It all began with topiary

So an important part of being a Shadowrunner is to never overlook anything. If something seems like it’s a coincidence, then it probably isn’t. And it’s not being paranoid to assume that everybody is out to get you. You’re a career criminal, after all. You do grossly illegal things for money. Of course it’s going to come back on you. The last couple of days had a series of events that did seem to be unrelated and just a matter of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was only when reviewed as a whole that the real problem emerged.

It started with Neon going through the data she’d pulled from the MCT lab we’d torched last week. She’d been concerned about the intrusion of that creepy Technomancer into the system. Freddie had suggested that we try to track him down, but that was proving to be difficult because, what do you know, Technomancers don’t play by normal Matrix rules, much to Neon’s frustration. What she found however, was strange. The Techno had gotten into the system and then deliberately tripped a whole bunch of alarms which had wound up alerting MCT to our presence. Why was another matter.

A masterpiece

Meanwhile at the golf course, Shortcut had been engaging in some landscaping without actually clearing it with course management. He’d gone to town on the topiary, and wound up trimming them into a number of different forms; giraffe, hedgehog, shark, dinosaur and so on. As he was admiring his work, he was approached by another Dwarf who was standing gape-jawed in awe at what he’d done. After collecting his wits, the Dwarf introduced himself as Harris Park, a professional gardener who had been hired by the Golf course to do a massive makeover of the landscaping.

Naturally, Shortcut wasn’t happy about this; after all, that was his job. He went to the club’s management. They rambled about quality of work and maintaining the decorum and proper atmosphere for a club for corp bigwigs and how Mister Park was going to ensure that such an atmosphere was present and blah blah blah. Naturally, Shortcut wasn’t having one bit of this, so he decided to see what he could find out about Park.

I’d come up with one immediate solution, however. I got Neon to create an agent that bombed the Golf Club’s guest books with fake entries complimenting them on the topiary. This was enough to make them reconsider their plans, but they were still insistent on Park doing work on the grounds.

Meanwhile, Freddie’s friend Dave had hooked him up with another race. One of the drivers would be a guy called Jamison whom he’d raced before. The star entrant, however, was an up and coming Orksploitation rapper by the stupid-arse name of Karga Ironfist, who wanted to be in the race to make himself look good and promote his brand. So he was going to take part in a genuine illegal street race, and Freddie was supposed to lose to him to prove his cred. Naturally, that wasn’t going to happen.

For my part, Tyler had come to me asking a favour. He had a meeting coming up with some clients that he just had a bad feeling about; nothing solid, but at the same time, he wasn’t entirely sure that they wouldn’t pull something stupid. (Hey, he’s an arms dealer. That sort of thinking helps you stay alive). So he was hoping that I’d act as an incognito bodyguard of sorts during the meeting. I’d be lounging around looking like a bit of set dressing while he did the deal, and be ready to flip out and kill everyone if needed. To aid me in the part, he was going to outfit me with a Second Skin Suit so I could look like I was, say, in a swimsuit while actually being ready for battle.

Back on the Golf Course, Shortcut was doing some investigation into Mr Park’s work while club management were trying to sort out the mess they found themselves in.  What he found was odd; Park was digging holes around the golf course and burying armed Aztechnology Crawler drones in them. That made him more then a little suspicious, so he decided to check park out astrally. Sure enough, he had a whole bunch of headware, as in the sorts of things that you’d use to, say, run a team of drones.

He got Neon to check Park’s background, which did yield a few oddities. While yes, he’d done landscaping work in past, it had been very sporadic and irregular. This all lead us to believe that Park was a contract killer, hired to rub somebody out on the Golf Course. With that in mind, me, Shortcut and Freddie went to check him out. Park turned out to be fully ready for a fight, and managed to evade Shortcut and me as we tried to take him down. He even went so far as to try and run us over with his truck, which didn’t work out so well for him.

What did go a bit better was him activating the Crawlers and having them come after us, which sent us scurrying for cover and allowed him to get in his truck. I decided to head him off by jumping into the truck after him and taking him down. Shortcut then took down the Drones with a toxic wave spell.

Getting the hell out of there, we rendered Park to a nearby abandoned warehouse for questioning (It’s like it’s our hobby or something). He quickly gave in and admitted that he’d been hired to kill Shortcut, but had no idea who the employer was. He also admitted that was going to back off given that we’d wrecked his drones and nearly killed him. Plus, the truth was that assassinations were just a side to his gardening business. Realising that he wasn’t going to give us much more we let him go. Besides which, Shortcut now had the leverage he needed to ensure that he’d have sole control over all gardening decisions at the club. Take your victories where you can.

The next day was Race Day. As allways, Freddie would be driving his Bulldog with Neon in the back for support. Kibble Doubledutch turned up in a gigantic pickup that had been yerzed out to the moon, and was accompanied by the stringiest, nerdiest Ork I have ever seen who was supposedly his manager. Corgi Ironcrutch was talking himself up big time, but Freddie was having some doubts about him, especially as inspection suggested that his SUV was in fact a purpose-built racing truck that had been dressed up to look ‘urban’.

A car that says "I am every corp brat
ever"

Entrant number three was a relative newcomer by the name of John Boy Daniels, who nicely fit the corp brat profile by showing up in a Shin-Hyung. His car was not that obviously modified, and didn’t even have an ostentatious body kit, but he seemed pretty sure of himself regardless, which suggested that he had some other trick up his sleeve.

Jamison, the number four entrant, was a no-show. In his place, however, was a guy dressed as an anachronistic greaser driving a 1962 Chevrolet Corvette. He greeted Freddie in specific, and said that he was here to race him. Of course, we’d seen this guy before, ans had reason to believe that he was in fact some sort of ghost car or free spirit. Shortcut assensed him to verify that the car was indeed some sort of spirit and that the driver... well, wasn’t there. But since there was nothing in the rules against a ghost car entering, they continued with the race.

Straight off the bat it was a two-horse race. Cuckoo Bottlebrush was left in the dust by the others, while John Boy was lagging behind Freddie and the Corvette. Meanwhile at the pit, the Nerdy Ork was shouting instructions to Rusty Doubleclutch, in essence coaching him on how to win the race. Shortcut deliberately annoyed him, which lead to him snapping back with racist insults. And then he noticed all the other Dwarves standing around him who wanted a word with the stringy Ork about his language. Deprived of his coach, Carpetbag Dongletrout quickly fell further back.

What was more unusual was the way that John Boy was driving. He was passing up opportunities to pass or even catch up to Freddie, and instead was seemingly content to remain in third. The reason why became clear midway through the race when his car dropped a small disc shaped hover drone out from underneath it, which then sped towards Freddie's van. Freddie identified it as a Knight Errand pursuit drone, a nasty little limped like device that attaches itself to a target car. What happens after that varies depending on the I individual drone, but is never good for the target.

While Freddie tried to concentrate on driving and not getting clamped, Neon took over the drone’s system. She handed it off to Freddie, who found that it was equipped with explosives and a small drone arm for planting them. Realising what John Boy had been up to, he decided to return to sender and had the drone go back to John Boy's car and clamp onto it. A second order told it to blow at the finish line. Meanwhile, John Boy seemed to be unaware of what was going on with his toy.

Freddie and the Corvette duel all the way to the finish , with the two of them crossing the line at the same time. It was so close that nothing was able to determine the winner between the two of them. John Boy would have come in third, but his car exploded at the line, completely destroying it and him; apparently that little drone was packing more heat then expected. Instead, Fartknocker Bumfluff came a distant third by default.

The Corvette driver (or maybe the Corvette itself, it's hard to tell) congratulated Freddie on a race well run. And Shortcut got a lot of free beer from the Dwarves inn the crowd.

The next day was Tyler's meeting, with all our preparations in place. Tyler was his usual charming casual self, while I was lounging on a deck chair with my second skin set to skimpy bikini. Added to that, I had a cooler by my side with my Predator and shock gloves inside. Oh, and a cheese platter . Have to enjoy your luxuries.

Tyler's clients arrived on schedule. Supposedly representing a Middle Eastern crime syndicate, they were your typical well dressed Euro types in sharp suits with stylish accessories. But my years of experience alerted me to the small details that were off. One of them had a bulging finger that suggested a concealed monowhip. The second was fidgeting with his belt buckle. And the third had his finger on a stud on his briefcases handle. In short, they were well-dressed assassins, the lead of which was about to shake hands with Tyler.

This would be a good gun even if it didn't hide inside
a designer suitcase

I acted quickly and threw my cheese knife at Whippy's hand. It hit him, catching him off guard and giving me time to grab my gun from the cooler. A few shots held the them off while Tyler made a break for it, meaning that he was safe and I was alone with the goons. As expected, number two had a memory metal sword disguised as his belt, while number three had a SMG in his case, and was using it to try and hose me down (He didn't get me, but made a mess of the deck). I confiscated his weapon and turned it on the sword guy. And then I took that as well.

That just left mister whippy, who had retreated below decks. I followed him, only to find that he’d grabbed Tyler and was now pointing a potentially dangerous finger at his head. He was threatening Tyler in exchange for his escape, and I backed off to let him go rather than risking anything happening. When he got to the back of the boat, he did relax a just a little, figuring that he had room for a getaway.

That was his mistake as I took a swing with the sword, quickly lopping off his hand. Screaming in pain, he let go of Tyler and fell to the deck. At swordpoint, he admitted that he and his now dead chummers were the ‘Brit Boys’, a group of hitmen who had been hired by a sight unseen Johnson. So, in short, a dead end. Tyler figured that this was business, but also that he didn’t want to clean another dead body off of his yacht. So we let him try to swim to shore.

Neon cut in to report one frightening little discovery she had made in the MCT data she was sorting through. Somebody had placed a data bomb in there, but it wasn’t MCT. Rather, it had been planted externally after the alarms went off from the intrusion. In short, it had likely been done by the creepy Dwarf techno who had put it there in the hope of frying her headware and/or brain.

Or, in short, we’d just been the targets of four deliberate hits.