Freddie and Wraith were off
doing stuff (Freddie was looking into Street Races or something and Wraith?
Well Lofwyr alone knows) when we got two job offers drop in our lap at once. I figured
that Yens are good, so I looked into them a bit further. The first one was
coming from a Renraku Johnson so I was immediately 'Nope nope nope nope no way
in hell." Seriously. I never want to work for themn again ever.
The second one was odd that it
came to Captain Cancer of all people, and was passed to him through a strange source.
The request for a meeting had been delivered via a local weirdo called - and
no, I am not making this up - the Ballard of Pudding Quest. The guy had apparently
heard of Captain Cancer, even if the good Captain had never heard of him. Added
to that, the meeting was going to be in, of all places, a tea house in
Chinatown. Yeah, getting stranger by the minute.
 |
| Charming local venue, or something |
So me and Neon met up with CC
and after I was done ribbing him about how I was right regarding Teh Dave, we
went in to the meeting. Sure enough it was a cramped old Teahouse packed to the
brim with obvious Triad goons, but our actual contact was a lot more
interesting, They were a Chinese pair in crisp suits, one man, one woman. They
looked close enough to be related or something. Very freaky. And while they
never identified who they were working for, it was stupidly obvious that they
were from Wuxing. Seriously, they had all the classic signs of a Wuxing
Johnson; two of them, a formal meeting and obvious triad connections. Plus, you
know, Tea House in Chinatown.
Of course, the job itself left
us with little doubt as to who they were working for. The deal was this; they
would offer us three jobs that we would complete in stages. Finish job one, and
they would tell us what job two was. At the end of the day, they would dole us
out a fat load of Yens. Job one was just the sort of thing that Wuxing is
infamous for. We had to break into the office of an EVO exec and mess with its
Feng Shui. Also, while we were there, we had to steal a cheap souvenir stick
pin and replace it with an identical cheap souvenir stick pin. Yep. Not making
any of this up.
Neon and I went off to plan
while Cap Cancer had a meeting with the aforesaid Ballard of Pudding Quest. Who,
by the way, was some mystic weirdo hanging out in the back of a battered old
van. Seriously. I have no idea of what went on, but it apparently involved
Captain Cancer being asked if he "quested for pudding" and how much
he was willing to pay for it. Yep. And Cap Cancer got all indignant because
Hermetic Mage dealing with mystic weirdo means that will happen. In the end,
however, he did figure out a way to mess with the Feng Shui of the EVO exec's
office by generating more light in there. So success? I guess?
Meanwhile, me and Neon had
done some recon of our own to find out some more about the target office. The
specific one we were after was a corner office on the 22nd floor of EVO's New
York headquarters, and belonged to an exec in the metaerginomics division.
They're one of EVO's bigger deals; they produce products specifically designed
not just for Metahumans but other Metasapients and the like. So things like
communication aids for Sasquatches, chairs for Centaurs, boxing gloves for
Nagas and so on.
A few legitimate enquires to
Metaerganomics confirmed that not only was the office used by the department head,
but that said department head was actually a Free Earth Spirit. Because EVO.
This lead us to surmise that the stick pin we were aiming to replace was
actually magical and possibly some sort of focus or other such doodad.
Our plan of attack was to get
into the building via the waste disposal of all things. Yeah, gross as all
hell, but whatever works. Once we were in, Me and Neon would secrete ourselves
inside the waste handling area. She'd be doing some serious hacking while I
watched her. In the meantime, Captain Cancer would be riding up to the 22nd
floor in a jacked Cleaning drone before getting into the office itself. We were
sending him so he could locate the Stick Pin via astral perception and all that
crap. Then he'd return to us via the drone, and we'd make our getaway.
 |
| Feng Shui: Note, not like this |
Barring Neon almost falling
off the Garbage truck, it went pretty smoothly. Going in at three oin the
morning meant that the 22nd floor was largely deserted save for one or two
Wageslaves doing monster overtime because they were stupid or something. Cap
found and replaced th pin easily, and nobody noticed that he was there. Neon
messed with the lighting and tint of his office windows so the office would be
brighter; not enough to notice but enough to mess with its Feng Shi flows or
whatever. Plus, at my direction, Captain Cancer moved around some of the office
furniture to reflect more light inside. Easy.
A couple of days later were
were contacted by the Wuxing Johnsons to meet them and hand over the stick pin.
They were pretty happy with the result, which meant that we were moving on to
part two of the plan. This had some very exacting instructions once again.
There was a flight coming in at five tomorrow afternoon at JFK. There would be
a briefcase onboard said flight. Our job was to very publicly and obviously intercept
and steal the case. And then once we had it, to throw it in the East River.
Seriously, this is what they wanted.
Our plan was simple. We found
out where the flight was landing and what arrivals lounge its passengers would
be coming through. We would follow them out of the airport and then intercept their
car on our bikes. I'd launch a couple of grenades to disable it, then we'd deal
with whoever was inside and take the case. Pretty straightforward.
Our info told us that the
flight was coming in from Eastern Russia, which made us suspect that it was connected
to EVO (Dull surprise). It arrived on schedule, and Neon's snooping on the
security system confirmed the presence of the case and its minders, who were a quartet
of big, burly looking Orks in crisp suits. Unfortunately, there was a snag in
our plan; instead of heading for a car, they went further into the terminal
towards the helicopter transfer. And given that there was one of those SK VIP
choppers on standby, we knew that if we didn't get them here, we'd never have
them.
So we threw our plan to the
wind and headed on after them at speed. Since we were in an airport, we didn't
have our big guns on hand, which made things a lot harder. Not that I really
cared; I ambushed them, leaping on the guy with the case and bringing him down
hard with a shock glove to the face. Naturally, he dripped the case, but the
others weren't happy about it, as they all drew Predators. It was so on.
I kicked the case away,
finding that it was surprisingly heavy as I did. Then it all went wild,
degenerating into a blur of gunshots and motion as I ran around shocking the
goons while Captain Cancer was laying out the stunbolts. Only things went a
little sideways as Cap took a round in the gut that knocked him down and damn
near killed him. The last surviving Ork grabbed him and put a gun to his head,
telling me to drop the case or else he’d drop Cap.
So I put down the case... And
then blasted the Ork with my own Predator. I mean, really, what did he think was
going to happen? I'm that awesome a shot. And besides, it was only Captain
Cancer. Grabbing the case, we got the frag out of there, basically lashing
Captain Cancer to Murdercycle as we went. Neon and I took off at speed, while
we sent Murdercycle's Autopilot to take Captain Cancer to that street Doc in
Chinatown.
So while he was getting
stitched up, Neon and I checked out the case. Inside was a slab of granite. No,
really, that was it. Somewhat anticlimactic, given that the case was securely
locked and alarmed and that we had donned gasmasks just in case. We figured that
it was connected to the EVO Earth Spirit exec, and that thus was a continuation
of the same job. And then we chucked it in the river no less. Captain Cancer
(once he recovered) cracked a sad over it, saying we should have retrieved it
or tried to sell it or something. Um, yeah, no. What the Johnson wanted. if he
wants to go dredge the East River for one case, then he's welcome to it.
This lead us to part three,
which was, perhaps unsurprisingly to geek the Earth Spirit himself. The Creepy Johnson
Twins had arranged a location for a meet where we would simply ambush him and
take him out. They had armed us with the real stick pin that we stole, saying
that it would protect one of us from being harmed by him. Our plan was to have
Captain Cancer astrally attack him so that he'd be weakened and unable to act,
then I'd blast him with grenades from my rifle. Easy plan.
 |
| Another charming locale. Very scenic. |
The meet was at a horrible
stretch of waterfront wasteland in Brooklyn. We were there and in place early,
with the Earth Spirit arriving by erupting out of the ground, I will admit that
it was a pretty impressive sight in person; a giant rock thing that was vaguely
humanoid, with oddly misshapen limbs. Not that I cared, because our job was to
geek it. At first things went to plan, with Captain Cancer doing his astral
thing and leaving the Spirit an easy target for me. I was blasting chunks off
it with my grenades, and it couldn't do anything back. It made some efforts to
swat me with ricks, but it was literally unable to harm me.
 |
| Evil Rock Lord and EVO exec |
But then it went and changed tactics
and hit me with some sort of magic fear attack that sent me running. This left
Captain Cancer to face the thing alone, which was not an ideal situation. I
have no idea what happened next (both because I was still running and because
it all happened astrally) but next thing I knew, the Rock Monster was dead and
Cap was still alive.
So all up it was a pretty good
Run (Well, trio of Runs or whatever). We got paid an insane amount, we got to
do something a little different and we weren't working for Renraku. All things
I like a lot.
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