Mostly Armless

Mostly Armless
Date 2085-02-18 GM jit Location Seattle, Redmond (Touristville) Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Cutters	Independent
Gehenna Lichtenberg	"Beating" Chester Abernathy Tommy Gilligan Charlie Simmons
Casualties and losses
N/A	Tommy Gilligan, Charlie Simmons

Summary

When people say they'll pay you in exposure, they don't usually mean exposing their spinal column.

Background

"Beating" Chester Abernathy is a former Urban Brawl-star with a devastating past. His wife, ten years ago, left him and took their seven-year-old daughter with her. She gave him the ultimatum - the game, or your family, and he, in his arrogance, believed he could choose both. Afterwards, he instantly quit and begged for her return, though could not reunite with his family. Crushed, he turned to Better Than Life chips to fill the void in his life, and quickly spiralled into the life of a chiphead addict.

Several weeks ago, that all changed. His daughter, nearly the age of majority, has gotten in touch. She wants to reunite with her father - and filled with the warmth of this revelation, he seeks to quit. He calls friends who have countless times tried to get him clean, and tells them this time he means it. He will change his life, travel to New York, and reunite with the most important person in his world.

That said, he happens to owe a lot of money to a lot of bad people. Lichtenberg just so happens to work for "bad people." He also just so happens to be a pretty bad person himself - so bad, in fact, that after Chester Abernathy and his crew of Urban Brawl-stars rough up the enforcers the Cutters had sent to collect on his 15,000 nuyen debt, his fixer and surrogate father figure, Pappy, decides he might be the perfect person to collect on a washed up, augged up, deadbeat chiphead who thinks he's too good to make good on his debts. That said, the razorboy needs to be balanced to be wielded effectively. A drop of yin to counter his yang.

Gehenna, fresh off her debut in the shadows, is contacted by her fixer as well. Whispers are lingering in the shadows regarding her work on Shakedown Breakdown, and those whispers are... flattering? Well, they say that she works for cheap, anyway, and does decent work for it besides. Good enough for the Cutters - they're trying to recoup losses after all. Silas sends her to the Lazy Samurai, a bar deep in Touristville and a notorious Cutters hang out at that, and tells her to continue curating her reputation in the shadows, if her current status as a bargain item isn't too her liking.

The Meet

While Pappy and Lickitung shoot the shit over a game of cards, Gehenna arrives, obviously out of place. Pappy waves her over and gestures toward a seat. He asks if she's the one that magenapped a guy right under the Crimson Crush's nose, and she reluctantly affirms, much to his relief. He knows she works for cheap, he explains, and she's a good enough talker for what he has in mind. He explains the situation - that a derelict chiphead with more chrome than brains needs to pay up - and also explains that the muscle he'd sent previously wasn't able to cut it, gesturing toward a small crew of Cutters nursing wounds and griping in the corner of the bar. Librarian is their solution, but even this brief conversation reveals that the man is a sociopath at best as he jokingly asks if they're afraid to get a little blood on them.

"People are assets, Axl," Pappy sighs as he explains, as if he's explained this a thousand times before. "And you can't just go destroy assets because you think it's fun. That's not how to run a business, kid." Licorice smiles and shrugs.

He offers 4,000 base pay to Gehenna, up front, for her help in the matter, and tells Liechtenstein he can tack an extra four-thousand onto this guy's already substantial debt for the extra trouble. Gehenna swallows her seething frustration and agrees - on the condition that she can grab a funny little BTL from behind the counter before they go.

The Plan

The two of them thank Pappy for his time and move to interrogate the gangers nursing their wounds in the corner of the bar - gangers who, although they were excitedly talking shit amongst themselves just a moment before, become nervously quiet as Lamborghini approaches. He tells them to relaaaaaaaxxxxxx, we're all friends here, right?

The more personable and focused of the two asks them tactfully for any information they can offer - they have the guy's address and some brief video footage. Their man apparently has a couple of bodyguards who insist he's done with them for good, chromed up and ready to brawl. They even make good on it, too - they rough up the gangers, swing chrome fists and break teeth, and the four of them scatter.

Information secure, they drive to the address on Lo-fi Hip Hop Beats to Study and Relax To's bike, the razorboy jamming to his tunes all the way. On arrival, Gehenna knocks on the door - only to be met with utter silence. She knocks again, listens closely at the door, and can hear only the muffled sound of a scripted conversation playing off a trid projector.

Lesbian breaks down the door and confirms the obvious - they've hightailed it out of there since that first attempted shakedown. The whole place is trashed - burnt out chips litter the floor, drying blood stains the door, and not a soul has stayed behind.

The two of them trade verbal jabs with one another, and it culminates in a bet - there's gotta be evidence here of where they went, right? Fifty nooj says Lofwyr is the one to find it. Gehenna, in an act of pride, accepts.

She finds, in the kitchen, a still-warm pot of prepackaged soup, and the cabinets splayed open and stripped of nonperishables. Nothing obvious is here.

Limerick, however, has more luck - in the bedroom, clothes are thrown haphazardly across the floor, as though packed in a frenzy. He finds a series of trophies along a shelf, matted in dust - all save for a blank space toward the end. A clean square sits where a trophy might have been, suggesting it was packed and taken very recently.

More digging reveals the coup de grace - a budget motel's keycard, branded with the logo of a national chain, and the address of a place local to Touristville. They're not so lucky that it also has a room number written on it, but it must have been dropped in quite a hurry to have been forgotten as is. Gehenna does call and craft a quickly constructed lie about being a family member to try to squeeze it out of reception, but they hold firm in their secrecy. No big deal. They've got what they need.

Target secure, they saddle up and track their prey.

The Run

They arrive at a seedy motel, the kind of budget place that day trippers to the Redmond Barrens would pick after losing all their money at the gambling dens and going home to nicer parts of the city in the morning. The woman at the front desk, present purely to offer a human touch and a trace of accountability in an otherwise automated system, glances up and pales upon seeing a nearly-nude razorboy waltzing in with a whistle on his lips.

Gehenna once again offers her lie, even more thinly veiled this time. She is a family member, she insists. She would like to see her family. Which room would that be? Light Bulb waggles his eyebrows behind her. The teller, easily swayed in the presence of honest to God shadowrunners, gives her the room number. Little House on the Prairie follows up as well - he tells her that bad things happen to people all the time. Even to their families! Even to her! Wild! Kind of weird, how it's all up to pure chance! Bad things also tend to happen when Knight Errant is called too - just one of those weird statistical quirks, ne? Scientists should study that.

She gets the picture, nods frantically, and goes on break. The two walk unimpeded across the hall to the room number she indicated.

Gehenna knocks. Someone answers - not the guy, but one of the people the two of them saw in the video. He asks what she wants, and she indicates that she's here on behalf of the very bad people Chester Abernathy owes money to. He tells her gruffly that, like he told the other guys, Chester's done with them for good. Nothing more. A clean break. Gehenna nods - oh, of course! No, no, they got the picture the last time. She's here to discuss alternate payment plans, and maybe conduct a sort of parting survey, so that everyone can come to an agreement that they like. Look, she's even got a peace offering - a specialized BTL meant to completely negate withdrawal symptoms. He's gotta be suffering from the shakes after a few weeks sober, right? She's really persuasive too - after a few lines of dialogue, he accepts the chip and shuts the door, then, after a few moments, actually steps outside to speak with her directly, even if he tries to shut the door behind him.

Tries, of course.

Limousine takes his leg off cleanly at the knee, before he even has a moment to process or breathe, and slips his chromed up foot into the crack of the door. Hey bud, there's no "knee"'d to shut us off! The man screams and collapses, and immediately he calls them asshole traitors, screams even more loudly for someone to call the cops. Not a problem for Lithuania, who marches straight into the room with a smile and a whistle. His other companion, a husky, friendly looking human, charges to meet him and locks Ligament in a clinch. Their friend cowers on the bed - the BTL Gehenna had offered was not a chip to help with withdrawal, of course, but a personafix for a scared schoolgirl.

While an urban brawl-star cowers on the mattress, Liminal Space casually decapitates the man defending him, followed by a quick stroll outside to retrieve the other guy still screaming and crawling toward reception. Hup! Over his shoulder, and back into the room. Gehenna locks the door behind him.

Liposuction pins Chester's leg to the mattress with his sword and rips out his beetle. They plead with the two of them - he doesn't even have the money. He's going to fly out of Seattle, finally, forever, to see his daughter. If they have an ounce of metahumanity left in them, they will spare him and claim to not have been able to track him dow- Yeah, no, Lichtenberg just fucking decapitates him too. His whistles while chopping them up - that's perfectly good ware, baby! It'd be a waste not to take it. He takes the man's duffel, pours it out onto his bed, and finds something interesting. A Girls' Under Ten Little League Trophy, cheap plastic and fake marble, dated for just a little over a decade ago. Precious. Sweet, even.

Chester begs him not to take it. In that case, Gehenna asks him to reconsider - and he says they weren't lying. He doesn't have the money.

"Call your daughter," Lichen suggests with a grin. "Or, if you like, I can?"

He says they're sick - but does as he's asked, and after a frantic back and forth, she's able to wire him the difference. Laser Tag swipes the trophy regardless, and Chester begs him. He's taken enough, hasn't he? Anything but the trophy.

Liverpool's got his good moods too! He can show a little mercy.

With a flick of the vibrosword, he cuts off her ponytail, and lets him keep the rest.

Hup! Arms and legs into the duffel. Knight Errant is probably on the way, despite warnings, and Gehenna wants to get out before they get here.

Aftermath

Back at the Lazy Samurai, Pappy is exhausted, his face in his hands. "Axl," he says, "what the fuck have I been telling you about needlessly killing people?"

Limestone shrugs. They got the money and the ware, ne? All's well that ends well!

Somewhere distant, Knight Errant cordons off a horrific crime scene that will absolutely make the morning news. Two Urban Brawl-Stars Dead in Drug Deal Gone Wrong.

Game Quotes

"Better he looks at the glass than the vampire's thick ass."- L' "The Hog" Hog

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Lichtenberg: I don't get this drek. Old man is like 'go here, scare this guy into paying' and then he gets mad when a few people die to get there. Washed up old urban brawl man is still kicking around, I ain't that stupid. But noooo! It's all 'people are assets, Axl' and 'torturing potential customers just makes them turn somewhere else'. I'm sick of it.

Had a hell of a lot of fun slicing up those orks, though. Hah hah! Makes the lecture worth it.