Super Monkey Ball
| Super Monkey Ball | ||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
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ShadowHaven Norville Craddock | Ares Search Team | Leftover MCT Troglodytes | ||||||||
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Huntress Stryker Cleaner Cleaner Tsarina |
Ares Mage Ares Ground Forces Ares Transport Rigger Drones |
Kada A ton of hyperintelligent Troglodytes | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| If Stryker gets close to the artifact again, he WILL become a monkey until he leaves the vicinity once more. | The Rigger was stranded and presumably killed in the crash, the mage was assassinated immediately, and the ground forces were almost totally wiped out and routed | None | ||||||||
Summary
A retrieval mission for a lost artifact from the 4th World to restore the collection of the notorious Norville Craddock ends up being an incredibly testing tribulation for a group of four runners as they try to settle some rather annoying monkey business.
Background
Norville Craddock, even as he tries to remain off the radar of the Vatican, still has a fascination for the relics of the 4th World. Utterly powerful and difficult to replicate, the possession and understanding of these scattered treasures would be the fancy of any researcher. And a greedy, well connected man such as Craddock? He's the type to go after as many as he can along his smuggling business.
So it was that he sought out a very strange relic indeed - a massive sphere, with engravings of apes all across it and radiating a magical energy akin to that of the red magic tradition in its primal, instinctive energies - and had it transported by air from the East Coast to the West in one of his discreet transport planes. Now, his network is good. Even the Atlantean Foundation he snagged this relic from would struggle to find one of his own without having some damn good assistance. But unfortunately, what Craddock didn't realize was that the power of this relic could transform anyone. Or, perhaps revert is the more correct terminology, as it seemed to revert metahumans into apes and monkeys of all types after sufficient exposure to it. This included the pilot of the vessel, whom unfortunately had succumb to the curse himself and could no longer operate the plane in his state of confusion and with his difficulty in operating it without the right kind of thumbs. Thus, the poor man crash landed in the SSC, just east of the Redmond Barrens.
This was a massive problem.
Not only was this an incredibly obvious, attention gathering crash which could have tipped off members of the Atlantean foundation who were already on the trail of the plane or perhaps trying to anticipate its arrival and coordinate with Seattle allies, but it would alert just about anyone with an interest in checking out a massive fucking crash in the middle of the forest. The SSC's own Wildcats, locals, whatever corporations and syndicates may have been looking around at the time or just been nearby. And according to some rumours, apparently there was even an old MCT facility where they did all sorts of wild experiments on paracritters. So maybe they would steal it too!
This was utterly unacceptable. The longer it took to get a status report on the situation and retrieve the artifact, the harder it would be. He needed manpower and experts, fast.
Dammit, he needed shadowrunners, in all their finnicky, freaky effectiveness.
The Meet
The meet was utterly rushed, with Craddock having a spirit pose as him for the sake of appearances as he called a group of runners to the Daze for a rushed meet. Tsarina was their face and a well studied arcanist, Cleaner Cleaner and Huntress were both skilled trackers and hunters, and Stryker was an all around solid street samurai who had a rep for taking on just about any job. Craddock kept it quick, despite trying to keep up the formal handshake and the usual aloofness one would expect from a smooth operator. He gave them the mission briefly: A plane of his carrying A Relic was knocked out of the sky for some reason, and it needed to be retrieved quickly. The team had to go there fast, crossing the border, and retrieve it no matter what. He gave a brief description of its look, the crash site's general direction, and the look of the plane for their own sake in finding it, and offered them 16k each for a good delivery. Tsarina, sensing the urgency and being an utter sharky bitch, got a small bonus for them if they got his pilot's body back. The family would want it.
There was no real time to waste though. Craddock would get them a smuggling route to use but they'd have to be discreet in using it so he doesn't have to burn it. And with that, the race was on.
The Plan
Working with limited information on a time crunch was rather rough for a runner team in any circumstances, but they could at the very least try to formulate a procedure. They'd go in CC's vehicle, large as it was and very well kitted out, to the smuggling route in the northeast corner of the Barrens. Sneaky driving would see them past the border, and then from there they'd reach the crash site. They'd observe at a distance first, just try to get a lay of the land and scope out threats before rushing headlong into it. A number of the team were skilled in long ranged combat (Tsarina being the only exception) and so taking advantage of that would be ideal. Eliminate any threats to secure the objective as quickly and efficiently as possible, then secure either a lead or the artifact itself. Once done, they could head back home. They would have to do the rest on the fly.
The Run
Getting to the smuggling route was simple enough - CC is a sneaky person in general, and a good driver besides. She was more than capable of getting the group to the border and to the crash site unnoticed, helped somewhat by the rain that was settling in. Worryingly, as they drove to the crash site, they could see what looked like an Ares copter approaching the site as well, and ahead of them. Thankfully, they weren't spotted heading there thanks to CC, but it meant they were definitely going to have trouble to contend with.
At the site itself, they were right. Long range observations revealed that there was a full team already there, taking stock of the crash site. There were 5 on the ground, 2 drones, and a copter in the air, likely the rigger. There were also visible track marks going away from the place - someone beat both of the groups to it. Tsarina suggested the team get into position for a long range ambush so they could kill the mage and rigger early, then deal with the ground forces swiftly, but unfortunately the rigger spotted out Stryker before they could finish their preparations. Thankfully, the team was at a major advantage with hundreds of meters of range over their exposed quarry. The mage died immediately, with ground forces dropping like flies. Huntress had a few initial difficulties taking down the rigger's vehicle, but Tsarina's needling lit a fire under her, and with an impossible shot she knocked the engine out in a single shot. The ground forces called back up and attempted to bluff the crew into giving up, but Stryker was absolutely not giving a fuck about it as he blasted apart the encroaching drones and Tsarina called that their backup likely wouldn't arrive for a while, not until long after this fight was over. Those who didn't run were obliterated by combined sniper fire, and the rest were no longer a threat. The team went to investigate the crash site.
Two obvious things stood out to them: The pilot was dead for one. Rather obviously died he during the crash, though he wasn't actually in the pilot's seat. Possibly trying to escape his crashing vehicle? Regardless, his family would appreciate having the body back. The ball, of course, was not there after their time searching, and the team only had the tracks and an improvised spell from Tsarina to use to track the orb down. And so they drove carefully once more in CC's ever reliable truck, following the trail with the two hunters working together with spell assistance from Tsarina to find the location of the robbed orb while not running afoul of the threats around them. This led them to that reported MCT facility, where...troglodytes were all around. Watching them from the shadows, carefully.
Tsarina initially attempted to intimidate them with a show of force, believing them to be nothing more than animals. But as her magic seemed to peter out mid cast, it was not so effective. Stryker actually realized that these troglodytes were...probably smarter than the witch gave them credit for, and against all odds actually convinced them that they weren't a threat and that they just needed something back. This led to their leader, Kada, calling the team inside under the promise that if they were no threat to the family, the family was no threat to them. Once inside, Kada began parleying in Japanese, with Huntress as the translator for Tsarina. Essentially, the troglodytes felt this strange magical relic was theirs as it seemed to call to them to retrieve it, but they were willing to part with it if the group gave them something in return that was worthwhile. Failure to offer something sufficient could simply be remediated with flesh, but thankfully even through the language barrier Tsarina managed to convince the group that this would only bring trouble, whereas working with her would supply Kada and the other troglodytes with something they desperately wanted: More skillchips they could use to quickly advance themselves, a gift from their "creators". With that agreed upon, the troglodytes began rolling out the orb for the team.
Something was up immediately upon contact with it. Literally, Tsarina noticed...something was wrong as she and then Stryker touched it. Which worried her. The troglodytes seemed unaffected, so they helped load it into the truck, even if it poorly fit and slowed them down, so for now the team just had to get moving. Tsarina felt paranoid, and kept her magical defenses ready just in case something was wrong with the orb, and CC got them moving safely through enemy territory once again.
It was about a half hour into the drive that Tsarina and Stryker turned into monkeys.
Now, they still thought like metahumans, but oh god were they not ok. Huntress was barely conscious and CC was too focused on the drive, so suffice it to say that this was not a welcome situation for the two. At least, not for Tsarina. Stryker, bless him, is chill as hell. The witch figured from the fact that this proximity based transformation would have happened to the pilot and his distinct Lack of Ape-nature meant the transformation wasn't permanent was a sign that they wouldn't always be apes, but it irked her regardless. She could at least keep her magical defenses up even in this form, and she used this to prevent CC or Huntress from becoming Apes themselves. Once they were back in Redmond, they contacted Craddock and got him to send...someone, anyone, bloody hell ANYONE over to help with the situation, and Tsarina did some testing as the truck hid somewhere. With distance, sure enough, she transformed back into her ice queen self. Too close? Ape. She tried dispelling it a few times, and though it was a rather tricky thing to dispel she found out it was something she could counteract since she was aware of it, and she could now approach it without monkey stuff on her person.
She did not do the same for Stryker.