Welcome to New York

New York is the city that never sleeps and where everything happens at once. That certainly seemed to be the case when our flight touched down at Empress Hitomi airport (Stupid Shiawase ruins everything. Megacorp history proves this point). As soon as me, Freddie, Neon and Captain Cancer were off the plane, we were approached by s guy offering us a job. See, New York.

Teh Dave, as he introduced himself, had apparently heard about is from my fixer. He immediately assumed that Freddie was in charge because of his "thick and authoritative moustache" (In all fairness, I will give him that; Freddie does have a pretty awesome 'stache) and opened negotiations. He did seem to be a bit surprised when I took over, even when both Freddie and I pointed out that I was the team leader. You can tell this relationship is already off to a great start.

The only way to fly. If you're a rich corp exec, that is

Once we got over that massive faux pass on his part, Teh Dave explained the job. It was very urgent, with a deadline of maybe fifteen minutes. He needed us to extract a NeoNET exec by the name of Don Morrison, which in theory sounded easy. The catch was that Morrison was coming in on a chartered private jet, and needed to be extracted before he reached the ground and was immediately collected by private security. So in other words, we needed to hijack his plane. And the only way that we were going to do that was by getting onto it in mid-flight.

I must admit that I leaped at the chance.

The good part was that Teh Dave had a chartered Tilt-Rotor that he could use to get us into position, He also had planned a landing point for us. All we needed to do was jump out of his plane onto the other plane, get inside, disable the security, take the controls and then land it on a way too small landing platform that would require some perilous hard banking and an approach through downtown Manhattan. Easy.

And then we were off. Teh Dave's pilot did a great job of getting us into place, enough so that even with our minimal freefall experience we were all able to make it onto the plane's exterior easily. Okay, we nearly lost Captain Cancer along the way, but hey, that happens. Neon quickly popped the lock on the hatch, with me and CC going in first.

Those inside were surprised, to say the least. Three security goons armed with Tasers tried to stop us, while a fourth shielded Morrison. As soon as we were in, Freddie and Neon followed up, trying to get into the cockpit. This process was hampered by a stray Taser shot hitting the door controls, fusing them shut. Wonderful. The good news was that the goons went down fast, with three of them chocked or manabolted into oblivion, and the fourth defenestrated via Magic Fingers spell.

At the same time, Freddie tried to pry the door open through levering it with a tea-tray (apparently his list of mechanical skills don't include opening locks). And when that failed, Neon managed to get it unstuck. That's right, Freddie, an Adult Male Ork was just out-muscled by a scrawny Elf girl. It would have been hilarious if we weren't in the middle of a fight on a plane.

Fortunately, the pair of them were able to quickly overpower the pilots and take over the plane, which left us just with the problems of landing it. Freddie instantly jumped in, and proved to be a better pilot then a lockpick and managed to dodge buildings and put the jet safely down with whole centimeters to spare. As soon as we were out with Morrison, we were met by Benny in the Bulldog with Teh Dave on board, and we got the hell out of there.

Following Teh Dave's lead, we wound up in the Terminal District, Manhattan's own tiny little slice of Barrens Hell. It's a chunk of Westide that includes Penn Street Station and a lot of massively run-down residential and industrial space that is walled off from the rest of the city. Teh Dave was able to wave us through the checkpoint and direct us to our destination, the Terminus. What was once apparently a convention center had since been turned into a combination nightclub/market/slum lot, and also was something of a hub for all things shady..

Besides getting us our payment for the job, Teh Dave said he could also arrange the passes we'd need to get through Manhattan. This was vital, as the city is effectively corp owned and controlled, and the movement of people within it is heavily regulated by the Manhattan Development Corporation. And without your MDC approved pass, the local police can arrest you on the spot and have you thrown off the island. And because a good Runner is also a bit paranoid, Captain Cancer put an Air Spirit on him just to make sure he was doing all this.

Sure enough, Teh Dave met his Johnson, handed over Morrison, got the pay and then they both did lines of Novacoke because. After that he did indeed get us our passes, which proved that he's at the very least a sleazebag of his word. In the meantime, I headed off to the dance floor to scope out the local colour, noting that I was far from the only one who was wearing body armour to the club.

Rejoining Freddie (who he still assumed was in charge despite all insistences to the contrary) he also tried to offer us a place to live. That would have been either in the Terminus itself, or elsewhere in the Terminal district. Freddie didn't like the sound of that for several reasons; he needed a place to park the Bulldog and a workshop for it and the drones. Plus he knew that Neon would want decent matrix support (Which this district definitely didn't have) and that I’d just hade living here in principal. (Also true)

Teh Dave's filing efforts to impress were cut off by the arrival of two others; a human and an Elf, both obviously Runners. They pretty much verbally crushed Teh Dave on the spot, pointing out that they used to work with him but had moved on, largely because he was kind of scummy and bottom-feeding. But they were also looking for Runners, which was enough to have Freddie summon us all back to hear what they had to day, while Teh Dave slinked off into oblivion.

They introduced themselves as Full Otto and Dayglo, and explained that they were looking for a few Runners to help them with a job. Their Rigger, Fastpig, had just unexpectedly exploded, and they needed a replacement ASAP. The upside to this was that they could also provide us with a base of operations, which definitely was a better offer then "some rat hole in a no-go zone". Plus, given the job we'd gotten from S-K that bought us out here in the first place, it was a good opportunity to get 'in' with the local Runner community.

Captain Cancer wants to live here...

We accepted the offer, although Captain Cancer said that he wanted to maintain his own hang-out separate from everyone else for god alone knows what reason. So he found some nice little hellhole in the Terminal district to live in, while Full Otto guided Freddie across town. It turned out their base of operations was actually a two-storey penthouse apartment on top of an upper-class residential block, complete with a pool, bar, gym, weapon locker, high-end Matrix access and a Drone Workshop that belonged to the late Fastpig. Yeah, I think we got the better part of this deal.

After a day to settle in (I got an upper-story apartment overlooking the pool!) and get ready and the like, we were off to work. The plan was actually rather simple; Full Otto and Dayglo were going to be retrieving something from a Scientia Labs facility. (A company owned by Zurich Orbital, and also have R&D labs for Horizon and Ares). We would be their getaway, with the pair of them in Freddie's Van while me and Captain Cancer would be providing escort and cover.

...we get to live here

A key part of the getaway would be to take advantage of one unique aspect of the New York corp scene. Unlike many other cities, there are three different Police firms operating in New York; Knight Errant, Winter System and NYPD inc. However, each sector could have one of those or all of them. Thus we could evade pursuit by simply hopping from one sector to the next, where anyone who was after us might not be able to follow.

The extraction itself went off without a hitch, with FO and DG in the van and our little convoy off and running. We were quickly joined by a pair of Winter Systems Dodge Charger pursuit cars, which in turn deployed their own Pursuit Drones to intercept us. That quickly escalated as Freddie popped out his own drones to counter theirs, turning it into a running car chase and drone battle across the sector,

I mean, really, where's the comparison?

Neon quickly locked up their comms to prevent them from calling in anything else, which just left the physical threats. Me and Captain Cancer (well, Captain Cancer's Murdercycle to be more precise) were able to put down the drones rather easily while evading their fire. One of the two cop cars wound up being gutted by Freddie's Steel Lynx drone firing out of the back of his van, while the other was sideswiped off the road. And before they could get anyone else on us, we were across sector boundaries to where Winter Systems had no jurisdiction. Eat it, Corproate Bylaws!

(Random note: Winter Systems also makes the Steel Lynx. Irony)

This is a cop car, by the way

Full Otto guided us to their destination, which was an entrance to the New York Underground. Formed out of the ruins of the old subway system, sewers, access tunnels, basements of long-gone buildings and whatever else, it's essentially a second city underneath the city. It's home to the SINless, black market dealers, smugglers organized crime, paracritters, the infected and all manner of other nastiness, and as such, was the perfect place to meet a Johnson. After picking our way through a maze for a short eternity, we did just that.

Everything was going smoothly up until the point that Full Otto pulled a gun on the Johnson for no reason. Captain Cancer quickly threw up a barrier in front of him to cut him off, so he shot Dayglo instead. We tried to take him down without killing him, but he probed to not just be tough but also more than a little deranged, shouting and screaming before I was able to shock him down.

On the upside, at least we got paid.

Another picture of our new hangout. Just to prove the point

We managed to find a Street Doc who operated out of the back of a Chinese Restaurant (Hint: Don't order the pork) who was able to stitch up Dayglo. She also ran some tests on Full Otto and confirmed what I had suspected; he was a Headcase. That was surprising to Dayglo as she said he'd never shown a signs sign of CFD before just then. After confirming with the Doc that he was a) too far gone and b) a danger, she had him euthanized and the body destroyed.

So all up, our first few days in New York and they've been both incredibly successful and a complete disaster at the same time. Fantastic!