Well, that happened

I’m writing this from a makeshift hammock on board our Cargo plane as it flies across the Atlantic. None of these things are by choice, I might just add. How I got here is a classic case of people taking things just a bit too far.

See, in the shadowy world of corporate espionage that us Runners live in, there comes a point where you have to take a loss and walk on it. When a Runner team makes a mess of your stuff and gets away, there’s only so far you can pursue the matter before it comes back to bite you. Most corps will take their losses and accept them, and then try to move on. But some are worse at letting it go then others.

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.

Crimes against humanity, hazmat suits and potato chips: a typical day in the life of a Shadowrunner

Well this happened.

Okay, I need a better summary for that last run then that. Right. Anyway, it began when we retrieved MCT’s prototype drone from DeckCon for Lizard Johnson for a hefty wad of cash. A few days later, Lizard B. Johnson got back to us with an aghast look on his scaly face, and said that he had another job for us. He wanted us to go to the MCT research facility that had created the drone and destroy it, their ability to make more drones and all the data on it. Oh, and kill anyone who was involved with the research and development of the drone as well. The fact that he used words like ‘abomination’ suggested that something about meant that this was more then just getting one-up on a rival company.

Mitsuhama Computer Technologies:
We're that damn evil

So we had a job, one that would need us to terminate the targets with most gross prejudice. Of course, to get there, we’d need to find out where it was being developed and who was involved with the program. (It wouldn’t help just to shoot up every MCT lab we came across, as fun as it would be). Likewise, we also had to deal with MCT’s infamous Zero-Zone policy, which meant that the place would be a virtual fortress packed full of guards, drones, turrets, critters, wards and run with a policy of shoot to kill and don’t even bother with the questions.

Fun times.

DeckCon 2078

Well, it’s Deckcon time again, which means that we get a lot of work trashing one of the world’s largest consumer electronics shows. I mean, it’s the only reason I’d be there otherwise, as the thing’s a total nerd-fest. Just look at how excited Neon gets for it as proof. And just like last year, we were busy throughout the show doing various jobs for various people. The offers came in thick and fast, and yet we managed to be at cross-purposes throughout.

The first job we got wasn’t actually a job, however, but also was rather personal. Ishtar, our least favourite Babylonian Goddess-themed pop star, had thrown down an open challenge as a publicity stunt. She was goign to be putting on a livecast show on the first day of Deckcon, and she was openly daring people to hack the feed. Naturally, Neon immediately wanted to hack the feed, but was trying to think of a way to do such that wouldn’t immediately be giving her what she wanted.

How to dress for the revolution

Our Cuban holiday came to an end, but not without a little bit of excitement along the way. But then, since we’re Runners, that’s probably to be expected. Our very nature is about performing illegal acts for profit, so it’s rare that life is dull.

Bur for a week, at least, it had been nice and relaxing. I had been playing the part of the wealthy upper-end tourist, staying at the best resorts, relaxing on the best beaches and eating real meat and seafood at some pretty nice restaurants. Either that or hanging out with Tyler on his yacht, so you know... Shortcut had been off at the former US Navy golf course at Guantanamo Bay, which is apparently the cheapest and least touristy one on the island. Also it features extra hazards in the form of unexploded mines, so yeah.

And Freddie had managed to get into a race, because he’s Freddie. He pitted our rental ’55 Chevrolet against a massive Cadillac driven by a greasy local. And then Shortcut entered his golf cart just to be sure. Even though he was racing without the benefit of his Vehicle Control Rig or being able to jump in or anything else like that, Freddie still managed to smoke the guy. He’s just that good. And while Shortcut did come last, he didn’t do that badly by comparison.

Come for the rum and cigars, stay for the heavily armed revolutionaries

After our last job, we felt that it would be best to lie low and avoid drawing too much attention to ourselves, since Aztechnology doesn’t take losing well. Fortunately, circumstances conspired to get us a job that would be far away from Seattle in a region that has a surprisingly low corp presence. Added to that, the job came from Tyler, which meant that I was in essence working for my millionaire arms dealer boyfriend (yes, I know, he’s not an arms dealer, he just knows lots of arms dealers). So you know, perks of the role and all.

Of course, knowing Tyler had its other perks, and I don’t just mean getting to hang out on his luxury yacht. He had used his connections to get me into a stupidly exclusive Delta-grade cyber clinic for a systems upgrade. As a result, I am rocking a new set of wired reflexes that makes me even faster then I have ever been before. It only cost me a cool half-million too.

Farmageddon II

Every run has its after effects. You do one thing and it sets off a whole series of other effects. Some of these are planned and were intended to occur. Others are collateral damage, the unplanned results of your actions. And then there are the times when it will generate further runs, as in this case.

Some time ago we burned down an Aztechnology experimental farm at the behest of an elderly (and creepy) Ork doctor. They were trying to develop blight-resistant strains of grain as a way of overcoming the problems that had been plaguing their food production for the last few years. We put a stop to that branch of the research, but it seemed that they had a lot more then just that one farm in the pipeline. The same Doctor had become aware of this, and had hired us to continue wrecking their agricultural plans.

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.

More things you probably shouldn't do in a Bulldog

Wow. It feels like forever since I posted here.

So one thing that you quickly learn as a Runner is that there’s a whole world of different types of Mister Johnson. Not just different behaviours depending on which company (or whatever else) they represent, but also their approach to the run and the runners they’ve hired for it. On this last run we encountered one of these types in the form of the meticulous overplanner.

This type has a rather unique approach to their operations. They’ve basically plotted out the entire run in advance, and think they know exactly how it’s going to go. The only reason they’ve hired Runenrs is because they’re expendable deniable assets; otherwise, they’d do the entire fragging thing themselves. Of course, this type has two weaknesses. The first is that their plans rarely account for anything untoward happening on the run; rather, they simply assume it’s all going to go off like clockwork. The second is that they hate it when the Runners they’ve hired decide to creatively reinterpret their orders in a way they feel is better.

We definitely had one of those on our last job. And in our decision to go off-plan, we not only saved the job but probably saved our lives as well.

High on organic carrots

Just a short and sweet one here, actually; a simple job that went perfectly fine and according to plan. And, of course, might have long term implications that will come back to bite us, but that’ basically a given at this stage.

But we’ll get to that later. Things had been going pretty well for us. While Tyler had been out of town, we’d been chatting enough for me to make it clear that I’d like a second date (or more), and that I’d love to see more of his yacht. Likewise, he said that if I ever should need to get anywhere by boat, then he’d be the man to speak to. It’s something I like the idea of. A cruise on a luxury yacht with my rich arms dealer boyfriend... I could get used to that.

Shortcut, in the meantime, had been engaging in a little bit of creative work himself. He’d been setting up a series of spy cameras across the golf course so that he could watch the players and gather intel on them. This is the sort of personal project that is insanely useful for us runners, and I have no doubt that it’s going to yield us some very good results, especially given the amount of work we’ve gotten through the golf club already.

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.

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.

Never deal with the minions of a Dragon either

So I think we all were in a bad mood after the whole debacle with Ares Johnson and the bugs, not withstanding Freddy having a new toy to tool around with. So there was a lot of blowing off of steam in the aftermath, with some of us letting go and trying not to dwell. Oh, and Freddie spending his time messing with the new plane. See? I told you.

Oh yeah, a Dragon had flown into Seattle and made a big show of it. I should have mentioned that last time, but what do you know, I was in too pissy a mood to mention it. However, Seattle’s runner scene were basically going crazy trying to figure out who this guy was and what he wanted. Because Dragons are basically bad news incarnate.

I decided to take Cwildred out for a night of partying and dancing, seeing as I owe her big time for all the mad biking skills she taught me. So basically the pair of us were bouncing from club to club and event to event and having a great time. We were enjoying ourselves, forgetting our worries (bugs, corp politics, creepily possessive older brothers) and instead getting a touch drunk, dancing and ogling cute dumb elf guys with tight butts.

Things not to feed to cows

So I say that I’m done taking jobs for Ares Johnson, so naturally I took a job from Ares Johnson. Its how the world works.

The job in question was, simply put, a complete nightmare. It was a mess from the very start and only snowballed from there. I’d like to think that something came from it, but really, apart from the Yens, nothing is coming to mind.

Anyway, to get back to what happened: Ares Johnson asked for a meet. That at least was an improvement over his prior habit of walking into our home and making a public nuisance of himself (Yeah, it looks terrible when a Suit walks into your place of residence and trashes your street cred to boot). And it was at a Steakhouse (Ares Johnson, what a surprise) so there was some good food on offer.

Shortcut: knives, magic and golf carts

Given that Shortcut has been on two runs with the team now (even if the team was just me, him and Neon) and is likely to be in a few more at least, I figure it’s about time for me to collect my thoughts on him. And like I said, he’s a better mage then Captain Cancer, which is also a plus in my book. Unlike some others, Shortcut (or Glen Quarry to give his real name) didn’t really come into Shadowrunning, Instead, it sort of came to him.

I don’t know much about his past and how he got to where he is right now, but there’s a few interesting things about Shortcut. The first is that he’s one of those stupidly rare types that are not only awakened, but poses spellcasting abilities and adept powers. How this happened and where he learned to use said abilities I don’t know as yet, but there’s probably a fascinating story involved.

Coffee machines, ground pentrating radar, gangers and other inconveniences

Sometimes you have to do a job in a hurry, with little time to plan and a lot of making it up as you go along. Jobs that are favours to friends/allies/contacts/whatever else are often of this type; they need something done in a hurry and they can’t do it themselves, so they have to turn to you. This sort of thing rarely pays well, but instead often comes with other benefits like favours in return. It’s the underground economy part of the underground economy.

I got a call from Cwildred because she needed help with a problem. It was small for them moment, but had the potential to blow up into a huge mess. I agreed to help her out because a) she’s a friend b) I owe her for all her awesome combat biking lessons and c) it’d mean getting on the good side of a massive nationwide gang who have fingers in all sorts of different ventures. See? Favour for favour.

One big dogpile of drek

You know what? The last few days have just been an utter fragging trainwreck. Trying to make sense of it all, even in hindsight, is not easy. So if this reads like a rather confused mess, then sorry, that’s just how it was. Oh, and Captain Cancer was involved, so you know, that’s not going to help any either.

Okay, so I’ll break it down from the start and try to recount the events as they happened, The first leg was Fat Yak hiring us again, bot to do a job and also do him a favour. The job part was simple; despite our defusing a potential Gianelli-Yak war, it appeared that the Gianellis were still getting ready for a conflict regardless. Specifically, Rosetta Gianelli had been making a lot of noise of late, and he wanted to know what she was planning.

How not to be seen: a guide for avoiding Blood Magic

One thing about being a Runner is that often the jobs will come out of completely unexpected sources. It’s a part of the world, really; after all, you’re being paid to commit crimes and work outside the law. Of course people aren’t going to be walking around shouting about how they’re looking for you to go do something grossly illegal for them. But even then, allowing for that, you do get some strange ones on occasion.

The other thing you need to know is that often the difference between A professional runner and somebody who just happens to be in the right place at the right time is often very, very slim.

Both of these elements were key to the last Run we went on. It came out of nowhere, involved somebody who hadn’t ever really considered being a Runner but had the right skills and, as a bonus, also had an outcome that was completely unexpected when all the signs pointed in a completely different direction.

Magnets, how the frag do they work?

Racing seems to have been the theme of the day for this last Run. Not that It was about racing, mind you, but racing was how we got into it. Freddie had been asking around about the street racing community again with an eye to getting back into the competition. While he was away, the new top dog in town was a relative newcomer called Bruno who was tearing up the scene in a Eurocar Northstar; a massive, turbo-charged, peasant-crushing SUV designed for the stupidly rich people and corp execs. That’s the sort of car that’s well beyond the reach of your average street racer, which was turning some heads.

On a related note, I’d been doing more combat bike training with Cwildred which was turning out to be not only useful but pretty fragging awesome. In the latest round of training she’d been teaching me to jump my bike off things (Cars, roofs, highway overpasses) which is the sort of thing that is useful in a chase as well as being just plain cool. So we’d been trashing a couple of rental Growlers along the way; no sense in destroying my good bike while practicing after all.

Farmageddon

So remember what I was saying about Captain Cancer relying a lot on technological gear rather than his own magic? Yeah, well there’s times when he really gets carried away with that. And then there’s other times when he goes so decidedly off-mission that I wonder why I even put up with him. Don’t get me wrong, this time did actually work out well for us, but at the same time also made our newest job a lot more complicated for the sake of it.

Having recovered from nearly killing himself on the last job, he was ready to go for this newest one. Our contact in this case was a doctor working in the Ork Underground who had a distinct beef with Aztechnology (But then, who doesn’t?). He also was rather creepy, but that was by the by. We met in his office in the underground. Oh, and in the name of making things nice and awkward, Captain Cancer insisted on wearing a physical mask spell to make him look like an Ork, which is a massive no-no and a good way to get yourself killed if caught. Or, you know, I could have killed him myself.