Dramatis Personae
Runners
April O’Mally
Remus Chandrasekharan
Ivan the Jackle
Others
Doc Todd
Jina Eson
One Shot Wade
Yann Tillberg
Long Pig
The team flees to Fat Carl’s, and then to Doc Todd’s. They sell the still warm organs of the two goons they brought with (to make it look like a setup), Doc Todd disposes of rest of remains. Ivan is pretty sure they weren’t tailed. They head out to Todd’s country clinic to lay low, heal up, and get some new implants, taking the hostage with them. They spend about a week there. When April gets a break at work, she heads out on her scooter to join them and figure out the next step-Wade is pressuring Ivan to dispose of the hostage for good, making sure to give the Black Shadows a public black eye-ransom has already been paid, so if she doesn’t turn up, it looks bad on them. Barry is going to remain in the hospital for a while to finish healing.
The team sees a public appeal from Romulus on all the main trideo channels, and Wade starts to fret about the promised undercity crackdown-he wants this resolved. Todd has meanwhile taken one of Jina’s kidneys to pay for the costs of keeping her at the clinic for a week, as well as drugging her to erase her short term memory. Team decides to re-ransom the hostage, sow further dischord within BS.
They drive back to Mars City, April on scooter, Ivan and Remus in Ivan’s rigged cab. The cab attracts a go-ganger attack, 1 chopper, 2 bikes with sidecars, Remus injured by elephant gun from a sidecar. They kill three of the riders and drive off the other two with the autocannon which was concealed in the cab roof. They reach Mars City, and meet April and Yann in the sewers beneath Problem Children turf. They encounter some difficulty entering the sewers, as Ivan releases a smoke grenade to hide their movements, forgetting that it also prevents all of them from seeing. They eventually find the sewer opening by feel. They stage the video as if April has uncovered a secret lead, and has been taken by masked BS operatives to this site to boradcast their new demands-more money to a different account (which Remus sets up). They almost forget to avoid filming the street sign at the bottom of the sewer ladder. they do remember to wear masks, however, and april manages to act convincingly scared. Remus is attacked by some sort of crazy cyver-ninja while covering his matrix trail on the account, but he sleazes his way out. The money quickly shows up, and the team releases the hostage (in PC territory, which Wade is none too thrilled about)-she quickly gets picked up by a convoy of upper city cops making a rare appearance, and has a very well covered public reunion with Romulus.
The team tries to access the money, and discovers instead a message from Long Pig, mocking their attempt to double cross the BS, and vowing revenge. Wade is even more pissed about not getting any of the money, so he sends the team on a dangerous nightclub raid to pay him back-the club is Slot, on the current frontline of the gangwar that the Mad Martians and Problem Children launched to capitalize on the confusion following the kidnapping. Apparently, a bunch of BS goons have been holed up in there, sniping PC’ers, and Wade needs a team to go in heavy and clean the place out, so that they can finish taking the block. Remus hacks the building plan, and the team plans their assault. Ivan enlists PC member Jaro to watch the side streets and make sure they don’t get surrounded.
Ivan watches front of building with eyeball drone while April sneaks up side in stealth suit and Remus ets up with his sniper across the street. When the assault begins, Ivan blasts out the front door and windows with his cab-mounted assault cannon while Remus snipes those figures visible inside. April gains access to the 3rd floor and quickly kills 3 goons in close combat, taking moderate damage and etting off her adrenal pump, putting her in a semi-controlled rage. Ivan enters thru the front door and him and April kill the remaining goons inside. They then head up to the 3rd floor again to investigate some locked doors. Ivan gets a serious shock, and then April blows the door open with c4, Ivan is the first thru, and is hit with a near-deadly fireball from a BS mage inside who looks to be rigging something up to the computer system in the room. In a rage, April charges him and tackles him out thru the window, heading towards the dump. The mage grins and triggers the explosives he was setting up-Ivan barely deduces what they are in time to jump out the window himself. April and Ivan are both unconscious from the explosion/fall, and the mage is killed. Remus manages to drive Ivan’s car (slowly and poorly) to the dump and haul them aboard, they head for Doc Todd’s clinic to heal up.
Yann uploads free teaser trideo and simstim for an upcoming “hotsim shadowrun subscription service.” He is careful to leave no datatrail-hopefully…..
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