Never let Captain Cancer talk to anyone

I am so angry about the last few days that I'm not sure I even want to write them up here. Seriously, by the time we were done I was ready to murder everybody around me.

Okay, deep breath. Relax. Let's take this one bit at at time.

To start with, everyone on Lightspeed's data server now hats me for saving De La Mar's life. Even the few who have pointed out that, if anything, her death would cause GOD to crack down even harder really aren't helping. I'm the queen of unpopular right now.

Never work with Children, Animals or Metasapients

Captain Cancer's new toy

Having not been paid for some time now, we were anxious to get back to proper actual work. So when I got a call from the (new) Ares Johnson, we were more than happy to meet him, even if it was, as per normal for him, under rather odd circumstances. For starters, he’d contacted me directly rather than going through a fixer. And then we were Meeting him face to face at a waterfront warehouse, rather than the usual sort of Johnson hangout. Sadly, this meant no steak, but there was more to it than just that.

But we needed money, especially Captain Cancer who had just blown a small fortune on buying himself an Ares Duelist drone and an assault rifle for it. Oh, and he also bought himself a reloading drone, obstinately so he could reload the dualist but actually so it could give him fresh cigs while in the field. His logic was that it meant he would have something else to protect him in a firefight, which seemed semi-reasonable. (Anyway, his drones are now called Thinman and Runt.) Thus we agreed to the meet, and headed towards the docks.

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.

We know what you want. We know what you need. We know where you live.

With Wraith gone, something strange has happened. I seem to have become leader of the team somehow. It's odd, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. On the upside, it does appear that everyone recognizes how just plain awesome I am and is willing to listen to me and let me call the shots. On the downside, there's a lot of responsibility and crap that comes with it, which is not helpful when really all I want to do is just run off to do my own thing.

The last little job we had pretty much covered the pros and cons of it, while also leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth, a sort of 'I don't like the way this is going' thing.

It started off with me out at the Skeleton having a good time and, amazingly enough, being recognized for who I am and what I do. An Elf Runner called Blidside approached me in the club, saying he remembered me from Penubra when everything went bad with the Azzie Johnson. I played innocent, saying that I was just there for a good time and had nothing to do with what went on and Jaguar Guards storming the place and all that crap in the spirit of covering my ass, and he seemed to buy that.

Street Legends and other lies

One of the reasons for our break was due to the death of our regular Johnson. I liked Ares Johnson, but I really didn't know what was going to come next, especially given the mess that lead to his demise. So when a new Areas Johnson just walked into the firehouse (I just realised that I haven't written anything here about the firehouse. I should, because it's pretty amazing) we were rather surprised for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is we have no idea how Ares knew were we lived, so holy crap what the hell security.

New Ares Johnson. He's... enthusiastic

Anyway, the new Johnson was... Enthusiastic to restart our working relationship, to say the least. Actually, he was pretty damned excitable about just about everything full stop, which is one of those traits that can be good or bad in a Johnson. To get the ball rolling, he offered us a simple job; tunes out that our old friends the Rusted Stilettos have been getting their hands on shipments of factory fresh Krime weapons as well as a fresh supply of drugs, and he wanted to find out how and why. It seemed a little odd - we couldn't immediately see his angle in this or what he was getting out of it - but we took the job regardless because hey, money is good.