A pain in the (robo) pants

So after the arse-up at the end of the last run, Minster was left babysitting Slayer for a few days until Walter Johnson got back. Given the spare time now on our hands, we took it upon ourselves to get back to the investigation that we'd come to New York for in the first place. Fortunately, we'd found ourselves something that resembled a lead, courtesy of the rather distinctive missing runner Robopants. She'd worked with two others in past, Mudbug and Ripstar, and we knew where to find the latter.

Ripstar hung out at the Link Club. She was an Ork street racer who ran with a tricked-out Americar and liked to use it to swindle Corp kids out of their expensive rides. Based on this, we told Freddie to take the lead, given that the pair of them had a lot in common, like a love of driving fast in unlikely vehicles. At first he hit it off, with the pair of them talking about (what do you know) street racing, and her recognizing him from several vids that got out of Seattle. They even went out for a practice race which Freddie won, clearly impressing her.

Sadly, he tried turning the conversation to Shadowrunning, only to fumble it badly. She told him to push off.

The next day was handover time, with Walter Johnson getting both his data and Slayer back. He thanked us for keeping Slayer alive, and added that the kid seemed to be well and truly discouraged from ever wanting to be a Runner again, what with somebody deliberately targeting him and all. Normally I’d be against that, given that it mans another guy giving his life over to being a corp drone but... Yeah, you know what? Slayer was a moron who was going to get himself or somebody else killed trying to play at Runner.

EVO: Because goddamn Transhumansits
ruin everything

That evening we headed back to Link Club, with it being my turn to make a run at Ripstar to try and get the info we needed. She got pissy at me and told me to shove it. Probably an Ork versus Elf thing I guess. I did find out though that she apparently had connections at EVO (Dull surprise!) and was a regular at a Red Star Clinic in Manhattan. That seemed to be a dead end, as the aforesaid clinic had been shut down due to fears of CFD infection.

However, we did find out that she'd also been doing side jobs with two others, a pair called DeathWozza and Last Unicorn, apparently to pay for more upgrades. Robopants must have been some sort of crazy transhumanist fetishist or the like, because it was like a habit to her. Some work lead us to Last Unicorn who was some sort of paranoid shut-in Technomancer who hid out in an apartment on the lower East Side. Wraith tried talking nice with her, which lead to her trying to bolt out the window. Fortunately we were ready for this contingency, and I was outside said window.

Despite the apparent threat, we explained that we were here to help her and that all we wanted was information. Last Unicorn (Who, by the way, was wearing unicorn pajamas and had a room full of pastel unicorn pictures... Yeah, I'm sensing a theme here) said that their run with RoboPants had ended pretty badly. She'd been getting ever increasingly erratic during the Run, and when Last Unicorn had looked at her while doing her Technomancer stuff, had seen bizarre data trails coming off of her that suggested she was suffering a rapidly accelerated CFD infection. At the end of the run, she'd taken off and freaked the hell out of Last Unicorn in the process.

Wraith offered to put her up at our rental penthouse apartment so she would be safe, which LU agreed to. When we got there, Dayglo was not happy at all with our basically inviting her into her apartment, but Wraith quickly hit her with a line of utter drek about how LU was running form an abusive boyfriend. All of a sudden, Dayglo was eating her own words and apologizing like hell while tripping over herself to accommodate LU. You go Wraith, you gratuitous emotional manipulator you.

So everyone was happy with that, Save for Neon who was having one of her adorable angry sulks. Apparently she doesn't like Technomancers because she doesn't understand how they do what they do and because a lot of it can't be detected by normal means. On the other hand, when she pouts she’s kind of hilarious, so yeah.

We went back to Link Club for a third try at Ripstar, this time with Wraith taking the lead. As normal for him, he charmed the socks off of her and was able to get a lot of useful information. The reason why Robopants was doing those extra runs was indeed to pay for more augmentations. There had been a price hike because she was still going to the Red Star clinic for new mods, even though it was shut down. We immediately speculated that there was some off the books, after-hours activity going on, and figured that some surveillance was in order.

Heading back there we set up our op. I took up as perch overlooking the rear service entrance, while Wraith was patrolling the area on foot, Freddie had a Fly Spy inside the sewers below the facility, and Neon was watching matrix activity. Sure enough, at about two in the morning some staff came in through the back entrance. Neon reported that their systems were going live, while Freddie reported that there was something moving in the sewers.

"Something" turned out to be an apt description, as it was Robopants now converted into a freaky spider-centaur configuration with extra assault rifle arms. She made her way into the facility which now was online and had an active staff of cybersurgeons. Mechatrousers was undergoing some servicing and upgrades, but was very distinctly different to her prior persona. Now she was very cold and detached, and was more concerned with functionality then flair. She also showed nothing but disdain for her signature robo-centaur torso, which suggested she was now completely gone Headcase and over-written with a new personality.

Freddie Fly-Spy trailed RP after she left, following her as she picked her way across the city via whatever underground means she could. This took her back to the Terminus of all places, where she popped up in a room along with two other of our known missing runners, Spazzy Pete and Scandisk. The three of them were papering for something, but doing such in a very mechanical, very silent way that suggested that the other two were also very infected. And then to our only moderate surprise, Teh Dave joined them, even though he was clearly nor a part of the show. Instead they were openly threatening him, making sure he looked after their equipment while they were out.

The three of them boarded a delivery van and headed across town. We decided that whatever three freaky headcases sere up to had to be bad, and decided to intercept. Freddie came up behind them with ease and effortlessly swiped their van off the road. Me and Wraith leaped out of his van as RoboPants and Spazzy Pete did likewise, a firefight quickly braking out. Meanwhile, Neon did her best to keep Scandisk out of our systems.

A grenade did a good job of crippling RP off the bat, though Spazzy Pete proved to be a more evasive target. Before he went Headcase, he had one of those Move By Wire systems installed which made him  almost as fast as me. Consequently, me and Wraith spent a lot of time ducking his wildly aimed sprayfire while using whatever cover we could find on an early morning New York street.

Managing to find an opening, Wraith aided Neon by shooting out Scandisk's cyberdeck and leaving him with a whole world of Dumpshock. That seemed to throw off their entire team, giving me a chance to badly wound Spazzy Pete with a burst of fire. Wraith finished the deal by putting a bullet through RP's head, the one part of her that she hadn't cybered to all hell. Critical weakness and a half there.

With the cops about to show up, we decided to get the hell out of there. On the way out, I threw ARO tags on the three of them (one dead, one wounded, one fried) to warn that they were all Headcases and thus should be handled with care.

That left us with one open lead, which in turn took us back to the Terminus for a meeting with Teh Dave. He deiced to take us to a private booth and offer us all free drinks, which was his way of trying to avoid us turning the thumbscrews on him. It didn't work, as we were all out for blood. I decided that Dave should try one of his own drinks, with me rather menacingly waving it in front of his face and swirling it in a way liable to cause it to spill on him.

Under a combination of my threats and Wraith offering him 'protection' if he talked, Teh Dave cracked in seconds, admitting just about everything to us in a moment. Teh Dave had been on a run against Renraku with his old team (Him, Dayglo, Fast Pig and Full Otto) which had gone south. From the way he told it, the rest of his team had abandoned him to face the music in the form of a Red Sam team and their boss. He'd been forced into a deal where he would work for said boss, a stern-faced Japanese man who nicely matched the description of the guy who'd tried to extract Slayer.

The man had given him a tray of what amounted to jellied cubes of CFD nanites, ordering him to Use them to infect runners. He'd even given him a quota of infections per week, if you can believe it. The delivery vector was dissolving the cubes in drinks, like the one that I was waving under his nose right now. He'd even got the Terminus staff unknowingly helping him by telling them that they were 'party drugs' and requesting them that they add them to 'special orders'. And yes, he'd even infected his own former team out of spite.

We were able to match a number of the missing to his deliberate infections, including Longshadow, the agent that Wrath had come to NY to find. Dave had targeted him because he was alone and isolated, and thus felt that nobody would miss him. For Wraith, this meant that at the very least he had the 'how' of his disappearance. The next question would of course be where he went to.

He handed over the stash to us, only to find that it was half empty. It turns out that his underpaid, overworked staff had been skimming off the top of his 'party drugs' for some time and he'd never bothered to check the supply. Idiot.

And for his cooperation, Wraith promised Dave that he would be sent to a country safehouse where he would be protected. And by that we mean that Wraith put a bullet in the back of his head and dumped his body in the east river. It’s not a trip to New York until you do.

AI also made contact with the SK security Johnson that had put us onto this mess in the first place and handed the CFD cubes over to her. So now we have some leads on the 'who' and 'how' of the disappearances. Now we need to figure out the 'why', because there’s no way that this is a good plan for anyone.