It's The Principle Of The Matter

It's The Principle Of The Matter
Date 2079-02-10 GM AdventureMoose Location Downtown, Everett, Renton, and Tacoma Seattle Result Valuable data that could eventually be used to birth new A.I. was stolen and flushed down into the Seattle sewers. Renraku recovered Riley Martinez.
Factions Involved
Renraku, Riley Martinez, Quxing	Ares, John, The Hurricane, and Y3
Commanders and leaders
None	Kyle Bradmine
Casualties and losses
None	None

Background

Riley went rogue during development of a "birth" of new A.I. about two months prior to the run. Riley was saw this as a nursey that she was making and started to feel very possessive of her future children. She already had a history of paranoia and the increased interest in her and her work, with people following her home and watching outside of her room, made her panic and she ditched, taking all of the code from the project with her. Renraku very much wanted it back so they started putting heavier pressure onto the Yakuza to find her and bring her back as she was deleting all possible matrix presence. Kyle Bradmine got word of Renraku looking for her and decided to find her first to shove it into Renraku's face.

Meet

The Runners arrived at 1 PM at a Downtown coffee shop known as The Shop, a neo-retro hipster coffee shop styled after the early 21st century and its trends. The Runners sat down and started chatting as the Johnson, whom they had all ran for before, Kyle Bradmine, came in dressed as a reedy hipster who called them all to the back. He commended the Runners for the previous good work that they had done for him and he was interested in having them run for him again. He had some data that needed stealing, both on the matrix as well as a physical data steal. He offered up 14k nuyen each for their work. When the Runners were trying to get more money, The Hurricane called Kyle shit accidentally (critical glitch). Kyle just smiled and told the Runners that the money was an appropriate amount and that the matrix key that they would need would be for 3 days from now, as it was a level 10 encryption that changed its passkey every day, under protection of Quxing.

Run

The Runners started by doing a search on Quxing hosts and managed to narrow down their search to a couple different Rating 6 Hosts that they seemed to be protecting information at, as well as a Rating 8 Host for their main headquarters, as they are only a single A corp. After they found out this, they started to investigating Riley herself as Kyle had very little information about her besides that she was in hiding and had several safe houses. During this, Hurricane called George to let him know it would take a bit more time, but George told him that a fruit basket had arrived at their doorstep with all of his favorite fruits as well as his favorite brand of apple juice. Hurricane was very spooked. Y3 turned up with the information about Riley but there was very little left. Much of it had been deleted, but it was clear that she worked for Renraku and had grown up in the corp, but was clearly very paranoid and there wasn't much on the matrix that determined her current location as it appeared that she had deleted much of this information after one of her safe houses was raided by Renraku teams. With little to go on, the Runners started asking their contacts what they knew. Hurricane asked his fixer Marion to look into possible locations of her as well as to apologize to Kyle in some way. Marion got the safe house info, but took one look at who Hurricane had pissed off and told him to shove it and deal with it on his own. They got three possible locations that were currently being investigated by the Syndicates. John called up Michael Wilford, who knew the person that John was asking about and she did some contract work at his Quxing location. John and Michael agreed to go to a boxing match between the Hurricane and Nightshade the next week with some of his boys to get to know one another better.

The Runners decided to do a stakeout at the three different safe house locations in order to determine where the target was hiding. Hurricane took up a spot in Tacoma, Y3 in Downtown, and John in Everett. All the locations had some amount of Yakuza presence at them, and Hurricane believed them to be Shotozumi so he went in swinging, knocking out all three, but taking a katana to the shoulder. Y3 stuck to the matrix and saw that the Yaks were trying to be stealthy with their commlinks running silent, but no noise at her location. John saw similar folk and managed to drop a security tag on them, but using her drones she managed to determine the smell of sweat and fear from the inside of the location where audio and visual perception had failed. They went to further confirm that this was their target's location by having Y3 check on the matrix and saw that the building was off except for a single commlink running silent. The Runners investigated the house pretending to be a door to door preacher and they saw tripwire across the door and saw the face of her peaking across the blackout curtains. They snuck in a drone with some microwire in order to scope of the location, seeing a small kitchen and a blackbox with the target working hard at the terminal.

They decide to wait a couple days due to Hurricane's injury and wanting to gather supplies. They know her house is booby trapped with nacrojet and explosives so they are cautious about their entry. Y3 makes a run on the Quxing host in the morning in order to get the encryption key which seems to be going well as she picks through the Host, which is tacky and oddly cartoonish. John asks her to clean up Michael Wilford's employee records when Y3 is suddenly attacked by the host which had apparently been sneaking up on her while she was going through his files. She is flustered, but isn't linklocked so she jacks out with the key in tow. They wait until the night to make a hit on her house. They directly connect Y3 with a microwire which is almost spotted, but she manages to get in, copy the file and nuke from orbit it, but as she copied it, Riley realizes that someone is in her box with and upon not seeing her, jacks out and blows up the terminal. Y3 is dump shocked and the Runners rush in.

Hurricane kicks in the door which launches narcojet needles at the Runners which they manage to dodge. Hurricane runs in without remembering the traps and sets off a high explosive grenade. He proceeds slower up the stairs where he sees Riley looking for something under her bed, which turns out to be a grenade launcher. John notices the terminal blown up and proceeds slowly to the stairs as Y3 cuts out the launcher. Riley only briefly passes before she throws a grenade at Hurricane's feet which blows up in his face, burning the side of his head and putting a fairly large hole into his chest. John rushes in and throws a trama patch on him to stabilize him and throws a paint grenade filled with immobilizing paint in order to restrain her. She tries to throw it back at John, but an unlucky bounce keeps it in her room and locks her down with her stun baton in hand. John patches up Hurricane very quickly, and then asks Riley where the back up copies are as Y3 is destroying the copy on her commlink. She has a datachip in a hidden Faraday pocket which she manages to say before Hurricane runs up and smashes her in the face. They take the chip, throw some glue solvent on the blood in order to make it difficult to determine it is Hurricane that was here, and get out of there. Kyle then requests that they delete all copies of the file they have except for the chip, seal it in a bag and then flush it down the toilet, sending a video of them doing it to Renraku with a heart Kyle at the end. With the video sent, a payment is prepared for them and they make their way out.

Aftermath

Renraku is pissed as they wanted that file and Riley had her mind blanked of the last couple hours so she doesn't have any memory of the Runners at all and the rest of the room is covered in paint or explosion so there isn't anything left for them to collect as evidence. And her paranoia about cameras and technology has left them without any matrix evidence to inspect either. They are determining internally how they are going to recover the data from the sewers while they curse and try to determine who let fragging Kyle Bradmine know that they were looking for someone because that drek will make everything more difficult. Quxing called in Michael Wilford in for questioning as to his connections within the Shadow community which he firmly denied because he doesn't know anyone that does the drek. He is on the straight and narrow and faithful to the company. His superiors are keeping a closer eye on him. Kyle is giddy and is starting to plant cameras in the sewers in order to get a full video of the show that is coming forward.

Rewards

14000 Nuyen and 6 Karma

Player Characters

John

Record Date: 2-10-2079

Record Tags: [Shadowrun], [Renraku], [Data Steal], [Kyle]

Kyle came calling again, another joke to play. This time the target was a former AI tech for who had gone rogue and dropped off the grid. Apparently the dwarf in question was working on an advanced prototype for Renraku when she lost her mind, and Kyle wanted to snatch the code while it was still in the open. Somehow the target ended up involved with Quxing, and we were tipped off that the her excessively powerful rotating encryption key would be landing on a Quxing host three days from the job's start.

The target was not an easy woman to find. She'd taken to ground in a booby-trapped apartment in Everett, apparently having eschewed any kind of 21st-century technology in setting up her defenses. Initial recon turned up tripwires, grenades, and an elaborate neuro-toxin-flinging door trap, as well as an explosive-laden, thermally-shielded computer which was the center of her development. (Note: I have *really* gotten my money's worth from that Kanmushi drone.)

The team was small again, a decker with some incredible Matrix legs but no physical ones and a pro boxer who has yet to learn the art of negotiation. The decker lifted the encryption key from the Quxing host without issue, but my attempt to burnish Michael Wilford's reputation within the corp nearly backfired. Apparently the 8-bit IC they had somehow spotted our girl doing the file manipulation, and she had to jack out. (Note: I probably need to buy Michael a beer for that, not that he knows I had a hand in it.) With the key in hand, we started the physical infil using Insight (again) to attach a direct link to the target's server. Honestly, I'm surprised that she didn't notice the cable tab, but it did look like she'd had half a dozen too many Long Haul's recently. We lifted the data directly from the host, but the exit wasn't clean---the target noticed and smoked the server. That shifted things to plan "Loud" and the boxer took down the front door. Of course, the lunk didn't stop there, and he took a couple of grenades and keeled over (how he wasn't a pile of red goo is still an open question). Of course, that left me tête-à-tête with an angry, paranoid dwarf with a grenade fetish. Thankfully, my recent investment in non-lethal munitions paid off, and she took a room full of adhesives and a finger full of Laes. Not going to lie, I don't like the thought of the questions she'll be getting from her friends upstairs at Renraku, but she made her bed and she has to lie in it.

The "hand-off" to the Johnson actually turned out to be a "flush-down", which I suppose shouldn't have been a surprise, given his track record. Something tells me that this won't be the last I've heard of this op, though.

Action: Scheduled a boxing match for Michael Wilford in exchange for some Quxing info, guess that over-zealous punching bag was good for something besides getting blown up.

Action: Schedule an upgrade for Insight, maybe a pilot upgrade and some autosoft.

Hurricane

Date: X-Y-2079

[Data Steal] [ARES] [Renraku] [Kyle]

Team: Y3 (cool cripple), John (some silver tongued guy)

• Day One

Kyle came ringin’. Said he wanted some data nabbed for him, met up with this John fella (not too much to say, good with bots and his mouth but that’s it) and Y3 (the decker chick in the wheelchair. Solid girl, if you ask me). Left practice to this hippie bar, Kyle wasn’t his usual AAA motherfragger style but was actin’ all weird. We got into the nitty gritty, I️ accidentally called him shit. The rest of the run goes about as well.

• Day Two

After the meet and doin’ some research, we went to do some scoping out. Three places: downtown, Tacoma, and some other place. I️ hit Tacoma, some fragging Yaks showed up looking for our mark. I️... discouraged them. Took a sword to the shoulder, managed to hail Seattle’s worst cab driver and nearly got arrested, and had to walk home. Took the next day off, meanwhile that John guy finds the mark. Nice.

• Day Three

Not much to say. Y3 and John did some serious legwork. We but some drek. I️ sat around on my ass waiting for my shoulder to heal.

• Day Four

Showtime. Sat around in the car with Y3 in AR, all of a sudden she starts spittin’ up blood. John tells me to go in, so I️ do. Crazy fragging bitch had narcojet darts, no biggie. Two steps in and I️ blow myself sky high, get upstairs and this Viet Cong slotter pulls an RPG out on me. Y3 saved my ass while John was still getting in the door, and then I blacked out. Woke up furious, and the mark was glued to the wall. John took something out of her pocket, and I️’m pretty sure I️ broke her jaw. Serves her right.

• Drop Off

Kyle fraggin’ pays us to flush this drek down the toilet. So we did. Sent it to Renraku, got paid, and I️ called Marion to apologize for buggin’ her all day. Also started lookin’ into more magic... figure I️ might. Gave John and his buddy free tickets to the Nightshade fight. That’s all she wrote.