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.

El Fiendo was a Luchadore physical adept, so that meant he always wore a mask. Likewise, he was a member of the Harlem Neo-Anarchist set, who are rather obnoxiously high-profile in Newtown (Don't get me wrong, I'm all for anti-corp stuff. It's more of their particular brand of whiny, self-important anarchy that I don't like) which gave us a circle of people he moved in that we could use as an in route. Oh, and also he occasionally set himself on fire, so that's hard to miss.

It wasn’t much of a chore to find a gaggle of Harlem Neo-Anarchists either; anything but. They like to be loud and obvious. One of their favourite forms of protest is to go into the clean corp cookie-cutter clubs and restaurants in the area and just be there, being as loud, colourful and non-conformist as they can. They don't actually do anything to break the rules of the joint, which means that it's hard to get them thrown out, especially when they're spending their money there. What makes them super-obnoxious to the proprietors, though, is that they attract gaggles of sightseers, being corp citizens from Lower Manhattan who come to gawk at them and their whacky individuality. See, obnoxious.

We wandered into a gaggle of them, headed up by a scruffy looking trying to be retro Elf by the name of Contra Rainmaker. He claimed to be a shaman but without a mentor spirit. (See? Idiots.) He was holding court with the other neo-Anarchists trying to be cool, so I sidled on into the scene and introduced myself... By speaking in German. He replied in kind, but his German was utter crap. Either way, I could tell he was suddenly fascinated by this mysterious, dead sexy elf girl sitting down next to him.

So I continued speaking in German, talking about the 'fascinating' Neo-Anarchist movement in Newtown/Harlem and of course, comparing it to my own experiences growing up in the F-State in Berlin. That had him reeled in and utterly fascinated, hanging off every single word I said. So I threw in a lot of talk about panning to smash the corporate system from my favourite Turkish Cafe, and how my parents were totally awesome German runners that you've never heard of and how they were now in hiding because of stuff they did during the fall of the F-State and... Yeah.

This is exactly what my life was like growing up

Switching back to English, I asked him about Crashdud and El Fiendo, and by that point he pretty much was glad to give up everything he had on the pair of them. Sadly, there wasn't much that was current; both of them had disappeared, but there was very little either way to say that either of them were CFD infected. However, he did point out something interesting, in that we weren't the only people asking around about Crashdud.

There had been a suit also asking about him, a guy by the name of Julian Simmons who worked for Magnadyne, a firm that focused on computer security. What made that interesting to me was that Magnadyne was in turn owned by Manadyne, a company that mostly specialised in magical goods. And then in turn, Manadyne was owned by NeoNET, and, what do you know, had been the core of much of their anti-CFD research. By this point, none of that should have been surprising.

I thanked Contra Rainmaker and then got the hell out of there before I threw up. With the info he'd given us, it was easy to track Simmons down. He was an Ork who specialised in "Host Architecture" which suggested tow things. The first was that he went around designing hosts and did all the boring graphic work like making sure the grass looked appropriately grass-like. The second was that was one of those rare types who dived into the Foundation in order to create new hosts. For a living We suspected the latter, as that was a lot more interesting and was more likely to get involved with this mess.

Surveillance of his office told us very little; it was an anonymous corp suite In Downtown that didn’t stand out at all. Our plan became to quietly collect Simmons when he left the office so we could have a chat with him and probably release him afterwards. So as soon as Neon had confirmed that he had logged out for the day, I was quietly strolling towards the building to have a polite word with him. And because this was a meant to be a quiet job in a heavily policed part of town, I was travelling light; just the Predator and my Shock Gloves.

Naturally, this meant that somebody attacked us. It always happens. Really, it would be a surprise if we got through one of these things without being jumped.

A small, subtle, easy to miss truck

A Ford Percheron and a trio of Chrysler-Nissan Journeys pulled up, boxing in Simmons with armed goons pouring out of them. I immediately ran into action, vaulting overo ne of the cars and shocking one of them before he even knew what was happening. One of the others opened fie on me, but i was able to use the guy I shocked as a shield before returning with a few shots of my own. I backed myself and Simmons towards a Storefront looking for cover while I called support and an extraction.

Freddie delivered in spades. Two of the Rotordrones popped out form his van to start suppressing the goons, keeping their second wave pinned down and unable to add to the pressure on me and Simmons. Then he and Neon got into a little bit of matrix dickery, hijacking the Percheron and using to run over the goons and crush one of their cars. That act of vehicle carnage gave us the opening we needed to get to the Bulldog and get the hell out of there.

We quickly explained to Simmons what was going on and why we just saved him from people out to kill or extract him. He in turn confirmed that yes, his job was to dive into the Foundation, and there was a definite connection between them and and Crashdud. The pair of them knew each other, and unfortunately Crashdud had been stuck by what seemed to be the same, very specialised CFD infection that we'd been fighting. However, Crashdud had sent him a file that he was trying to crack open that might have held some useful clues.

Great for crossing. Not so good for living under.

With that in mind, we retreated to a safehouse in a hovel under the Williamsburg bridge. Yeah, it was an utter hole, but hopefully we wouldn't be there any longer then we needed to be. (Tiny, no amenities, bare beds and no entertainment at all. Completely unliveable. One star). The good news us that between him and Neon it didn't take long. What they amounted to was a series of Video Logs made by Crashdud as his CFD infection progressed, in which he tried his best to document what was going on and his own research into the situation. S can be imagined, they really began to go off the rails towards the end, but they did have some useful information.

Most importantly, Crashdud had correctly diagnosed that this particular CFD strain was resulting in propel being infected with duplicates of the same AI. From there, he had diagnosed a way to said AI could possibly be eliminated, possibly shutting down the whole thing. The problem was that would require two things. The first was a set of bleeding-edge intrusion software that NeoNET was developing in their central New York office. The other was that it would require diving into the Foundation.

And then to make things worse, we got a call from our friend at SK. It seemed that a certain yacht containing a certain Renraku Johnson has just pulled in to harbour.

So we had to figure out how to get our hands on the NeoNET software, an infected victim that was willing to let us mess with their heads and a way into the Foundation of Pierce's system. Oh, and possibly a bomb big enough to blow up a yacht...