Emergency Decathlon
| Emergency Decathlon | |||||||||
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| Part of The Crow of Seattle | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven The Golden Hind Asahiro Kunitoshi Proteus AG | Shedim | ||||||||
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Katherine Tyler Samsara | Unbreakables | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Kate's confidence got a minor bump. | All and none. Depends on perspective. | ||||||||
| Counts as Ascension/Initiation if desired. | |||||||||
Summary
Samsara and Kate put their running shoes on. Kate almost kills herself, Samsara almost splatters into a wall and Kate duels Asahiro.
Background
Due to the events of Idiot you negotiated with a dragon there's a power player on the board: a Master Shedim enslaved by Leviathan, the Great Sea Dragon. It uses its Astral Gateway power to bring in more power from its own plane and uses these pawns to infiltrate the Black Lodge; however this also means there's more Shedim on this side of the globe.
The Meet
The meet happens after some pains with Bautista and the The Golden Hind. Kate was forwarded the request by Asahiro Kunitoshi who wants her to see if she can find any useful data from the obvious Proteus AG job. They meet two scientists huddled in a dark room over a singular online trid projector terminal: Dr. Keller Cross and Dr. Richard Rosenberg. Cross has a kink bomb in his head, Rosenberg a F12 geas. They elaborate that some worker in the facility violated security protocols and opened a cargo door to go out for a smoke during a break instead of going through a ward. This apparently had let shedim inside that began to wreak havoc in the area and managed to catch the deep sea HTR team off guard. The HTR's abandoned vessels are now trapped in the lower levels, but they also mangled the main generator, preventing the arcoblock from having enough power. Strained long enough, the other generators won't be able to compensate forever and the entire arcoblock will sink, not to mention letting the corpses free. The duet accept the job, not wanting civilians to die (and if Dr. Cross or Dr. Rosenberg had called Proteus AG management their families would've been fired for this level of fuck-up).
The Plan
The plan is to sneak towards the generator room in the south-east after rappelling down. If any of the shedim (which is what the security mage suspected they were before he suffered an untimely device) notice them, run the rest of the way and turn on the backup generator. The boot-up sequence is fast so they just need to activate it and the scientists can close thick bulkheads to protect them temporarily. From there, UV lighting systems can corral the dead HTR members.
The Run
Rappelling down is easy enough; astrally perceiving the dead suits of heavy power armor identify them as dual-natured; eventually one of them spots Samsara's occasionally assensing dual-natured presence and roars the rest of them into action with infrasonic troll roarers. The others respond in kind; Kate's enhanced hearing can detect it and they hide behind corners, with the creatures mere meters away in the hallway. Kate and Samsara take a deep breath and make a mad dash for the generator. The HTR detect them immediately and chase after them in cramped corridors, few of them having torn off entire segments of the reinforced concrete wall and wielding them as crude clubs. Kate takes a hit straight to the chestplate and falls victim to the creatures' horrifying presence. As she runs away in terror, one of them even sinks their fingers into her mind and forces her to believe that only the final escape is a viable way out of the horror. Samsara manages to slot into the computer terminal with her commlink, turns on the generator and the bulkheads close, turning on UV lights. Kate's reflexes are fast, but thankfully sluggish enough to stop her from impaling herself on her own sword. Samsara's attempt at using Proteus AG's jetpack had failed due to the misfortune imposed upon her by the spirits outside the door.
While Dr. Cross reconnects with them via DNI, he regretfully informs that they have to make another dash to the elevator since the spirits smashed some of the lights before he could fully contain them. The two are wary, but manage to sneak relatively far before finally engaging skimmers and jetpack and speeding the rest of the way over with exceptional sprinting abilities or technology.
Aftermath
Panting and exhausted in the elevator, the two fist bump and get upstairs to ask the scientists' plans. They inform that the armors will run out of power eventually and that once they do, the spirits should be manageable, especially since they now have restored proper access to the rest of the arcoblock. They'll find a way to dispose of the shedim and with Samsara's suggestion, will cremate the remains of the HTR once their ware has been extracted. Kate managed to hack a personnel file just barely, containing information about the team: they'd all been either notorious gangers or career criminals hired by Proteus for a second chance; all were pushed into such a life by the need to provide and protect, something Proteus does as long as they work. Unable to often leave for assignments except for 1 month each year, their work schedule is draconian but lucrative, often providing their loved ones with higher lifestyles than what SINless normally hope for. Now that they're dead, those families will stop receiving financial aid. Sons of Sauron, Skraacha members, SINless bodyguard thugs -- all troll squad is surprisingly effective judging by how augmented they were. Samsara brings this information to Warboss. Kate brings the information to both Asahiro and the Huk, impressing to Asahiro that she gives this to him as himself, not as a member of Shiawase Corporation.
The two deepen their bond by dueling on Asahiro's private estate. While Kate suffers a defeat before the artifact-wielding vice-president, she lands a solid hit on the man without any magical ability of her own. Samsara witnesses the duel and sees Sohayamaru, the legendary seven-branched sword of ancient myth, even if it is not fully reformed. Asahiro offers Kate a future job to steal one of its shards from a collector in mainland China in order to fulfill his dream of permanently vanquishing evil spirits and advancing the world's chance for a utopia. Kate contemplates whether she could exclude Shiawase from her pledge to not support the JIS, instead focusing on screwing over Renraku and MCT as much as possible...