something I really bothered to check as I instead tried to hose him down with my Alpha (Here's a thing; I have a phobia of essence drain for obvious reasons). He managed top srhug that off, lunging at me while I managed to keep out of the way.

Down below, Freddie's Drones and Thinman were turning their best to deal with the Chupacarbras, which wasn’t easy given how skittery they were. They did eventually go down, but not before one of them did a good job of chewing on Thinman. It happens to him a lot.

With that distraction clear, Captain Cancer provided me with an unusual but not unwelcome hand against Loreno. He attacked him astrally, effectively grappling with him and holding him in place (Maybe he was just jealous that he missed out on the wrestling earlier). This was enough to immobilize him and keep so I could finish him off with my rifle. Unfortunately, a quick check old us that he no longer had the mask on him...

...which is where things got really weird.

A figure appeared above us, one that could only be described as fabulous. It wasn’t hard to recognize them as being Manebow, one of Twitch's former crew who were MIA. The reason he was so easy to eyeball was their long mane of rainbow-coloured hair, the result of a SURGE mutation. Manebow was meant to have been a mage, but right now he was laughing before he literally vanished, dropping the damned mask as he did, I managed to catch it. So yet another damned stupid twist in this bloody mess. But I guess I got the objective, so yay for that much or something.

So we shipped our stuff back to the smugglers to get it out of the country and then flew back to Seattle. After picking up the decoy fake mask we handed it over to Ms Azzie Jounson Lady who seemed satisfied and gave us our not inconsiderable payment. And then we handed the real one over to March, who was also satisfied and handed us our (smaller but no less impressive) pay. So we managed to put one over on both Azzie factions and walk away with a lot of money for the deal and I got to fight a masked Mexican Wrestler. If not for the damned stupid twist in the tale, I'd be pretty happy about it.

Okay, that and breaking up with Blindsite. But you get the picture