Fat Yak Noodle Soup

There are a number of reasons why Mister Johnson does the whole Mister Johnson thing. Deniability is key amongst them; if you don’t know who he is and who he works for, the grossly illegal activities he’s paying you to engage in can’t be traced back to anyone. It’s also a good why to hide his agenda, especially when what he’s asking you to do is actually pretty dubious, even by Shadowrunner standards or when he’s looking to screw you over for whatever reason.

I mention all this because the latest run I went on ended up having one of these. The worst of it is that they were on the surface a rare case of a Johnson that was completely open and transparent about their identity and agenda. Which really meant that he was lying through his teeth.

The job came through the golf club where Shortcut works, a place that has proven to be a strangely lucrative hub of employment opportunities. The Johnson had heard that there were people there that he could go to for getting things done, which lead to me and Shortcut having a meeting with him. Straight off the bat he struck us as not the usual Mister Johnson type. He was nervous and fidgety and clearly worried, while also being entirely up-front about his name and who he worked for. He didn’t even look like a Mister Johnson, given his cheap tweed suit, a look that has never been fashionable ever. If anything, he looked like someone’s dad who was in well over his head.

Which is what he turned out to be, or at least what he claimed at the time. He introduced himself as Donald Henderson, a manager at Dai Dai Mineral (A mineral resources company and subsidiary of Wuxing). His thirteen year old son, Dale, had been kidnapped and obviously he wanted them back. He turned on the waterworks, talking about how he had scraped together enough money to pay us and how none of that mattered because of how much e loved his son and so on.

The Laser Heated Bacon Serive

We agreed to the job (The money was actually pretty good, given his claims to have ‘scraped together’ our fee) much to his relief. Mr Henderson instructed us to contact him when we had recovered Dale so he could meet us at the Laser Heated Bacon Service, a retro-futuristic Diner near downtown that was the kid’s favourite or something. It made a certain amount of sense; there could have been any number of reasons why he didn’t want Runners to drop off his kid at the company or his house. Office politics are funny like that.

After pulling Neon away from her game (She was sulking about how bad her team was) we headed to Dai Dai to check the scene out and see if we could find any clues as to what had happened. Based off the info Mister Henderson had given us, it seemed that Dale had been jumped by a group of men on bikes as he was getting into his car. His bodyguard/driver had been shot, allowing them to make a clean getaway. Pretty standard stuff.

Shortcut assensed the area and while he found no signs of magic used in the attack, he did note that there was at least one awakened individual inside the Dai Dai building. Neon prodded the cameras in the area which found us some more interesting information after she was able to replay the attack. The Bikers rode various new-model bikes, nothing too distinctive there. They also all wore deliberately anonymous jackets that lacked identifying features. Good move, save for the fact that one of them had rolled up his sleeve to reveal a blue dragon tattoo on his arm. There’s allways one moron in the bunch.

Typical MCT eco-friendly operations

That info was enough for us to put a few things together. The attackers were likely members of the Blue Dragons gang, who had a fondness for new-model bikes and (perhaps unsurprisingly) blue dragon tattoos. They were also connected to our old friend Fat Yak, who in turn worked for MCT. And since MCT is really big on horrifically destructive mining operations, it would make sense for them to try to get something over on a minerals company run by one of their competitors.

It was also a convenient lead, as we knew where Fat Yak liked to hang out. We headed down to Tacoma and slipped into his favourite Noodle House to discretely watch things (And also have some rather good noodles as well). Fat Yak was there, even if his Oni bodyguard (and Captain Cancer’s boyfriend) wasn’t, and he looked like he was waiting for something. Sure enough, one of the bikers from the attack entered and had a short meeting with him.

When the biker left, the three of us discretely followed him, eventually finding out way to a run-down house in a seedier part of town. There were several bikes parked outside it, the same ones that had been used in the attack. We could also see that there were a number of armed men on the premises. And while we couldn’t verify that Dale was there, we felt that it was a safe assumption that this was where they were holding him.

We quickly came up with a plan. Neon would lock out their comms, stopping them from calling for help. Shortcut would sneak up the stairs, and I would go in through the fire escape. We would neutralise those inside and then search the place for Dale.

Shortcut’s infiltration went off fantastically. Shadowing a guy in, he made his way into the living room where two of them were on the couch, watching combat biking. A quick Control Thoughts spell meant that one of them started endlessly spewing out statistics, and didn’t notice when Shortcut stunbolted the other. With them out of the way, he headed towards the back room where I would be coming in.

Speaking of, my own intrusion went fantastically. I made it up the fire escape and in through the window basically unnoticed. Even better, while there were two thugs in the room, Dale was also there, tied to a chair but otherwise unharmed. Thug one went down to a quick shock glove attack before he even knew what was going on. Thug two, however, was faster and managed to evade me. However, he didn’t evade the knife that Shortcut threw into his back.

After dealing with another pair of thugs, we managed to get out of there unharmed and were ready for our getaway. I reassured Dale that he was safe and that his father had sent us to get him. This came as a surprise to him, given hat his father had been dead for several years. Just to be sure, I showed him a picture of the supposed Donald Henderson, which Dale didn’t recognise. What do you know, the sincere and open Mister Johnson was, in fact, lying to us all along.

Now while we had been paid to deliver Dale to him, the three of us did feel bad about handing over a child to a kidnapper. Logic told us that the supposed Mr Henderson had actually been after Dale for himself, but Fat Yak had swooped on him first. So instead, we called up Dale’s mother at Dai Dai and explained the situation to her. She was grateful that we had recovered her son, but there was also another problem. In order to get him back, she had hired a Runner team of her own.

While we were contemplating what to do next, we got a call from said team. They had somehow wound up at the Laser Heated Bacon Service and found fake Mister Henderson. He had offered them the same money he had offered us for Dale, which is more then his mum was paying them. SO now they were demanding that we hand Dale over to them.

Fat Yak (Now with less fingers)

So I came up with an idea. I said that I would meet them, and specified a location, being Fat Yak’s Noodle House. I then arranged a meeting with Dale’s mother to hand him over to her and get paid. She was glad to have him back, and was more then happy to us what she had offered the other team. And while it was less then what Fake Dad was paying, we got to at least feel good about ourselves afterwards, which is rare enough.

As for the other team? Apparently things did not go well at the noodle bar. Something happened between fake mister Henderson and Fat Yak that resulted in a gunfight tearing up the place. And while by all reports Fat Yak escaped alive, I suspect a finger or two will end up in the soup.

What we did find interesting was the final postscript to this whole mess. Fake Mister Henderson had signed into the Golf Club as a guest of Marcus Ferrera, the man who had been giving Shortcut jobs.