Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team freaks out after acquiring all the data as both Creep and Cholula start to enter anaphylactic shock from the spore exposure. Luckily the rest of the group’s full seals hold, and they manage to get them out via some quick-thinking and a near grenade disaster from Otters. They navigate back out via the train tunnels but have the feeling that something might be following them. Once back aboveground, they contact Dig, who recommends quarantine until they can make sure the spores aren’t contagious.

Jaga helps set up a sealed treatment area at the safehouse, and monitors them with Dig for a day while drones work on patching them up, but luckily they seem to be improving and non-contagious. They heal up for another day while Dig fills them in on happenings aboveground, and they all decide where to sell their score from the last mission. They end up selling all the experimental tech to Zennia, who pays well and seems eager to sell it on, and all the data to Ellis, who is eager to receive it and requests first look at anything additional they find.

The team then decides to start looking into how to take down the local Fear The Dark chapter for good. Dig researches the Higher Power Tarot card, and with some help from Fargus Sol determines that it doesn’t do what they likely need it to for these purposes- i.e. beam sunlight directly in a focused point. They think about planning some kind of ambush at the upcoming “Bye, ARES!” block party that the Plat Zone is hosting, but that’s coming up too soon.

After consulting with Walker in Ways, they settle on a different plan- WIW and their shamanic group will plan out a massive cleansing ritual to expand the magical cleanup they’ve been doing on the river outwards into the rest of the city, slowly expanding over time as they cleanse new areas. Dig, CG, and Jaga will assist with this. The rest of the team, and a bunch of other hired assistants, will provide recon and security around the site, and watch for FTD/fight them when they arrive.

The team uses favors owed by Julia Pesina to report on a piece about this upcoming ritual and spread it around, to make sure that FTD hears about it. With a few days to wait until that happens, they stock up on gear (wood pulp bullets and the like) and finish healing and patching armor. They all head over to the Plat Zone party in their street gear, with Otters bringing her new array of drones, freshly out of their boxes, in the van. CG, The Detective and Creep take up surveillance positions just in case anything kicks off after grabbing food from CastIron.

Cholula dances while assensing, vibing on the energy of the room. Otters monitors comms to watch from suspicious traffic while Dig keeps an eye on the matrix, and both of them notice a lot of posts pouring in, seemingly notifications of the death of various East Coast deckers and TM’s. Ringmaster calls them back to the situation room, where they monitor a disturbing thread on Jackpoint right up until there is a disturbing inaudible rumble, and bright flash, and all the lights go out.

Checking things further, it seems like the power is fully down, and a lot of batteries are fully or partially drained. Before they can determine anything else, gunfire breaks out outside. The team outside engages with a group of 6 gunmen, which they quickly realize are shadow spirits inhabiting disguised corpses, who are firing indiscriminately into the crowd. They manage to take them out though Creep and CG are both near killed, with Cholula also joining the fray.

Inside, Dig just barely manages to get in front of the swing of a monofil whip that an invisible assassin had intended for Ringmaster, getting badly injured in the process and splashing Ringmaster with his blood. The assassin chops Otters’ gun in half after she ineffectually fires before Dig manages to fell them with a massive lightning bolt- Dig approves of this show of pack loyalty. Unfortunately, Dig is a carrier for HMHVV so warns Ringmaster of his new lycanthropy risk- certainly much better than dead.

Otters, frantic about the lack of matrix connection and drone feeds, races outside to the van, weaving through the frantic crowd and finds the locks engaged and powered off, so has to hardware her way in. The drones are all powered off but seem to have some varying level of charge left, though no way to recharge if drained at the moment, and the van seem drained but otherwise fine, aside from antennas which seem universally fried. Otters is having to find all the clunky manual controls since usually all of this done via ARO.

Dig and Ringmaster, using magic and charisma, manage to start organizing and calming the crowd, and the weary Latvian Gambit vets present get back to work trying to figure out what happened and what it means. The team all eventually joins up and speculates a bit too, as they hear gunfire, screams, and breaking glass all around the city, and are able to see the stars for the first time in a while (or for some, probably the first time ever). Otherwise the night is only light by muzzle flashes and bonfires…..