Crimson Dawn (Part 14)

The sounds of gunfire and the sprays of chipped cement from stray shots might have only been ARO objects, but they definitely were adding to the urgency of the situation. "Got two behind that wall ahead," she sent to Slicer, indicating towards a row of broken cement halfway across the vacant lot. "Possibly a third."

"Understood," Slicer nodded. "They're between us and the exit too."

"Where's my damned drone support?" Crimson replied as she glanced over at both her partner and Outrun who was squatting behind the same wall as the pair of them.

"I guess the company sees me as too valuable to lose," Outrun commented. "Despite the magnificent work you've done so far in extracting me. Clearly you have a talent for this, my lady."

"Slicer, hit him if he talks again," she muttered. "I got to get us out of this mess"

Rock Lords, interior decoration and Tea Houses. Find the connection

Freddie and Wraith were off doing stuff (Freddie was looking into Street Races or something and Wraith? Well Lofwyr alone knows) when we got two job offers drop in our lap at once. I figured that Yens are good, so I looked into them a bit further. The first one was coming from a Renraku Johnson so I was immediately 'Nope nope nope nope no way in hell." Seriously. I never want to work for themn again ever.

The second one was odd that it came to Captain Cancer of all people, and was passed to him through a strange source. The request for a meeting had been delivered via a local weirdo called - and no, I am not making this up - the Ballard of Pudding Quest. The guy had apparently heard of Captain Cancer, even if the good Captain had never heard of him. Added to that, the meeting was going to be in, of all places, a tea house in Chinatown. Yeah, getting stranger by the minute.

Phones, Drones and Automobiles

Okay, still fuming over the whole "Pierce" thing, but at least I'm a bit more settled. This summary will be somewhat more coherent, at least.

Our investigations into the matter were somewhat sidetracked when Dayglo pointed out the fact that we hadn't gotten paid in some time and that giant elaborate penthouse apartments don't pay for themselves. This much was true; we'd been doing waaaaaay too many unpaid jobs of late looking into this, so some money would be good. Plus I was personally itching for something to do that wasn't related to this whole trainwreck. So when Dayglo said that she had a potential job lines up, I was all over it.

That moment when you wish you'd geeked somebody when you had the chance

Word of warning. After the events of the last couple of days I am so angry that it is going to be very hard for me to give an even remotely coherent summary. So yeah. If there’s huge gaps in this summary I don't frakking care.

This whole terrible downhill slide began in the aftermath of our execution of Teh Dave and the mess with Doctor Hughes. The SK Johnson had asked Us to follow through with racking down everyone he had infected, which then meant finding the people that Teh Dave's underpaid bar staff had sold the CFD bombs to. All of which was resulting in a massive headache-inducing mess of people to track down and find out just how badly they had been infected and how heavily subverted they were.

The good news is that Teh Dave had a list of all the people he had infected. With Minster's aid, we were able to compare that to Runners he knew in New York and find out who were on the known to be missing list. From what we had found, some were more vulnerable to the infection then others, most notably those with more augmentations. Of those he’d infected, we found only two that were still missing and unaccounted for, which is good after a fashion.

Crimson Dawn (part 13)

Every time Ashely clocked off at Vendor Mammoth, it was with no small sense of relief. It meant that once again she had escaped the purgatory of idiot customers, idiot workmates, piped muzak and constant looped safety announcements of the latest alleged bargains for the day, and that she would be free to live her life a little for the next few hours. Or, at least, until she next stepped back through the gates of hell itself to live out her endless torment of greeting customers with a false smile.

What made today's release feel even more like a blessing was a message from Slicer on her comm, arranging a meet for tomorrow night. What was unusual was that he was asking her to come to the same detract facility that she'd been training at before. Maybe he's just skipping a step, she considered as she sent back a reply, indicating that she'd be there.

And so, one very boring day later, Crimson arrived at the site in question, her mind racing with the possibilities of what could be there. Even then, what she found was quite unexpected. Slicer was there, but his Rapier was now parked next to a row of other racing bikes. With him were a half dozen humans, male and female, and what a rather awkward-looking Elven man. Each of them were dressed in biker leathers, adorned with red and white stripes and each carrying one of the training rifles.

Demon Rats are the worst thing ever

This is a great place for a covert meeting, and is very relaxing
to boot

The meeting Me, Freddie and Neon set up with the SK security boss went well. She chose a nice cafe with real coffee that was by Central park, which added a charming old-world atmosphere to our discussions of espionage, intrigue and attempts to deliberately induce a large-scale pandemic. We explained what we had found and then arranged to safely hand over the CFD tablets that Teh Dave had been using. She said she'd have them analyzed to find out more about them and, hopefully, where they came from. We also explained his supply chain and how it went back to a man we thought was with Renraku. She offered to investigate further.

As we were wrapping up there, Dayglo told us that she had a job and arranged a meeting. Her contact was from Renraku (Funny that) and wanted to meet us in the middle of Central Park. (How very Cold War!) She was rather open with us about what she was after, given that this was a job of opportunity and was definitely on a limited timetable. What had happened was that Doctor Abigail Hughes, a researcher at Mindstorm Neurotechnologies had vanished, and she wanted to find out where they were and, if possible extract them.

In other words, somebody at the same company that we had just foiled an attack on. Funny that.

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.