Talent Scout

Talent Scout
Date 2082-07-29 GM DiscoGoblin Location Tacoma Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Henri "Squid" Thiago M1nn0w	Technica Security Solutions
Potato Argus Cold Hands Sanjuro	OpFor Decker OpFor Rigger OpFor Sam
Casualties and losses
	No deaths, but heavy injuries for all

Summary

A small scale jewelry heist on an armored truck in Tacoma, performed to film an illegal BTL on behalf of the club owner/chip dealer Henri "Squid" Thiago. The team blew the axel out from under the truck as it traveled through a low security zone, swiftly dispatching the opposition and making a getaway with the loot. The Johnson was incredibly pleased with the action movie-style performance, and put the runners in his books as having the dramatic flair he's been looking for.

Background

The BTL market is intensely competitive; a non-stop arms race to film bigger and better experiences to keep up with the dulling of chipheads' brains. Henri Thiago, a BTL kingpin and owner of the downtown club Statik, was looking for new actors and decided to put some feelers out in Seattle's runner community. After all, who better to film an action movie than the people who live it? He contacted the team with a simple robbery job to test if they had the spark that he was looking for.

The Meet

The team met at the entrance to Statik, all sticking out from the crowd in their various ways. Sanjuro was wearing her kimono, Argus had his seeing-eye bandit on his shoulder, Potato was half-drunk and covered in dried paint, and Cold Hands was carrying a sword. After talking their way past the bouncer (mostly by Sanjuro being polite), they reluctantly gave up their weapons and went to meet the J. Thiago was lounging in the VIP section, a lanky man with long purple dreads that sprawled across the couch like tentacles. Beside him sat M1nn0w, a mousy looking decker with a rather stylish glasses chain. Thiago bought the team drinks and outlined the parameters of the job.

The objective was that of a simple heist. The team were to intercept an armored truck going through Tacoma en route from Fort Lewis to Bellevue. After disabling it they would steal the boxes of corpo-kid jewelry stashed inside and make their getaway. The only catch was that it all had to be filmed; the team would be hooked up with simrigs and have their experiences recorded to create a BTL. Every precaution would be taken to ensure their safety, of course. The footage would be scrubbed of identifiers by M1nn0w, and the runners would have ample opportunity to review the footage before it was released. Pay was set at 16k nuyen, with the opportunity for future collaboration if the footage was up to snuff. After negotiating for some gear rewards, the runners agreed and went on their way.

The Plan

The armored truck would be moving through Tacoma in approximately three days. Some matrix searching by Argus revelaed that it belonged to an Ares subsidiary known as Technica Security Solutions. The vehicle was some variant of the Ares Roadmaster, but exact details couldn't be procured without a host dive. The team decided against it, as they figured that whatever the truck was Potato's bombs would probably have enough punch to stop it. As Potato set about actually making these bombs, Sanjuro and Cold Hands scouted the route for ambush points. Upon finding a good spot, the team decided to blow the axel out from under the truck and do a smash and grab.

The Run

The morning of the runners met with the J in a nearby warehouse, where they were fitted with their simrigs. After suiting up in FBA (or just a mask in Argus's case), they moved to their respective positions at the ambush point. When the truck arrived, Cold Hands and Sanjuro charged it on their bikes while Argus began his matrix assault. Cold Hands put a few bullets into the tires (run-flats, sadly) and Sanjuro leapt onto the roof, attempting to duel the truck's onboard turret. On the 'trix, a heavy data-spike from the TSS decker was met with a devastating counter by Argus, nearly booting the decker off the matrix entirely. Sanjuro sliced the gun turret in half, shrugging off armor piercing ammo as the thing tried to keep her away. Cold Hands swung in front of the truck, and the sheer audacity of a motorbike cutting off a Roadmaster caused the driver to veer to the left. Right over Potato's mine.

For a moment Sanjuro felt weightless, as the force of the bomb pushed the truck up on its suspension. Then it hit the ground again. The axel snapped in two and the truck veered to the side, tossing Sanjuro off onto the pavement. She hit the ground hard as the vehicle flipped, sliding behind her in a shower of sparks. Potato was pumping it full of LMG rounds before it even came to a stop. On the matrix, Argus spared the now-unconscious decker a potentially fatal final blow. Cold Hands jumped up onto the side, and after a quick exchange with the enemy streetsam forced him to surrender. Sanjuro, heavily injured, sliced open the back door and began grabbing boxes of loot. The team hopped in their cars and made a quick getaway, with Argus foiling the response of a KE patrol car.

Aftermath

Having made a clean getaway, the team traveled to a Puyallup warehouse to meet with their J. Upon arrival Thiago exclaimed that their footage was nova, exactly the kind of thing that he'd been looking for. He offered them some Push as they scrubbed the footage, with M1nn0w being especially careful to remove the resonancy bits from Argus's view. Thiago wired the team their money, and gave them his commlink in case they were interested in future work. Payment received, the team headed out to celebrate a run well done.

Rewards

-16k nuyen (32k in ware, drugs, or luxury goods)

-3 karma

-Optional contact: Henri "Squid" Thiago at 4/3

Game Quotes

Potato: "I'm still down for domestic terrorism"

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Cold Hands

"This job went against my instincts as a runner, which was to keep a low profile and avoid the public eye. I rarely get the chance to mix showmanship with work, and I have to admit I enjoyed toying with the Roadmaster's driver a little too much. In retrospect, I took a few risks I probably wouldn't have taken with a more level-headed mindset."

"The pay was good, but being involved in the production of BLTs is more or less the same as being involved in a drug cartel. While I'll take the Squid's nuyen, I'm not going to go out of the way to work for him again."

Sanjuro

“This was fun! I broke like ALL of my bones getting thrown off of an exploding car moving very fast but I had my pain editor on so it was fine! And they got my bones upgraded with cool metal stuff! Everyone did a super good job too! Potato kind of exploded me a little bit but she’s cool so it’s cool!”