The Collectors: Give Me A Man After Midnight

The Collectors: Give Me A Man After Midnight
Date 2081-03-07 GM Ghostlin Location Bellevue, Seattle
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Ikari Kara Moth Mush Rambozo Sparrow	Horizon

Summary

The Gang steals an ABBA CD from some Horizon talent scouts.

Background

The Collectors have been contracted to steal an ABBA CD currently held by Luke and Lina Loquacious, a pair of Horizon talent scouts.

The Meet

Relatively uneventful meet at a Bellevue Hard Rock Café. The team are briefed on their target - a pair of Horizon talent scouts working out of a single-story talent agency in Bellevue. Moth negotiates up the pay.

The Legworkp

The team starts legwork immediately with Kara doing some astral scouting of the building. It has absolutely zero magical overwatch of any kind. Sparrow then dives the host, getting the team sans Kara an audition with the talent scouts in four days. The team also manages to learn that the CD is being kept in Lina Locquacious' office, and commision a forget for a dummy replica. The team spends the days practicing their dance routine under Moth's leadership, and binding sprites and spirits in preparation of the big day.

The Run

The team pose as a variety act. Ikari casts improved invisibility on Kara in the bathroom, and then goes back to the auditon. The audition goes quite well, and Rambozo is invted to Lina's office and Kara takes the opportunity to invisibly sneak into the office. Rambozo distracts Lina by gushing over a guitar in the room, and Kara swaps the framed CD with the dummy, but Sparrow gets up to trouble in the host bricking cameras, and security is alerted as the team is exfiltrating. On their way out, Mush and Rambozo trip. Team makes loud escape where Mush blocks off the door with a Physical Barrier. Ikari then driveby murders a bunch of corpsec. Kara carves her signature on an exterior wall of the building.

Aftermath

The team is to put it mildly quite upset with Ikari for gratuitous murder at the end of an otherwise relatively elegant op, but the J pays out fine as soon as they have their item.

Rewards

12000 nuyen

5 karma

2 CDP

a recording of Abba's Greatest Hits and Mamma Mia! The Musical (no value)

Game Quotes

"Great, you've made me learn." -OB, sulkily

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Mush: Fucking Ikari, that murderous bastard! Made a shit-show out of an otherwise clean run. Another buncha needless, 'runner hating orphans, siblings and parents in the sprawl tonight because of that fuck! And to think my shoulder's slumped when I walked into the meet and saw the clown! Needn't have worried about him though. Ramboozle was a consummate professional. Kept to his word about keeping the run quiet. Moth could persuade the stars to wink out of the sky for a night if she wanted too and damn, those moves! Sparrow worked the matrix well. Might have gotten a little bit carried away by bricking the camera's before we were completely clear, but we all know how difficult it is to co-ordinate meat and matrix, right? Kara swapped the goods from under Loquacious' nose without a hitch. Even that shit-head Ikari was holding up his end of things. GODDAMMIT! There was a fucking -barrier- between us and all the exits. The fucking wage-slaves could. Not. Get. Through. Sheer fucking waste, chummers. Sheer fucking waste.

Moth: Moth here!  My third run! 

And it was about music and dancing! 

We had a good group:  I was there, ready to ‘Face’ the world.  We had Ramby, a friend and strong combatant.  Sparrow, a medic and technomancer.  Mush, a manipulation mage.  Kara, a combatant with mage and face skills. And Ikari, another mage.

A lot of folks new to the scene, like me. And I knew three of them before we started.  That feels good.  Like I’m putting down some roots here.

But, anyway, the job was to get an artifact from the prior age.  A ‘CD’ of music from a band named Abba.  A CD is like this wild looking metal circle that somehow was necessary just to store music files.

We knew it was in the Horizon building, in one of the offices.  Likely related to two twin talent scouts, Luke and Leina.

The johnson had quite a disguise.  I can’t even say if they were a man or woman. But they clearly wanted the CD, so I talked them into a better payment!  (Yay!)  20,000 each.

Here follows a lot of legwork.  This was a good team.  Focused on planning.  Gathering info.  We had a week, so we took advantage.

Everyone came back to my house.  My new house in Bellevue!  They got to enjoy the space and I made them home-made meals to keep everyone at their best.

Now, Sparrow was doing some deep technomancing and things got a little dodgy, so we raced them to the car and drove around in circles so my house didn’t get tagged.  But they were okay.

At this point, we knew the CD was in Leina’s office.  We knew the twins were hipsters.  Vain. Easy to flatter.  Very interested in eclectic acts.  Sparrow got us an appointment on their calendar several days out, for a carnival-inspired act.

I worked out choreography for a dance routine that mostly showed off my skill.  We split the group into performers, and the two who were going to be in roadie/manager plain clothes roles and slip off to the bathroom, turn one ‘invisible’ and sneak into the office and grab the CD while we distracted with the performance.

I made costumes for the performers.  It turns out Ramby’s clown make-up is novacoke. So, I lost about a day in there recovering from that but yum.

We knew the CD was in a frame on the wall. I had the idea to do a swap. Ikari had a contact who was able to make a really passable fake, frame and all!

I gave Kara 1000 nuyen to get a concealable holster for their weapon since we were doing it real soft and subtle. 

We bought the most hipster coffee to make a solid first impression and we were off to make our appointment.

Now, when we got there, we saw it was a big open office design, with the two twin’s offices in the center surround by a whole bunch of wage slaves in cubicles.  So breaking into the offices without being noticed was going to be tough.

The way it played out was that me and Ramby danced our hearts out!  (I was pretty impressed.  Who knew Ramby had it in him?)

Mush was watching like a hawk and realized the wage saves were all security guards, just watching those offices.  Oh no!

But we’d committed to soft and subtle, and that was sure the right call! 

They pulled off the invisibility just fine, and Kara set out to do the swap. 

Luke wanted to take me to his office alone to sign.  (Big surprise there.  But I knew I could keep him 100% distracted while they pulled it off.  And I did.  I was really tempted to sign for real.)

Leina wanted to take Ramby back to her office, and me and Ikari worked together to convince her that Ikari could come too. Keep an eye on the talent.  And she put a chair for them outside her office and left the door open, which was just what Kara needed to sneak in.

Ramby needed to keep her eye away from that framed CD.  He proved to be an absolute genius at musical artifacts, recognized this fancy guitar she had, and chatted her up like crazy.

Now, meanwhile, Sparrow was down in the car, doing technomancer stuff.  Helping loop the cameras so there would be no evidence of what we did, if they found out. Unfortunately, they tripped some alarm.

But, the job was almost done.  Each second, folks were getting it done, and then we just had to bolt.

We almost all got out totally clean before the guards alerted up.

But Ramby tripped and he and Kara and Ikari were still inside when the guards went into action.  They just had to race for the door.  Ramby ran out and joined the rest of us.  Kara put up a barricade blocking the door.  They were out.  Clean.

And then.  Ikari just started killing guards.  Magic.  Through the transparent barricade that the guards could not get through or shoot through.

Sparrow could see what was happening with her technomagic and tried to protect the guards, but it wasn’t enough.

There was a lot of yelling about that as we drove back to the meet and got paid.

Still, everyone else was amazing and I’d run with them again in a heart beat.

And we got a recording of Abba’s greatest hits as part of our payment!  And it is SO GOOD to dance to.  This is my new obsession.

Everyone got to hear it at the after party at my house.