Guerrilla Gardening

The thing about Shadowrunning is that it i dangerous work. It’s also usually bloody and horrible, and dealing with the worst that Metahumanity has to offer. But Every now and then you have a run that is strangely enjoyable, even if in the most unexpected ways. And some days you find that members of your team have skills that might not seem useful at first, but in fact become vital to your success.

The last Run I went on was a lot like that. It was good for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I got to introduce Shortcut to the rest of the team.

It started off when Shortcut was approached for a job at the Golf Clubhouse (great place to network, by the way, even if the crowd is excruciatingly dull). A massively bloated Mister Johnson was asking if he wanted to do some work of a less then legal nature. Shortcut agreed, and then scored points by fake knifing him in the back, much to the surprise of him and his Ork bodyguard. A few calls later and me, him, Abbey, Freddy and Neon were in the club, meeting the Johnson.

The job was... unusual, to say the least. The target was connected to Ken Ooki, a Shiawase suit that we’d run across in past (Captain Cancer had gone to great lengths to mess up his love life in a previous job). Specifically, it was a Shiawase I-Doll that he owned. (Gee, no way this can be creepy at all). The Johnson wanted it replaced with an identical duplicate he’d had customised up, and needed it done within the next two weeks. It had to be done subtly too, without anyone being aware of the swap.

Shiawase Logo, because no way am I looking
for images of creepy robot maids

This meant that we’d need to get to the I-Doll, swap brain modules between the two and then get out with the original. And since the Drone was his personal property, the odds were that it was inside his living quarters in the Seattle Shiawase tower. So that would be heavily secured and anything but easily accessible. Furthermore, it meant that we had to move a human sized and shaped object in and out of the building undetected. Finally, we had to do it without Kenny knowing.

Step one was to pick up the replacement drone. Mister Johnson had already arranged this, and all we had to do was collect it form a specialty drone shop in Tacoma. Seemed easy enough, so naturally it went completely sideways. When we got there we found a Troll standing over the place armed with a Minigun, while another guy was waiting outside with a Gopher. This was obviously a standover, and more to the point, one that could throw our job before we even started.

We throw ourselves into the situation, with me quickly taking out the guy in the truck. Shortcut blasted the Troll’s Minigun with lightning, wrecking it and knocking him down. He then jumped on the guy’s back and tried to choke him out. I kid you not, a Dwarf basically riding a Troll. It was awesome. Freddie sent his fly-spies into the shop to see what was going on, which is where it got really awkward. Inside was the store’s owner and out contact and an Elf girl being held upon by a punk with a mohawk. Added to that there was a second girl with a mohawk who decide to launch herself at me, and a thin Ork who was backing her up

Freddie deployed the Lynx while Abbey tried to get into the store, only to be attacked by a sniper. While the shot missed her, she was abler to find the source, being a Dwarf waiting across the street on an upper floor. She immediately ran up there and threw the Dwarf out the window, dropping her onto the street. They rolled with it and tried to knife Abbey, which she danced around.

A Steel Lynx, something you don't want parked on
your head

The mohawk girl popped out some razors and had a go at me. I leaped on top of the truck and she followed me, the pair of us duelling up there. This went on a bit until I leaped off the truck and shock gloved it, frying her in the process. Meanwhile, Freddie had decided that the Ork was a mage, and so opted to run him over with the Lynx. That worked, but he had a bit of fight left in him and tried to levitate it off of him. Fair enough, or at least until Shortcut counter-spelled him and dropped the Lynx on him again.

Finally, Abbey managed to calm the situation after a fact, by calling out their leader. She pretended to be a representative from the Ginelli family and say that she was ‘not happy’ with them on their turf. That was enough to scare the lot of them off, especially given that half his team had already been taken out on way or another.

Unfortunately, during the mess the Elf girl had been shot. This lead to two startling discoveries. The first was that she was the drone we were meant to pick up which had undergone extensive modification to make it look as lifeline as possible, to the point of being creepy. The second was that it was packed with explosives, which made the whole point of the plan a lot easier. The dealer was glad to be rid of it, especially given that he had been standing right next to it at the time.

So we recovered the drone, but the had to do a lot of very, very careful cybersurgery on it to a) make it operable again and b) have it not go off. And so, after a lot of hard work and near certain death, we were finally past the first hurdle and able to get back to planning the actual job.

Fortunately, Abbey and Neon had done a past break-in at the Shiawase tower, and actually had a pretty good idea of the layout of the building and the executive living quarters specifically. The interesting thing was that there were several floors of elaborately landscaped gardens inside the building for the benefit of the high-level suits. That little fact planted the seeds of what might be our best idea yet.

Doing some research, Neon found where Ooki lived, which was reasonably convenient to one of the gardens. She also found his schedule, which was actually somewhat erratic. From that, I deduced that Ooki was actually a Shiawase Johnson, and his odd hours were due to him meeting Runners for jobs. That gave us a way to get him out of the building. Going through Lightspeed’s Runner network, we found a duo by the names of Deadeye and Ironclad who had worked for him in past. We passed them the info we’d stolen for Fat Yak on those swarming magnetic drones for them to sell to Ooki, on the proviso that they call him at a specific time of our choosing., They were okay with this, because what do you know, extra money.

That gave us a window, but the issue was still getting in there. See, when Abbey had last been in there, she was going in on her own with a discrete team managing security and only had to steal a book. This time around, we needed to get the drone to his room and swap it, and we needed Neon there to do the brain transplant. So that meant two of us inside his room with something the size of a person, so a simple B&E was not going to do it.

And then Shortcut came up without way in. He suggested that we go in as landscape gardeners to do a garden makeover on one of the executive levels. This would allow Freddie to drive in with the van, unload the drone hidden in the equipment and then jump into it and guide it to the target. It also provided a handy way for the entire team to get into the building, with Abbey and Neon heading to Ooki’s room while me and Shortcut would be there for backup in case things went bad. I loved it.

There were two stages of prep to this. The obvious one was Abbey and Shortcut buying a whole pile of gardening supplies, enough so that we would be able to keep working for some time. The second was Neon slipping in an order for a complete garden makeover. Both of these went off well; it helps when you have people who know both landscaping and hacking.

So after a bit of prep (including hiding the bomb drone inside a large pot) we drove up to the Shiawase building with the Bulldog disguised as a van from Sir Shrubs-a-lot landscape gardening. After a bit of tension the guards found the work order (We did a lot of ‘they don’t tell us anything, we just get the job’ stuff to help defuse tension) and then let us in. A pair of them escorted us up to one of the habitation floors and let us go to work.

Before: Peaceful and serene

And boy, did we go to work. The four of us basically set about tearing up the existing garden and laying waste to it in as messy and complicated a mess as possible. At the same time, me and Shortcut began swapping ludicrous gardening stories in an effort to keep the guards distracted. This allowed Abbey to steal one of their security cards, which gave her access to the executive floors. A quick Control Thoughts spell from Shortcut ensured that the two guards didn’t notice that two of our team had suddenly disappeared.

I put in a call to Deadeye to call Ooki in order to lure him out of the building. Once she confirmed that he was en-route, Abbey and Neon (plus a large pot) slipped off to do their thing. Freddie was actually jumped into the drone as a security precaution lest they be discovered. Fortunately, thanks to Abbey’s sneaking skills, they were able to get t Ooki’s room without any incident.

Said room proved to be highly disturbing, to say the least. The whole place was done up in grand Tir regal style, as if it was the home of a Tir prince. The real drone was also there, dressed up as a Tir Prince(ess). Yeah, this is so many levels of creepy. The headswap proved to be remarkably easy (even if Neon almost fumbled the brain at one point) with the pair of them getting it over and done with and then out of there with the original drone with ease. As a bonus, Neon was able to swipe a lot of data from its brain, which could be useful in future.

The pair of them (Plus Freddie in a bot in a pot) were able to re-join us for a bit more destruction. By this stage, we’d reduced the once harmonious garden to a blasted wasteland of dirt piles, holes, mud, randomly placed plants and assorted poorly implemented ornamentation. And then we called it a day, making it back to the Van and out of the building before anyone knew what was going on. And definitely before Shortcut’s mind control spell dropped and the guards realised what had happened

After: vegetable wasteland

Which in the end works to our advantage. We figured that the odds are that we were using the gardening as a cover for something more direct. So they’ll be checking the floor below us, digging up all the spoil, ripping up our trees and so on. But because the droneswap was completely unconnected to that, we figure that they wouldn’t even think to look at it until it’s too late. And then, boom.

Certainly Mister Johnson was happy with what we did, and gave us our pay as well as a bonus for being subtle about it. Well, about as subtle as we could be with our massive gardening attack. And we figured that in a week or so, we’d be able to sell the drone once the original blew up. Sure as hell as we’re not keeping it. That thing’s creepy.