Waiting to be Known
| Waiting to be Known | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Hao Lin | Yellow Lotus Triad | ||||||||
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Lingchi Sojourner | Shen Sheng | ||||||||
Summary
Lingchi makes good on her promise to her cousin Hao Lin to free him of his binding tattoos that kept him chained to the Triads.
As a result, her home is burned and she is now wanted by the Yellow Lotus Triad.
Background
During the events of The Full Moon Makes the Flowers Bloom Lingchi met her cousin Hao Lin - who referred to her as Jingyi. After working through her outrage, she rescued him from a car crash (which she caused) and patched him up. A promise was made to help him break the bonds he's been placed in.
The Meet
A cold call is made, and when Lingchi picks up it's who she expects - Hao calling, asking that she hold up her promise. He explains that he's being watched by the beast spirit which Sojourner and Lingchi fought two months ago, with close tabs being kept on his location after the death of the vampire he'd been meeting with.
Stakes established, the mage starts to plan.
The Plan
Lingchi mulls things over for a few seconds, then comes up with the best plan she can:
Have Hao go to a shop with a decent ward, then let Sojourner gank the spirit on the astral as he crosses the threshold to safety. She and Hao can exit from the back.
From there, she'll take him to her home where she has a lodge to work at breaking his bindings.
The Run
Yue arrives at a shopped named Trix & Treats, striking up a conversation with one of its two proprieters. After briefly getting tips on what types of hardware she should get for her future attempts at learning decking, she hears Hao enter and asks a straightforward question. "Do you have a back exit?" When the man stammers, she offers 1000 nuyen to him, which he takes before letting her exit through the back. On the way out, she lays a pair of invisibility spells on herself and Hao, asks Sojourner to conceal them, and they make for her car.
With Sojourner following along from above, the pair head north from Loveland for the Fife neighborhood of Tacoma. En route, Sojourner notices that a drone is following the car. And while she initially suggests destroying it (to a protest of "That will just make them send another"), she ends up taking a detour east - driving under the approach into the McCord Air Force Base. Forcing the drone to back off by that method, she buys a little time - then a little more by turning her devices wireless off when she checks for marks on them.
A drive to her home follows.
After spending some time studying the bindings, Yue lays out a spell circle on the floor, creating a ritual to suppress the effects of the group bond in preparation for breaking it down. Hao is ordered to lie on a cot and wait. Sojourner's bedside mannerism is better than the mage's, so the spirit chatters while she works at the last of the lines. After empowering it, she takes a tattoo gun, a laser removal tool, and starts to work changing the symbology of his tattoos to break the symbolic link to their effects and free him without triggering the penalty effects of the group bond.
She's nearly finished when the door to the apartment opens. Sojourner hears it - alerts Lingchi, then goes to delay him.
Lightning arcs through the room, grounding on the stove, the trid player, and mostly missing the Triad assassin who has come to take back Hao. After taking a strike from the man's cyber spurs, Sojourner draws back and hits him with Confusion - whereupon he starts swinging wildly, tearing the room to shreds as Lingchi tries to finish her work. With a flash, she finishes off the bindings - leaving Hao free and clear, in pain but alive and okay.
Then she rounds the corner and nails the assassin with a powerbolt, putting him down.
After asking Sojourner to collect what is worthwhile, the mage tends to the fallen assassin's wounds - saving Sheng Shen's life before she flees into the night.