More strangeness from the sixth world, Daddy-O

Let it be said now that the sixth world is an insane place. But most of the time it’s a level of background insanity that you get used to and don’t really notice. Your neighbour is two and a half meters tall and has horns? Normal. The World’s richest man is a dragon? Normal. A guy who sees electronic spirits form computers and can interact with them? Normal. Or he’s off his meds. But you get the picture.

But even within this level of everyday insanity there’s a lot of stuff that’s just plain what the hell batdreck insane. And Runners get exposed to a lot of that. Our jobs will usually take us towards the most extreme ends of the world’s levels of crazy. And even then, we tend to be exposed to the more bizarre, even of only by accident, or as an indirect result of our activities. Hell, sometimes we’ll only see the crazy because we just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time because we were doing something gratuitously illegal or the like.

This will be relevant later, but first up was how we landed our last run. Once again, Shortcut managed to get us a job through a Johnson who hangs out at the golf club, proving the value of social networking and places that don’t usually register as meet spots. In this case, it was another bounty job on the sort of unpleasant targets that Runners need to deal with a lot. A couple of people had broken into Oroborous Limited, a medical research company, and made off with some valuable cell cultures. This wasn’t the issue though; the main problem is that one of them was a Toxic Shaman. Johnson wanted him captured if possible and dead if not. And apparently he didn’t care at all about the stolen goods at all.

Shortcut came to us with the job, and we accepted it. However, before we could get underway we had a few other things to deal with. The first was the final confirmation on our last job, where we’d swapped creepy robot maids around. There had been a high-level VIP visitor coming in from the Shiawase head office in Japan visiting the same building where Ooki lived for a very important meeting, Said meeting had then been disrupted when a chunk of the building blew up. Funny that. So we sold the original I-Doll on, glad to be rid of the creepy thing.

Saab Gladius. The Hypercar of choice for those with lots and
lots of yens to burn

More immediately, Freddie had been challenged to another race. This time it wasn’t an organised street race, but rather a one-on-one challenge from Jameson, a racer he’d met before. Last time they’d been up against each other, Freddie had beaten Jameson’s Bentley Concordat in a street race. He wanted to even the score, and now had a brand new Saab Gladius to prove the point. And Freddie, being himself, couldn’t say no.

The race was basically a short dash with a bit of obstacle course manoeuvring in the middle. I gotta admit, as awesome as Freddie is when he’s in action, he was up against a fragging hypercar here. I wisely stepped back from betting on the race (realism versus trying to support the team) but Shortcut and Neon did get in on the action. And while Jameson did win, it was a lot closer then he would have liked. Plus Shortcut got a case of beer for the deal, so that was all good.

Basically just like this. Not pleasant

With these issues out of the way, we got back to the job. The Oroborous site had been closed off by Knight Errant, but we were able to get a pretty good look at it and what was going on there through various means. Neon hacked the cameras and got a look at the attackers. One of them was a human woman with an assault rifle. The other more important one was a Dwarf man who was conjuring up various horrific-looking spirits to do his bidding. So we had our target. The other interesting thing that it revealed was that they were using spray-on explosive foam, which is not a common tool. Finally, Shortcut was able to assense the area and find residual traces of the shaman’s magical aura, which meant that he could identify the guy in future.

I knew at least one place where one could get the explosive foam, and that was the Crime Mall. Heading there we located a squirrely explosives dealer with no eyebrows who confirmed that yes, he had indeed sold the explosives to these two. The woman went by the name of Prodigy, the Dwarf called himself Duxt Exile, and the pair of them often worked together. Added to that there was a third in their team, a Troll called Thunderwrath (Who the hell thinks these names are cool?) who hadn’t been on that job.

The dealer was able to give us the location of one of their hangouts, which was just plain ugly. It was in a bar (well okay, a converted crappy old warehouse) in one of the more wastelandy parts of Renton called (and I kid you not) the Deep Fried Shcnapps Monster. It was apparently a hangout for old German neo-Anarchists, and by that they meant one or two actual ones and a whole bunch of poseurs. We headed there to check it out, and found it instantly regrettable.

Besides the fact that it was indeed a hole (complete with god-awful crappy fake German music), the bartended decided that I was a poser straight out and all but ignored, me. I mean, what the hell? He wouldn’t know a real Berlin Neo-Anarchist if they threw a Molotov Cocktail at him. Fortunately, Shortcut also speaks German, so he was able to do a bit of wrangling which lad to him being pointed in Prodigy’s direction. The result was him awkwardly chatting her up while Neon rifled through her commlink.

Based on what she had discovered, we headed to check out her safehouse. Located in the basement of a burned out building, it was easy to get into. There wasn’t much inside though, more of some sort of testament to her love of guns and minimalist living the anything else. Seriously, a dirty mattress was the extent of the amenities, and her weapons racks took up more living space then her furniture. What we did find was her personal terminal, which had a good record of her movements (Downloaded from her bike), showing where she had been before the attack on Ororbourus; an abandoned city park near Glow City. Well that sounds like a perfect Toxic shaman hangout.

We agreed to rendezvous there, but that’s when it got weird.

If this car looks too good to be true, then it might just be

Along the way, a car pulled up next to Freddie’s van. Not just any car mind you; this was a 1962 Corvette in immaculate condition. I at first thought that it had to be a fake body shell, but Neon said that there was no Matrix signals coming form the car at all. So maybe it was real after all. The driver of the Corvette started calling out Freddie, saying that he’d heard how cool he was and challenging him to a race. The guy, by the way, was dressed as a 1950’s greaser and using insanely out of date slang.

Freddie declined, pointing out that he had a job to get to. The driver continued to try to goad him, bit Freddie managed to stay on course. Finally, the Corvette pulled off, leaving Freddie behind. That’s when Shortcut assessed him and found that the river had no astral signature at all. Instead, the Car was a spirit. That’d right, we got called out by a ghost car. See what I mean? Weird drek.

That little incident aside, we arrived at the park and began discretely scoping the place out. There was a hobo camp at one end of it, dominated by a (big) troll who was quietly cooking some stuff over a fire. Some assensing told us that the Troll was awakened, and that there was a second awakened signature in the tent. Furthermore, there were a pair of Toxic spirits lurking nearby, ready to be called down upon us. We figured this was Dust Exile and Thunderlips, and that it would be best if we took them out fast.

Freddie opened the attack with a shot from his Steel Lynx, taking out the Troll with a single shot. I followed through by riddling the tent with fire, but it seemed that Dust Bunny managed to get out of the worst of that. He got ourt of there and managed to whip out the two Toxic spirits, which is where it got really nasty. Shortcut managed to take out one of them with his own spells, but the other one engulfed him in a cloud of choking smoke.

Well this is many levels of not good

I dropped Dusty Boy, but that left a rampaging spirit that was choking out our mage. And since magic is the best way to stop a spirit, that was a problem. I tried slicing into it with my katana, but that really didn’t help much. Eventually Freddie managed to disperse it with some insanely precise gunfire, leaving behind a slightly worse for wear Shortcut.

It also left us with a badly beaten up but still alive Dust Dude, whom we turned over for a hefty reward. Why Mister Johnson has us hunting random guys, I have no idea. But the cash is good, so hey. Of course, there is still the matter of the ghost car...