Sometimes
you have to do a job in a hurry, with little time to plan and a lot of making
it up as you go along. Jobs that are favours to friends/allies/contacts/whatever
else are often of this type; they need something done in a hurry and they can’t
do it themselves, so they have to turn to you. This sort of thing rarely pays
well, but instead often comes with other benefits like favours in return. It’s
the underground economy part of the underground economy.
I got a
call from Cwildred because she needed help with a problem. It was small for
them moment, but had the potential to blow up into a huge mess. I agreed to
help her out because a) she’s a friend b) I owe her for all her awesome combat
biking lessons and c) it’d mean getting on the good side of a massive
nationwide gang who have fingers in all sorts of different ventures. See?
Favour for favour.
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| The "A" stands for "Ancients" (And not "anarchy". Never confuse the two) |
Except,
of course, some idiot had gone and accidentally discovered it. A works project
in Bellevue had stumbled across it, and that was running the risk of blowing
open the whole thing. So she needed us to find out who knew and, if needs be,
stop them from reporting it.
We were
on a tight schedule but, unfortunately, everyone except for me and Neon were
busy. So I called up Shortcut, and asked him for help. He was glad to lend a
hand, given that it meant he could get a break from dealing with rich snobs and
put his awakened skills to use. We met in Bellevue (Shortcut turned up on a Golf
Cart, can you believe it?) To take a look at the site and plan our next move.
The
site was your basic works mess, being staffed by actual honest to god city
council employees, rather then farmed out contractors. The real issue was one corner
of it, where they had accidentally discovered the tunnel. So far, it didn’t
seem that they had found out what it was for or reported it, but we needed to
find out for sure and contain the damage.
 |
| Underground Seattle is full of amazing crap like this |
This
was where Shortcut had a chance to shine, by taking advantage of being a Dwarf.
He put on a hardhat and a high-vis vest and simply blended right in, like he
had always been there. After scoping out the tunnel and confirming that they
hadn’t actually been inside it yet, he tried his best blend in and make himself
unnoticed while finding out what was going on. Instead he ended up accidentally
completely wrecking the soycaf machine on site, which really got people
annoyed. While they were fighting with the machine, he was able to slip a tag
onto their Ground-Penetrating Radar so that Neon could mess with it by clearing
its logs and the like. Destroy the evidence and all.
He
wanted to check out the foreman’s office, so i provided a helpful distraction.
I showed up, pretending to be a Bellevue resident who was complaining about the
noise and their work causing property values to drop. I did such a good job of
being annoying that the on-site acting manager lost it at me, which meant that
several others had to hold him back and apologise profusely to me. All of which
was giving Shortcut the cover he needed.
He got
into the Supervisor’s office and rifled his stuff, making sure to remove any
mention of this tunnel from the site plans and other material. Neon helped by
remotely purging all the information off his computer and making it look like
there was nothing there. Unfortunately, she also discovered that there was one
other problem. The supervisor had decided to go and report this find to Knight
Errant.
Well
frag.
Fortunately,
he had done it in person, so there was a slight chance that we could head him
of. Figuring out the best route to the nearest KE station house, the three of
us set off at all speed. I raced ahead of the other two, hoping to get an
eyeball on the target. Instead, I found that somebody else has an eyeball on
me; a pair of bikes driven by obvious Haloweeners were on either side of me.
Now while they could just be dumb Weenies looking to break things because, I
didn’t want to rule out their having a reason to be there. Gang rivalries and
all that.
 |
| Gangers who ride these things around us tend to meet ugly ends. I'm just saying there might be a pattern |
A bit
more weight for the ‘deliberate’ part came when Neon reported that she and
Shortcut were also being followed by several more weenies, including a couple
on an ATV. Then one of the ones following me took a shot at me, and it was on.
I sprayed back with my SMG before speeding up and doing my best to outrun them.
Putting all the skills that Cwildred had taught me to good use, I broke
pursuit, weaving through back-streets and side roads while those chumps
struggled to keep up with me.
Meanwhile,
Shortcut and the Weener leader on the back of the ATV were having a full-blown
magical duel. Mostly it had been a lot of counter-spelling, but Shortcut was
actually holding his own. Neon was being hassled by one of the goons who had
bumped her bike a few times, but then I showed up and blasted him for her. I
also took a swipe at the leader, but his driver managed to evade me.
Shortcut
then solved the problem for us by hitting the ATV and its two occupants with a
wave of acid that he wasn’t able to counter. The ATV’s tires dissolved in
seconds, causing it to crash and send its two already horrifically burned
occupants sprawling. Suffice to say that none of them were getting up from
that.
With
that little distraction out of the way, we made it to the KE station house.
From the info he’d found, Shortcut was able to conform that the supervisor (a
Dwarf, by the way. Of course) was there, having eyeballed his truck in the
parking lot. While he decided to have a go at the truck, I headed inside to
deal with the target myself.
I found
him in the waiting room, sitting down next to him. Unfortunately, Neon was not
able to get into his commlink and simply erase the info from it. (She said her
arm got knocked in the fight. Excuses!) Instead it was up to me to discourage
him from going through with his report.
 |
| Toyota Gopher: boring and practical. And easy to hide a Dwarf under |
That
was easily enough accomplished by me simply sidling up next to him, whispering
a few words in his ear about how the Ancients used that tunnel and how they
would not be very happy if somebody was to ruin their perfectly good smuggling
operation. That was when he looked at me, noticed my ears and made the
connection. He admitted that he’d received an anonymous tip about the tunnel,
which led me to realise that the whole thing was a set up by the Weeners all
along.
I
suggested that he forget about the tunnel, fill in the hole and just go on with
his work, oh and to also not report what he’d found to KE. He agreed on all
those points, then got up, walked out, climbed into his truck and drove off.
Except that Shortcut was hanging onto the underside of his truck and had sabotaged
it, so it stopped working a little bit away from the station. So while he was
desperately trying to restart his truck, am angry, goggled Dwarf popped up and
stole his commlink. Probably scared the hell out of him too.
So the
tunnel was quietly reburied, the Ancients got to keep their smuggling line and
a bunch of Weenies got melted into the pavement. All in all, a pretty
successful day out. Cwildred was really happy, and was able to pony up some
yens as a reward. More importantly, she could pull favours for us I we ever
needed them in future. Because, as said, having a nationwide gang syndicate on
your side has its perks.
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