Pushing the Needle
| Pushing the Needle | |||||||||
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| Part of Murders and Acquisitions | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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Grimoire Val =SUM Arbite Razzle |
Cerberus Security Solutions Flash Star! | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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9 Cerberus Security Personnel 5 GMC Dobermans 5 Barghests 4 Dogs | |||||||||
Background
Samuel Hutchinson is a renowned chemist and "Drug Artiste" that has been earmarked for extraction. He works for Flash Star!, an A-rated corporation, and he has backstabbed and clawed his way to the position where he is in.
He's working on his latest concoction, Flash. It releases chemicals in the brain to give a seriously good high, but with a few serious drawbacks
Tamanous are also planning something big. They need to clean house beforehand to make sure that the pawns and corps don't frag with them. They've done a host hit on the Knight Errant host and found a list of informants. One of them is listed as a runner. They lean on a low connection fixer, Mr Incognito, and tell him to put their man, Arbite, on a job. Arbite has been given a mission, eliminate the rat and make it look like an accident.
Meet
The Runners met Goldeneye, a particularly charismatic and friendly man with a rather peculiar set of cyber eyes. Alongside Goldeneye was a large troll he seemed to refer to as Arthur. The duo met the team for dinner at Icarus Descending. He flashed his credsticks around and helped make the runners feel comfortable. =SUM and Arbite pretended to be each other.
The Johnson gave them the job: Extract Samuel Hutchinson from Flash Star!'s clutches and bring him to the docks after they get rid of any tags and traces. He also wants the team to torch the lab he's working on and take as much of their data as possible. They've got 2 weeks to work on it
Run
The runners hit the pavement and start doing physical legwork. They scope out the host and the facility, learning that Sam has 3 Street Samurai who act as his bodyguards. They're old gangsters from his old crew, the Blood Streetz, who were wiped out over a decade ago. Sam had used the Crash 2.0 to go legit and brought those with them.
Tamanous informs Arbite that they have Razzle's daughter if he needs anything to hold over him. Razzle calls his daughter after he realises she hasn't been home in a while. She sounds distressed, but he believes she is fine.
Razzle attempted to socially infiltrate the apartment building where Samuel lived. His dryad good looks led him to be remembered. A few of the more paranoid individuals felt threatened as his cover story was a journalist looking into things.
Security was called and they asked him to leave. In the rush of the moment, Razzle says that he has solid proof that there is a dead body in Samuel's apartment and that they are housing a murderer. The security call the cops, who send a swat team to deal with the threat. They find nothing and demand to bring Razzle to the station.
The team scarpered when they heard the sirens coming, and saw him go offline. Meanwhile, Razzle manages to get out of his issue by informing the KE officers throwing the book at him that he is undercover. They let him go seven hours later, and the team is immediately spooked. "Why did KE just let him go? Is he wearing a wire"
The team are incredibly suspicious when =SUM is informed that his eSports team will be playing in a tournament in LA in a couple of days. They continue to do legwork when Razzle races home, claiming he needs to check up on his daughter.
The team find this shifty. The team tell Arbite to come along with him and watch. Arbite drives him through Disassembler turf, who are also looking to help Tanamous. Razzle gets confronted by a duo of gangsters, then shot in the back by Arbite. The pacifist goes down, and the Disassemblers have him on their operating table. Tamanous are happy, but Razzle manages to slip out of his bindings and grab his daughter while escaping into the sewers. KE marks him as AWOL and issues a burn notice on him. Razzle goes into hiding while the team invites a new teammate
Val gets hired to help with the job. They scout out astrally and prepare. =SUM returns to Seattle and it's time to go. He, unfortunately, alerts the host early and the team has to move faster. Arbite uses his favour from geeking the rat to get a Road Warrior exfiltration. Val and Arbite move into the facility and all hell breaks loose.
They get spotted attempting to get through the window and use their magic to make the paracritters and dogs go wild. Spirits are summoned and combat ensues, as the team makes their way into Samuel's laboratory. They smash through their defenses and knock out their target and pull out.
Aftermath
Mr. Johnson's associate met them at the docks to do the handoff. The Money was deposited and unconscious body of the chemist was thrown into a boat and driven far away.
Val had been unable to wipe her astral signature, and Cerberus security's mages and a few KE mages have seen it.
Rewards
16,000 Nuyen, 4 Karma
Goldeneye as a contact
1 Street cred to =SUM, Arbite, Grimoire
+2 Rep to Goldeneye
Razzle:
No nuyen
12 karma
Bad rep
Must buy off the Day Job and Electronic Witness
Loss of all loyalty 1 contacts for being known as a rat.
1 Free connection 2 fixer
May spend karma on contacts. All leftover karma is karmic debt.