A pain in the (robo) pants

So after the arse-up at the end of the last run, Minster was left babysitting Slayer for a few days until Walter Johnson got back. Given the spare time now on our hands, we took it upon ourselves to get back to the investigation that we'd come to New York for in the first place. Fortunately, we'd found ourselves something that resembled a lead, courtesy of the rather distinctive missing runner Robopants. She'd worked with two others in past, Mudbug and Ripstar, and we knew where to find the latter.

Ripstar hung out at the Link Club. She was an Ork street racer who ran with a tricked-out Americar and liked to use it to swindle Corp kids out of their expensive rides. Based on this, we told Freddie to take the lead, given that the pair of them had a lot in common, like a love of driving fast in unlikely vehicles. At first he hit it off, with the pair of them talking about (what do you know) street racing, and her recognizing him from several vids that got out of Seattle. They even went out for a practice race which Freddie won, clearly impressing her.

Sadly, he tried turning the conversation to Shadowrunning, only to fumble it badly. She told him to push off.

Where even the architecture tries to kill you

Our trip to New York has managed to be full of surprises, both good and bad. This last run was no exception, although I'm going to say the good won out this time for a number of reasons.

We'd gotten nicely settled in to our new hideout, with any lingering concerns over Full Otto's rather unexpected demise somewhat offset by the fact that we live in an awesome penthouse abetment with swimming pool, gym, massive lounges, massive bedrooms and whatever else. You know, the little things. However, we did need work to help support our luxurious lifestyle, as well as the job that had bought us to New York in the first place. Dayglo had found us something that looked to be fast and financially very lucrative.

Filler post is Filler

It's been a while, I know. I would say that I’ve been busy with Runs and stuff, but the truth is we've been on a bit of a break after the whole Pierce fiasco and the fallout from it. More than a little of that has been focused on what to do about that Reraku Johnson who was behind it all. We've come up with several plans, but most of them amount to 'snipe him while he's on the deck of his boat', 'blow his boat up with him on it' and 'snipe him while he's on the deck of his boat and then blow it up to be sure', but they all have common issues of getting the chance to kill him and also making sure that Renraku don’t come after us too. The good news is that they haven't taken a shot at us so far either, but while this guy is out there, it's hard to feel completely safe.

I also remain broken up with Alphonso. He's taken to asking his mechanic (Dave) to ask Freddie to ask me to call him. Not gonna work. You had your chance, chummer, and you blew it big time.

Digital Apotheosis

Nothing to do with anything, but I broke up with Alphonso. Turns out I wanted a stable mature long-term relationship and he wanted a trophy Shadowrunner girlfriend he could show off to all his racer buddies. His loss.

So that aside, let's talk Pierce. Thanks to Neon's efforts, we know how to kill him. Disrupt him in the Matrix, then take out the device that he uses as his refuge when he flees there to recompile. Of course, that means fighting a Crazy Digital Murder God in their native environment as well as then walking into what was doubtless going to be a well-prepared, well-defended secured facility that would be on alert and ready for us. Easy, huh?

So stupid he's dangerous

He is the Anti-Sexy

There’s a saying that a man is measured by the quality of his enemies. I’ve never got that myself; in the Shadows, it’s best if you don’t have any personal enemies at all, so how’s someone supposed to measure you by that standard? But there’s one other reason as to why I don’t like that turn of phrase, and that’s because one of our own enemies is a pretty low standard to measure anyone by

Buzz-Bomb was ugly, greedy, cowardly, petty, vengeful beyond all reason, incompetent and, above all else, pretty damned stupid. He also became our enemy largely because of his ability to not leave well enough alone and instead make a bad situation even worse by whatever means possible. If there was a way to dig himself into a deeper hole, then he would find it.

He was an Elf Rigger, but I must admit that I have my doubts on the first pat. I mean, he was ugly, with a nasally voice and weird teeth and the like. That’s not very Elf-y to me, and I should know, right? Personally I’ve always thought that he was a poser, which meant that he paid good money to end up looking like this. It would fit if only because it would make him that extra bit lamer.

Diplomatic incidents

The last few days have been complicated, to say the least. A lot of things happened, and we’re not entirely sure of what’s going to come of all of it. In fact, to be honest, our team has either achieved a major breakthrough or is completely screwed and under somebody’s thumb, and it’s hard to tell which.

How we got to this point is complicated to say the least. Following our trip to the foundation, we found a whole pile of useful information on Pierce and his crazy plans as well as his insane Bug Shaman allies (They’re Bug Shamans, of course they’re insane) and their own goals and how they were going to execute them. This also came with a bit of good/bad; the bad was that their intended sacrifice/host for the bug queen was Snow Fox, the daughter of a major Salish tribal leader and also Wraith’s fiancée (or something). The good was this meant we had a way to find her.

Wraith: he's like a boss

There's two things you need to know about Wraith. The first is that even though he's a Runner, he's actually a pretty good guy. The second is that he lies all the time.

This is the best photo you'll ever see of him

Now with that being said, let's talk about the guy. He's very camera shy for reasons that might become obvious, but he does cut a distinctive figure to say the least. He's pretty buff, clearly of NAN extraction and he has this really weird hair. Like, it's silver down one side, copper down the other and braided in the middle level weird. He claims that it's natural, but then again he's also given any number of other explanations as to how it came to be this way. Like I said, lies all the time.

Oh, and he also has these really cool tats; possibly even cooler then mine. A Ghost Wolf on his forehead, and then a second one running down the length of each arm and more on his back. At various stages he's claimed that they used to be magical or that they're his spirit beasts or something else. Like I said, lies all the time.

And while he doesn't actually hit on me (or neon, or Abbey), he definitely likes having lots of Elf ladies around him. Guy's a total horn dog, I swear. He once joked that if we get a mage on the team, it should be another woman while he was eyeing Cinders.

Dangerous Acquaintances

So while we're here, let's talk about the team I usually run with. I'll say now that they're kinda hard to define as a team; they come and go, and its rare that we'll do a run with everyone. More often than not, it's kinda situational and based on who's available at the time. Hell, I think I'm the only person who's actually been there for every job we've done so far (And that is because I'm awesome, of course) unless the others have done jobs together that they didn't tell me about.

Anyway, in no real order, here they are

Check out the 'stache

Freddie was the first of them that I worked with. He's an Ork, but apparently one of the rare "goblinized" variety that were born human and changed at puberty. That doesn't happen much anymore from all I've heard, so that makes him kinda cool in a way. He's ex-army, and picked up a lot of his skills from there, which is also what got him his start in what he does. The way I hard it, he’s originally from Tir Tangiere. That’s kinda crazy, huh? Only Ork on the team's from the Tir, but neither of the Elves are. Added to that, he speaks Sperenthiel, and I don't. Freddie's apparently his real name, but all efforts to get a street name have failed to stick. He just looks like a Freddie

Om the runner side of it, Freddie's a Rigger to use the conventions of the Runner world. He's got a control rig that he uses to run Drones and his Van (more on that to come!) remotely which makes him super-useful. He's great at recon (fly-spy drones which can get anywhere and are easy to hide because they look like normal bugs) and fire-support with his two Rotordrones, both of which pack assault rifles and grenade launchers (Boom!). He also recently came into a Steel Lynx drone with a MMG, but hasn't had a chance to use it as yet.