Sim Hell (Remastered)

I hate the foundation.

But we had to go there anyway in order to kill Pierce, so I really had no other option. And so, Me, Freddie, Neon and Captain Cancer (Best not to ask where he came from) plummeted into it, knowing full well that we'd end up having to navigate nonsense dream logic in order to find the nodes and their connections. In theory all we needed to do was indentify the control node and then interact with it to destroy the hose. Of course, since it could be anything and the interaction could be anything, that just meant we were casting a very wide net.

We got an eleventh hour call from Dayglo, which was her asking for help to go reclaim the spirit of the Brooklyn Bridge form Aztechnology for some random neo-anarchist reasons. We said 'yeah, that's nice, will totally get on it' in a way that was a massive brush-off and instead asked her to watch Nobosuke Yamura’s yacht. With that minor obstacle out of the way, we jacked in.

Open plan offices: the Runner's worst nightmare

So in order to stop this while Crazy Digital Murder God CFD conspiracy thing, we needed to steal a piece of prototype software from a NeoNET research facility. While that does seem to be a pretty routine run, there were some caveats (of course) that meant it would be a hell of a lot harder.

The biggest problem was that the research facility in question was within NeoNET's New York headquarters. That meant that security was going to be super-tight and the instant that the shooting started there would be HTR teams on their way. And I don’t mean 'coming straight from the district HQ' on the way, more of the 'they're within the building' on their way which meant that we'd have an escape window so slim as to be near impossible. And while I know I could take them, there were issues like the fact that we wouldn't have Drone support and that I'd have to drag Neon through the line of fire.

So that ruled out the go in shooting approach, as fun as it would have been, Instead, it was time for something a bit more subtle.

The curse of the flaming luchadore

So after being caught in the middle of the dick waving war between NeoNET and Renraku (And me maybe spending a couple of nights at cool New York clubs dancing with cute dumb Elf guys), we managed to get ourselves back on course for our main job that had bought us to New York in the first place. Our investigation of the missing people had turned up teo more "persons of interest" that were still uncounted for either way, which was quickly turning into our only real avenue of investigation. Of course, since both were Shadowrunners, it meant that being hard to find was key to the lifestyle, which was going to make things a little difficult.

Of the two names we had, one held a little more promise than the other, even if the pair were loosely affiliated. Crashdud was a decker who kept a low profile, even by Runner standards, so that wasn't much help. On the other hand, El Fiendo proved to be a lot easier to find Information on given that he was a rather... colourful individual, again, even by Runner standards.

Crimson Dawn (part 16)

Crimson had never made it clear why she only ever met her fixer after hours. Telling him that it was because she didn’t get long enough on her lunch break just simply sounded so earth-shatteringly lame that she could barely bring herself to admit it. So whenever she was at the bland downtown Soycaf shop buying bland Soycaf, it was always well after dark. Fortunately, the place was open twenty-four hours to accommodate customer needs to get something better then Stuffer Shack, which gave her some flexibility.

Even though this was the heart of safe, bland, sanitised corporate downtown, she couldn't help but glance around as she waited for him to arrive. Maybe it was Slicer's training getting to her, but it was something she was more and more feeling the need to do. Size up the place, look for threats and make sure there was nobody about to geek you. It sounded paranoid, bit that sort of thinking had kept him alive for decades in a business that tended towards a short life expectancy.