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.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Test
Aylin
6 Cylinder
Carol Turpentine

The team puts together their counter-offer to Fringe, and he accepts. Aylin and 6Cyl arrange to ally with his spirit and some members of the Vigilia Evangelica to secure the 3rd Book of 9 Gates and hopefully free themsevles from Tohu Wa Bohu. Hotkey and Carol gets more money, Test gets contacts with the Egyptian Coptic Church which apparently shelters a lot of TM’s who are working with the great dragon Masaru on a new library of Alexandria. Avocado gets a quickened strength-boosting spell on him, provided by Fringe. They need a few days to heal and then it’s off to the metaplanes to end this particular threat once and for all. They find out that Patty C, Otoko and Big Meat have been doing movie and popcorn nights at Ahabitat.

In the meantime, Avo promotes 6C’s upcoming fight at the Vault, and notices that “Popular Will” militias and propaganda are starting to crop up around the CZ. Doing some research, they find that this is the street arm of the Freedom Network, a militant anti-magic/anti-TM group, like a more extreme Purists from Boston (without the hate for implants). They seem to be cross-race and meta-, but have strong paramilitary vibes. Test also gets and invite from GC to help connect Garmonbozia with different mesh net building subversive groups globally, to ensure they have some safe harbors when the new Matrix launches, and in exchange they will help Test with his Null problem. Hotkey hangs with his fam, who arrive and get settled in their Sierra Crop provided apartment. He hears that the mesh net in NYC that he helped start in Queens is a big hit, and seems to be safe from the Null. Also apparently the Rat Pack has gone partially toxic and the Underground has gotten a lot less safe.

6C and Aylin head down to Midway airport to meet with Old Crow, newly arrived in town from the metaplanes. They also meet up with Lycus, Vonny, Angoka, and some other neo-A’s, and get some offers of work and assistance for some of the team’s various interests, as well as introduction to a runners union called The Shadow Chapters from a Muslim ork woman named Jazz. There is also a pro training facility on site, which Avo is excited about for learning new maneuvers. They also notice Midway has an impressive drone security array. Chessick wanders over and he and Aylin have a good chat about Boston and fringe reporting, and agree to collab in future. OC finally lands, and schemes a bit with Aylin and 6C about going up against the BL. They find out about the BL’s infiltration of the “Free City STL” movement, which HK’s wife is also interested in, and also find out that the BL has infiltrated the highest levels of Chicago/Illinois government, and has an unknown level of control over Gov. Presbitero, the mean in charge of Operation: Takeback. They plan to try to use all this as a way to get the Book they need to a less secure location than the seeming BL North America HQ that St. Louis has become.

With everyone rested and ready to roll, they head back to the church, and find that Fringe has fully cleaned it and arranged an elaborate maze on the floor. His angel spirit still guards the door, and says she will present interference from both sides. Fringe pays up and grants their various boons, and then walks the maze and cuts himself into the Jade Cup at the center. He tells the team to follow, and they do, seemingly crossing the astral boundary as they do so. They walk for what feels like hours, and then say the angel again and are told they have completed their task. Luckily they quickly spot this as a trick, and recognize a Nightmare spirit posing as the angel. It seems amused to be spotted and says it will get them next time.

They head through a glowing portal, and emerge into what looks to be a truly haunted realm. A narrow mile-long causeway with long falls into a perhaps never-ending chasm on either side approaches a dark and moldering castle in the distance. A rotting dragon flies overhead. Seeing no way to sneak, they attack the dragon, and are surprised and delighted to find that it has a matrix presence. Luckily they manage to take it down between those 2 modes of attack before it can reach them and it plummets into the abyss. They head up the causeway.

Carol spots a narrow path down the side of the castle to what looks like a dungeon entrance, and they take that route. The door has a maglock (surprising, again, and also once again MCT brand). They enter and find 6 chained Catholics from various points in the last few decades, who all seem very tortured and confused. They free them and tell them to make their way to the exit and announce themselves to the spirit there. They head upstairs with drones scouting ahead, and find a creepy courtyard with a massive bone garden and gargoyles. The skulls and gargoyles seems to follow them, and seem to be cameras with watcher spirits bound to them. Seeing no way to sneak once again, they head further and find 2 rotting knights guarding a massive burned black set of doors. They blast apart the knights who seem bound to their post, and approach,

The doors blow open as they near, and they see Auslander on a tendrilled throne, he mocks them and tells 12 more knights to attack. They get in a brutal brawl with the possessed corpse knights, and find their life energy being slowly drained by the throne. Luckily the throne seems to be the host device for all the castles tech, and HK and Test manage to brick it, shutting down it’s powers. Auslander seems weakened in it’s absence, and they managed to finally take him out after defeating his guards, without permanently losing anyone on the team, despite some close calls.

Fearing that they may be approaching the deadline of the ritual after a lengthy exploration of this plane, they race back towards the exit! Suffering through some drug crashes, many almost tumble into the abyss off of the narrow causeway, but with assistance from the medical drone and some lucky catches from some quick on their feet members, the team manages to safely cross and re-enter the astral maze before it closes. Completing their journey, they find the angelic spirit waiting, luckily Hotkey spots that it is once again a Nightmare spirit trying to trick them, which cackles when spotted and flits off. They double back out of the dead end it was trying to lure them into, and actually emerge in the church.

6 piles of ash on the floor imply that the prisoners they free were burned by the spirit, who claims they were “unclean” but won’t elaborate further. The team worries they may have sent some long suffering Catholics to a firey death but…. maybe they were possessed or something? They find a note on Fringe’s remains saying goodbye and telling them to keep fighting the good fight- he has sensed a sickness at the core of the Spirit of the City of Chicago, and suggests they continue their investigations. The Jade Cup is fully destroyed, as promised, and the angelic spirit leaves after vowing to return to help 6Cyl and Aylin fight the Black Lodge.

The team heads back to the bolthole to rest and heal, all very exhausted from their ordeal.

Runners
Hotkey
Avocado
Test
Aylin
6 Cylinder
Carol Turpentine
and goodbye to: Dr. Kinnie Zest

The team drops their newly purloined Ancients street bikes off with Goober to get them repainted and fixed up, so they don’t get into trouble riding them. They then crash at the Bolthole after a hard night, while a few team members head back to Ahabitat to rest up there. They awake the next morning to find Kinnie Zest gone, the Tower Tarot card missing, and a note saying “Gone to Seattle, Don’t Follow”. Kinnie has also replaced the drones they lost on the last mission, and finished the second round of repairs on the sub. They reconfigure the TacNet and other team structures for good infosec, and discuss why Kinnie left: presumably to pursue his revenge on Richard Villiers. They hope the Tower card isn’t destroyed in the process and hope to hear from Kinnie again.

The team spends a few days finishing acclimating to the Zone’s overall mana sphere, and Avocado finds himself attuned to their safehouse a bit better as well. Patty C presents the team with some protective potions she has made to keep them safe, and seems excited to discuss some other theoretical advancements in the field with 6C when he has some free time. Otoko and Big Meat are having a fish feast with her, though they seem a lot more comfortable with the raw seafood diet than she does. They make some calls and call in some favors, with 6C getting the ball rolling with Old Crow to seize the Black Lodge’s copy of the Book of 9 Gates for his cleansing ritual.

6C also contacts Fr. Darren Dolf in NYC and reports on the Altar Boy issue. Dolf seems disturbed and tells the team that 2 Catholic operatives (likely Sylvestrines) have gone missing in the Zone in the last few weeks while looking into some mysterious new Bishop who has been operating out of some Church properties near the Cermak Crater.Dolf puts them in touch with Fringe, a strange disgraced changeling priest with angelic qualities. They agree to team up, and Fringe confirms that they are hunting a powerful master shedim (or 2), as well as an artifact that Fringe thinks might allow the shedim to open another stable rift to their homeplane.

Test and Hotkey, in the Bolthole, get a tip from some Desolation Angels about some Ancients embroiled in a firefight nearby and decide to go scope it out, hoping to get some useful intel about where the remaining Anients are holed up. They sneak up, but hang back, seeing the corp team from the Skeleton Key mission engaged in a brutal gun battle with a larger group of Ancients who seem to have tried to lure them into a trap. Both sides had a spellcaster but both are down, and the Ancients seem to have been trying to leave with the body of what looks like the leader of the corp team. HK tells the DA’s to hang back and trail any Ancients trying to leave.

At the last minute, HK lays down some suppressing fire to save the lone corp goon remaining on their feet and introduces himself. THe corp type recognizes him from the SK job and says they’re glad for the assist but that HK and Test should clear out before their backup gets their since the team killed a few members of the corp team the last time they met. However, she thanks HK for the assist, and tells hi, he’s welcome to the body the Ancients were trying to take: the Johnson for this job. She explains that the corp team are ex-NeoNet operators working freelance locally. HK and Test grab the Johnson, who’s been beheaded, and find that the beheading perfectly severed his biomonitor, preventing his cortical bomb from blowing.

They dip out of sight as the corp squad rescue vehicles arrive (it looks like a few other members survived due to HK’s intervention), and do some quick hacking. The Johnson is a bagman and Technomancer hunter who has worked locally for Shiawase: he’s the guy who originally kidnapped Sam for their clone experiments back in the day, and has been seeking her (and another escaped clone) ever since runners breached their facility and handed the remains over to Saeder Krupp. He recently got some leads that Sam and clone where both up for sale from some flesh peddlers, the Ancients, and made a deal. He hired the corp team as backup but it was a trap. HK and Test manage to also get the remaining funds on his expense account for the job.

The team reunites and tracks the Ancients back to the are outside the Cermak crater- they determine a likely Church to check out based on some good assensing and tracking, but lose the trail through the irradiated Crater and can’t confirm for sure. They also hear from Fringe that based on his research he has ID’ed the person most likely possessed by the Master who is calling himself “the Bishop”. They get a home address (more Church property- he is a groundskeeper hired recently to start rehabbing the properties during Operation:Takeback). The team decides to check out the house first, then the Church. They call in the DA’s to make a perimeter again to keep anyone from fleeing, and call in backup from Ryder.

After checking out the home amidst a heavy rainstorm, and both spotting and being spotted by some shedi guards in Ancients bods, the team decides to storm it. They hit up Becky 99 and tell the DA’s to close in around the church address while they call in Ryder to back them up. Remo (the sprite) is urging Test to hurry, as he can’t contact S@m. They defeat a few shedim guards, who seem to have stayed behind just to slow the team down, and make a chaotic entry into the house through series of poorly targeted grenades. They find evidence that the possessed church employee had gone toxic pre-possession, and was possessed during a summoning ritual, implying there is a free toxic spirit hanging around somewhere…. fun.

They also find evidence of the 2 missing Sylvestrines, as well as semi-concealed basement door. They head down and find the secure case for the Jade Cup, empty, bearing strange signs of both toxic and green magic, so it seems the shedim only gained it recently as their death aura hasn’t taken over. They also find a locked room containing 1 Sylvestrine, who seems to have been driven mad, and the remains of the other, who was apparently reanimated repeatedly by a low force shedim to force the survivor to butcher and consume him. They call in Ryder to get the survivor out, and he does, and they call in Fringe to arrange for him to get back to the Catholic Church’s care. Fringe also agrees to meet them at the church here to bring an end to this.

They find a tunnel in the floor which looks to lead to the church, and luckily Carol had prepared because he manages to FAB another waiting shedim as they open the hatch. The effects of the FAB III are terrible to witness, even on an enemy, and they decide to travel overland to their destination, assuming that the FAB will keep anyone from trying to escape through the tunnel. The DA’s call and say they have the church surrounded but that there’s some kind of gnarly ritual going on inside. The team races over, having to do some on the fly drug adjustments to stay conscious and functional for some, and breach the church.

6Cyl once again manages to blast the sacrificial knife out of Altar Boy’s hand, and almost trick shots the knife out of Auslander’s hand as well, but Auslander still manages to stab his victim- it looks like both S@m and SM-501 have been drugged and tied to the altar, and 6C isn’t sure which one he saved. 2 dozen mind-controlled Ancients and locals turn to charge the team, alongside AB, the toxic free spirit, and the possessed cyber-solider from Tate’s clinic. The team calls in the DA’s who go toe to toe with the enemy gangers as the team takes on the big bads. Fringe is outside cleansing the local space to allow the team to not suffer horrible background counts, and also interfering with Auslander’s ritual. Fringe’s angelic spirit is watching the exits to burn with holy fire any foes who try to flee.

Alyin manages to take out AB before he can deal any damage with his sword, and his teen face shows a look of great surprise as he slides in half from the monofil whip slice. Auslander keeps going after 6C with spells but Aylin keeps taking his damage and regenerating it, so the toxie comes after Aylin. Test starts hacking the cybersolider while Hotkey returns fire, and Carol makes a hail mary run with the FAB thrower to get to Auslander. Before long, HK, 6C, and Carol are all KO-ed, though Carol manages to shoot off the FAB cloud near Auslander just as he goes down.

Avocado steps up to the plate as Aylin and the hacked cybersoldier duel- the soldier is faster but doesn’t have regen, and with Test and Remo’s hacking support Aylin finally brings him down, just as Avocado uses a miraculous commanding voice to trick Auslander into staying put while the FAB III surrounds and envelopes him- they hear more twisted, horrible screaming as he is driven from this plane. A CrashCart team shows up and whisks 6C away to a hospital in the O’Hare sprawl while the rest of the team settles up. The DA’s on site were mostly wiped out with the exception of Becky, and Fringe looks drained from his efforts. Remo and Ryder and thrilled to find that S@m was saved, though the shedim seem to have stripped her of her TM abilities as part of the ritual. SM-501 bled out from the off target stab wound during the fight, unfortunately.

The team gets some local rep boosts, make some new and improved contacts, and gets paid from the Catholics as well as some local fundraising done to support their good deeds. They head back to the safehouses to rest up, and hear from Fringe that there is one more job available: a perilous mission to use the Jade Cup to travel to Auslander’s castle to defeat him once and for all and end his incursion attempts. This will destroy the Cup, and kill Fringe in the process, so they’ll get one shot at it. The team says they need a few days to rest up, and Fringe agrees. Avo also sets up a fight at the Vault for 6C, finally, and starts making some teaser ads to build hype.

Runners
Kinnie Zest
Hotkey
Avocado
Test
Aylin
6 Cylinder
Carol Turpentine

Otoko emerges briefly to say hello and rub her bleary eyes before heading back to her den to continue bingeing trids. Patty C helps 6Cyl with some alchemical projects, and he finally learns the art of the alchemical bullet, a long goal of his. Test hears from Mrs. Clean that his new ID got burned again, and decides to start looking into what’s going on. He has a lead – a Foundation-obsessed decker at a bar called “The Hangman” in the Noose, but he can’t find him on the matrix- IRL visit it is. They also get word from Ryder that no useful ID’s have been made from the photos from the body pit but that they were printed in an old-school darkroom, so the chemicals needed might be way to track down who printed them, though Zone records are not exactly great.

Most of the team head to the bar to back up Test, and end up meeting with Quantum Princess, an old-school decker who helped set up NooseNet. She checks their reps, getting a bad vibe off Test, but after he explains himself and everyone else looks solid, she brings them into a backroom and shows them 4 comatose deckers, including the man Test sought. She tells them they were all early Foundation divers, and are now all that remains of the Midwest Pirate’s Guild. They all got obsessed with skimming the Null node, giving them access to lost info only usually accessible to TM’s, but said that they all eventually noticed something following them around the matrix (and after that, IRL) afterwards. Test, having skimmed the Null node in the Seelie Court, confirms the few steps he’s been through of this, and is worried about what’s next for him.

QP tells him that the MPG had figured out that they needed to perform some sort of ritual of obeisance to allow the Null node to “pwn” them in some way, but were unable to find their back to the necessary areas to perform it in time. They also debrief a bit about the Null Sect in general, and speculate about their involvement here. Test agrees to share any info he gets with QP, and the team takes a box of mesh repeaters to put up around town to expand NooseNet further, especially as DelaMar’s New Matrix expands into the Zone with the rebuilding. Test also confers with GC, who verifies that the New Matrix is much, much harder for AI’s and Garmonbozia specifically to stay concealed in, and agrees to see if GB wants to coop with Test vs the Null Sect longterm.

The team then gets a call from Becky 99, who says that she has a building with some creepy rumors around it she wants the team to check out. The Desolation Angels have a meeting with one of the few gangs they’re friendly with nearby, so they can meet up after and debrief on next steps tracking down their missing people. She can’t pay much, so they negotiate for future favors instead and agree to terms. They also hear that Ares was successful in rescuing Moonberry from and MCT Zero Zone, but it seems like someone warned MCT they were coming and the Ares team took heavy casulaties. Weirdly, the Ares team is wearing full armor, seems t be able survive what should be lethal wounds, and took all their casualties with them, according the footage leaked online. Based on the resilience of some of the MCT guards, it is speculated that they also have something up their sleeve, possibly confirming rumors that they are providing a safe home for some shedim in exchange for protection duties.

The team head to the building for B99, a former Fuchi dev center, and find it abandoned and looking kinda haunted. They sweep it with drones and, seeing no threats, head in. It looks like someone used breaching charges to enter the building a long while back and then boarded over it, but some of the boards have been pried or weathered down since. They check out the first floor, and find it totally trashed, but find some Universal Brotherhood recruitment material moldering in a break room. They spot a pack of devil and demon rats upstairs, but decide to steer clear for now. They head down to the basement, where the background count gets even worse. Weirdly, there is also a strong dissonance pool in the building. The building was built with some wireless blockers that are badly interfering with their comms as well.

They check out the basement and find 3 large chambers, the first a server room that is totally trashed. They find a journal from some employees who considered themselves loyalists but seem to have been overrun after barricading themselves here. In the next room they find the source of the awful odor and background count: a massive pile of twisted skeletons, some cocoon/pods that are husked and dried out, and a massive cloud of FAB III. The awakened team members flee while the rest continue to investigate. The pile of bodies looks to be the right amount for the entire staff of the facility, confirming rumors that this was the only Fuchi location in town that noone made it out of. The FAB canisters and other expended ordinance are all Ares brand from the appropriate era, suggesting this was one of the sites they hit where a hive was located. The pods look to be filled with the mutated remains of the “loyal” employees or perhaps other neighborhood strays, midway through their infestation.

The third room contains a destroyed decontamination chamber with a collapsed tunnel filled with more twisted skeletons, as well as more UB propaganda, suggesting that this office was infiltrated by bugs before the walls went up, and heavily enough that they took over and prevented anyone leaving. It seems to have been a roach nest. However, noone has been done here since, it seems, so the team figures it’s good paydata but not relevant to the current job. Carol grapples up the 2nd floor to investigate the sole semi-intact room the drones found, and avoid the rats, and finds what looks like a “brains-in-jars” experiment that feels related to The 100 experiment from Boston. Notes about “electrokinetics” on a whiteboard suggest that the brains likely belonged to Technomancers, explaining the dissonance well also. They find a scrap with the name “Halberstram” on it, but it looks to have been abandoned since the early 2070’s, so they figure again, good data but not currently relevant. The demon rat sneaks up on Carol and melts some of his armor but he escapes out the window, and see B99 and some other DA’s getting chased by a large mob of Ramblers.

The team sets up an ambush to help out, and gets some good hits in. Luckily they managed to avoid killing anyone, and end up convincing Griller, the Rambler head, to take a payout and an apology after they sort out what is going on. B99 apparently went on a rampage after the last mission, thinking the Ramblers were responsible for her missing people, based on what seems like a mediocre quality frame job. Griller affirms that they weren’t and threatens her further if she moves on them even the tiniest bit again, but takes off. B99 and the team debrief a bit and the DA’s head for a nearby safehouse to patch up and rest- it seems like she hasn’t slept for days. She gets them to go to the gang meeting at the nearby cemetery on her behalf. When they arrive, they find that the Crypt Keepers, the gang there, have all been massacred. They were a pacifist ghoul gang that offered burial services in exchange for food, and kept the bodies from being useful to shedim. With some clever hacking, they retrieve some data, and find that once again, someone did a frame-up attack on these guys, dressed in DA colors but obviously not the DA. However, they are skilled riders with both physical attacks and magic available.

The team does some digging on local gangs, and can’t figure out who it is, unless one of the syndicates sent in some muscle to fuck with the DA’s, since the DA’s interfere with human trafficking often, but this seems like a weird way to go about it. They call up Goober to see if anyone has been buying a ton of weird bikes and stuff recently, and find out (after convincing him this is a major community issue) that a creepy kid named Altar Boy has been. The team assumes he is likely a shedim, based on his appearing and all of this kicking off shortly after the major shedim presence in DeeCee got shut down. Reviewing footage, they also find a circle of dead flowers and weeds at the cemetery, further confirming. They get 2 leads fro B99 on where to look into Tasha more, and see if the team can figure out where she got spotted and photographed initially, to try to find more leads.

Tracking down the 2 leads to Brother’s Scrap Yard and the Maker’s Collective, they make some interesting contacts at both spots. They also link up with STV’s local liaison through Madeline Schmidt and agree to some future cooperation. Using some complex mixes of perceptions they manage to locate where the surveillance shots of Tasha and Misa Sanchez (the young dwarf TM from the DA safehouse) were taken, and confirm that Altar Boy was at one site with a fancy street bike, and an elf in slightly concealed Ancients colors was at the other. 6C is thrilled to finally get to go after his nemeses. They ask around a bit and find out about an Ancients clubhouse in an old S-Mart near the Cermak crater. They do some drone recon and gear up to go in heavy.

They confirm Ancients are onsite, due to the 12 fancy bikes parked out front. The drones don’t see any guards and proceed inside. They hear chanting from deeper in, and the team sends the drones deeper but loses comms and they don’t return, so the team rushes over to get in there, worried about a ritual. They call in backup from Becky and Nick Ryder (who’s drunk but gets a ride), but they will take some time to arrive so the team launches some grenades in ahead of their entry and rolls in. They spot some Watcher spirits observing them while others zip off, presumably to warn someone. They find the dead drones inside, near an expelled charged ward, which seems to have zapped them. They notice there is a large area in the center of the warehouse where astral space has been cleaned, and some sort of ritual is occurring,

They head in, with Avocado hanging back to lead from the rear, and Ryder and the DA’s finally arriving. The DA’s start trashing bikes outside, while Ryder dashes up to join the team, wearing some cobbled together and ill-fitting bulletproofs. They enter the center area and see Altar Boy about to plunge a knife into Misa Sanchez’ chest on top of an improvised altar, with a ring of 12 dead-eyed Ancients circled around, chanting. AB delivers a villain line, and Carol shoots him in the chest, but the rounds just bounce off, only slightly staggering AB. 6Cyl jumps in and pulls an amazing trick shot, shooting the knife out of his hands. AB declares the team the great heroes and says they can have the girl, and then flees, slipping into the shadows and moving unnaturally quickly, implying the use of some spirit powers.

Strangely, the Ancients don’t seem to be shedim-possessed, just mind-controlled, but 6Cyl revels in cutting them down, especially once the team notices they’ve all been implanted with cortical bombs, and a few of them detonate, almost taking out Aylin (who luckily regenerates). They kill all the Ancients, and looking down 6C notices that they are all very young, and realizes he saw a look of terror behind their eyes as they charged, and finally lets go off his childhood fear/hatred of them- he’s (almost) their height now, and obviously more powerful. 6C frees Misa and she asks if the others are safe, so the team races for the back of the store. They spot the area where AB warped through the wall to escape, and also find a busted walk-in full of bodies- each with a stab wound through the heart.

They find Tasha and the other TM’s they were seeking from the flower shop abattoir photos, except for SM-501, who is absent. It looks like they’ve been killed one at a time, once per day. Based on what AB said as he was fleeing, they know he has a Master and that they are apparently seeking some way to inhabit TM’s, based on the new revelations about the connections between Resonance and magic that the team has been involved in discovering/releasing. Becky takes Misa in quickly, wrapping her in an oversized gang cut and promising to keep her safe. She, Ryder and the team all vow to continue this investigation and get revenge/end this threat, and Ryder promises them get out of jail free favors from him (for something “reasonable”), and they head their separate ways to regroup.

Runners
Kinnie Zest
Hotkey
Avocado
Test
Aylin
6 Cylinder
Carol Turpentine

They head over to the bar to meet Ryder, grabbing HK on the way, and get the rundown. Another Johnson is also present, Martin Tate, a doctor with clinics throughout the Zone. Him and Ryder both are invested in the missing persons case, and give the team a few specific ones from the last few days to follow up on. They arrange payment, including some ’ware and surgery from Tate, and both hint they will be good people to know in future. Ryder also tells them to expect a call from a contact of his named S@m, who sends her sprite Remo to tell them to look for a missing TM named SM-501 as well, who 3D has also reported as missing to HK: the investigations overlap!

The team heads out to the first locale, 2 families that missed a neighborhood watch meeting the previous night. The area seems well defended and very clean for the Zone, centered around the split level house that the 2 families share on a fenced and defended triple yard. The team teaches some local patrolling teens some better tactics to ensure they are welcome here and explain their presence as investigators. This seems to work and they receive a warning about the house being trapped, and spot some trip wires, sensors, and pressure pads. Aylin also spots a lot of dead fowl in the detached shed, and from the maggots they think they could potentially determine time of death, which might hint to time of disappearance, but Avocado narrows it down to “sometime yesterday”. The house also has a suspiciously well-defended matrix host, styled to look like a high-end but not suspicious home security system, which raises the team’s hackers’ eyebrows.

Seeing that the converted garage door drawbridge is lowered over the lot’s moat, they think that’s probably the best way in, and prepare to enter. After they stress for a while, Carol walks across and with no problems, the car follows. Carol spots some dirtbike tracks behind the chicken shed that noone else had noticed that seem to be from around the time of disappearance, and in a place not visible by the house’s cameras. He also pukes, hard, after opening the shack. The team carefully heads in, wary of traps, and manages to avoid triggering any. They use a maglock to backdoor into the well-defended system, and Test uses TM powers to obscure them while HK recovers cam footage and some log data. Reviewing it, they see one of the dad’s of the families go out to check out the shed after a sensor activation around when the bike was there, and then return into view about 1/2 an hour later, seeming both stronger and lighter on his feet somehow. The team assumes some sort of spirit possession.

About another 1/2 hour later, both families pile into their 2 cars, lower the drawbridge, and drive off. HK, being a family man familiar with having a go-bag and a quick exit plan, takes a look around and confirms that the families left in an orderly hurry. There also seems to be a surprising lack of electronics in the kids’ rooms, implying they were possibly TM’s themselves. Carol finds a hidden room in the basement, with evidence which implies that the parents have been in the Zone since around when it went up, searching for “Melissa”, who they assume is Melissa Truman, the famous missing heiress to the corporate fortune. They gather all the evidence and head out to the next site. As they leave, they spot some Desolation Angels watching them from a distance, but lose them quickly.

Rolling up to Tate’s recovery house, they find 4 unmarked but corpsec-looking guards on 2 entrances. They don’t give the team any trouble once they confirm they are from Tate, and take off. The team gets the power back on inside, seeing that something seems to have punched a hold in the panel and bypassing it, decides not to loot the medical supplies onsite since Tate didn’t give them those passcodes, and get more security camera footage. With some impressive analysis, Test is able to spot another dirtbike’s shadow just out of frame. Shortly after, 2 children (who they recognize as the missing kids from the previous house) run up to the door screaming, and the guard and nurse let them in. Ushering them into the back, them and the kids are all KO’ed by 4 smoking canisters the kids pop open. A blurry figure then enters through the front door and everything is lost in a cloud of smoke for a short moment before the power cuts. They assume this figure was either camo’ed or moving super fast but can’t get a good image.

They also get a list from Tate of what implants the recovering patient had, and find out he was getting super kitted out with deltaware. They also do some digging on his name, and find out that he is an employee of Truman Technologies (now a Horizon subsid), in their “special projects” wing. They wonder if the previous house’s occupants gave up the location to this clinic, given the Truman ties, or what is going on. Carol also spots a disconnected and dusty LoneStar emergency button, and sends a pic and some anonymized details to Candice, for her campaign against them. The team heads to the 3rd site, and runs into more Desolation Angels. The address they were given as a last known for SM-501 looks to be a bombed-out ruin, and the DA’s are digging for bodies.

Aylin approaches Becky 99 in astral, and they agree to chat in meatspace. The team heads in, and a few get details from Becky while HK uses his computer skills to help located bodies by seeking active devices. Apparently this was a DA safehouse for people who needed a safe and secret location to get away from dangerous men or organizations of whatever sort, so noone else should have known it was here. Test recovers some info from a smashed comm that HK digs up, and it seems like someone set off a gas leak to blow the building and also had set up a jammer to keep those inside from communicating out. Disturbingly, there are only half as many bodies as there should be, and although a lot are badly dismembered, noone finds any pieces of the missing 4. Carol once again spots some dirtbike tracks.

Becky gives them images and names: a human and dwarf woman, SM-501, and Tasha, the DA’s young TM mascot. Becky seems distraught and offers the team a bonus for sharing their findings, making clear she wants revenge as well as wanting them found. Test has a bright idea, and coordinates with HK, a skilled profiler, using the 3 sites they’ve interacted with to triangulate a potential locus to focus on. Sending out drones to do recon, they find an abandoned flower shop pretty much dead center, with 3 dirtbikes and one of the family station wagons parked out back under an awning, all unlocked and with keys in them, seemingly either ready to go or waiting to get stolen. Avo calls Holmes and gets confirmation that none of their missing people overlap with the folks recruited into Fey bargains, with HK adding a ton of random names to their list to try not to give Holmes too much info.

The DA’s agree to help the team secure the area around the flower shop, and prevent attempts at escape by the kidnappers. 6Cyl sends in a spirit that warns of a terrible background count, and doesn’t want to go further. It also warns them of multiple magical signatures but no auras on the first floor, but Avo gets impatient and flips the lightswitch just inside the front door. This sets off a fireball spell, which torches the shop, but is quickly put out by some sprinklers. Carol steps in and is instantly almost killed by some DMSO/Slab solution in the sprinkler spray. They haul him out with a grapple and 6C cleans him with a water spirit, before they heal him up a bit. They head in more carefully after the sprinklers die off, and find the shop looking long-term abandoned, but the freezer room in back still operational. Locating a hatch in the floor, Carol opens it and pukes, hard, again at the terrible odor from within, and falls in the hatch getting stuck.

They haul him out, and see that the larger team members are going to have to strip their armor off to fit down the narrow, old-looking tunnel. This is also where the background count gets especially bad and Death-aspected, so they assume this must be shedim and not bugs. A few of them head down, with Carol stripping off his armor to fit, and Test slips in the gore and gets some in his mouth. They seem like old bootleggers tunnels, and given the collapses visible, not very stable. Carol enters an abattoir chamber ahead where it dead ends (ha) and finds bits of a few of the missing people, but none of the TM’s, and finds creepy surveillance photos crossed out of all the TM’s they had ID’ed plus a few others. Unfortunately, he doesn’t see the mistform vamps who slip in through a crack in the wall and they get the drop on him, nearly killing him and beginning to feed.

The team frantically shuffles around in the tunnel to try to get in to help, and 6Cyl manages to take one vamp down, with Aylin chasing the other in mist form back the way it came. She emerges into a city utility tunnel filled with Fear the Dark graff and manages to catch and kill the 2nd vamp. She starts to find her way back, following the death aura, and based on the lack of vamp bites on any of the body pieces, assumes that the vamps had likely done the same and were not the original killers. The bodies in the chamber are fully torn apart, and look chewed on. The team quickly grabs the photos off the wall and the few non-disgusting bits of evidence they can find as the chamber begins to collapse from the gunfight damage.

Aylin mists through the debris and rejoins them as they reascend, and Kinnie confirms that 2 of the side tunnel collapses look recent and planned, so someone likely came down here, escaped via one or both smuggler’s tunnels, and closed them behind themselves. They debrief Becky 99 up top, and confirm that a few more of the depicted individuals are missing TM’s. B99 says she wants her people rescued and/or wants revenge, and that she’ll be in touch. The team keeps one of the kidnappers dirt bikes (after checking for traps) and the Desolation Angels take the rest of the vehicles.

The team heads to the bolthole in Hoodville to patch up and do some research, and confirm between talking to 3D and checking missing persons boards that the rest of the photos also depict missing people, all of whom are known or suspected TM’s. They also some do some more digging into the “Melissa” angle and find some more hints but everything seems out of date. This doesn’t explain why Truman Tech was sending in a fresh operative though… They arrange to meet up with Tate and Ryder, and head to Tate’s newest clinic, being built out and guarded by a tribe of Neil the Ork Barbarian cosplayers. They give Ryder the intel first, and he pays up, saying that he hopes the team will keep looking into this as well. He seems confused that one of the pics they found was of S@m, and suggests that one of her clones must have survived after all, and gotten free (and then snatched up again). Tate dismisses him, but he takes the pics to run some tests.

They then debrief Tate, who agrees to get them some discout ’ware as promised, and seems very interested in the Melissa Truman intel, and says he will likely have more work for them soon. They head back to Ahabitat to rest up for a few days and figure out next steps.

Runners
Kinnie Zest
Hotkey
Avocado
Test
Aylin
6 Cylinder
Carol Turpentine

The team’s been up for over 24 hours at this point, and decide to head home to rest. Goober gives them a discount for making sure people know he’s the mechanic who helped save the ghoul kids, and they get their car back. Test decides to set up a bolt hole in the CZ to have a land (and matrix-connected) option. Using Opti’s rep they secure team invites to NooseNet, the local shadowboard, and Test makes contact withe 3D, the admin of the Hoodville community in the Noose. 3D verifies that the team aren’t affiliated with the Horde (although he doesn’t elaborate as to why) and agrees to set up the spot Test has envisioned. The team drops Test off there, so he can reconnect with GC via Marry Me. He also invites the hostess Molly from the bar, and gets her to agree to an IRL date in a few weeks as well. GC verifies that Garmonbozia will be in touch with Skeleton Key to see if it wants assistance or shelter. Ominously, 3D also wants some help clearing digital vines from some old hosts in the area, so it seems like Null problems are here as well.

The rest of the team heads back to Ahabitat via sub, and rests up. They fix up their fuel system using some more of the repair supplies they bought from Ares (to appease the Sea Dragon) and Mako pays a visit, confirming that the SD has extended her protection to the Zone community known as “Freaktown”, as she apparently has an affinity for changelings. The awakened team members finally feel somewhat adjusted to the local manasphere, also. They get a message from Allan Clay, the nervous TM johnson from the bar, and 6C plans to follow up. Aylin’s mom also says she has something for Aylin and 6C. 6C gets dropped off at ATF to buy a camo cloak, and the team grabs Test from his gaming fest at the bolthole and picks 6C back up.

They do some matrix sleuthing on Festival Foods, and find that they are providing product to a soup kitchen in the northern Noose, so they head there. They spot some Volk on headed that way as well, but Carol sees some other figures laying an ambush, so they lay back and use the gunfire as a distraction to sneak into the Feeding UCAS building. It seems like a totally legit soup kitchen (no bug magic), but they get spotted by a Neo-Anarchist decker named Gamze Seidel. After they assure her they’re just looking into Festival Foods, she backs off but keeps an eye on them. The team that ambushed the Volk come in shortly after, and seem to be more Neo-A’s.

A combat decker named Angoka is giving them the stink eye, but they make friends with the seeming “leader”, Lycus, and get some info about the SIN drive they are running out of this and some other spots (what the Volk were targeting seemingly). They are using old pre-Crash records to get Zone denizens started on their paperwork to get official ID’s. Gamze and Angoka have managed to retrofit some old city govt terminals that they are apparently able to pull data off of. Hotkey thinks this will be good info to pass on to Mrs. Clean/Sierra Corp, but Lycus and the others seem very suspicious of corp involvement. The team heads out and 6C is delighted to see a dwarf woman in home-welded knight armor ride up on a bike armored up to look like horse.

They converse a bit, and she reveals herself to be one Lassie Landsknecht, and offers her services as a chevalier if 6C or other weaklings find themselves in need of saving. 6C leaves a note after she bikes off to try to get in touch with her again, somewhat besotted. They also spot the Neo-A tagger Vonny seemingly commemorating the site of the nearby Volk massacre, using drones to quickly throw a huge piece up, but they leave him be. They head to their next lead, the Vault, where a fixer made the deal to get the soup kitchen Festival Foods for cheap. Arriving, they find a well-defended building surrounded with bollards and guarded by Desolation Angels, housing the fighting bar as well as a medical clinic.

Aylin makes friends with the DA’s, especially a young TM named Tasha who seems fascinated by Aylin’s monowhip, and gets approval from Becky 99, the leader, to get one. After a while Matt Wrath comes out to get Matt Rat some fresh air, and Kinnie and Test converse with him a bit, getting recognition as fellow Jackpointers. MR agrees to introduce them to Sid as a favor to some newcomers, and offers his skills as a guide and fighter if needed. They head in and meet Sid, who’s a bit greasy but seems cannier than he looks. Avocado feeds him a whole line, but he just seems excited about making a connection with a new team and is happy to help. He sets up a meet with Danny Dankwallow, his connection at Festival Foods, and Carol hopes to also use the meet to get intel useful to Ares. They plan to link up a public location near O’Hare, minimizing both parties risk.

At Carol’s suggestion, they do a deep dive into the related Tarot, in order to maximize their negotiating position, and find some info on where Moonberry likely is being held captive, as well as determining some of the answers to Hansu Prophecies 6, 7 and 8. They head to the meet, and carefully negotiate in Courtly rhyme with Dankwallow, to subvert his guards’ surveillance. They discover that he’s working for Hanged Man, and the guards seem to be from AZT. Which is weird, since Festival Foods is a Renraku subsid. Dankwallow offers to put them in touch with his boss in HM, and seems amenable to switching sides as needed if it helps free his wife, which is the only reason he got involved. He confirms that the strange additive to the food was his idea, inspired by the team’s discoveries about Taco Temple at Court, and doen in order to magically track and approach people who are in dire economic or social straits for potential voluntary Pa bargains and servitude at Court.

The team decides to do further research and calling around, and goes for a drive, trying to resolve Prophecy 8. 6C calls up Fargus Sol and he helps them determine that there is likely some kind of 4th World treasure near the Iran/Turkmenistan border, near Aden’s turf. They also sell Prophecy 6 info to Ares, where Candice Phillips seems excited to be dealing with Avocado who she obviously respects more than Carol. They arrange for Ares to rescue Moonberry as well, in exchange for a positive intro at Court, where they currently lack standing. They also sell Prophecy 7 info and Moonberry into (related) to SpinRad via Miranda King, who seems excited to get the info, as she seems like she’s still finding her footing in the corp after jumping off the sinking ship of NeoNET recently.

Sol also gets the Catholics to finally return 6C’s calls, and he arranges with Darren Dolf (who seems likely to be a cutout for the Vigilia Evangelica) to bring their Book of 9 Gates and help with the ritual to free Aylin and 6C. However, there’s a cost: the VE requires that the team retrieve the 3rd Book from the Black Lodge (or whoever stole/bought it from them after they stole it from the Catholics), both for the ritual to work and as pay for them at the end. Dolf agrees that Arleesh will keep her Book, as they trust her to keep it safe, or so they say. 6C starts scheming on how to make this happen.

The team contacts Dankwallow using the burner comm they slipped him at the meet, and set up the deal with Ares. He says he will have his boss pop over to Earth and contact them, and a short while later they get a call from Rooster, who explains that the whole thing is an elaborate smear campaign on behalf of AZT, in revenge for the team’s actions to help Renraku at Court. Rooster agrees to share the smear info with the team’s employers if they wait a week to hype them. They plan to play up the “disappearances” of poor people who ate Festival Foods and hint at the bug cult/Chicago history to put people off of it. Holmes agrees, and Rooster and Holmes both seem delighted that Ares has decided to rescue Moonberry from MCT’s well-defended TRU-13 unit, which will likely be a deadly mission, which they now don’t need to undertake while still receiving the benefits.

The team gets paid out, and agrees to potentially do more jobs for Hanged Man in the future to disrupt Court stagnation. They head to the hotel where Aylin’s mom is staying in order to get the present she has for 6C and Aylin, and she requests they all call her “Patty C” for now. 6C does some real awkward stuff trying to participate in her and Aylin’s fam dynamic and she tries to welcome it. She gives them both potions, and explains that she is a skilled alchemist, though her magical ability has been depleted by her possession. They decide to invite her to the safehouse, where she can work on potions to make a living and also collab with 6C.

They drop HK off at the Bolthole, where he has a lengthy hang with his fam, gets updates on the situation in NYC, and talks about their plans to maybe come to Chicago, Aanka has been getting involved in some “Free CIty” campaigns on the matrix, in St Louis and Seattle specifically, and the community mesh network HK helped set up in their corner of Queens seems to be working well to keep both the Null Sect and the DelaMar sec upgrades at bay, useful for refugees and freedom fighters. HK also hangs with 3D for a bit and gets some deets on a few things: the missing technomancers (suspicious, and seemingly different than previous cases of corp kidnap or hate crimes), and the local phenomena of metaracist combat tourism. HK agrees to help with both, but decides to talk the team into looking into missing persons first, and gets a lead.

The rest of the team rests up at Ahabitat, and at Test’s demand, Patty C starts involving herself in providing some “real world” lessons to Otoko. Kinnie finishes the first major sub repair, and they try to contact Allan Clay, the nervous TM Johnson, but get a dead line. Worried that this may be connected, they head back to town and finally call Red back about his missing persons job as well, figuring they can roll two jobs into one again. Red puts them in touch with an alcoholic Omnistar detective, Nick Ryder, who sets up a meet shortly thereafter at a Zone dive bar.

Runners
Kinnie Zest
Hotkey
Avocado
Test
Aylin
6 Cylinder
Carol Turpentine

The team spends the next day hungover from the bday party and working on fixing up the Hab, now named AHABitat. They name the sub the “Shadowrudder.” Otoko has only been emerging for food occasionally while bingeing all the new sims Test bought her. Kinnie and Hotkey, in charge of repairs, make a list of needed supplies, and the team also makes a list of necessary upgrades and purchases to pick up. Carol, Avocado, and Aylin head to town in the sub to get all that stuff while Test, HK and Kinnie finetune the air recycler and fix the chemical toilets. 6Cyl does alchemy all day to begin stocking up their new Vault of Ages.

In town, the team splits up their purchases to not give any one supplier too much info about what they’re up to. Goober gets them sub upgrades and a water safe comms drone (also stealthed). They get enviro tech and filters from Sierra Corp to stay on the Sea Dragon’s good side by not polluting, and get all the other fittings and equipment needed from Ares. They then head into town further to meet with Red, and get some local vamp tips. Aylin makes fast friends with the ethical vamp, and gets good local info. He seems down to trade more info and favors for hooder runs.

They then head to Camp Lincoln, to try to rendezvous with the Fleshmongers, who purchase trapped bodies there to sell to local infected or part out. They successfully find them and make an ammo trade deal to get Aylin fed, and Aylin gets a dead drop to call for future needs. She feels bad about the scenario though and hopes to seek out more ethical feeding. The team then heads back to the sub and the hab, with their delivered purchases in tow.

The next day, the team gets the comms drone working and receives some messages. GC is trying to get ahold of Test, and Aylin’s mom has come to town, a surprisingly fast return from intense trauma therapy. The team contacts Mrs. Clean to get a rough idea of the payout on all her jobs, and chooses one to follow through on first. Avocado buys a car with a cowcatcher from Goober, and they head to the O’Hare Sprawl and meet a Johnson, who turns out to be ex-NN, in a poser/Zone tourist bar. Test makes a friend of one of the hostesses by mocking it all.

They agree to a price, but are a little uncomfortable that it involves handing over a shadowcaster named Opti, along with some data he apparently stole. With some background research, they figure out that their Johnson has lost some sort of “special project” that he salvaged from collapsing NN and was planning to use as a means to another job. He seems a bit down on his luck and desperate, but the pay is good. Test pays the hostess for any tips on odd happenings she spots.

They then get into a brief scuffle with 2 poser gangs in the parking lot, but easily scare them off. They then head towards the airport, and Aylin and 6Cyl meet with her mom while the rest meet with a young drake and a hugely charismatic woman named Mako. Aylin’s mom tells them she met these entities on Celephais, and helped Mako raise the drake along with 7 others from infancy- weirdly, again, for the relative time passed. This confirms that Celephais has some weird time shit, similar to the Seelie Court. Also strangely, Aylin’s mom only appears slightly older than Aylin remembers her from when she disappeared- only her eyes show all that she’s been through since then.

Aylin reveals that she is a vampire, and her mom tells her it was a vamp who gave her the Blood Box all those years ago. They bond and reconnect a bit, touchingly, and make plans to continue. Aylin tries to give her way too much money, and 6C very awkwardly declares himself part of the family too. They then head down and Aylin’s mom meet the team and they all chat a bit. Meanwhile, the team has met with the drake and Mako, who are here on behalf of the Sea Dragon to cement the agreement made with the merrow.

The team sends them to Carol, who lacks a good SIN other than his real one, and stayed with the sub. They get there surprisingly quickly, and he frantically gets some tips on piloting from Goober. They head down and he makes the intro to Otoko, who takes them down to meet Big Meat and Ryujin. Carol heads back to the surface and plans to meet with the team at Club Clusterfunk, their first lead on where to look for Opti. They all link up, and Carol borrows some money from his brother to get Seirra Corp to upgrade his SIN. Spending a while surveilling the bar they can’t find any obvious leads, so Avocado tries to casually ask one of the servers, who pleads ignorance. Kinnie heads back to the docks to work on the sub some more.

However, the mention of Opti attracts some attention from a bar patron, the shadowcaster Static, who seems to be a rival. She gets some money from them for an address for Opti, and they head out. Strangely, the square block around Opti’s hideout is one of the nicest parts of the CZ that they’ve seen, especially impressive given that it’s in the Noose. The team is starting to feel a little more iffy about handing this runner over to a corp Johnson given that he seems to be doing some good hooding work. For now, they continue, with Carol’s suggestion to contact him voted down. Half the team stays in the car to keep it running and do matrix support with Aylin floating up to the 3rd floor in mist form. The rest of the team uses spirit concealment to sneak through a thai restaurant to a shared courtyard with a door leading up to Opti’s.

HK luckily spots a secondary security measure, and him and Test bypass with some sprite assistance, opening the door. 6C notices astral markings in the narrow stairwell, but verifies it is a powerful astral ward, so he doesn’t think he can bypass it without alerting the caster anyway so they just walk in. They find a collection of shadowcasting gear, various bits of tech, and a lot of collectible ephermera, including a lot of Crow/Raven themed gear and a signed Jonny Silver guitar. Test gets an urgent message from GC and is told to make sure he grabs the beeping device inside and make sure it broadcasts. He tells them team but does so- it contains a fragment of the code string the Johnson gave them to recognize his program. It also pings 3 other map locations when activated- it looks like Opti disabled the antennae on the comm but Test bypasses that with his touchlink ability,

They are starting to poke around a bit more when 6C spots a spirit watching them in astral and the room starts slowly filling with acid fog, doing some armor damage to everyone. A 3-minute countdown also begins. Test stays til the last second, getting some info off the terminal before diving out the window, ko-ing in the impact. The room explodes behind him, but seems intended only to destroy the insides and barely damages the rest of the building. This plus the countdown implies this was more a security measure than a trap, as Opti seems to have not wanted to kill anyone. GC messages again when Test wakes up to tell him to track down the other 3 locations, and tells Test doing so won’t violate their team norms.

Test and HK then receive a call from an unknown number, offering info on Opti- they agree to meet and head to Jindrich’s, a small fancy bar near O’Hare. They meet a woman named Vox, who is on a list of allies/peers they pulled from Opti’s terminal. She asks them to go a quick task in exchange for the info and they agree. They head for a literal hole in the Wall bar called the Civil Libation Tea Room and Avocado distracts the chatty proprietor while Carol and 6C steal a datachip out of the safe, with Aylin and HK providing remote support. They return to Jindrich’s and hand it over. Strangely, one of the 3 map pins shows as being there as well. Vox accepts the info, seems to receive a message, and then looking slightly confused, hands the team her burner comm and tells them “this is what they need.” Having scanned the datachip, they know it’s a list of Seattle high society B and C-listers, and she offers to reconnect if they find themselves in that city.

Taking the burner comm to the car, Test connects both at GC’s instruction, and the code seems to copy it’s opposite instance to both. They now seem to have half of the code string. Following another map pin, they head to the Chicago Market area as the pin finally stops moving around. They find a huge music festival occurring and all buy tickets, it is a benefit for a “Save our Ghoul Youth” foundation, and seems to have some corp support from Evo and Horizon. There are some classic rockers playing, as well as a local opener and mid-tier shadowband member, Vendetta Violent, doing a solo set. She seems to be the target. Aylin and Avo buy VIP passes to get backstage, and Avo poses as a pusher while Aylin mists to bypass security to get into the musicians’ green room.

VV and another man inside, Monday Trip, ID him as a runner right away, though they don’t initially spot misty Aylin. They have a slightly tense negotiation of figuring out what he wants but seem basically chill, and agree to sell him the partitioned data package off Trip’s comm that has been giving them trouble. However, before the transfer can go through, the racist/metaracist Volk gang kidnaps a bus full of ghoul children, and VV and Trip tell Avo to get his team and save the bus, and they’ll give him the data for free plus a bonus. Aylin manifests and they seem a bit surprised, but all agree to the deal, and the team starts after the bus, which is speeding off trying to run over anyone it can as the children scream and try to escape from inside. Aylin hangs back to keep an eye on the payday.

They chase down the bus, with Kinnie joining just in time to pull the car around. Avocado uses commanding voice to get the rest of the team into the backstage area and 6C summons a spirit to boost his speed on foot. Hotkey and Test manage to tagteam a hack and dump the Volk hacker out of the bus system, while Kinnie pulls the car up next to the bus and Carol uses a grapple to jump up on top. 6C catches up to the Volk car on foot and blasts one of them who was trying to get a rocket launcher set up, and then mana balls the car, finishing off the dumpshocked decker and 2 others.

The remaining passenger shoots 6C but he dodges, Then, the driver clips him with the car, sending him flying into a building, killing him. His CrashCart bracelet activates, and the team sees an ambulance racing in from the concert (where Evo had a major presence). They finish off one more of the Volk and then focus on slowing the bus down as the Volk car speeds off. Unfortunately, Kinnie crashes the car, not being a great driver, and almost totals it. The limp back to the concert area, with Carol heroically riding atop the bus after poking his head in to calm the children, and deciding not to climb down in and risk a bite.

Test gets a hashtag started to boost the team’s local rep, and they get the data for free from VV. Aylin is also told she can get food for life (at a reasonable rate) from Long Pig Farm in thanks. The team sees the data combine with the previous packets once again when Test links them, and head to Goober’s to swap cars while theirs is repaired. They then head for the final geotag, also in the Zone. They find a fortified warehouse with a mishmash of senors and drones protecting it. Using some excellent surveillance, spirit support, recon, and hacking they manage to infiltrate the facility with no alerts and find the onsite decker Numitor (from Opti’s enemy list) engaged in a matrix fight with some sort of digital entity.

They make their way through a few floors of traps fighting over a dozen drones who are creepily all dressed up like local runners, fixers, and Johnsons, some of whom the team recognizes. It looks like Numitors uses them for target practice, and they do some research and find he in a former Otaku who faded instead of emerging, and has become spiteful and hateful. They find his hardened safe room, and manage to blow their way in, with Carol and 6C teaming up to just barely prevent him from detonating a suicide vest before they can grab the cyberdeck they seek.

It has the antenna disabled, once again, and they jam it while Test links it up with the other fragments. They all copy to the deck, and the team finally seems to have the full file Mr. Johnson wanted. Now they just need to find Opti…. They leave the area and receive a message from Opti telling them to meet them where they first got the job so he can talk to them and their Johnson and sort things out. They don’t have a way to respond so they call the Johnson and head that way. Montgomery is nervous when they arrive and frustrated that they won’t give him the data right away. They eventually assure themselves there isn’t an obvious trap, and also no sign of Opti, so they pass him the data.

He jacks into the deck and seems relieved to find it all there, just before the bar’s auto turrets deploy and blow him to pieces. A voice over the PA announces that it is the now recompiled AI known as “Skeleton Key”, a sort of protosapient matrix B&E expert program. Opti comes out from the back and seems just as surprised as the team that his “tech guy” was in fact an AI, who just murdered the Johnson (with cause, but still). Just as Opti is negotiating to pay out the team and go about their separate ways, a heavy duty corp strike team rolls in and fans out into the bar. The turrets retarget and there’s a brief pause while the corp team tries to convince the team to come over to their side for pay.

In the parking lot, 6Cyl sees another runner team sneak up on the corp troops and get them in a crossfire. They tell the corp troops to stand down and everyone can walk away, but then the turrets kick in. A brief gunfight ensues but the corp troops quickly retreat, outflanked and overpowered. The second team explains they came to back up Opti, and the team finishes negotiating, gets paid, and gets a local rep boost and a promise of a shoutout on Opti’s next ’cast. They try to track the corp teams to figure out who they were working for but lose signal on the tracer 6C placed while heading out of town to the North.

Meanwhile, Carol has passed out in the trunk from too much stim, and the Tan Robes pay him another visit in his dream state. This time they read his mind, find out what happened in Fauth-Doshgoi, and tell him that when the team goes to space, they will kill a man named Fentin Walls, and agent of GOD, in order to square themselves with the TR. Otherwise, trouble and pain. Carol is annoyed, but so injured he is unable to effectively resist.