Dust
| Dust | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Emerald City Clash | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Various Third Parties | ||||||||
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Copperhead Professor FW-6 |
Cutters Ancients KE Beat Cops | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | None (by runners) | ||||||||
Summary
A poor girl's request for her lover to come home. To be found, and safely restored, to her side after a worrying disappearance.
And the resounding refusal of mercenaries.
Background
Michael "Wires" O'Riley and Lua Luna were a happy couple. Punk as hell, living in the backwaters of Downtown, and barely staying afloat, but they were happy. He and his buddies went off at night to drink and get rowdy, but Lua knew the guy was loyal. She trusted Michael. And Michael trusted her.
But Michael was loyal to the Cutters. They were his friends, his livelihood, the reason Lua could smile, the group empowering him to feel like he could take on the world. And he did good work for them. So, the war was going to be a problem at some point.
Turns out that was the night of the 19th. As he and his posse were driving back up the 5th from Tacoma after a night out and his call to Lua to make sure she knew he was coming home safe, Cutters in the area sent out a distress saying that hit had hit the fan on the South End. They sped over to help out in the ambush as quickly as they could. It was a damn mess. And Michael got chased off, bleeding and near death, by someone who really shouldn't have been there. Not that anyone knew that, of course. To the other Cutters, Michael was MIA. They couldn't go searching for him with Ancients having whooped their asses like that, and even though KE had wanted him to be found, they also weren't about to brave an armed and dangerous Ancients force without damn good reason.
So, he rotted in an alleyway to his dying breath. And about 10 hours later, Lua realized something was wrong. She barely managed to pull the strings of her boyfriend to get runners involved, not trusting KE to actually get the job done and maybe a little suspect of her partner's affiliations. She was at the mercy of strangers.
The Meet
Copperhead, Professor, and FW-6 met the girl in an alleyway over in Tukwila. She was clearly inexperienced and not used to these kinds of dealings, but she made the deal pretty clear: Find her boyfriend. Simple enough. She didn't have much to really offer them for cash, but the job itself was simple in theory, and she wasn't really experienced enough to dupe them. So, they agreed, she filled them in on what she knew, got some bars he frequented and his face for locations to hit up, and in a matter of minutes were already digging up last known locations for calls and the like.
The Plan
There wasn't much besides Tacoma and the local bars to go off of, but quick checks on the matrix confirmed his last call on the Highway and that there was, among numerous other attacks peppering the sprawl, a massive attack further down South. They had their leads.
The Run
Heading to his last known location, the gang found 2 beat cops who, with schmoozing from Copperhead and a very convincing performance to keep them from checking his SIN, told the group Michael was actually suspected of being in the incident last night. Figuring he was injured and calling upon Professor's knowledge of clinics in the area, they tracked his likely next step after being in a fight (getting shot) and checked a Cutters clinic. He wasn't in, and apparently other Cutters lost contact with him and a few others, presumably since they died. In fact, it seemed he was harried the other way, which is when they lost contact with him. Using traffic footage, a rough window of the events, and his genius intellect, the Doctor managed to actually pinpoint his location to an alleyway hidden from a number of patrolling Ancients.
The team did not want to involve themselves in the war. And technically, they had already finished the job.
Aftermath
Lua was not happy, to get this half measure response. But these runners were cutthroat and scary, and Copperhead put it professionally enough that she just felt like she did something wrong rather than being cheated. But...no one saw Michael again after that footage was taken. And a woman gets widowed without a proper acknowledgement of whether her partner is even still alive or dead.
It isn't a happy ending.
Rewards
2k Nuyen (1 RVP)
1 Karma (1 RVP; Mercenary af run)
10 CDP (2 base; 4 RVP)
Optional Rewards
Common sense at Chargen rates (3 RVP) for the rather pragmatic run and mostly legal methods