Sunday 2 July 2017

One big dogpile of drek

You know what? The last few days have just been an utter fragging trainwreck. Trying to make sense of it all, even in hindsight, is not easy. So if this reads like a rather confused mess, then sorry, that’s just how it was. Oh, and Captain Cancer was involved, so you know, that’s not going to help any either.

Okay, so I’ll break it down from the start and try to recount the events as they happened, The first leg was Fat Yak hiring us again, bot to do a job and also do him a favour. The job part was simple; despite our defusing a potential Gianelli-Yak war, it appeared that the Gianellis were still getting ready for a conflict regardless. Specifically, Rosetta Gianelli had been making a lot of noise of late, and he wanted to know what she was planning.

This tied in (if indirectly) to the favour. He was hosting a street race, and Rosetta would be there in the crowd, because it was done to be seen there (or something). This would give us the chance to eavesdrop on her and find out what she was doing. At the same time, Fat Yak wanted Freddie to enter the race; this was not so that Freddie would win, however. Rather, there was a local favourite that Fat Yak wanted to come in first, and Freddie’s job was to ensure that he won.

Meanwhile, I slipped into the VIP booth (such as it was) and took up a position next to Rosetta Ginaelli. She was thoroughly unhappy with the idea of being there, and was only there for the sake of appearances and pretending to play nice with the Yaks. With some skillful conversational cues and a bit of eavesdropping, I found out that she was expecting a large shipment of weapons in the next few days.

Damned post-apocalyptic pop-up bars are everywhere
these days
She headed to the pop-up bar, with Captain Cancer following her. Once there, she met a creep called Conrad, a small-time arms dealer who worked for our friend, Tyler. It seemed that Conrad was trying to cut out the middle man and in essence steal from his boss, and the Ginaelli deal was his way of making it big. While we didn’t get an exact time as to when this handover was taking place, we got the location (Near the Skeleton), which gave us something to work from.

Leaving Conrad to drink himself into oblivion, we reported back to Fat Yak, who was happy with this outcome. He gave us our pay, half of which Captain Cancer then blew by betting on Freddie in the race. Oh, and Captain Cancer also awkwardly hit on Fat Yak’s shirtless Oni bodyguard.


Performance, comfort and style. One of these days, I'm going
to have to steal one
With that out of the way, we moved on to the race. Freddie had entered, of course, as had I. And then, as if to make a mockery of the whole thing, Captain Cancer entered Thinman raiding on Murdercycle. That did not go over well. Besides the local hero in his modified to the moon Shin-Hyung (The car of choice of young idiots), the rest of the field consisted of a rather polite guy in a S-K Bentley Concordat, some chump in a Toyota Gopher and an Ancient on a brand new Harley Nightmare.

The latter of those really had it in for me. He didn’t like the fact that Cwildred was hanging around me, because I was an outsider and not one of the ancients and wasting her time and so on. I pointed out that I saved her life and that she was doing this all of her own choice and the like, but he was having none of it. I figured that he was an overprotective brother or jealous boyfriend, and then made kissy faces at him to boot. That really pissed him off.

Harley-Davidson Nightmare, the bike that will replace the
Scorpion. Yeah, right.
Conversely, Jameson, the Bentley driver was the model of civility. He introduced himself to Freddie and said he was a big fan of his work. The pair of them had a rather friendly chat about racing and the rather incredible performance Freddie had gotten out of his Bulldog. While Jameson usually took part in circuit racing, he was relishing the challenge and the chance to do something different for a change. In other words, the opposite of my chat with the Ancient guy.

The race started off well with Jameson taking the lead and Freddie hot on his tail. The local favourite was in a distant third, but, most importantly, the Ancient was behind me and unable to pass. I knew full well that there was no way I was catching Freddie, so I did the best I could to cut the Ancient off and generally ruin his day. I can only assume that this made him mad as all hell. Awesome. Murdercycle was near the back of the pack, but given that it didn’t actually have a driver and was on autopilot, that’s kind of understandable.

I managed to pass the designated winner, which pissed the Ancient off even more. He was riding my hoop all the way, but couldn’t get past me at all. The Gopher blew a turn and crashed out of the race, only just missing Murdercycle in the process. Meanwhile, the front of the pack was Freddie and Jameson, who were excitedly racing each other with so much of a gap between them and the rest of us that it wasn’t even close.

Ancient guy finally lost it at me and tried to sideswipe me. Instead he hit the local fave’s car and almost knocked himself over in the process. Both him and the favourite dropped back, still in the race but well out of the running. Freddie crossed the line in first, with Jameson in a close second. I was a distant third, with the local hero in an even more distant fourth. Freddie and Jameson congratulated each other n a rave well run, while the Ancient drove off in a huff.

And then Fat Yak’s Oni bodyguard had to cancel his date with Captain Cancer, as apparently he and some business to attend to,m regarding Fat Yak and the fact that Fat Yak’s chosen champion had not won the race. As a result, Fat Yak’s bosses wanted to talk to him about a number of important matters.

I also called up Cwildred to thank her for helping me to be such an awesome biker, and told her about what had happened with the Ancient biker. She confirmed that yes, he was her brother and yes, he was as overprotective as all hell. And yes he was also glad that I had put him in his place. Suck it, older sibling.

However, this probed to only be the start of an interesting night. While we were off racing, Captain Cancer had rescued an injured elf girl who was clearly on the run from someone. When he got her back to the van, Neon identified her as Ishtar, Ares Media’ current hottest talent. Also the same one who’s PR stunt had nearly gotten Abbey killed a little while ago. She’d been shot, and said it had happened when her car had been attacked by a group of armed men.

Everything she said described a professional extraction attempt. She had been on her way to a concert via anonymous sedan when her car had been boxed in by a pair of unmarked black vans. A quartet of men in back outfits with masks and assault rifles had hosed her car down, killing her bodyguards. She’d managed to escape, but bee wounded in the process. Oh, and only a few people knew about this route, not the least of which was her new driver who was rather nervous. Gee, I wonder why.

(She also explained that the whole PR stunt with the flag had been her idea. She’d gotten the son of an Ares Johnson to steal his dad’s commink and she’d pulled the contact list form there, which is how she had managed to spam so many people, Neon included. It also means that it was her stupid idea that got Abbey shot, so thanks a heap, lady).

It didn’t help that Neon was fangirling over her all the way too, claiming that Ishtar’s music wasn’t just cheesy manufactured bubblegum pop but actually had strong counter-Corp culture themes and tones. Please, Neon, those counter-Corp culture themes are only there because they’re corp approved ones. If you want real counter-Corp culture music, listen to German underground anarchist rock (I personally recommend Shouting Song for I do not like the corporate system and have to shout about it, although it loses something in the translation)

Older-model Bulldog. Freddie's is a lot less kibbe-ly
Realising that this could be super valuable to someone (and I suppose a little bit of human decency) we took her to a safehouse while I set out to investigate what had happened. The crime scene was where she had indicated, only it was now under Ares Firewatch control. Talk about your over-reactions. I did find something interesting there, however; shell casings from an assault rifle. As nearly everyone uses casless ammo these days that was very unusual. Pressing some locals revealed that the attackers had used older-model GMC Bulldogs, again an apparently retro step.

That gave us a lead. Leaving Neon and Thinman to guard Ishtar, Me, Freddie and Captain Cancer took a lead on trying to track down our attackers. They had chosen to go completely off-grid for the strike; no commlinks, no smartlinks, no electronics in their vans, nothing. All of which meant that they had to go through a few speciality vendors to get there. Freddie stopped by Dave’s garage which confirmed that he did work on a pair of old-model Bulldogs and he did indeed gut their already bricked electronics. He gave us a description of their leader, and pointed us towards where he’d been seen at the Crime Mall.

Older model AK-97, fresh from the third world sweatshop
to you
At said wretched hive of scum and villainy, we were able to lean on a stodgy arms dealer (Like that’s a redundant statement, given the locale) who confirmed that yes, he had indeed sold a bunch of cheap knock-off AK-97s to this group. We were also able to squeeze out of them that this bunch were hiding nearby, inside the basement of a part-collapsed building. Talk about your paranoid nutcases.

We found the place easily enough; what do you know, it didn’t have a single scrap of electronic security. Getting in was a matter of just jimmying a manual lock, and then picking our way through the rubble. Their base was just as off-grid as everything else; they were doing all their planning on paper maps, for frag’s sake. And while they weren’t at home, we did find something important. One of those maps had a number of known safe houses marked, including the one we had Ishtar stashed at.

This gave us the outline of a plan. We had Neon take Ishtar to a different locale, while we lay in wait at the safehouse, figuring that by procedure they would get there sooner or later. That worked out fantastically, with a pair of old-model Bulldogs pulling up as if we’d scheduled an appointment. The four goons got out, and walked straight into a hail of Neurostun grenades, going down fast.

We tied them up and roused their leader. I made him a simple offer; he could tell me who hired him, or I could get Captain Cancer to rip it out of his mind with magic. Given the choice between coughing up and magical interrogation, he went with the former. (What do you know, Captain Cancer is once again most effective when he doesn’t cast anything). They had been hired in a private matrix host by an unknown user who’s avatar had been a woman with a flower in her hair. Interestingly enough, that matched the description of the Johnson and circumstances that got us a recent job.

So now we had a new plan. We would fake Ishtar’s death, then use the burner commlink we’d confiscated to contact their Johnson and find out who was behind the hit and why. This didn’t go to plan either (of course) when the Jonson was genuinely surprised to learn that they had arranged her death. After a bit of explaining, we arranged a meeting.

I really hoped we'd seen the last of this creep
It turned out that our woman with a flower in her hair was actually (new) Ares Johnson, a person who I would be happy to have never, ever seen again. While nothing was proven, it seemed that somebody had stolen his commlink and arranged the hit on Ishtar. Given her past thievery, it was entirely possible that she’d done it herself for whatever reason. Regardless, we handed her back to Ares Johnson who threw a pile of Yens at us for bringing her back alive. So we got paid for a fake job or something. I don’t know.

Now that we had that flaming mess of Juggernaut ding out of the way we could get back to our plan to spike Conrad and deny the Ginellis their guns. This proved to be easier than we thought; we traced Conrad to a nearby bar and ambushed him as he left. After pumping him for information, we hit him with a dose of Laes and left him to wake up in his apartment without pants. He would just assume that he had drunk too much (again) while we were off wrecking his operation.

Now posing as him thanks to a physical mask spell, I met his contacts from the Crimson Crush (An Ork and Troll gang we’ve had dealings with in past). I demanded that they deliver the weapons early, mollifying them with a promise of a bigger cut of the take. Once they delivered the guns and took off, we simply drove off with them and returned them to Tyler. He was rather happy to have his merchandise back, and paid us off with a bit more credit towards our group weapons fund. He was also rather happy to hear that Conrad was going to have to deal with both an angry gang and the Mafia family he hoodwinked.

So all was well and good. Or, at least until Ishtar’s next video was released, which incorporated elements from a number of our runs. Apparently Neon had told her all sorts of stories while they were hiding out... And Ishtar had gratuitously stolen them for her own marketing. So it looks like Conrad wasn’t the only person who git conned.

On the other hand, everyone’s probably doing better then Fat Yak...


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