Community Warfare

Recoil. Likes: Shotguns and Chilli sauce.
Dislikes: Talking about her old team

We're now on our way to New York. Of course, before we got there a lot of things decided that they were going to resolve themselves at once on us in the most messy way they could, because you can't just walk away and hope that things will just go away on their own. Nope, it's never that simple. Instead it has to be one massive clusterfrag of everything going wrong at once.

Stepping back a bit, we were getting ready for the trip to New York. Packing was proceeding well, and Recoil the house-sitter was settling in nicely. And by that I mean she was sitting on the couch playing video games with Benny. Turns out that she's really good at tactical shooters, which meant the pair of them were really enjoying co-op mode. And she'd already does a guest appearance on one of Benny's "Unboxing the Video Game and the pizza" vids, so clearly all was going well.

Never deal with a company run by a dragon either

Gah. Not sure how the hell I'm going to write up the last few days. I am so angry on so many levels and feel a need to punch people around me a lot so maybe, just maybe, this will help.

Okay, stepping back. We'd gotten back from Atzlan and operation screw people over to double dip on the pay. Things had been pretty quiet since then. I'd been getting more and more quietly frustrated because, while I’m flush with cash, I’m also very much nearing the end of my upgrade cycle on my Augmentations. Most of them are at the a stage where improving them will eat more essence then I have (my Cyberdoc pointed me to an essence calculator app) to the point where whenever I add an item to the list and the result is 'you're dead'. My best bet is to go backwards and then start replacing what I have with the same thing only in an higher grade. Either that or somehow manage to gain access to Deltaware. Not likely.

So to blow off steam I’d been spending a lot of time clubbing and making sure I avoided anywhere that Blindsite might be because that would be so many levels of awkward. It also meant that I was spending very little time at home.

Runception

Most days when you're on a Run, you don't ask questions, Even if you don't know who your Johnson works for, you can pretty easily guess their motivation from what you're doing. Other days the Johnson is good ad hiding their true motivations and goals, to the point where what you're doing seems nonsensical. And then there are the times when not only are you at cross-purposes with another run, but the two are so mutually contradictory as to make you wonder what the hell is going on. The last Run we were on was that three times over.

Things started out pretty straightforward. I was at the skeleton and flirting with Blindsite (apparently, he thinks I am awesome, which means he's got good taste) when I was contacted by the EVO Lizardman Johnson that Offroad had worked for before. He arranged to meet us at a warehouse near the Tacoma docks (no. Not the same one as last run) to sort out the details. When we arrived there was when things began to get a little odd, as not only was the Johnson in attendance, but there was another figure who arrived in a Bentley Concordat, the sort of car you only associate with Johnsons or big-name celebrities.

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.