Don’t let your babies grow up to be crime lords

I finally managed to score some downtime, and by that I mean more than just a couple of hours clubbing and some sleep between Runs. It actually felt good. Yeah, I know what you’re saying; why wasn’t I bouncing off the walls looking for some action? Well the truth is that even I need a little break every now and then. Being this awesome is tiring work, you know, especially given that It involves a lot of running, leaping and shooting.

One of the highlights of this break was actually meeting the contact that S-K had set us up with as payment for the whole New York Crazy Digital Murder God mess. I really didn’t know what to expect; a boring guy in a clean suit was the most likely, but then, it could be anything. Instead, Tyler, our contact, turned out to be a remarkably casual and polite Elf Guy in a bright floral shirt. So while I wasn’t sure what to expect, I know I wasn’t expecting that.

Still, Tyler had the chops to come up with the good we asked for. In my case, I wanted a combat shotgun so I could blast doors open; after that last incident with that Dwarf, I not willing to let locks find another way to stymie me. Captain Cancer, on the other hand, came out with a long shopping list that included a second Duellist drone, a grenade launcher and some insanely expensive custom bullets for his HK-227. When (NAME) told him how much that would cost, he stepped back a bit to some slightly less insanely overpriced options. He’s nice, yes, but he also has to watch the bottom line.

(Also, what the hell is with Captain Cancer buying so much tech crap? Has he screwed up his magic that much? Or is he just that insecure about his spell-slinging skills? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him spend a single Yens on preparations or foci or junk like that)

Yes, Elves come in Rumpled too

All this came in handy when we got another job offer. This one came from Jimmy Kinkaid, an Elf detective who worked out of Pullyup. Kinkaid wanted some help defusing a potential mob war. Given that this would be happening on our doorstep and that we would be getting paid, I gladly accepted the job. The meet with him was remarkably blunt; he was on the street outside a Sushi restaurant that had just been shot up. Therein lay the problem.

The Sushi joint was a preferred hangout of goon form the Kenren-Kai Yakuza, who have a long-standing dispute with the Gianelli Mafia. On the surface, this looked like a Mafia hit that hadn’t worked out right. While the place had been shot up, the Yaks inside had only been injured. So instead of a first strike, this had turned into a provocation. While the few witnesses had not been able to confirm that it was the Gianellis, there were a lot if indications of this being their work. The attackers had gone past in an anonymous sedan with mirrored windows, doing a great job of making themselves as anonymous as possible.

Of course, that left the question of why the Gianellis had wanted to heat up this local cold war, and why do it in such a ham-fisted way. It wasn’t like there had even been any local Yak bigwigs present at the time, so it was a lot of noise for very little actual result. That made me begin to wonder as to what was actually going on and if it had been the Gianellis in the first place. First rule of finding out who was behind a crime; look for who profits.

Initially me and Captain Cancer didn’t turn up much. Neon wasn’t able to get too far on tracking the Sedan either. It was very anonymous, complete with Spoof Chips to lose its ID. Combined with the lack of infrastructure in Pullyup and she’d been unable to track it through the Matrix. But then something did crop up to further complicate the investigation.

A rare Oni who is wearing a shirt
(Actually it would have been more
appropriate if he had blue skin...)

A quartet of bikes roared through the area, headed towards Gianelli territory. The bikes decorations made it clear that they were members of the Blue Dragons, a Yak-affiliated street gang. It was pretty clear what they had in mind, given that three of three carrying guns openly. The fourth, their leader, was an Oni (Yaks tend to be conservative, but their affiliate gangs are often a lot more diverse) who was waving around a katana and not wearing a shirt. The latter seems to be a common trait of the metavariant. Furthermore, a bit of research suggested they were headed to Sunny Salvos, an Italian restaurant that was a favoured hangout of high-ranking Gianelli members.

If that didn’t trigger a gang war then nothing would, which meant that a whole bunch of innocent people would get hurt and, more importantly, we wouldn’t get paid. So we needed to take them out quick and in a way that wouldn’t further inflame the situation (Because a huge pile of dead bodies and burning bikes never looks good). A bit of quick thinking got us ahead of the pack and ready to stage an ambush.

Remember what I said earlier about Captain Cancer lacking confidence in his magic? See the thing is, when he does use it, he does some clever stuff with it. In this case, he created a Trid Phantasm of a pair of obvious Gianelli goons shouting in alarm at the bikers before running into an alley. The four Blue Dragons all decided to go in after them, possibly to stop them from warning their buddies or simply to take them out. What they instead got was a Neurostun Grenade form yours truly which took three of them out in one go.

What do you know, the Oni was the only one still standing. Coughing and wheezing, yes, but still in the fight. Fortunately, I was able to get in there and finish him off before he could escape or warn the others. We stripped them of their weapons and tied them up, then stashed them in a secure location. While they were no longer an immediate threat, we figured that the Gianellis finding four Blue Dragons on their turf would still be a bad move.

Generic Italian Restaurant, for all your Generic Italian
Restaurant needs

Having cleaned up that mess, we headed to Salvo Sals to gather some more info. It was your basic generic Itallian restaurant, but presently it was closed for business. Captain Cancer dropped a physical mask on me to make me look like one of the staff and go in undercover to better scope out the situation. The reason why it was closed was because there were a number of high-level Gianelli men inside, holding a war council. Yeah, definitely a good thing that we stopped that attack dead. The Gianellis were angry all right and wanted blood. It would only take one false move to set the whole thing off.

That one thing showed its face in the form of the anonymous sedan from before, tearing towards the restaurant at speed. While I was heading towards it, Captain Cancer was taking up position to try and disable it with one of his new gadgets (Seriously. I’m the Sam and like huge chunks of me are machine and he’s the gadget-obsessed guy). In this case it was a grease grenade from his own launcher that saw the sedan spin out of control.

Ford Americar, for all your anonymous Sedan needs

Its four occupants piled out with three of them immediately slipping and falling in the mess. The fourth, however, was a lot more resilient. More importantly, they also were distinctly not members of either the Mafia or the Yaks. Rather, they were a young Asian human woman dressed in contemporary Korean fashion and with really ugly, ham-fistedly nailed on artificial arms ending in sharp claws.

So I rushed her. And while she was struggling to stay on her feet in the slick, I was able to glide through like a fragging ballerina. Our fight was less a standing exchange of blows as it was jousting, and I was just that much better then her. I was able to easily bypass her own claws and take her down, and look good doing it to boot. We quickly grabbed the four of them and dragged them away. Good old off-site renditions; it’s a hobby of ours.

Amusingly enough, once we got her away, Little Miss Clawful was more than happy to spill the beans. She claimed to be a member of the Devine Revenge, a Korean Syndicate. They’d been squeezed out by both the Gianellis and the Yaks, and so were lookign to start a war between the two and hope to move in on both while they were distracted. She was also super-defensive about her ware, claiming that it was awesome (it wasn’t) and better than mine (Oh hells no).

A very disappointed crime lord

A quick check of her Commlink showed that it was all but brand new and an obvious burner, but there were a few numbers in there. We gave one of them a try and got a rather immediate response. From there a brief exchange of words saw us reach an arrangement and, a little while later, a huge limo pull up at our location. Inside was a rather disappointed looking Korean man who said a few things to our captive (In Korean, which none of us can speak, by the way). This resulted in her going form angry and defiant to sulky and sullen and being all but dragged by the ear into the limo. Somebody’s in the drek.

So we stopped the war before it began, which made Jimmy Kincaid pretty happy. The best part is that we did such without really drawing much attention as to what was going on. Both the Gianellis and the Yaks ended up more or less unaware of what we or the Divine Revenge had done, which makes it even neater. And we got paid to boot. Everyone wins. Well, except for Ms Clawful.