Runners
Carol Turpentine
goodbye to: Keg
introducing: Leonid
guest appearances from: Aylin, Toast, April Halfwoman, Chessick Allens-Whitehill

The team takes some downtime as Aylin gets back to town with Patty C from linking up Arleesh with Mama and the Sea Dragon for some sort of “secret project.” They hire Carol and Keg as local guides and assistants, alongside Kit’s old Evo contact Leonid, a rigger who Kit thought had died in a test pilot crash. Leonid seems to have slipped into the shadows and is in Chicago looking for work for a bit. Fargus Sol has also hired the assassins Toast and April, and the face/hacker Chessick, who was already in Chicago, to round out the team. They decide to run a con on the Black Lodge to get them to bring the 3rd Book of 9 Gates to town, and then ambush them, but also expect a counter-ambush.

They use the artifact they found at the Foul One’s base as a lure, and carefully leak the intel that they possess it and are looking to trade for one of the books, hinting at cult connections. Chessick plays up how they really don’t know what they have and aren’t a real threat to try to minimize response. They get a call back shortly, and Chessick negotiates the trade and sets up a meet spot based on the team’s scouting. He and Leonid then retreat to a nearby bar to provide remote matrix and drone support for the mission. They team has chosen the former GI lab that Ares just raided to minimize any collateral damage or LoneStar interactions during this encounter, and Leonid helps April get in place with a sniper rifle above Spire Enterprises in their building’s unused floors.

Carol, Aylin and Keg are the ground team making the handoff, while Toast provides overwatch from a nearby roof. The Vigilia Evangelica is waiting nearby with the 3rd Book in a chopper with a mobile exorcism ritual set up insde, and Fargus Sol and other Arleesh operatives are also close-ish with the third book to trade back for the toxic artifact. The BL team arrives via invisible levitation, but Toast and April spot them setting up a trap as well and spring their ambush first. Unfortunately, 6Cylinder is present in his new vengeful spirit form, and quickly kills Toast before he is felled by April and Keg. However, he doesn’t disapparate, and Aylin notices he seems to be bound to his gun- she severs the connection with her whip, and he vanishes into the gun. She grabs it.

Meanwhile, in a chaotic gun and spell fight, the team manages to fell the Black Lodgers, with big assistance from an alchemically invisible April and quality drone support from Leonid, who also manages to snatch the Book the BL brought out from the middle of the fight. They finish them off, and strangely find that Toast’s body has vanished, leaving a hint of dragon mana vibe behind… They hightail it over to the Catholics, while Keg and April hop on a bike to swap artifacts with Fargus Sol, who is accompanied by a woman who is quite possibly Arleesh in human form. Avocado joins up to negotiate on behalf of Aylin, and convinces the Catholics to also include 6Cyl’s revolver in the ritual to try to free his spirit also.

The chopper takes off, hearing from Carol (on overwatch) that BL reinforcements, or some other hostile, are en route. April and Keg take out one of the reinforcements on their way back with the Book, and chuck it into the chopper, which starts heading out over the lake to ditch pursuers. Carol and Leonid manage to take out the second pursuer, though Tate’s clinic roof and top floor is badly damaged by a missile aimed at Carol that he has to jump off the building to avoid. In the chopper, the Catholic exorcist leads the ritual while the alchemist tries to stabilize the whole thing, with Patty C’s assistance.

Aylin reaches out and feels a brief moment of connection with 6C before a massive pressure wave blows out all the windows in the chopper and sends them into a spin. The pilot manages to right it and land them, and Aylin notices the revolver has exploded, but finds an intact grip to keep as a memento. Patty C explains that both Aylin and 6C are finally free from Tohu-Wa-Bohu but that, and 6C is fully gone. Aylin will not be able to bond with a regular mentor spirit again, but Mama has offered her patronage, it seems she is the Spirit of the City of Boston, and possible one of (if not the) only surviving Passions from the 4th World. Mama had explained to Patty C that Spirits of the City will likely be an early target for Horror corruption in the 6th World, much as Passions were in the 4th. This explains some of what the Foul One was potentially up to, helping shedim and using her strange artifact. More disturbing things to investigate…

Keg, having been badly wounded yet again on this mission, decides to take off with April, who finds him somewhat useful and very easy to manipulate, by promising him regular sex with a mostly robotic “hot” person and regular doses of Jazz. It seems sort of sad and weird but noone really tries to talk Keg out of it, as he is very gung-ho. The rest of the team rests up and spends some their payday. April also gets Carol a recommendation to join Brokerage X, finally, and he gets assigned an ex-runner using the street named 3Card as his handler there, and finds out about some of the strange investment opportunities they offer. Carol also convinces the team to give the intel they found about Toast to ARES, likely limiting Toast’s future usefulness to Saeder-Krupp significantly.

April, Aylin, and Patty C have also all been recruited into a new magical threat fighting, semi-formal organization called Grey Cell, which is the project that Arleesh has been putting together and recruiting backers for: they are getting various specialists on retainer to be able to respond to magical threats and oddities with more agility and speed as they arise, and these three all seem to have passed their test with this mission’s success and gained an invite, which they accept. Aylin and Patty C agree with the team to keep using Ahabitat when they are in town but to maintain secrecy norms and whatnot about it, and they will likely not be there much, but Patty C offers to try to help keep the Vault of Ages a little stocked up.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
and introducing: ThinkTank

Hotkey and Enkaa have been helping expand Opti’s area of positive influence, partially out of HK feeling guilty over literally blowing up his spot shortly after arriving in town, and Enkaa has now founded a Sprawl Scouts chapter in the neighborhood as well to encourage positive action amongst the various youth, and an alternative to gang life for some. HK also hears from Mrs. Clean that she has a pro contact in town if the team needs another member to fill in the recent loss of Keg. HK gets the contact number and says he’ll be in touch. Clean warns him that although the new guy knows his stuff, he’s also a little old school and used to mostly working solo, or at least not with a regular crew.

The rest of the team bids a temporary farewell to Aylin and Patty C as they head for Boston, and plan out next steps. They decide to look into the missing runners for the Shadow Chapters, and do some matrix and IRL digging, after picking up HK and his new contact ThinkTank, a massive, elderly troll, who seems to be surprisingly nondescript for his size and who has worked primarily as an assassin, and seems to know a weird mix of people around town from that life. They manage to narrow down the likely places where the missing team (runners they competed for a job with their first night in town!) might have vanished from, and locate their former safehouse: now a nano-facturing site under construction by ARES.

Making contact with some local activists trying to organize a protest, Avocado finds a survivor of the raid that cleared the building for ARES to move in, a local squatter named Gravy. Gravy relates how a team of runners looked out for the squatter community that lived there and used it as a safehouse between jobs. A team of well-armed mercs broke in after the runners’ last mission (a total milk run) concluded, and killed them while they slept. They also killed any squatters who didn’t instantly flee, and then posted up til the official ARES presence arrived. Gravy thinks the mercs then changed into ARES Sec uniforms and are still onsite.

Reviewing descriptions and whatnot, the team determines this is likely the freelance mercs they’ve run into a few times in town, working on ARES’ behalf. Gravy also tells them the location of a secret tunnel he used to escape, that he doesn’t think the mercs found since he closed it behind himself, in exchange for Avo promising revenge. The team investigates the tunnel, and makes a deal with a feral dog shaman and his pack of cram-addicted dogs to pass to and fro in exchange for obeisance and small payment, which Creature manages well with xyr animal knowledge.

They find the tunnel entrance into the building sealed and intact, and HK gets some old records of floor plans from Lycus, while Kit gets Remo to find building info- it seems ARES acquired this spot recently in the NeoNET fire sale, it was formerly one of their holdings through a series of corp collapses and acquisitions since the Zone went up. The neighborhood is rapidly getting corporatized though, with a new “edgy” sports bar moving in down the block and the Maker’s Collective getting sponsored by Horizon. The team reports into Jazz, their main Shadow Chapters contact, who tells them she’ll work on a proper job to get revenge, as they can’t let this stand. She offers the team first option for this job, since they already know the in’s and out’s and they seem interested.

She gets back a little while later with the news that Tate is interested in sponsoring, as he’s been quite skeptical on the dangers of nanofacture, and Avo and the rest of the team starts planning how to boost the protest outside (as well as the brutal eviction, ARES is also busing in all the workers, so no local jobs) and how to use it as a distraction, though Kit insists they can’t put protestors at extra risk. They go meet with Tate, who seems invested in using this an opportunity to get protestors away from his clinic by distracting them with nano-fears. Avocado agrees to help stir up a bigger protest and also con the Freedom Network into redeploying their Popular Will protestors to this site. The rest of the team agrees to take a job from Tate to destroy the 2 nano-forges ARES will have onsite. He wants it done overnight, before employees are bused in to start running tests and begin production the next day, but otherwise leaves collateral damage up to the team.

They gear up with some assorted stealth tech, and pick up 2 thermite burning bars that Tate provided. HK calls Opti to get him to get some drones onsite, and he reports that 2 competing vloggers are also there, one more pro-corp, one more pro-“the people”, both a bit obnoxious. The team also sends a bunch of fireworks to the protest for added distraction, with instructions to Avo to use as needed. They string drones along to make a comms relay as they head back into the sewers. They bribe Mange and his pack with drugs and med supplies, and get safe passage. They safely enter the facility undetected, and Kit finds a spare coverall that fits, and slips out of the supply closet with some more drones to do some recon.

Kit manages to bluff some techs that they belong (as they are a nanotech expert), and gets a look around- only one forge is present! They find a shipping manifest suggesting the other is enroute, but will arrive too late for the team to risk waiting. HK manages to hack in to the host after Kit finds a vulnerable data port, and gets the transit info for the truck the other forge is on. Kit decides to do a more complex sabotage on the present one to make it look like maybe an accident, and they and HK collab on a script to get the nanites to start self-cannibalizing and eating the machine. ThinkTank provides some burning bar tips, and Kit uploads the script and burns a hole in the safe nanite containment vessel, causing some rapidly escalating chaos.

The few techs onsite start trying to put out the fire and then quickly call for deploying and EMP to limit nanite spread, and the team escapes via the chaos, with ThinkTank leaving a nasty little (nonlethal) chemical bomb rigged up for anyone who follows, which he made while stuck in the supply closet. They rip down the guide lights in the sewer as they exit to slow any followers further, and head topside. Avocado stays at the protest to keep things from escalating far enough that the ARES guards will start shooting live ammo, and the rest of the team quickly gets Goober to camo spray the van before picking an ambush site.

Carol also calls up and hires the Frenemies, the smash and grab crew that they met a few weeks back on another job, to get them to do their thing and cause another traffic jam on the route, getting the forge truck stuck for the team to hit. They race over and find the Frenemies worked well on a tight schedule, and staged a multi-vehicle crash just outside the West Zone entrance, trapping the forge truck on a frontage road. Kit parks just outside the jam, and the team heads in on foot, TT and HK racing forward as Creature blows open the back of the truck and takes out drones from afar, with fire support from Carol. A spirit slows them down a bit, but Kit manages to ram it back to the metaplanes with the van, and HK provides cover for TT to get into the back of the truck and hurl the thermite bar into the forge there, and then convince the ARES guards to let them back slowly away before someone gets killed- everything has been nonlethal so far, and the only damage was to spirits and drones.

The ARES guards agree, feeling literally trapped, and the team flees. Carol makes some elaborate plans to use his new Brokerage X access to help ARES out though- he’s going to tip Candice Phillips to what happened before it goes public, so she can figure out a way to make some money off of the insider trading. He also plans to use this as a way to get Candice on board with the Shadow Chapters, explaining that this kind of thing doesn’t need to happen how it did, and only went this way because ARES geeked a bunch of well-respected runners in their sleep. Tate seems pleased with their work, as usual, and pays up, as well as signing on for the Shadow Chapters himself.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Keg

Meeting with Lothan, the team finds out what he needs done: an old enemy needs to be permanently dealt with, as he worries about what she is doing to the local manasphere in this time of flux, and also is trying to kill him more actively than usual. He explains that this a toxic mosquito shaman named the Foul One, who is also a wendigo. He gives them some pro tips on fighting wendigos, and also says that as she is a skilled mimic and has him under surveillance, they won’t be able to discuss the job again til it’s done for fear of interference He teaches Avo some basic assensing in order to be able to positively ID him in person (hopefully). He also gives them a quicksilver camera to help them prove they fought toxies, in order to get bounty payouts from various groups, and also a variety of potions in order to empower them in the battle to come.

Kit buys and starts tricking out a classic runner van to replace Avo’s dead car, adding on the useful bits the Frenemies salvaged at Goober’s yard. The rest of the team gathers equipment and intel. They make a plan, which is to use Ares to assault the northern branch of Swamp Thangs turf, in Shattergaves, to pull off some defenders, use Desolation Angels to fight mosquito spirits in the Calumet Swamp, and have the team do an alpha strike on the Foul One and her core cadre that remains. Carol gets some FAB III grenades, which Ares seems creepily eager to see used, and also meets a Dr. Ellis, who he recalls from the team file as one of the Project Apex heads from DeeCee. She offers their services again, saying they are excited to test out the updated version. After some careful social investigation, and some favors to Tate and Ryder and drone surveillance, they ID the likely base of ops in Shattergraves, an abandoned Gilgamesh Initiative lab that had once hosted an insect shaman, and which seems to be connected via new tunneling directly to the heart of Shattergraves. They tip Ares to this, and hope they can limit collateral damage, not wanting any chance of the ST’s getting tipped off.

Avo also recalls that the Desolation Angels magical order had a weird “friendly bug” vibe when he initiated, and carefully investigates this via their member Praxis. She doesn’t fully confirm, but they seem likely to be mantid spirits, which hunt and eat other bugs. They tell the DA’s that they have FAB and plan to have them hang back and fight spirits so they don’t get exposed. The team also finds out that Foul One has long been importing strange relics and items into the CZ, including the Jade Cup that the team recently used to close the shedim threat from Auslander. She apparently started following mosquito while on an expedition deep in the Amazonain jungle, where she found a valley full of strange temples to various insects, and she is also an acolyte of something called the “Vast Green”, seemingly an eco-fascist movement, or possibly a Horror, with some connection the Logos death cult and Sirrurg, the Destroyer. All worrying stuff…

The team spends a bit of time gearing up and upgrading arms and armor. They get in place with the Deso Angels, near to the Calumet Swamp lair. Carol calls in the Ares strike force to the Shattergraves site, and the team gives it 45 minutes based on estimated travel times and whatnot to lure away as many defenders as possible. They enter the edge of the swamp, come under assault by spirits, and retreat, luring the spirits into the Deso Angels trap. The team splits off and heads in. The woods are disturbing and seem to be moving about and trying to trick them. They end up fighting some flesh forms and a radiation spirit, expending one of the FAB III charges. They continue on and find that twisted trees are moving around behind and around them, guiding them towards the center.

Creature tries to get a better look, and scales a tree, but is almost consumed by it’s toxic core. Avo confirms they’re headed towards the worst place in the astral, at least. They continue, and use 2 more FAB grenades to try to pierce confusing illusions they find themselves within before realizing that they are already inside of the tent, made of human skins, that the Foul One uses as her mobile magical lodge. They get into a brutal fight with a mosquito spirit, 4 toxic shamans, and the Foul One herself, managing to quickly take out 2 of the shamans and the spirit (via Creature’s monofil garrote plus an impressive jump, and another FAB grenade). They also set off another FAB grenade and the Sunbeam potion from Lothan, trying to tag the Foul One, but mostly miss on both. Luckily, all the damage and excitement has allowed most of the team to see through the illusions at least, giving them a fighting chance.

The fight continues, with the team felling the 2 remaining shamans, and a second wave of flesh forms as well as a toxic gator arriving. The gator nearly kills Carol before leaving him for dead and chasing down Creature, as both Keg and HK are felled by various attacks, only to be revived by Kit, frantically charging around the battlefield with their medical shield deployed. Creature manages to avoid getting killed by the gator and lobs a couple grenades into it’s mouth as it snaps, but is nearly killed xyrself by the nearby explosions. HK manages to finish the gator off with some APDS, though it’s much less effective at piercing it’s thick hide, so the team is quite glad Creature managed to attack it from inside.

The standing survivors finally get to focus their attention on the Foul One, and a few notice that she has left an illusory self behind while attempting to retreat. Keg manages to tag her with a machine pistol burst, staggering her and giving Avocado enough time to charge up and bite her. As her final act she overcasts a massive toxic wave, killing Avo by burning a huge hole through his center. Luckily, he’s a banshee now, so Kit manages to just barely stabilize him enough to swallow some of the healing potions from Lothan, and Kit uses the rest of the potions to get the rest of the team on their feet.

They notice that the gator and the rest of the tent (and swamp) seem to be rapidly going through cycles of rot and regrowth, in a chaotic somewhat cancerous way, and decide they better beat feet as the water is also rising. Keg, needing a trophy, manages to tear off a section of the Foul One’s rotted armor jacket, and finds a strange journal in the pocket. HK, unable to stifle his curiosity, salvages a data core and finds a strange hidden artifact, a writhing ouroboros of vines, inside 2 rusting old school terminals. They flee.

Luckily, Avo rallies and manages to give some solid tips to Kit, who handily navigates them out. They are all crashing badly from combat drugs, but the swamp seems so chaotic in it’s magical fits as to be effectively ignoring them. They find the surviving Deso Angels outside, who seem to have lost 1 of their members and 1 of the newbs, but say the other newb proved herself and will replace their lost sister. Avo senses a fresh mantid vibe to her, and decides to investigate more later. They get in the van and head out for medical and money. They decide to pass the artifact to Fargus Sol, trusting him to be able to transport and keep it safe. He tells them to stay mobile and he will have some local operatives grab it on the road, and tells them he’ll have some work for them soon.

A cybered-up elf (Toast) and a dead-eyed cybered-up woman (April Halfwoman) roll up on bikes, and Toast does some fancy gymnastics to hop over to the van, grab the arifact, and swing back onto his bike before they speed off. Sol calls them a while later and informs them that this artifact would have a corrupting influence on spirits and the mana sphere, and to tell noone else of its existence. Meanwhile, Carol calls in a favor to get an expedited bounty license on his legal SIN, and they drop off the proof at Archangel Bounty Redemption, getting a significant payout the next day after it’s all reviewed. They head over to Lothan, verify it’s really him, and give him the brief also. Keg has discovered another 6 Tarot card in the journal, which they tell Lothan, and give him the rest of the info except about the artifact. Lothan suggests he would like to be involved, suspecting that something larger is at work, and gives the team some hints as to what he thinks the Foul One was up to (basically, corrupting spirits and the manasphere to ensure that whatever spirit follows Calumet, who was slain by FAB III as the Spirit of the City, it will be a toxic one). The team tips Fargus Sol, who says that Lothan has been on a list of theirs to contact anyway, so he’ll reach out.

He also reports that Aylin and Patty C are headed back to town, and suggests that this new artifact will be the perfect lure for the Black Lodge- they couldn’t resist such power, and would likely be willing to trade the Book that Aylin needs for it. Of course, the trade will never happen, as Sol and Aylin are putting together a team to ambush the BL, but also expecting unexpected treachery, this being the Lodge and all. The team then heads to Tate’s and heals up, with some members getting some upgrades with their hard-earned cash, and Avo needing to stay a few days to get the few organs he actually needs replaced. They also all have a decent amount of exposure to toxicity so get some antibiotics and screenings, and have some gear that needs repair.

Kit reaches out to Jackpoint and other places, and HK does some research, to find out more about mantids. They are from the plane of Vhortas, as are all bug spirits, but they can only reproduce by killing other bug spirits, and it seems like most mantid cults only make good merges (or destroy any others), which maintain both the original personality and the inhabiting bug. Strangely, as a shared personality themself, Kit is the most bothered by this, but overall the team decides the Deso Angels are good allies to continue working with, just also being aware of this new context. Kit posts all the job info to JP (minus the artifact again) in thanks, which secures the rest of the team provisional access. HK also makes sure this same info makes it way to Mrs Clean for Sierra Corp.

Kit also reaches out locally to find out more about the Ash Union and the Shadow Chapters, and getting good vibes from both, and some talk of collabs, pitches the team on a job: find some local runners who missed their last meet and noone has heard from in a few days.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Keg

Creature heads in to get some new animalistic upgrades and Keg upgrades his ears while the rest of the team rests up after the investigation. They get a frantic call for a last minute job from Maggie Goldberg, and head to Miller’s Pub to meet up with her, Keg and HK meet them there. She seems stressed and explains a prototype deck was stolen in transit, and she needs it back within 2 days. She emphasizes this is a hard deadline. They agree to pay, and she sends them out the site of the theft to investigate. They find a traffic jam at the NW Zone entrance, and discover it was caused by local gangers who loosed some hogs from a hauler and caused some crashed via hacking. They track the gangers to a nearby bar they’re based out of, and pressure them into giving up who hired them, Avo takes a smooth route while Keg and Carol act tough, and the gangers eventually agree to a bribe to fill the team in. Since they seems useful, if not overly loyal, the team figures they also might come in useful someday.

The gang, the Frenemies, was hired by some runners with badly concealed NN logos on their armor. They recognized the main runner, a dwarf, as a guy named Aaron who grew up nearby. The team does some research, and spots what looks like some invisible figures using magic to access the truck that the prototype was in while the Frenemies caused the distraction. They also call in a favor with Ryder and find Aaron is probably a runner who goes by Grappler, and get a safehouse location nearby from a snitch. HK confirms with Jagoda Rajni that this wasn’t them, and she sells him the info that a former NN stash spot was raided about a week ago- armor and such was taken. So the team assumes Grappler’s runners were false flagging. They head over to the safehouse to check it out and find it is mostly a burned out building with a few security and surveillance upgrades. They leave Avo at a nearby coffin motel as he’s too astrally obvious.

They circle back to the motel to plan, but the drones they leave behind spot yet another team prepping to move on Grappler’s runners. They race back over, and call in Jagoda Rajni plus a few others and mage as backup, for a decent payout. Carol gets the VTOL to drop him on the roof of the building that this other team is in, and spots a sniper team. He lube grenades and tackles them off the roof, taking them out and badly injuring himself. A mage almost finished him off from the Renraku team and major firefight ensues. Keg is nearly killed, and HK spots Grappler’s runners using the chaos to make a run for it. Avo makes a deal with them after avoiding some traps they left, to help save their friend (why they say they needed the prototype, which HK confirms is a serious deck) in exchange for cooping against the Renraku team and not fighting each other. Kit manages to just barely save Keg, and Jagoda Rajni and the backup team finally arrive to provide medical and extraction, since the Renraku team destroyed Avo’s car.

The team hires the Frenemies to strip the useful parts off the car and keep the rest as payment, and gets Keg, Carol, Kit and HK extracted safely via VTOL, with Rajni’s mage providing some stabilizing healing for the journey. Avocado leaves with the other runners to try to make a deal. When the team arrives at Tate’s clinic, they are amused to find Creature there, mid-surgery, adding some monkey feet to their animal ‘ware repertoire. They get there in time and save Keg’s life, though he needs a replacement jaw and opts for the most cyber option possible: the junkyard jaw. Meanwhile, Avocado does some social digging, and due to his good rep and skills, manages to make a deal. It seems the other runners and Maggie have a missing friend in common, so she agrees to let them use the deck to make a fake handoff, which will actually be a trap, get their friend back, and then give her the deck. They head off to Seattle to make it all happen in time. The team still gets paid most of their pay for the job too, as Maggie seems satisfied with how things worked out, even with the complications.

The team all heal up a bit and then bond at the safehouse, though HK is once again off doing his own thing, helping out Opti in expanding his “safe” zone. Keg opens quite a bit about his life, recent tragic past, and whatnot. They check messages a few times, and eventually decide to pay off their debt to Lothan by helping him resolve a problem that has been plaguing him. Carol also orders an experimental armor mod from Ares to limit his falling damage in future, a modification of some test pilot emergency deceleration foam.

Runners
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Keg

The team spends a bit of time in Ahabitat, but get bored quickly. Aylin and Patty have left on a mission for Arleesh and Fargus Sol, to make introductions to Mama in Boston and to the Sea Dragon wherever they can find her. Without any work on their immediate horizon, Hotkey decides to spend some time with his fam, repairing his deck, and helping Opti rebuild and expand his safe zone, so heads up to O’Hare for a bit. The rest of the crew just heals up and waits for their few times a day message buoy to bring them something. This eventually bears fruit, as they receive a few work opportunities. Red wants them to foil a Fear The Dark plot, Tate wants them to redirect the hate and paranoia that the Freedom Network has been directing his way towards someone/thing else, and Ryder wants help with a cold case. They decide to follow up on this as Carol also hopes it will present an opportunity to embarrass LoneStar and get him back into Ares’ good graces after the last mission.

They meet up with Ryder and (surprise) Tate, at a bar “cleverly” named The Coffee Shop. Ryder gives them some case files and says he can’t be much more direct help, but that he’ll make sure the team gets a decent payday from the reward money if they can solve the mystery and catch the killer. Tate offers a little upfront money to entice them, saying when questioned that the dead man had helped him with some property dealings. The team agrees and digs in. First off, Kit takes a thorough look at the autopsy, and discovers that it was fairly short and minimally investigative, and that they missed some details and failed to explain others. Unsure what the strange wound patterns could have been caused by, he also posts it to Jackpoint hoping for some tips, and finds out from some AztAm war vets that it looks like a bullet wound to a prone individual.

Next they head to the scene (though 6 months after the crime), and talk to some hotel staff and check out the room, undercover as “Ghost Boyz” a paranormal investigations crew. Comparing notes to the fairly lackluster case file, they decide noone at the hotel was involved, and finding some furniture moved slightly and a bad wall patch, they figure out that someone sitting on the bed in the next room over fired a heavy pistol through the wall once, striking the victim and killing him. Due to his position and weight, the entry wound was discounted as a secondary injury or side effect of the unexplained internal injuries, rather than the start of the bullet’s path as it ricocheted around his body.

They get some records from the hotel and confirm the case file’s info that 3 electricians had been partying in the next room but had all “not seen or heard anything.” Kit calls Remo to check out their place of employment, and finds they all still work there but they have decent matrix security. Both the electrical contractor and the hotel are Ares subsids (way down the corporate ladder) and the dead man was freelance, so they can’t figure a connection yet. Avo calls up and manages to get some info from the combative receptionist, who agrees to send 2 of the men from the room over to meet with them (the team is posing as property developers sourcing bids) after their jobs for the day are wrapped.

The team manages to get the rest of the 2 men’s crews to leave in one work van and split off the 2 suspects. Creature, Keg and Avocado all team up to do an impressive analysis and combined god cap/bad cop scenario and get them to spill the beans: the 3rd man was the shooter, it was an accident, and they all figured noone needed to know since the cops on site the next day said it looked liked natural causes. They get the 3rd guy’s number and call him up, getting an annoying “joke” answering machine message, but Remo manages to trace it to Ramblers turf in the Zone.

They hatch a plan, having also heard that the 3rd man had reached out to a lawyer who had defended him before. Kit drives Avo and Keg to Milwaukee to the lawyer’s office after failing to dupe him on the phone, and Creature and Carol infiltrate on foot with the fly spys and the VTOL overhead into Ramblers turf. Kit takes over drone control once he’s parked, and Avo and Keg break into the lawyer’s office and do a combo of threatening and bribing him to cooperate. He caves quickly, and not only calls the 3rd man to get him outside of the well-guarded house he’s in, but also gives the team the murder weapon and some data files showing that the original detective was on the take to both the lawyer and to Knight Errant (who didn’t want this case solved as it would look bad for Ares contractors to kill a civvie in an Ares hotel).

Carol and Creature send in the fly spys, who does the 3rd man with a KO agent, and then load him into the VTOL, which Kit pilots over to one of Tate’s clinics, where he will keep the man on ice til him and Ryder figure out what they want to do with him. The team also figures out that the man was Ryder’s brother, and Tate’s brother in law, which helps explain why the 2 surviving men have such a well-established unlikely friendship. Kit drives the rest of the team back, they get paid as promised, and they all call it a night after a strange but satisfying job.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Keg

Tate needs the team to get over to his office post-haste: a medical alert has just activated which was last assigned to Melissa Truman, the missing heir from a few jobs back, who has been outh of site for the last 2 decades, and he needs the team to find her (or at least the alert bracelet) and figure what’s going on. They agree and head to his office. He gives them the rundown and they negotiate pay, but as they’re heading out they realize that his receptionist has been eaves-dropping, and after some fast hacking from HK see that 2 messages were sent- 1 to a local fixer named Anastacia and 1 to Sarah Silverleaf. Silverleaf sent back payment as well, which Carol reports to Tate. He says he will deal with his disloyal receptionist, and encourages the team to hurry.

Not wanting to lose any slight edge they might have and/or let someone else get there first again, they don’t do any shopping and head straight to the last ping from the bracelet, near Truman Tower, now Spire Enterprises. On the way they decide to put their good rep and networking to use and call up a bunch of local gangers and hackers to make some light mayhem for any other teams trying to reach the job site, hoping this will slow any adversaries. They also receive calls from Silverleaf and Candice Phillips offering higher pay for a last minute job, but they shut them down, having already made an agreement with Tate.

They reach Spire, and drop Avocado off as a faux street doc to seek info from what seems to be the remains of a large firefight. The rest of the team heads to the last ping location and starts looking for tracks. Avocado has good luck, meeting a friendly ganger named Staci who helps him get vid footage, showing a young woman running away during the battle. Staci confirms this woman always wore an old weird bracelet, and offers to help Avocado find her, after sussing out some of what he’s up to- however they both seem to have her best interest at heart and agree to team up.

The rest of the team does find some tracks and they converge on the Haymarket Nation community, which has declined from it’s heyday as a smuggler’s hub but still has decent numbers. Avo and Staci head in and find the missing woman (Katy) absent and her residence trashed. Luckily, a hidden escape tunnel wasn’t found, and they follow it out, to avoid anyone watching. As they prepare to join the rest of the team, a surveillance drone tries to suicide bomb then, but Carol spots it and snipes it. HK also upgrades their tracker’s capacity and they get another ping. They also get an alert from some of their hacker and ganger hire-ons that another team is approaching, and HK recognizes them as the ex-NeoNet team that they’ve run into a few times. He manages to convince them to back off in exchange for partial pay and the info the team has so far, so they can offer up a convincing “sorry we failed” excuse to their Johnson.

They head North, into the Shattergraves, and encounter the third pursuit team, the Ares mercs that Carol had previously met, trying to subdue Katy with non-lethals. They succeed as the team approaches, and the team rushes in – Kit wants to keep things non-lethal also, but Staci doesn’t seem so inclined, and Creature notices a mother’s protective instinct at play, and begins to suspect that Staci might be Melissa Truman. The team downs the Ares mage first, which unfortunately ends the spell he was performing to keep a huge mosquito spirit at bay- it rises from the earth and pulls the mage down before attacking both teams.

Creature lobs in a lube grenade to add some chaos, and with Avo’s help gets their team out of the effect field while the Ares team is still trapped in it fighting the bug. Taking pity, they help deal with the bug, which flees below ground before disruption, and leave the Ares team to get off the lube slick, having lost half their number in this encounter. Carol gets a stern rebuke from Candice, and feels he has lost some ground there. HK manages to spot a tracker on their car as they head to Tate’s, and they fry it. They get paid, and Melissa tells them some of her story. Tate seems surprised that she’s been undercover all these years, and she advertises the quality of the face-changers at Lincoln Park. She agrees to a potential interview on Kit’s shadowcast in the future, once she gets a chance to get her and Katy settled back into the family.

The team heads back to Ahabitat to take some well-earned RNR, with no jobs on the immediate horizon for the first time in a while!

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Keg

Tate rushes Avocado into treatment to try to stave off HMHVV type 1- using advanced medicines + some potions (as well as additional potions the team gets from Patty C and Lothan the Wise). The team/Avo owes Lothan a favor for his help. Avo almost beats it, but eventually succumbs. He enters a coma and begins transforming while members of the interior Desolation Angels magical order guides his astral form through an initiation, during which he bonds to a new mentor spirit: Peacemaker, having gone through some major changes since 6Cyl’s death. Creature, Kit and Carole head to the Bugstomp rave at Midway, and have some fun dancing and socializing, while also getting some tourist-y t-shirts. It seems to be a medical supplies fundraiser for the ABC, and Carol searches around in vain for hidden corp sponsors.

They head back to the Bolthole, wanting more team members’ approval before introducing Creature to the group norms and Ahabitat. The next morning the team drives a still comatose Avo out to Long Pig Farms, where Aylin has called Red in to help oversee the transofrmation. They meet some of the ghouls who work there, and get Avo set up in a locked bunker basement out in the middle of a field, with a nearby chained up human to feed on when he wakes up. The team is assured this person was “ethically sourced” and decides not to inquire further.

Kit is uncomfortable with this whole situation, so stays behind at the Bolthole to tinker. Hotkey heads out to O’Hare to hang with his fam and fix up his deck from it’s near-bricking, and Keg (after he wakes up in Tate’s clinic and gets updated) has a brief freakout over his melted fashion armor and heads up to the Maker’s Collective to patch it back together. So Carol and Creature oversee Avo’s final turn to Banshee, with the option to kill him quickly if he goes feral. Luckily he comes through intact, with some assistance from Peacemaker, and feeds off the present captive to regain his senses. He decides to finish the captive off to get his essence maxed (for now), which Peacemaker doesn’t push back on too hard so it seems like this guy must have done something bad.

The team all joins back up and debrief on all the wild shit that just went down. Kit still seems uncomfortable with Avo’s new needs, but they all agree to continue working together. HK finds some local vamp fetish forums for Avo to find willing bloodbags on, to seek out a more sustainable longterm fix. Red also offers assistance if Avo wants to follow the “friendly vamp” path. For now, rent is coming up on both safehouses, so they decide to try to make some money. Looking to get some new and upgraded SINs, they decide to do another job through Mrs Clean, to boost her standing with Sierra Corp in exchange. They meet up with Juan Xiuhuitl at a Taco Temple in O’Hare (this is Creature’s first time outside the CZ since arriving from Denver a year ago).

They get the rundown on the job: AZT has lost comms from a lab hidden under the newly (re)opened/rebranded Omnistar hospital in the southern Zone, and Juan wants it cleaned out and all data retrieved. He doesn’t want anything left for other teams to find in the future, so the team decides to get some explosives and the like. They head to Ammo Jim’s first to restock on some key supplies, and then back into the Zone, where they roll up to the Atomizer. They spot Byom, who helps them get set up with what they need (EMP’s, some incendiaries, and some shaped charges), as well as a colorful cast of other characters, including what looks like some Mars survivors. Kit also learns a little bit about demo.

While on their way there, Avo got a call from Maggie Goldberg, offering them either: more pay to do the job for her with slightly different specifics, or: additional pay to share the data they find with her as well. Avo very politely refuses, wanting to remain pro, and Maggie seems to understand. However, they both acknowledge that this means she will likely put other runners on the job. They get more worried about this mystery opposition the longer they spend stocking up on the way to the job, and decided to head straight there without any recon. They park nearby in a concealed area, and plan to steal an ambulance on the way out and ditch it at that spot to swap to an un-ID’ed vehicle.

They sneak in to the hospital and infiltrate down to the morgue without being spotted. They KO the morgue tech with drone sneak attack, and HK squelches his comm to prevent alerts. They cut the lights in the morgue to minimize chances of onsite sec spotting anything, and use the hidden switches Juan told them about to open the secret door. They scout the hallway they find and debate setting traps, but decide to head in quickly in case anyone comes to check on the tech. They close the secret door behind them, and descend, finding a heavy security door, that seems to seal off both matrix and magical senses. Carol can barely hear some bellowing and crashing sounds from the other side, and a bright warning light is silently flashing above it. Carol confidently enters the code Juan gave them, but this time it doesn’t work.

HK hacks the lock, no trouble, but it looks like someone recently changed the code- did the other runners beat them here? As the door swing open, a bizarro slimline cyberzombie charges Carol, who barely avoids a slice from it’s claws. Another CZ down the hall opens up with an arm cannon, and Keg is quickly killed. Creature once again proves xyr worth, teaming up with HK to take down the farther CZ while the closer one is felled by the rest of the team. They EMP and incendiary grenade the bodies, as HK has detected active nanite colonies trying to repair them, and worries about CFD. HK also comes under matrix attack- disturbingly it seems like Dissonant energy, but the TacNet provides solid defenses, though his deck is once again badly damaged. They prepare to head further in to the facility.

The TacNet comes under attack from the same Dissonant entity, and HK tells everyone to go wireless off. He and Carol advance up the hall and take cover near an open door, hearing movement. Avocado steps into the doorway and catches a full burst in the chest (luckily his new banshee strength preserves him), and Creature, Carol, and HK get into a melee fight with another Dissonant CZ while Kit starts healing Keg. Creature zaps the CZ with another EMP and also hits Carol, frying his antennas, and then they manage to take it down, setting another incendiary off on it after to halt it’s regen ability. They then demo blast open the lone sealed door in the facility, and find four cowering scientists. Rushing in a with breach and clear move, Avocado and HK kill one scientist and badly wound another. Kit dashes in to heal the injured woman, as Keg murder another scientists for talking back, and then continues pummeling the corpse until Kit intervenes.

Avocado threatens/questions the remaining scientist, who quickly caves and helps HK get the data they are after. However, Carol has been investigating the rest of the facility and discovered that there is a missing secret backup server that also seems to have been taken by whoever beat them here. The team convinces Kit that they have to kill the 2 surviving scientists as part of the job, and that they can give them a more peaceful death than what AZT would offer for their failures. Kit doesn’t agree morally, but mixes up a lethal cocktail. Avo lies to both that they will knock them out and smuggle them out, 1 scientists believes them and the other doesn’t, she also insists on injecting herself, wanting some element of control over her death.

After, they plant the charges and some more incendiaries throughout the facility and head out. Carol realizes that whoever beat them there may have left some surprises for their way out so they tread cautiously. They call in a bomb threat to the hospital and hear that someone already called in a active shooter, so they decide to split up and try to get out. Kit detonates the basement and shuts the secret door, and then poses as a doctor using one of the dead scientists lab coats while probing Keg’s wounds to get him to perform better as a patient. Avocado wears another lab coat and social sneaks out. The remainder of the team heads out through the garage as planned, using fleeing civvies as cover and setting off some more grenades away from the crowd to cause chaos and confusion but no injuries.

They all rendezvous at the team car and skedaddle, heading back to the O’Hare Taco Temple to drop off the data and the samples that Kit took from the CZ’s with Juan Xiuhuitl. They also report that someone else likely has the data, but don’t give up Maggie Goldberg’s involvement, not wanting to burn that relationship. Juan is disappointed but Avo con’s well so he doesn’t seem overly suspicious that they do in fact know, and they get paid. Avo and Maggie exchange some winking texts and agree to work together again where possible. The team heads back to Ahabitat, introducing Creature to the safe house. Carol collects rent from everyone as well. Keg, living up to his name, buys a couple kegs and brings them down, and most of the team parties together, alongside Big Meat, only missing HK who has gone back to stay with his fam and fix his deck.

They decide to tackle the final job on offer from Mrs. Clean (for now), and arrange a meet with Shiro Seto from Shiawase, after taking a day off to rest and heal. They meet up at a sake bar in O’Hare and get the rundown: Seto wants the corpse of a Goblin and as many live ghouls as the team can get from one particular ghoul community in the Zone. The team briefly confers and does some research, finding out that the community is likely not feral, so they refuse the job, but Kit and Avo make an effort to be as polite as possible, in order to maintain the relationship for future work. Unfortunately, this requires Kit to drink, and they slip a bit deeper into addiction. The team gets in touch with Red as part of their inquiries, and he arranges to pay them and boost their rep in order to get their help moving the ghouls and smuggling the Goblin out of town to Terasca’s Goblin-safe community in NOLA, before Seto can hire another team.

They decide to set some non-lethal traps for the followup team, and Carol disguises himself as a ghoul, with Keg on a bike nearby for the getaway. HK, Kit, and Creature rig up traps while Avo convinces the community holdouts to leave. Most of the team takes the Goblin in the trunk over to Freaktown, to smuggle to NOLA via their drug sub, and strike a deal. Carol leads the next runners to show up into the traps- non-lethal stuff in the mazelike underground warren the ghouls were living in, and collapses his escape path behind him. He and Kit race off, and everyone links back up and gets paid. They get some rep boosts and are just thinking about what to do next when they get an urgent message from Dr. Tate!

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Keg
Goodbye (for now) to: Aylin
and introducing: Creature

The team heads down to Ahabitat via sub, with both Keg and Kit trying to play it cool but pretty surprised. They see 6Cyl’s remains ensconsed in coral, slowly being consumed by lake life. Upon arrival, Patty C is slightly sad to see that 6C has already been replaced, though she understands. Avocado, feeling some conflict with his mentor, decides to abandon the Children of the Beak for now, and takes the handwritten sign off the door. This allows both new members to have a room without needing to clean out 6C’s stuff, which noone is really ready for yet. They all chat and bond a bit, and then Keg goes into his room and shuts the door and has a loud freakout. The team inquires, but he seems disinclined to explain further.

They rest up for a few days, and talk about next steps, reviewing the few remaining jobs they have on offer. Aylin announces that she will be mostly focusing on solving the Black Lodge/Book problem for the time being, but will still be around and may require some assistance from the team. Avocado is feeling increasingly attracted to Kit’s more peaceable philosophy, and is wondering about maybe finding a better magical connection through a different path.

They head back to the surface to get some drinks and hang, and Kit takes delivery of a massive new shield, which he says is for protecting them while doing medical in combat scenarios, but Kit requests noone attack from behind it. They head to the dingy ammo-trade bar Pog mo Thoin, delighted by the grody atmosphere. They catch up with some other runners and shadowcasters, and overall have a nice bonding time. Returning to Ahabitat to crash, they awake the next morning to some messages in their queue.

Apparently the Devil’s Revolver has now slain the free spirit gunslinger Thornhill as well, though Thornhill may have survived in some form due to a secretive ritual they had performed with their True Name. Aylin announces that she will be leaving the team’s day to day ops in order to focus on the Black Lodge heist with her mom and Old Crow. Aylin says she will likely need assistance from the team to pull the actual job, but will be in touch. For now, her and Patty C will still be using the safehouse. Tate also reminds them to come by for another job, so the team heads his way, after making some upgrade plans for the safehouse with the new teammates.

They arrive at Tate’s and find an even larger Freedom Network/Popular Will protest than last time, and a much more agitated crowd. Avocado almost instigates a fight with Keg’s backing, but the rest of the crew talk them out of it, and Avo once again feels some conflict with his mentor, with another voice calling to him, showing him a different path. The Desolation Angels help them sneak in the back way, and Tate tells them there’s a killer paracritter he needs captured alive. He introduces them to a local runner named Creature who is good with animals and toxins, who should prove useful for this gig.

The team reviews the evidence, and heads out, and decide to look into the FN/PW more: the PW militia seems to have much nicer gear and better matrix defenses than the team expected, which seems interesting. They drive over to Greektown, and meet Tate’s informants. They spend some time talking with various encampment in the dangerous locale, and get some good intel. With drone surveillance assistance, they spot a storm drain that seems like the best spot to start tracking, and head there. Quantum Princess contacts them on the way and asks them to retrieve an old pre-CZ data storage device from the area, since they’re going in anyway. She also helps them navigate around an ASPS team which is cordoning off a large area around the Shattergraves due to strange alchera activity.

The team heads into the sewers, and Carol does some impressive tracking using his new nasal implants, with Creature providing valuable assistance. Carol does puke again from the smell, for good measure. They get attacked by some ghouls lead by a Dzoo no qua, which bites Avocado and possibly infects him. However, the team performs well and slays most of the feral pack, driving off the rest. They find QP’s old data store, and a few members are badly injured by a trap- it seems like the lone survivor of this cell tried to hold up and ride out the start of Bug City, not knowing they’d be trapped here, and starved to death. They do find an intact 2050’s deck with data storage module, however, so mission accomplished, yay.

They follow the tracks a bit further, and find the Talis Cat’s lair. Unfortunately, it’s made a friend- a large sludge spirit, which attacks them as soon as they enter. The cat tries to flee but Creature manages to KO it and grab it with xyr tail. The rest of the team barely defeats the sludge spirit, taking some heavy damage, and Hotkey almost gets geeked by a stray Jormungandr virus fragment that apparently survived in the local mesh net of devices down here. The team returns the cat to Tate, gets paid, and agrees to keep working with Creature for now as xe seem quite handy. Onward!

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Aylin
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Keg

Avocado and Kit have a good “getting to know you” interview on Kit’s shadowcast show, though Avo deflects and fronts a bit. The team, high off their previous night’s successful mission, decide to check some smaller jobs off the list. Carol heads in to get some cyberware put in by Tate, and Aylin heads off with her mom to start working on luring the Black Lodge to town with the book they need. Avocado heads out a little early and makes a large donation (with a small contribution from Kit) to the Desolation Angels for their outreach work, and meets Blue, the DA seemingly in charge of that wing. It looks like the teenage gunner from the opening fight, Fidget, has been recruited already as well. Avo notcies 6C’s bike is still at the Vault, and seems to have morphed into an impromptu memorial site- single bullets stacked atop it, and some weedy Zone bouquets scattered around.

The team hears some rumors from astral contacts of some kind of astral assassin taking out community leaders and defenders in the deep metaplanes, and based on the fact that this figure is being called “The Devil’s Revolver”, assume that 6C’s gun/spirit are likely involved. The 4 available team members all link up at Midway Airport to follow up on some leads and figure out next steps. They chat with Old Crow a bit, who confirms it is likely 6C, in some form, being called to serve after his death, and OC says he needs to get with Aylin ASAP to sort this out. They also find Jazz and get the intro spiel about the Shadow Chapters- she agrees to an interview on Kit’s show and the team seems potentially interested in learning more. Blue from the DA’s also was excited about the Shadow Chapters, which is putting Avo a little more in favor of joining.

The team meets up with Lycus and checks in on the progress of his SIN registration project. They arrange a meeting after some careful negotiation between him and Sierra Corp, which will hopefully benefit both. They also discover some background on Lycus- he used to be a fixer for Gov. Presbitero before he ascended to the governorship, and disappeared amidst some sort of scandal just before the election. Lycus then emerged some months later, with a very different philosophy. The team gives Mrs. Clean this info in case it can help Sierra Corp in their negotiation, and she seems stoked about their work. They also warn Lycus that the info is out there, and he says he needs to rescrub his data trail, but doesn’t give them anything further.

They also head over to train at the onsite facility, and find two of their bounty targets: Anne Ravenheart and Li Wei. They decide to feel it out, and start getting the 2 newbs trained on the team’s common maneuvers. Both Ravenheart and Wei seem very skilled, and also pretty cool based on HK’s quick research. Ravenheart specifically is somewhat of a local hero, one of the few (former) Ares employees who’s seen in a positive light. Their unit at the training facility all has modded Ares armor with the branding stripped off and new “Freewatch” logo applied, perhaps explaining why Ares wants into on them. The team decided to shelve that for now and discuss further down the road.

They take a job with Sid Gambetti to do a little sabotage, and take a side job from Tate to throw an extra element into the mix, which with some investigation looks like it will have the effect of framing Simon Andrews, or at least sending suspicion his way. They head to the Wind Transit Terminal and port warehouse, which has been taken over by a squatter community since Winterknight was kicked out a few years ago. They find the container they need to access, but they notice the community is about to come under attack from some protection racket enforcers from the Horde, and intervene. Using some slick driving and nonlethal weapons, as well as aided by the communities 3 defenders who they warned, they drive off the attackers with no casualties and minimal damage to the team’s car.

Avocado arranges for the DA’s to start protecting this community, and uses this as a bargaining chip to allow access to the container they need amidst the tent city. They get in and find the decades old Shiawase chemical tank they needed as part 1 of the job. They load it in the truck with help from Spills, the troll defender, and head to Goober’s to get a few repairs and upgrades before they drive south a ways out of town to the agricultural facility they need to poison. They also upgrade Kit and Keg’s fake SINs to make sure they pass muster, and since they used team funds for this they insist both also sign onto the group norms, and say they will explain some of the obscure ones later. The assumption being that both Kit and Keg are joining up for the foreeable. Aylin and Carol come link up with the team at Goober’s while the repairs are happening, and they convo out of town.

They bribe their way through a checkpoint, and head south to the farm, doing a little research on the way. To Carol’s distress they find out it’s an Ares facility, but they assuage themselves with the info that it’s a fancy test farm, so the poison they deliver shouldn’t get distributed to vulnerable populaces, at least, and likely won’t go out at all. They seem to be intended to disrupt an upcoming bidding process, so they tip off the McCaskill mafia to allow them to make some money off that knowledge, in order to make peace there. They arrive at the rural site, and come up with a quick plan. Kit drone rigs a flyspy with a data tap into the guard shack, and HK uses the remote access to add the team car as a “scheduled part delivery”.

Avo talks them past the semi-skeptical guards, with HK, Carol, and a misted Aylin hiding in the trunk. Keg hangs back a ways with the 2 bikes to cause a distraction or come to the rescue as needed. They get up the loading dock, and using some clever tactics get HK up close enough to hack a rail drone to deliver the poison tank to the main water distro spot, and loop some cameras to help Carol sneak up to hook it up. Aylin sneaks off to plant the sample of lizard skin they were given. Avo and Kit spend quite a while faking car problems and flirting with guards to delay their exit, while Carol does an impressive infiltration. Unfortunately, he oversold his mechanical abilities and really struggles to hook the poison up. The team is forced to exit the lot, but luckily Keg finds a promising distraction in the form of an anti-corp-agriculture protest nearby that he lures in their direction.

Avo convinces the guards at the exit to allow the team to wait there in their car til the protest passes (the guards seem creepily excited about the prospect of getting to bust heads, though), and Carol, with some coaching from HK, finally gets the poison going. He then almost gets out unseen, but gets spotted by a patrol, and starts getting tagged with gel rounds. He hides amidst the livestock, correctly assuming they’re too valuable to shoot, and it seems like the guards think he’s connected to the protest. He shoots his way through a dome wall and races for the car. Finally blowing their cover, Kit slams it through the boom barricade, and smoothly sweeps Carol up with a tight turn. They smash through a fence and race off.

Meanwhile, HK has done some sneaky hacking to make it look like these intrusions were protest-related, and the onsite spider has gone after the protest’s deckers. WIth Knight Errant reinforcements on their way, everyone scatters, and the team has to take backroads back to town. They ditch the cops and make it back, just in time to get some drinks with Sid and Matt Wrath after his latest victory. Sid pays up, and they check in with Tate, giving him the sparest details as requested. He tells them to rest up and return when they’re ready for more work.

They head out and prepare to introduce Keg and Kit fully into the team lifestyle.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Aylin
Carol Turpentine
adios to: Test
a sad goodbye for: 6 Cylinder
and introducing: Kitten Caboodle aka Kit and Keg

The next day, 6Cyl preps for his fight with a visit to Ahabitat, where Patty C asks if he really wants to do it at all. He has a bit of a crisis of intent, and realizes he’s just following Avocado’s desires, and Patty C offers to counsel him more later. Seeing Patty C with Otoko after their popcorn and trid binge also makes Aylin sad since she wasn’t around for Alyin’s teen years. Hotkey heads out to spend the day with his family, and Test announces that he is leaving the team. He says it’s time for him to focus full time on technomancer and e-life struggles, and is headed for Cairo, where there is a large TM community sheltered by the Coptic church who are working with Masaru on the new Library of Alexandria. He stops in at The Hangman on his way out of town to put GC in touch with Quantum Princess and get them talking about using the local NooseNet mesh as a potential Garmonbozia safehaven, and plans to continue this work during his travels. He signs off the team TacNet and goes on his way.

Avo, meanwhile, cruises around the Zone doing last minute promo for 6C’s fight, and stops at the Vault to double check all the prep there. He meets a Desolation Angel named Praxis who has a real hate on for bugs, and offers her (and the gangs) services should the team encounter any. Becky is absent, trying to round up some new recruits to replace the massive losses they suffered fighting the Ancients and shedim. Sid and Matt Wrath satisfy Avo’s questions about the prep for the evening though so he focuses on getting the green room “just so.” Carol hears from Candice Phillips at Ares about some new leads on the Taco Temple info he sold them, she seems to be gradually coming around to his usefulness. Hotkey takes his family out to Chicago’s Own Pizzaria, and spots some ghouls from Long Pig Farms delivering whole hogs out back. Using some sensors and TacNet programs he scopes out the ingredients and sees that they must be making good use of the onsite, well-protected greenhouse, given the amount of fresh components to their meal.

He also sees an adjacent table where the Monad gunslinger Twofer is eating with his retinue, including a local guide, another Monad named Kit, who seems to be a tech and medic, and has a cyberarm and some scrolling nanotats. HK does a tiny bit of recon for the team and buys the Monads a round, and also buys a dessert surprise for Test’s date here later, in case he still shows for that before leaving for Cairo. Avo also buys Test a fancy hour at a love hotel by O’Hare as a goodbye gift, and Carol pays back part of the massive loan he still owes to Test. HK and fam head back to their apartment, the location of which he’s decided to keep private for now. Meanwhile, eveyone else heads for the fight. They all get back into the green room as 6C’s entourage, and see that there is a large and rowdy crowd already in attendance.

The first fight is between 2 surly teens who remind 6C of himself, not too long ago, and who both seem a bit in awe of him. He tries to offer encouragement of a sort, in his usual bumbling way. The second fight is between a very unpleasant toxic ganger with an acid sprayer who says he “likes to makes them scream” and a new-in-town total fashion cyberpunk named Keg. He’s got a classic 2060’s trid quality getup, but seems to really know his gear. Carol and Avo are thrilled to meet him and he seems really confident in his abilities until he realizes his kit may get damaged by acid. The third fight is the big draw between Twofer and 6C, they spot Twofer and Kit tinkering on a weird Marstech gun that looks to be alterable in form and chip it’s ammo off of a feedblock. And the final bout is a deathmatch between a Rambler and a Demolisher- it’s apparently a tradition amongst some of the gangs here to settle certain disputes in the ring so they don’t turn into turf wars.

The first fight kicks off and the teen who looked more enamored by 6C fumbles the draw out of his new holster under his new coat, and his opponent teen draws her gun from an unholstered waistband carry and shoot his in the stomach. He falls to the mat crying and is hauled off by medics onhand from Tate’s clinic. The “winner” stumbles out of the ring in shock and pukes in a corner as Matt Wrath and Matt Rat commentate/chirp. 6C once again offers some words of his encouragement, but too quietly and far away for the teen to hear. Avocado wins some money.

The second fight begins, and the team watches in shock as Keg strips out of his nice duds, saying it will be easier to fix acid damage to his skin. He pulls out all the stops and speed draws, killing the toxic ganger in one amazing shot which also pierces their acid tank, and melts their corpse and part of the ring. Avo once again wins some money. Matt Wrath announces a brief recess while the ring is repaired, with Kit’s assistance. The third fight is called, and 6C and Twofer enter the ring to a lot of hype. Avocado places a massive bet, and everyone is shocked when Twofer outdraws 6C- but 6C easily dodges the shot and gets a solid hit in on Twofer in response, though it looks like Twofer is so cybered-up it seems to not do much damage. 6C only brought 6 bullets to the fight and he hopes it’s enough….

Twofer responds and blasts the gun out of 6C’s hand and the crowd goes wild, but 6C rolls and grabs it and knocks Twofer down, and the crowd goes wilder. Having gotten a little worried about his opponents skill, 6C has switched from trick shots to max damage, and it seems like Twofer is in the same boat- he unleashes a targeted burst and catches 6C right in the face. There is a shocked silence in the crowd as he falls to the mat, and Kit rushes in with a medkit. As he is declared dead and flatlines on the TacNet, the team notices his gun vanishes. Aylin seizes and almost dies as well from their bond, but instead waked up to Kit, Keg, and Carol hovering over her and is disturbed to find that she has lost her magical ability. She feels that breaking the bond with 6C broke their bargain with Tohu Wa Bohu, their mentor, and she won’t regain her magic until she abases herself before It. However, she plans to continue with their plan to sever their tie, and hopefully save whatever remains of 6C as well…

A CrashCart team rushes in, confirms 6C’s death, and takes his medalert bracelet. The crowd filters out, and Matt Wrath announces that the two gangers from the final deathmatch decided to settle it non-lethally, mano a mano outside. Twofer and entourage take off quietly, not wanting to gloat on a rough victory, but leaves a contact with a hint that he has good Evo ties. Kit sticks around to keep an eye on Aylin, and they all drink together. Everyone bleeds a little into a shot glass for Aylin, including Kit, who reveals they are a Monad., and HK, who moto’s down for the occasion (to some eyerolls from his wife). Keg also joins in, and offers his services, since he’s new in town, and obviously they need a new shooter. They agree and drunkely call Mrs. Clean to take a milk run job to test out these two potential new team-mates. They get the info for the meet the next morning and arrange to all meet there.

Keg and Kit head off together on Keg’s moto, and Kit gives an all-nighter tour of Zone hot spots to the new arrival. HK heads back to his fam, and the rest of the team heads to Ahabitat to break the news to Patty C, and figure out what to do with 6C’s remains. When they arrive, they find Patty waiting with celebratory brownies and have a pretty heart-breaking convo with her. They all eat the brownies together in grief, and share some alchemical moonshine Patty has brewed up. Otoko, as usual seemingly not super phased by death, summons Big Meat, and they all agree to bury 6C in the coral reef alongide the Merrow community’s dead. As 6C requested, they bury his Red Samurai blade with him so as not to get anyone in trouble for having it. He wanted his gun destroyed as well, but it seems magically absent so they’re not sure what to do.

The team travels down in an air bubble from a summoned spirit, and watches one of the Merrow shape coral in the reef growing out of the wrecked third hab area around 6C’s body, as Big Meat places him within and places his arms over the sword- a proper warrior’s burial. They all head back to the hab, have one final toast, and crash. Blearily rising for the meet the next morning, the crew head to what seems like a Yakuza bar to meet Maggie Goldberg. HK, less wrecked, has prepped a dossier on her for Avo to use a negotiating tool, but he’s off his game, feeling that he needs to break with his mentor and find a new guide since Raven was a big impetus towards him manipulating 6C to his death, as Avo sees it.

Maggie is semi-on the DL a fixer for MCT, seemingly a cutout for their shadow ops. She seems very friendly and upfront, and has a good rep, but HK thinks she is likely more loyal to her patron than her corp, if that ever proves useful. They arrange for a regular level of pay and are tasked with retrieving a prototype camera hacking soft projectile developed by 3D (their landlord at the Bolthole) and Byom, a Russian explosives expert. They figure this will be a cakewalk since they know 3D and Maggie seems open to paying for it, so they call him but it goes straight to voicemail, very unusual for him. They head to Hoodville and find his office trashed, but carefully covered so the damage isn’t obvious from outside. Using CSI skills they determine that the kidnappers are some mafioso types, and calling in one of their favors with Ryder, he ID’s them as MacCaskill mafia bruisers, and gives them an address they’re likely at- a safehouse adjacent to the Chicago Market.

They head over and do some quick recon. Two guards out front, 3 more inside, plus an interrogator, and the two captives. They send the drones in through a high window, who sneak attack with their narcoject. Aylin mists in and frees the captives. Byom takes one of the kidnappers ponytails as revenge, and Aylin figues “why not” and feeds on him a bit too, just topping off. Carol and Keg take out the guards out front with stick and shock, and the team quickly gets out of there with no casualties on either side, which Kit is thrilled about. Kit tries driving and almost crashes, but swears they’re usually good at it. Avo convinces 3D and Byom to sell the tech to MCT (though they seem to plan to leak it to the shadows as well) to get people off of their tail, and they agree. The team gets paid, and Maggie seems quite happy with their work, and says she’ll be in touch with more opportunities. Plus the 2 newbs worked out well, so that’s good.

Kit also tells the team about a “downtime” shadowcast that they do, and requests to interview them, to get more perspectives on the Chicago shadows. Avocado is the first to agree.