Community Warfare

Recoil. Likes: Shotguns and Chilli sauce.
Dislikes: Talking about her old team

We're now on our way to New York. Of course, before we got there a lot of things decided that they were going to resolve themselves at once on us in the most messy way they could, because you can't just walk away and hope that things will just go away on their own. Nope, it's never that simple. Instead it has to be one massive clusterfrag of everything going wrong at once.

Stepping back a bit, we were getting ready for the trip to New York. Packing was proceeding well, and Recoil the house-sitter was settling in nicely. And by that I mean she was sitting on the couch playing video games with Benny. Turns out that she's really good at tactical shooters, which meant the pair of them were really enjoying co-op mode. And she'd already does a guest appearance on one of Benny's "Unboxing the Video Game and the pizza" vids, so clearly all was going well.

What was a but less pleasant was the loud explosion that echoed over the district. I pretty much went straight from 'packing' to 'out the door on my bike, assault rifle at the ready,' and heading towards what we had guestimated was the source of the explosion., Unfortunately, that was Cinders' schoolhouse hangout, a suspicion that was halfway concerned when we traied to get through to them on the commlinks only to get nothing but interference. Figuring this was the case, Freddie and Neon hopped in the van and headed over there with me, followed by Captain Cancer on his Mid-Life Crisis.

This is not the sort of thing you usually use to drop the kids
off at school

Our suspicions were confirmed by the presence of a LAV shooting up the school. That's the sort of thing you don't see every day, even by Runner standards. Freddie activated his Steel Lynx and had it crawl on top of the van (gotta love those Gecko Grip wheels) to act as a makeshift turret, and opened up on the LAV. While it didn't do much damage, it grabbed its attention, which was what we really wanted. He headed away from the school, firing as he went with the thing in pursuit.

Taking advantage of the distraction, I entered the school through the massive fraking hole the LAV had blasted in the side. Unfortunately, the first thing I came across was a NeoNET Juggernaut attack drone in the hallway, which is the sort of obstacle that you can't just try to evade. Some quick thinking and slick moves on my part allowed me to put it down, but I could her gunfire and shouting echoing through the building. That told me that there would be a lot more large, heavily armed drones inside.

Meanwhile Freddie had lead the LAV on a wild chase across Redmond, hosing it with machine gun fire and, more to point, keeping it away from the school. Once they got it out of the field of whatever jamming was looming over the school, Neon discovered that there was nobody actually inside the thing. Rather, the LAV was under the control of a Machine Sprite of all things. It matched up nicely to Black Noise, a rather nasty Drone controlling Technomancer (Or "Droneomancer" if you prefer) that we'd run across before,. It also gave them a plan.

They fired up the Directional Jammer they had stashed in the van and deployed it via the complex methods of opening the back doors and having Thinman stand there and hold it. That messed up the LAV's connection to its control long enough for Freddie to deploy his rotordrones. The five drones created a murderous hail of fire that, combined with the loss of control, caused it to crash into a bridge. Amazingly enough Thinman didn't get scrapped in the process.

Back at the school I found that the refugges were largely sheltering in the rooms unharmed but terrified. That was a small relief in and of itself, as it suggested that the actual goal of the attack was Cinders' team. Following the noise, I managed to sneak up on two more of the Juggernauts, who in turn had Malthus pinned down behind cover. He couldn't go anywhere both because of their murderous machine gun fire as well as the fact that Pandora was with him and badly injured.

NeoNET Juggernaut: Twenty-five years of development hell
to get something this slow, clumsy, stupid and heavily armed

I put a grenade straight under one of the Juggernauts, disabling it and badly damaging the second. Malthus finished it off with an Assault Cannon shot through its torso that blew it to shrapnel. Fortunately, at that point, Captain Cancer showed up and was able to fix up Pandora via a heal spell while Malthus filled me in on the situation.

It had been pretty much a perfect surprise attack. The first thing they knew about it was when the school was hit by a block of jamming. Next thing was somebody hacked Pinpoint's wired reflexes, effectively putting him into a seizure. The LAV and the drones had been the next step after that. As far as Malthus was able to tell, the Jamming was coming from a building across the road, but that was being watched by one of the Juggernaut drones who was concealed within.

We came up with a quick and dirty plan. Captain Cancer drove his Mid-Life Crisis by, distracting the Juggernaut and allowing me to sneak over to the building. Once I was inside, I made it up to the second storey where I discovered three things; the Juggernaut watching out over the window, a Rigger Control Console and a Jammer. One quick grenade from my Alpha fixed the latter two of those, while also handily shutting down the remaining drones.

Regrouping (and also checking on Pinpoint who was now fine, jsut grumpier then usual) yielded a few clues while also making things worse. The first was that He'd seen Cinders being taken, carried off by a figure that we confirmed was Black Noise in a van. The second, slightly more positive note, was that Neon had manage to get into the flight logs of the Krime Wing and look at its recent history. The last place it had been before coming to the School was an abandoned mining facility out on the lava flows around Mount Rainier. In other words, a perfect place to base this sort of hardware out of.

It was our only lead as to where Black Noise had taken Cinders, so we decided to head out there to recover her. Malthus and the rest of her team were going to stay behind to look after the refugees there (as well as Pandora who was still a mess), meaning it was just the four of us plus small army of Drones. As we drove out there, something did catch our eyes en-route, being two different Stallion helicopters flying out in the same direction that we were headed.

I was formulating a theory as to what was going on as we headed there, but I wanted to see where this was going first. Once we got there we pulled up well short of the mining facility itself. Most of it was gone, save for a large platform that was jutting out of the volcanic rock, more of the skeletal wreckage of what had been there before than anything else. A quick scout run with the Fly Spy told us what was on site, which seemed to confirm my theory.

Well this looks healthy

First and both the least important and possibly the greatest threat was the presence of Black Noise, waiting by his van at the base of the facility. Up top was more interesting, however, given the pair of Stallion helos both with Aztechnology markings. By one of them was Ms Cozzi, who had a body bag which presumably contained Cinders. And by the other was Hayden March and his own bodyguard, who was holding the Mascara del Diablo Rojo. Finally, around them were a quartet of heavily armoured mercenaries who were rather conspicuously not Aztechnology guards at all.

An astral assessing by Captain Cancer confirmed a few things. The four goons as well as March's bodyguard were all heavily cybered up. Cinders was alive and in the bag. And while we knew that March was awakened, what we discovered was that his aura had the same distinctive flair as hers did.

So it was simple. Cozzi wanted the mask, and was going to trade Cinders for it, who, in turn, was somehow connected to March. Our objective was to get both it and her away from both of them.

Step one was to remove Black Noise, because with him around we couldn’t communicate or use drones or anything else. This meant that myself, Captain Cancer and Freddie who was jumped into the Steel Lynx had to crawl across to the site very slowly and carefully, mindful of all the volcanic fumes, ash, hard black basalt and whatever else. Once there, stage one was achieved rather simply by me doing an effortless Shock Glove Mugging of Black Noise. Leaving him zip-tied in his van, we moved on to stage two.

This was, understandably, a lot more complex. I scaled one of the remaining smoke stacks, getting me a good view of the platform where the whole mess was going down. The idea would be that I lobbed in a Neurostun grenade whole Captain Cancer threw out a Mass Confusion spell. Freddie would take advantage of the architecture to literally shoot the floor out from under the guards with his Steel Lynx. As soon as the ambush went off, he'd also have the Rotordrones in flight for extra fire support.

Easy.

Stage one went off without a hitch. While the mercs were sealed up within their body armour, the neurostun dropped Cozzi and crippled both March and his guard. The Mass Confusion spell did a number on the rest of those up there, leaving them open to my attack.

I dropped down and popped a careful aimed shot into the bodyguard in order to get him to drop Cinders, As I did, March used a heal spell to purge the gas from his system. He tried to fry me with a Manabolt, but fortunately missed thanks to all the crap that was going on. As the bodyguard tried to get to his feet (I'll give him points for determination) he instead ate a shock glove to the face.

The mercenaries, in the meantime, had been dropping off the platform as Freddie had been shooting out the floor from under them. This lead to a firefight down below between them and both Freddie's Lynx and Captain Cancer. One of them got off a burst that almost killed the Captain before he got chewed up by the Lynx.

Up top Freddie's Rotordones joined in the fight. Two of them hosed down the last remaining guard, while the other two dropped March, leaving hi neither dead or badly wounded. With the area clear of hostiles, I collected both the mask and Cinders while Neon drove the Bulldog in ASAP to recover us. Quick thinking on her part plus the Van's extensive medical system allowed us to keep Captain Cancer alive as we sped away from the site knowing full well that Azzie backup or a DocWagon HTR team - or both - would be on the way.

We didn't stop running until we got back to the schoolhouse and were able to recoup a little. By that point, things were a little better; Cinders was up and on her feet and was able to heal Captain Cancer, while also providing some explanations. March was in fact her brother (as I had suspected) and Cozzi was trying to use her as leverage against him. She was amore then a little concerned for March's health, given that he'd been hosed by a pair of drones, but I admitted that our priority was making sure she was alive.

Not too much later, we got a call from Lukas, thanking us for his sudden promotion on the assumption that we were responsible for it. Cozzi had been suddenly removed from her position and 'relocated;' elsewhere, probably to a stone slab with accompanying sacrificial knife. There were still a few unanswered questions, however, most notably how Cozzi had managed to find the money to shill three and a half million for a LAV, another couple of million for the Murderbots as well as the RCC and the Jammer, but, frankly, I was beyond caring at that point.

Some recon of the site confirmed that all involved had been evacuated, Suits, Mercs and all else. All that had been left behind were a few dropped assault rifles and the two Aztechnology Stallions. Oh, and Black Noise, who was still trussed up inside his van.

That just left us with the issue of what to do with the mask (Which had been stashed in my back pocket all this time and thus I might have sat on along the way). A call to the Draco foundation did provide a rather handy solution to that and one of our other concerns. They would happily take the mask off us and, as payment for its recovery, provide us with transport to New York. And not just the team, but also our equipment, drones, weapons, Van, et cetera. So another massive win.

Which means we're off to New York, having closed out another long and sprawling mess. Yeah, I know there's a few things still left hanging like what was with Manebow and that happened to Twitch's team, but frankly, I don't give a crap. As long as it’s all behind us, I'm happy. And besides, it'll be great to see something different and get started in a fresh scene and land new jobs and all that. I can't wait.