Street racing, killer attack drones and other relationship killers

So while Freddie's been doing even more work on the Van I've been having some work of my own done. I'm now sporting a new set of Betaware-grade Muscle Toners, which are making me even faster and more agile then before. Turns out that you can improve on perfection after all.

In other news, we've heard nothing more form the Ares Johnson, but I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing. He's up to something, but there's still no clue as to what or why. I don't like it at all.

In the meantime, my personal life has taken an entirely predictable turn, albeit not through a way that I fully expected. Me and Freddie were invited to another race, admittedly through Alfonso talking to David the Mechanic talking to Freddie talking to me. He was all for the idea because racing’s his thing and personally I suspect he wanted to show off just what he could do in a Bulldog anyway. (Seriously, that Van's two tons of turbo-charged, armour-plated, candy-coated, corp crushing killing machine). Me I entered for the thrill of it and, of course, to watch Freddie's back. Although if I did beat Alfonso it would be awesome.

Biker Gangs, seedy motels and other reasons why I hate road trips

A Rotordrone. Freddie's are now less prone to exploding

Despite the Ares Johnson's ominous sendoff, things have been pretty quirt around here. About the biggest activity for a while was Freddie, Benny and Dave (a mechanic they know) doing some modifications to add more armor to his Rotordrones so they wouldn't explode as soon as somebody looked at them funny. Along the way we gained a Garage Couch (you know the type; covered in a drop sheet and then cluttered up with parts) which I am earnestly shocked we didn't have before.

And then things got awkward when Aphonso called David to ask Freddie for a favour. A friend of his, a Dwarf Rigger called Offroad, had apparently gotten into some trouble during a smuggling run and desperately needed to be bailed out. After a lot of me not talking to Alphonso stuff (including when I was finally actually speaking to him my deliberately not speaking to him; can't he just get the picture already?) we agreed to go help him out as a favour to Dave and, of course, the possible benefits down the road.

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?

Dangerous Aquaintences

So beyond the team, there's a bunch of people we know one way or another. These guys are more or less allies, although this being what it is and our doing what we do, there's plenty of ways that any given ally could be tomorrow's deadly enemy. It's the way things go.

Lightspeed. Yes, she always looks this grumpy

Lightspeed was a runner in the 2050s, but since she's an Elf, it doesn't really show. She used to be a decker back in the Old Matrix and had the good luck to survive crash 2.0 which drove her into retirement. Nowadays she's more of a consultant and info broker and is rather well connected, even if many of her contacts are other old fart ex-runners. She definitely knows her stuff, and I suppose the fact that she lived so long as a runner means that she knows what she's doing. Her network has been very helpful to us in a number of ways, not the least of which is getting us some more recognition. She also apparently runs her own Data Store which serves Seattle area runners.

While she hasn't said much, I got the impression that most of her old team were dead or retired now. The few times she's mentioned them, she didn't seem to have many nice things to day about them.  Lightspeed apparently has a lot of her old pre-Crash cyberdecks, although they're utterly useless now. She turned one of them into an Ant Farm.

We jokingly call her "decker mom", although it turns out that she actually is Neon's mom (and, incidentally, refers to Neon as "the brat" a lot). Apparently, she didn’t know that Neon was an active Runner for some time, until someone 'outed' Neon in front of her. On the other hand, it explains a lot about where Neon got a lot of her skills and knowledge from.