Kyuzo growled softly, so low it was probably not picked up, but before he could respond, Kali moved in and diffused the situation. Or... maybe created a different situation, one that wasn’t his problem. Regardless, he was almost happy that he didn’t have time to respond as it would have most likely have been somewhat confrontational in nature, at least on his end.

It was a delicate balance playing Yegor but thinking as Kyuzo. He had almost slipped as he thought about it--the response he had bitten back were Kyuzo’s words, not Yegor’s, and he couldn’t afford a slip.

His issue wasn’t that there was no plan, it was that the plan was not well thought out and very prone to being compromised and again, it didn’t seem to bother Traction, and why would it? She’d be safe enough from wherever she decided to do whatever it was that she did. He decided then to simply remove her from the situation and discuss the situation with Cath.

He decided to send her a message rather than address it verbally, simply because there was much going on in way of conversation and preparation and this way she could check it at her leisure.

Oi, Cath. I think we should head down to the bar and talk to my contact. I think I can get some information out of him. Let me know what you think. Yegor.

Sure, the text wouldn’t seem like Yegor, but that could be written off as a simple text recognition and correction feature—there were only a hundred or so softs that did that. It was all about consistency.

He started to get anxious and eager, not wanting to stand around wait any longer than necessary. His metabolic monitors picked this up and immediately started to calm him by controlling and adjusting hormone levels and regulating his heartbeat and breathing. A moment later, he was waiting calmly, head back against the elevator wall. He was asked a question by Traction and he rolled his head to the side and answered tiredly, “frag if Yegor know. They come soon enough.”

00:00 - Docks District, New Orleans, Louisiana, CAS

Warehouse Sector 1, in front of Warehouse 02.



The docks were quiet tonight. Fishermen had their boats on the water doing their business, but no cargo ships had come in today, so the workers were lounging around, playing cards, trading drugs, or otherwise milling around. It seemed like nobody cared tonight. Nobody cared about the group of new people congregating around, save for a few dirty looks from the Orkish and Troll muscle wandering around. The message was clear: "Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone."

Kyuzo had successfully pinned down the location of their target: Warehourse 02. The van had also been located, parked at the end of the district past Warehouse 04, half a block down in front of a public park. Nobody was inside either the cab or the back, though the group had confirmed that both sets of doors were unlocked, ready to receive whatever was to be delivered tonight. Kyuzo's friend Ilrek had also been forthcoming with information that a few new recruits had been signed onto night duty across all four warehouses. Trolls all, nothing was particularly unusual about them except that they had all been hired at once and placed immediately. Even their union placement was sudden. Usually there was a process to these things. But it wasn't that strange. Could be somebody high up knew a guy that knew a guy. Nothing greased the gears of a job interview like prior acquaintance.

Those attuned astrally who chose to look could immediately see what Zelda had been talking about. There was some kinda crazy astral footprint in this building. If its center was those CDs, something was definitely janky here. Apart from that, a scan of the wireless networks revealed minimal security, but limited interconnectedness between the machines here. You could access the sub-terminals through a main computer here, but there was no proper 'net cnnection, everything was old school. There was no telling what sort of security might be installed into the network without actually being inside it.

Recluse yawned deeply, readjusting his heavy burlap pack over his shoulders. It was past his bedtime, but he was in no danger of actually falling asleep. The Long Haul was making sure of that. "So... we're going ahead as planned? Once everybody's in, nobody's getting in or out the front or back doors. I'll have 'em covered until the job's done. Y'all know how I work already. I'll be set up somewhere out of the way until I'm needed." He wasn't entirely sure where he'd plant himself, and the building was quite large, so he'd brought the remote detonators along, rather than the wired ones, leaving him quite flexible. His astral sight wasn't going to do much good here because the footprint around the CDs was pretty big. It was hard to see stuff around it. So this was a job he was fully prepared to go through in the meat. Not that that's too out of the ordinary... As far as he could tell, the others had reached some consensus of a plan, one that only barely involved him, which was fine and dandy. Recluse worked best left to do his own thing. With so many people on the team, he didn't need a spotter to snipe, he could use his astral sight where necessary. The others would take care of keeping people off his back, or else his natural ability to camoflauge would do so. Either way, he made a good overseer and a terrible frontline team player. Let the glory go to somebody else.

They couldn't tell how many people would be in the warehouse, or of what variety. Whether there would be security, whether the regular workers were armed, or even present, was a big blank spot, but it would become pretty clear once they started.

"Once everyone's in position, I'll get to work. Keep an eye on your comms, I'll be messaging you if I see something worth noting."

"Once everyone's in position, I'll get to work. Keep an eye on your comms, I'll be messaging you if I see something worth noting."

"Just keep an ear out for the PD. If they came along I want you to detonate the insurance charges I told you to set up." Traction mumbled through a mouth half-full of Soyjerky. "Otherwise Damien will scope your back for you." She swallowed and stuffed the half-empty snack bag underneath her seat.

"Kali, you just hang out until we need you. Be ready to drop in through the skylight or by any of the doors in case we need you to brick anything. Caewil, Yegor, and I will go in through the front, no fuss. We get stopped, we're here to pick up a personal item, Caewil can take point while I own any commlinks or tags they pull to check for verification. We go in chill, there's no reason they won't know we're legit unless they check their manifest, in which case we know where it is. If they let us be, I'll find the manifest while you two window shop for the CDs. We'll wait until I've spoofed the manifests, then run a blitz on the pallet. If they decide we have no business in there, we dump them." Just like that, Traction climbed out of the Gopher's back passenger cabin. She sent an AR message to Damien as she left the vehicle.

Inform me immediately if you see any obvious cargo or shipping vehicles pulling in, or any Go-Gangers for that matter. Also make sure Kali doesn't do anything stupid while she's in the air.

"Let's go people, we don't have all night."

Kyuzo didn’t speak to anyone on the ride in and had his eyes closed most of the drive. He traveled light on this run, opting some run down jacket over his kevmesh shirt and cargo pants. His loadout was light, consisting of his Predator, 5 shot Luger, his sheathed trenchknife, and the shock knuckles. Nothing too large and each with its own purpose.

Truth be told, riding around with both Traction and Kath would have been somewhat intimidating and he would have just tried to focus on not focusing on them, which would have led him to do just what he was trying not to. But as things were now, he was focused on the run and going over some things in his head. Layouts, possible scenarios and bluffs, and other things he had gotten from Ilrek that may come in to play. As they hopped out of the vehicle, Kyuzo looked around and took him the scene. He looked for anything that caught his attention and listened so he could get a feel at a street level. There wasn’t much going on, but that wasn’t really a good thing because it meant that anything they did, they now stood out.

Kyuzo decided to get into character immediately, yawning heavily and scratching his head as the group formed up. Tonight, Kyuzo was Marek, some ork muscle hired to escort the two Corps logistic crew into the docks and make sure their cargo was secured. He didn’t think of, ask, or care what corps because well, an ork wouldn’t. Most orks would escort damn near anyone anywhere as long as the price was right. He sucked his lips up towards his nose which gave him a slightly dumb look, as if his cheeks were drooping slightly.

He took a look at the other two, waiting for them to both give him some form of sign or nod to continue while he looked around with a bored expression on his face.

Whatever respite could be found from the sweat summoning nawlins clime was wasted on Kali as she stood poised to drop from the slow circling roto-drone. Despite tonight's unorthodox cargo the no-nonsense Nissan maintained an aloof holding pattern which--barring a lapse in concentration or unforeseen circumstances--would endure for the remainder of the run. For her at least this paired poorly with the gnawing realization that everything was set to go off without a single hitch or spent shell once Cath and the token grunge started wagging their tongues. That's when Kali's shoddy excuse of a comm bayed at her from a coat pocket.

Even that term might of been too generous for the brick of a thing razzing out static above the low thrum of the remote VTOL's spinning blades, closer to being extinct than outmoded. At the team's insistence and a certain elf's persuasion she'd been begrudgingly accept a comlink, and a reasonably priced one at that. It was her penchant for fencing them on, after and even before missions however that eventually saddled her with this cumbersome monstrosity, as there was no way she could feed her habit with what amounted to a very loud doorstop. Cradling it to ear like a self obsessed otolaryngologist she strained to piece together the chatter.

"Kali, *BZZZT* we need you. *CRRRR* drop in through....skylight *ZZZT* brick anything....

By the time matters were in gravity's hands the rest was just white noise, she'd stopped maintaining her mystical balancing act and now the window was rushing up to meet her. With the joyous abandon of a diver catching a breath mid-cannonball her lungs filled with another substance entirely, lips forming a seal around a small inhaler during the descent. Like all freefalls it met with an abrupt end as shards of broken glass caught the light around her and trapped the surprised reflections of a small cadre of orks and trolls. Were it not for how often she threw herself through assorted lunettes and oriels the now sprinting stim-jockey would have ended up smack dab in the center of them, as opposed to beating a mad dash down the overhead lighting courtesy of a traceless walk. In the confusion some orks had dove for cover under the rickety walkway while an unlucky few cursed at being caught in the cutting downpour. The trolls were suitably unperturbed, content to simply spray automatic fire into the ceiling and draw a bead on the intruder.

With that particular hornet's nest buzzing up a storm behind her Kali breached the long hall that fed into the break room, barreling into another pair of suspiciously well -armed 'workers' with bone jarring force. Her bones, precisely, she'd of stood a better chance of running clear through the far wall than knocking over the nonplussed troll that had absorbed her tackle. He didn't even drop his sandwich, not before she'd started chopping him down with the fan of a hammer. Stereotype, heuristic or hot heap of bunk it's a common held belief that the beefier brands of metahumanity have nerves of steel, as every ork and his grandmother oft attest. Those are the sorts of people lucky enough to have never met a Kamikaze huffing gun berserker. She'd been shot twice before the ork managed to interrupt her, having been alternating between beating the fresh corpse with a communal microwave and tracing the freshly fired barrels of her pistols across her body. Between the drugs and the wards that kept her from getting sliced up during the dynamic entry the trog might as well have been packing a derringer.

A salvo of fourteen replies stitched up the front of his uniform as Kali fired her two-fisted cavaliers dry, and with some nimble reloading repeated herself. Outgunned, outmanned and having put a narrow corridor between herself and the remaining seven gunmen there was only on thing on her mind as she put a boot to the doors behind her.

"Any of you trogs so much as look my way for' I choke down this sub and I'm geeking you double!"

Caewil, Traction, and Yegor had just begun their placid walk over to the warehouse entrance when they were treated to Kali stunt-diving off of Damien's Rotor drone and through the skylight. The shattering glass and snapping girders was loud; the ensuing gunfire from at least half a dozen weapons was nonetheless louder.

Traction, despite the look of utter dismay that flashed across her face, recovered quickly and had already started talking again. Her words were rushed and her voice somewhat strained, but it was otherwise hard to tell what kind of straights she was in. "If they haven't called the PD by now, some wageslave nearby has. Forget the old plan, we have three minutes before the ped shows up. Damien, get your Nissan in there now and give us fire support, then drive around to the loading dock. Recluse, go with Damien and plant charges to blow open the bay doors, we're not gonna have time to open them the nice way. Yegor, you head in first so I can share telemetry data for all our smartlinks; Kali still doesn't have any. I'll follow you in and we'll clear the room. Just focus on dumping them, don't worry about trying to assist Kali." And there it was. Traction had all but written Kali off at this point. If she got through the firefight, fine. If she was bleeding out on the ground, Traction had no intention whatsoever of wasting time trying to stabilize or retrieve her.

Traction reached into her coat with both hands and pulled out her smartguns as she began to head for the warehouse entrance again, walking at a hurried pace. Instantly, Yegor's cybereye started receiving enhanced telemetry data from both, along with Traction's smartlens and his Predator. Even though none of them could see anything, snippets of overhead data from Damien's Nissan had apparently caught a few hostiles through the skylight, and already his cybereye was projecting AR reticules onto the wall of the warehouse in case he felt like trying to shoot any of them through it. They weren't giving favorable tohit percentages, but once they were inside he wasn't going to miss on account of his meat. "Caewil, take up the rear. Take whatever shots you need to, but focus on any Astral noise that looks funny."

Kyuzo sighed and didn’t spend much time mulling over what had happened because at this point it didn’t matter. When drek hit’s the fan, the longer you stand there wondering why, the longer you stand there covered in drek. Or something like that. Frag, his mom used to say it better.

He pulled his Predator and gripped his trench knife, putting his shock knuckles on over the blade. His combat HUD started to light up with activity. As he walked, he pulled his mask up over his face to the eyes from the bottom and then hooded himself to cover his hair. He didn’t want to be seen and identifiable as he intended on doing business around here.

One he was all set with his gear and attire, he took off in a run, assuming and hoping that the other two would follow him at their own pace. While Traction had her plan of the run and how things were going to go down, Kyuzo’s plan was slightly different. On the streets, or in the apartment, Kyuzo wouldn’t piss on Traction if she was on fire. But in the shadows, things were different. He wasn’t leaving anyone behind. While he would go ahead with the immediate plan, if things went south for Kali, his course of action would change. He sure as hell wouldn’t leave Traction behind, and he had a lot more respect and history for Kali, so that was a no brainer to him.

For now however, she was in no trouble and he knew Kali could take care of herself. So not wasting any more time, he sprinted towards the door, threw a shoulder into it, and rushed inside.

Yeah. Kali could take care of herself...

Many moons ago...

Driving a beat up vehicle that he acquired, he made his way south from Detroit. Once you’re out of a major city, things get really...weird. Most of the roads are straight and seem to go on forever. On those long stretches, it’s a mix of nothing, farms, old villages, small functioning edge-towns, and shells of vehicles in various state of abandon.

His vehicle was a big, old school 4 door with nothing futuristic about it. Truth be told, it was the cheapest, easiest vehicle he could buy without leaving any kind of trail. He could have thrown a rock over his should and hit any number of vehicles that would have been preferable, but, it is what it is.

He ripped down the roads, watching for any sign of danger but there seemed to be nothing. Literally. Nothing. And that was a good thing because it wasn’t long into the drive that he started to feel run down. Over the last few days, hell, the last few hours, he’d been through a lot. Part of that “lot” included several fairly dramatic cyberware modifications to his body. Under normal circumstances, he’d have been on bed rest for at least two days, most likely more. In light of the circumstances however, that wasn’t an option.

So it wasn’t long into the drive that he decided to take it off the road and take a nap. He ensured that the spot he pulled off was not easy to spot and allowed quick access to the road. He pulled off and leaned the seat back, taking a few moments to play with his new cyberware and software. The eye was linked to his deck and allowed him to see information via an internal HUD. After navigated for a few moments and found an overlook program that monitored for sounds and visuals that would be a threat. Moments later, he drifted off into sleep.

Secured down to the hospital gurney, the ork came to and looked around. He panicked slightly, but the drugs pumped into him kept him from doing too much too fast. He felt groggy and looked over at someone who had to be a doctor. He was a human, tall, lanky and pale. He looked over and sneered. “Ah. It’s awake. I hope you enjoy your new hand, compliments of Ares.” His head rolled to the side and he vaguely remembered them cutting off his hand...and that was it. There was a slight spike of anger for a moment, but the vital systems read that and induced some apathy by way of drugs. “Ah, it’s upset. Anyway. Per instructions, you were also outfitted with a bomb. In case you try to leave the employer, it detonates. If you remove it, or your heart stops for any reason, it detonates. And I know what you’re thinking, why not a cranial. Cranials are so...” He motioned with his hands mulling over a suitable word. “Not cliché. Uncreative. It’s so easy to forget what is in the back of your head, you cannot see it. This though. You pick up your firearm, shake hands, piss, eat...you see it. Hell, maybe you even have a nasty litter at home, and every time you touch something you love, you’ll see it. And remember. Now. Go back to sleep....

Warning. Possible threat incoming.

The frag?

Warning. Possible threat incoming.

Then the sound woke him and he read the read warning message.

WARNING. POSSIBLE THREAT INCOMING.

The horizon hid nothing as the quintet of rumbling combat bikes began to expand within his rearview mirror, chewing up the sparse vegetation as they made a beeline for the disoriented ork, cutting the most direct route from one stretch of highway to the next. With a disobliging sputter the turn-key ignition of Kaz's junker told him just what it thought about moving, distant potshots freckling the nearby asphalt. He pressed and turned the key, not really familiar with the older model vehicles. “Gotta be fraggin’ jokin’. Man, you gods up there watchin’, this must be really funny. Because you know, it’s not enough that my friend were killed, I had to leave my home, I lost my hand, then my arm, then my spirit totem. No, you all are up there thinking how you can just keep this going, right? It’s amusing.”

The car finally turned over and he smashed the pedal down and drove back onto the road, keeping the pedal pressed to the floor. The old, heavy metal car seemed to be cruising at a leisurely pace though and the riders were catching up.

“So yeah, don’t even let me get any rest. Just send the roadside assistance to come help me out. Because that’s what I need. Not peace, or rest. Just more drek. MORE DREK! Well, keep it up, frag it. Let’s have some fun then. I hope this really has you all entertained up there!” He pulled out the weapons that weren’t bagged in the back seat or trunk, and arranged them appropriately. He looked back and that’s when the rounds started plinking into the back of his vehicle. “Fraggin’ awesome.”

The beached four door continues limping along the blacktop, losing ground to the raiders all the while. War-whoops climb in decibel as the group nears, words picked out between the volleys of gunfire that claim his wing mirror.

"Trog looks like he needs a tow, Ozzy! Lace! Give em' a hand!" thrummed out what could only be a mad-woman, her voice wicked and joyful. It was hard to tell if the named riders were quick to comply or already firing by the time he heard the order; either or seemed like a secondary concern about the time a harpoon was homed in and launched.

Driving in the middle of the road, he looked back through his mirrors, trying to get a count of the threats. It was then that his Ares Smartsystem started to take over. Kyuzo didn’t know what he walked out of Detroit with, but this stuff was cutting edge, mainly reserved for Ares Corporate Military, the ones sent when collateral damage wasn’t an option and results were all that mattered. Smart was key, and not only that, but this tech began to form what Ares Tech called symbond. A symbond was the entire system learning about the user and tailoring the way it ran accordingly. If one soldier favored his right, it focused left, things like that.

So it was almost a shock when the combat HUD put red target identifiers over 5 separate organic threats. A moment later, a yellow identifier went over a weapon, identifying it as an unknown threat. A moment later, it said POSSIBLE HARPOON.

“Possible har-fraggin-poon? Are they driving the godamned Pequod?!” He turned around and looked, trying to see what was going on, mainly out of habit, just in time to see the harpoon already mid-delivery. Yesterday, he’d have been dead. Today though, today he was sporting that new ‘ware. Before he registered a though, his system identified the threat and as his body and smart system became more acclimatized to one another, it started doing things with less conscious thought. So before he knew it, he was turned back to the wheel, shoulder against the door as the harpoon ripped through the vehicle and slammed into the dash. He looked around, let out a whistle and said “that was cl--,” and was interrupted by the state of the art, 20th century life saving air bag system deployed, smashing him up under the chin and disorientating him. Control of the vehicle was lost momentarily, but once again, his enhanced senses helped him gain control, even as he was blinking back tears, dust, and trying to catch his breath. After a moment, he bit at the airbag out of frustration, then tore at it, all the while, the tempo of incoming rounds began to increase steadily. After a few moments, he succeeded in ripping the bag out entirely and tossing it over his shoulder. “Ok. If you had THAT planned--I can’t lie, that was fraggin’ funny. I can only imagine how it looked up there.”

Unanchored the viscous hook raked its way back through the interior, snagging on the passenger side seat with enough force to yank it against the back window. "Crow! Owl! Fish are biting!" announced the man helming the black Gaz-Niki Titan now playing tug-of-war with Kaz's Ford, a dwarven woman practically spilling out of the attached sidecar. As if on cue a pair of matching red Yamahas sprinted ahead, zig-zagging within inches of each other.

The overborged elven razors stunted to either side of the straight-shot highway before bearing down on their respective handbrakes, coming to a full stop as they swung a set of combat axes with alarming sychronicity. The tungsten blades made short work of the sheet metal whizzing by them and exposed the wisdom of not footing extra nuyen for a sun-roof. Flanking the ever dwindling rental one of the twins echoed the shot-caller further down the convoy, treating Kyuzo to a tongue-in-cheek "You ran a toll few miles back! Pay up chummer!"

The vehicle actually increased its speed slightly and in response, Kyuzo reached in the glove box and pulled out and old flashlight and the driver’s manual, throwing both out at the elf more out of frustration than anything. The elves both laughed, but the male had to swerve suddenly as Kyuzo jerked the wheel to avoid a heap of trash in the road.

At this point, Kyuzo kept his eyes on the road, hunkered down to protect himself from incoming bullets. He slipped the knuckles of his right hand through the trenchknife as the elf biker on his side approached. As he crept in, the ganger didn’t see the ork moving. At that point, he assumed the ork was too intent on the road to realize he had made his way in close to the car again. He looked back and pointed at the ork, indicating to the others to watch. He waited for the right moment, axe poised and then shot over suddenly to deliver what he only imagined would be his defining moment: decapitating an ork at high speed in front of all of his gangers. This was the stuff legends were made of.

Everyone even stopped shooting and it seemed everyone was holding their breath. Everyone except Kyuzo. His enhanced peripherals made him aware of the entire scene unfolding. His fist clenched in the knuckles of the trenchknife, waiting...waiting...waiting…And at the last moment, he shot up and spun. The hand of his left cyberarm intercepted the elf’s arm at the wrist, its grasp crushing. In the same movement, his right arm slammed the trenchknife up under the chin and into the brain of the elf.

Initially no one reacted, not seeing the knife because of the speed and angles. They didn’t know the fight was already over. Not until Kyuzo ripped the knife out of the side of his opponent’s face, reached down, grabbed his Colt shotgun and emptied around into the elf’s face, just for good measure. He even took the time to try to aim in the direction of those behind him, spraying them with bits of brains, blood, skull, and maybe a large pellet of buckshot or two.

“You could have AXED me a little nicer. WOOO!”

He sat down in the seat, tossing the shotgun to the floor just as the female elf shot in and lept into the passenger side of the car. “I’ma kill you trog!” She had the axe in her left hand and brought slashed at Kyuzo with it. It was obvious that, trick riding, hopping up on drugs, and executing maneuvers a sane person would never attempt aside, these people had no real training. It was because of the difference in training that he easily caught her arm in a similar fashion as the other. His right hand caught her wrist and he noticed she was ‘wared pretty heavily. It was flashy though, not hi-end. The caught him with a left hook and he immediately wrapped his cyberarm over hers and pulled up visciously. It didn’t break the arm cleanly off, but it bent the cyberarm so that liquid shot out, wires flashed, and she screamed painfully. And it was just the beginning. Not missing a beat, he slashed down at her elbow elbow joint with his cyberarm.

Cyberware Rule # 28: High end ‘ware ALWAYS wins over cheap stuff. Period.

The arm severed her arm cleanly and he lunged forward, smashing his head into her face and, with his left hand hurling her OVER the front of the car at the same time her threw the arm, still gripping the axe, behind him, hoping to hit something. For a second, he stopped. “Does that bitch have 4 ar—“ he was cut short though by the vehicle lurching and jumping as the female’s body went under the front of the car, her remaining arm smashing into the hood as she was dragged under, denting it severely.

“That was a new paintjob!”

Two down, three to go. A fusillade of SMG rounds had the ork driving blind, his seat in full recline just to keep something between himself and the gunman, though man was a bit of a stretch. Steadying an ARES switchblade across the handles of an equally flimsy looking EVO-Falcon boy let lose with one tight barrage after another from the bucking foldgun. The kid was running colder than the rest--a quiet thriller, go figure--he knew that as long as he kept on Kaz's ass he'd win the shoot-out. It was cut, dry and textbook; might've even worked on your average tusker.

Kyuzo, hunched down in the seat, tried to put his shotgun up and hoped the spray would hit, but at the high speeds, the spread wasn’t enough, and they could see the gun come up and react. He then opted to try shooting out both the front and back passenger side doors. He shot at the hinges one after another and within seconds, both shot from the car. The driver though, this was his kind of game and he expertly maneuvered around them, albeit narrowly. In that brief moment, Kyuzo poked his head up and didn’t even have time to say anything. He simply jerked the wheel to the left, attempting to avoid the burnt out husk of a car in the middle of the road. He didn’t avoid it, but he managed not to hit head on. When he contacted it, it sent it spinning and flipping into the air. This time, the kid wasn’t fast enough and got a facefull of sheetmetal as a penalty. Kyuzo hardly seen what happened, what with trying to keep control of the vehicle, but when he did, he looked back at the group and flipped them the bird, firing off a round with his shotgun just for good measure. You know, the metaphorical exclamation point. At this point, he put the seatbelt on, fastened the shotgun to his leg harness, put away his knife and started to look for a place to pull off. He needed shelter, some kind of structure. He knew he could survive a shootout with these drekheads, but the road was their territory.

"Frag'n krovvy, chummer. Wet krovvy!" shouted the assumed ringleader, fanning a broadside into his back tire from no less than two wheelguns--hands three and four soon returned to ten and two. "Quit mirin' the mark an' just geek em' Kali!" bellowed the panicked remnants of her gang, he and the dwarfess still manning the thick steel cable threaded through Kaz's ride. "Better idea." countered the auric hued rider, overruling her bearded comrade with the finality only a bullet can offer. "Frag'n Bi-" the beta nearly managed, turning just in time to see Kali take reign of the steering and ground their towcycle; it was the pavement that interrupted her. As the heavy bike crashed its spokes swallowed up the tangled lead and reeled the speeding Americar into a warped metal embrace.

There was no piece of ‘ware, soft or hard, that would have been able to avoid this. Truth be told, he felt the car lurch out of nowhere, he was pretty sure the car rolled or flipped at least once.

He was buckled into his seat when he woke up and when he couldn’t find the button, he simply ripped it and fell out of the side of the car. He heard footsteps on broken glass and went to pull his gun when the form lept at him. He was groggy, and she was quick so she had an edge. She’s lept onto him and mounted him, one of her hands gripping his cyberarm with what had to be magically augmented strength. He went for his knife and that arm too was grabbed. He took a moment, realizing he would have to overpower her…until a large firearm was pressed to his forehead by…another hand?

Before he can even think of a plan B as he feels yet another hand on the crotch of his pant…and this hand, it wasn’t groping for any kind of weapon. "You're just packin' all sortsa' fun toys aint'cha grunge? How bout' I take you for a ride?"

‘Yup...this bitch has four arms...’

Spider's lessons were always valuable, survival-focused, but they could rarely separate themselves from certain unpleasant truths. To live under her, her many children lived ever close to these truths. Death, corruption, sickness, spiders made their home where brainless flies gathered in plenty. And they made their living around exploiting their limited psychology. Flies couldn't understand how their friends always ended up getting caught in webs, they just weren't built that way. The way of the spider was to always be able to outsmart, or else out-wait your prey. You might go hungry for a week, but you would not die, if only you had the patience to simply sit by your trap and wait.

With these tenets in mind, Recluse got to work. Under cover of the massive gunfight that had ensued, everyone was focused on Kali. Nobody had time for a pile of trash moving imperceptibly through the shadows. At the front door, two skids of cheap soy were now rigged to blow, sentencing anybody who tried to leave through the doors without permission to a fiery, soy-filled afterlife. At the back door, crates of who-knows-what, now with remotely detonated C4 added to their cargo. The bombs were a last resort scenario, intended to keep the run self-contained. Anybody tries to get out, or unwanted badges try to get in, they ended in a pile of rubble and charred steel. Briefly he thought about cracking one of the loading doors for the Nomad's assault drone, but the timing wasn't right. It had already taken him too long to skulk around the back of the building.

Like a well-fitted puzzle piece, the walkway above was empty. Kali had barreled through it into the room upstairs amidst the shattered glass that had fallen all the way to the floor. It looked like she had danced across the lights in order to land on the walkway... which wasn't a half bad idea. Kali was a loose cannon, but (at least under the divine wind) she could adapt with the best of them. It didn't sound like a good idea, but Recluse would take a leaf out of her book. Traction had come up with a limited plan. He wasn't completely on board with her plans, as a rule. Too much willingness to throw away the lives of her teammates. If you wanted to live, you didn't always follow Traction's plans to the letter. This was as true now as ever. But her plans for Recluse were limited, scornful. As long as something was rigged to blow (and it was) then he wouldn't throw off her plans directly, and thus could avoid an earful later. It was the best of both worlds.

He chose his vantage point carefully. After Kali's ballistic entrance, nobody would be looking up in the ceiling. It was two stories in the air, and that was not where the threat was anymore. The 'threat' had just barrelled headfirst into the lunch room. Nobody noticed the presence-less silence climbing the walkway ropes into the lights up top, and if anybody noticed wires being strung between the hanging lights, it wasn't as important as the muscle and steel that was invading the warehouse presently. From Recluse's new perch, he could see almost everything in the main area, and could see mostly into both processing rooms. It was hot, almost too hot, but that was the price of sitting out of harm's way. From here, he could give directions, notify people of danger, and watch over how everything was going. Taking shots minimally, only if it would save a teammate. But one point needed to be sent out immediately, to the team's comm network (at least, those who bothered to check.)

"CDs in shipping room. Some sort of magic laced into it, a bit more complex than a layman could handle. Handle at own risk. Clear out the gunfire and I can dispel. Else somebody else can do it."

------

The warehouse was full of orks and trolls, and the difference between them was immediately apparent. Orks dressed in leather and denim, holdout pistols at their waist. Obviously all workers. Three orks on the main floor, at least that the group could see from the front door. They all seemed to be fumbling for their guns, or else considering going in for a more familiar brawl. Aside from the three orks there were four trolls wandering the floor. Significantly more well armed and significantly less confused, they had all pulled out HK-G12 model assault rifles, levelling them steadily at anything that threatened them (currently a certain drug-addled Nartaki.) The trolls looked tough. Beyond the usual bone spurs riddling their large frame, bits of ceramic and plastic were evident, signs of obvious dermal plating under their kevlar vests. It was clear that these guys weren't here just to help lift boxes.

The CDs, now revealed to be in the shipping room, would be clear to anybody who looked at them, though as Recluse had pointed out, probably dangerous to the touch of a layman. In the middle of the shipping room was a single heavy skid of stacked CDs. Their rather plain packaging labelled them as "Reverend Michael's Sounds of Worship - 'The glory of our lord revealed through song!'"

The break room, now clear, fed into the super's office. It seemed empty, and the door was locked, but if somebody could get through those doors, that was liable to be where any papers, servers or terminals were. The hub of information for whoever owned these warehouses.

Reaper trained his binoculars on the scene ahead of him as his boat quietly coasted ever closer. Both the binoculars and the boat weren't worth the nuyen he'd forked over, but if he was right about this payday, it was small potatoes- besides, he needed a way to get in... discretely. More discretely than just kicking down the front door, anyway. Of course, for him, "kicking" was somewhat of a misnomer.

...He was getting distracted. He concentrated for a moment, closing his eyes, as a bank of fog slowly started to rise from the water around him. A tad suspicious, to be sure, but hopefully he was far enough away that by the time someone noticed, they wouldn't be able to point him out, specifically. He grasped the handle of the machete under his coat. A useless gesture, but it made him feel better as he got closer to his target.

Somewhere in the warehouse, I think they said. He raised the binoculars to his eyes again, looking for a decent point of ingress. Maybe if I set a fire somewhere away from the warehouse. Ought to distract the goons enough that I can sneak in and get to the warehouse. Hell, might even take out the files and ledgers and drek. That... counts as altering them, yeah? He smiled at his plan- it was a decent one, at least, for how short a time he'd been given to come up with it. He usually had a lot more time to think things over, but his Johnson wanted it done tonight.

Must be a busy old bastard. He was close enough to see the warehouses with his naked eyes now, even through the fog. Moreover, he was close enough to hear.

It suddenly occurred to him that there was a lot more ruckus in this place than there should be. And it didn't sound like the usual busy sounds you'd hear in a place like this. It sounded like... gunfire.

What the Siegfried? The sounds only intensified the closer he got to his target, and he rolled his eyes. Of course, someone got here first. Gods dammit, Henrik. He hunkered down in his boat, hoping the fog he'd generated was doing its job properly enough. He had some adept talents, sure, but he couldn't just dodge bullets on a whim. Arrows, maybe, but not too many people used those, anymore. He gripped his machete's handle a little tighter, narrowing his eyes as he prepared to disembark.

Okay. Let's see what we're up against, and just how fucked I am if I want to get this run finished...

Kyuzo went through the door as hit combat HUD lit up, showing him the location of several enemies on the main floor, in his direct vicinity. He tossed two flashpacks at opposite ends of the room and they immediately sent off powerful flashes of light that were meant to stun and blind targets. There was a metal storage container between him and the targets on the main floor, so he moved to that immediately. As he moved, he targeted and fired at 2 fire extinguishers on the wall, causing a good size explosion in both locations. At those spots, one on a wall near each of the stairs, it destroyed part of the wall, sent shrapnel in different directions, and then hopefully sent at message to at least a few of those inside that those coming in meant business and that this business was not what they were paid to deal with.

A few moments after, gunshots started to ring out from an assault rifle. He figured that they were shot in a general direction at this point, but bullets didn’t care if what they hit was a target or not. He looked behind him to see the other two runners making their way into the door. He waved a hand at them to move over to the covered position before turning around its corner and bounding off into the room.

He chose to move in the direction of the closest fire extinguisher (to the left of the main entrance, near the stairs) as the carnage, debris, and dust would give him some concealment as he moved. He jumped over one form on the floor, an ork who was either unconscious or dead, and stepped through the smoke and dust and found himself in front of a troll.

The troll turned, but the strobe from the flashpack went off, disorientating the troll. Kyuzo sidestepped immediately and darted in low, avoiding the spray of the assault rifle fire that the troll sent where Kyuzo was a fraction of a second before. The ork felt his metabolic system pump some chemical or hormone into him in the form of a burst of speed and energy as he moved in and caught the troll with an uppercut, full under the chin. If there was a picture in the dictionary of what a textbook uppercut looked like, that was it. There was a low but distinct BZZZZZ sound as the ProTek Shock Knuckles did their job. The nice thing about these is that not only did the incapacitate the body, they also did a number on electronics. That damage would depend on the type of system, but still, it was just a nice little addition. The troll crumbled in a heap onto the floor.

Kali surged through the doors into a pelting of blind fire, those that had pursued her making a token effort to keep the runner penned in as they surveyed the skirmish erupting on their flank; the telltale clap of a pressure wave weakening their resolve. It was clear Kyuzo's theatrics had them rattled, he'd turned what should have been a numbers game into something more cerebral: Those slow descending clouds of off white powder played havoc with visibility--meaning indiscriminate fire ran the risk of thinning their numbers further--a problem only exasperated by the second shooter being distinctly of the ork persuasion. Put simply this was an engagement the rent-a-thugs weren't equipped to fight, and that fact was slowly dawning on them. All it would take is a single, well-timed assault where their weakest to break them, force a tidy surrender. Sadly, no one has ever accused Kali of being clever.

If she'd had some prepared remark it wasn't there when her mouth opened, instead letting loose with a damning warcry; it would have been less trouble to just shout "Shoot me" as she rushed the walkway. Not that it had mattered, stimmed as she was Kali had turned the mouth of the corridor into a wood chipper, putting the magic in her hands to good use. Fan. Trade. Load. Fan. It was like watching a human metronome the way she worked her extra arms, or at least it would be were there an opportunity to poke out from behind cover. Fact of the matter was she wasn't just out pacing the handguns pointed her way but was going tit for ratta-tat-tat with what the Trolls were toting, shots coming too close together to count. With a trail of spent casings still cooling behind her Kali overran the choke point, all four revolvers waiting the greet the pair of orks callow enough not to abandon their position. No less than twenty eight muzzle flashes illuminated the now gruesome twosome, being the woman she was those bullets walked their way up from lap level.

Clubbing what could only be described as the ever loving shit out of what was quite clearly a corpse the ex-thrill criminal (And that was a very soft 'ex') edged her way closer to a full on murdergasm; heaving the bodies over rail more in the hopes of making a mess than hitting anyone. At the sight of this the remaining gunman silently reached consensus.

Then they began to fire indiscriminately

As Yegor charged into the warehouse, Tracton simply knelt on the ground and became still. The warehouse might not have been connected to the matrix or had any nodes, but the same wasn't true of the muscle packed inside, and she had plenty of time to make them start regretting their choice of career while Yegor slowly tore centimeters across meatspace. Running Hot, even on the public grid, time slowed to a crawl as her persona manifested within the sparse desert of the warehouse. The moving icons for the trolls' and orcs' augmentations, weapons, and commlinks were all arrayed before her, unmoving, undefended, and all isolated from one another.

Every Shadowrunner team that wanted to last for more than two runs had a Decker, and the reason for that was solely to protect themselves from other Deckers. Anybody who had augs after the second Matrix Crash, unless they specifically went for throwbacks or had gone far out of their way and deep into their pockets, had augs with wireless capability. Even a child with so much as a finger prosthetic had at least a biomonitor installed as well. Any decker who knew what they were doing could force their way into any kind of aug's innards, whether they had their wireless features disabled or not, and if there was one thing you did not want to happen during a run it was for some Spider to start shutting off every bit of wire and metal in your body - or worse.

Traction idly activated her agent program, and a lithe, spindly construct resembling a twisted insect spirit materialized in a flash of light. Without any prompting from her, it drifted past the set of icons representing Yegor and began autonomously applying sleaze programs on the fly to every device belonging to the unknowing muscle. Their smartlinked weapons, their augs, and their commlinks alike. The smart ones among the bunch had slaved the rest of their devices to their commlinks, providing them with limited Matrix firewalls - but every commlink in the room combined couldn't have protected their users Traction's codeslinging. Even as Yegor finally reached the warehouse doors and threw them open, every device in the room had been marked once. Traction herself started to move back and forth along with the agent program, and by the time Yegor had thrown his second flashpak she had two marks. By the time his shot reached the fire extinguisher, she had three, and with that came the beginning of the end.

Traction went to and from each commlink in turn, manually reformatting each device and slipping snoops into their operating systems. Those she would leave intact, just in case any of these meatheads lived to talk to anybody more interesting later. Once she had made sure all was well there, she signaled her agent program and they both started shunting dataspikes into every device that wasn't a commlink.

Back in meatspace, one of the orc guards fell flat on their face as their prosthetic left leg went dead. Another crashed into a stack of crates as their right arm locked up and became a fancy anchor latched onto their shoulder. They were the fortunate ones - An orc and a troll who had wired reflex packages both collapsed as seizures wracked their bodies, spasming and frothing in anguish as their neural boosters and adrenal simulators started shooting raw pain through their every nerve and fiber.

Worst yet came when most of the remaining gunmen decided to indiscriminately open fire on Kali only for their weapons to completely fail. For a few of them, the clips for each of their guns were comically ejected to clatter on the ground, while for others the trigger simply locked itself in place. The only mercs left in the warehouse still in commission were those using throwback weapons without smartlinks, and who didn't have any hardware augs.

Jacking straight out of the Matrix, Traction rose from the dust outside the warehouse and, without any fuss or hurry, walked inside with her ingram smartguns ready in either hand. She was ready to fire on anybody still standing - enough of them were already incapacitated or writhing in pain on the ground for her purposes of ensuring a few of them lived to feed her data later. She had no compunction about geeking any and every one of them still standing if either Kali, Yegor, or Recluse didn't manage to mop them up by the time she got inside.

What a horror show. Didn't matter how many times Recluse saw drek like this, the shock never really went away. If he wasn't already hopped up three ways to sunday, something like this might have sent the shock right through his spine, crippling his trigger finger to the point of uselessness.

Thank god for Big Pharma and his slummy little cousin.

From his vantage point on high, above all the smoke and muzzle flash, the situation was clear. Several orks, poorly equipped and pretty clearly unsure of what they'd gotten themselves into, were all incapped. The lucky ones got a stray bullet to the brain. The unlucky ones had to feel themselves go haywire from the inside out. Ah, the unfortunate situation of bringing endless muscle to a matrix fight.

Speaking of muscle, there were a few trolls left standing. It seemed like they'd been a bit more prepared than the orks. Somebody had clued them in that there was going to be a raid sometime soon, they hadn't even bat an eye at the opposition and sudden outbreak of gunfire. He filed that in his brain for later. Now wasn't the time to analyze this, but who had let them on? Or was their target so important that guards like these were posted the whole time...? What was going on here?

Amidst the carnage, he saw Traction enter the building. Her dirty work was mostly done outside where it was safe. It was an envious position, though maybe he wasn't the right person to be saying that from his position up in the rafters. But the fact that she'd come in the doors meant that everybody was accounted for. If Kali had run out through the break room doors, that meant that room was probably accounted for. Very accounted for. That being the case, they just needed to clear up the people here, then. Recluse didn't really dare come down from his vantage point while there were folks spewing bullets every which way, but he could take a little potshot here and there. One troll entered his sights, having been tall enough to be visible through the smoke.

"If you wanna curse somebody," he muttered sluggishly to nobody but himself, "curse your parents for giving you those genes." Some sort of battle sense made the troll aim his gun upwards toward the ceiling just as Recluse braced his body against the stiff rafters and fired a shot. The trog's instinct was good, but it wasn't enough to save him. With the sound of a small bomb going off (there wasn't any need for a silencer in an echo chamber like this) the rifle bullet crashed straight through the barrel of the troll's assault rifle, ripping the steel to shreds in his hands, before entering his ribs, doing equal damage to everything in his chest that ribs were usually supposed to protect. It wasn't flashy amidst the flair and carnage that was happening around them, but for Recluse, a shot like that was always satisfying.

---

This job had been made for them. Their team was overflowing with destructive power, and a job like this wasn't even in their league. Even the group of what were likely trained mercs weren't ready for their assault, and with minimal cleanup, and a bit of time, the warehouse was 'cleared out.' Or at least, for their purposes it was.

The devastation wasn't going to go away that easily, and it was far from a clean run. White dust and debris coated everything in the main room, broken up by cones of dark red and brown blood, and a couple of bodies still twitching from their nerves literally frying. Bullet casings were lodged in just about every cranny, and most of the stock on the main floor was garbage now, or else somebody was going to get a little more lead and brass than they bargained for.

"What a shitshow," Recluse sighed as he climbed down from his position in the ceiling, hanging down from a wire clipped to his belt like some kind of doped up spider, which was probably a little on the nose.

"I guess this is the messy part done, but now we've got to figure out what to do with these CDs, right? And if we're gonna tamper with records, maybe now's the time, Miss Traction, while the rest of us figure this out." He didn't mean it in any pointed way, but there was probably no way of saying it that would put him in Traction's good books anyway. As if there was an open slot for Recluse there in the first place. There was no need to comment on their efficiency. When it came to putting bullets in dudes, it was hard to match their team, so this outcome was expected. It'd be easy money, if not for the remaining factor of getting the CDs dispelled, out the door, and on their way to the boss before the fuzz showed up. Now came the real work.

Reaper narrowed his eyes as the scene before him unfolded. Well, unfolded as far as he knew- he wasn't exactly in a position to see everything that had gone down.

But he could certainly hear it. Someone's having a lot of fun in there, it seems. How did I not merit an invite? All joking aside though, this could either make things very easy or very difficult for him as he sneaked between the warehouses. He wasn't the stealthiest of folks, to be sure, but every little bit helped, if he was seeing this bull correctly.

Jesus. Someone get the number of the truck that hit these poor bastards... This was looking less and less like a good idea, the more he went along. Whoever this team was- runners, mercs, whatever- they seemed to have very few compunctions about letting loose with a few hot lead enemas. Hopefully he'd be more difficult to notice in the now-incredibly-obvious fog bank rolling over the warehouses. Hopefully they're all inside. Or would that be better? 'Cause then they hear me coming in through the door and make a lovely Swiss cheese sculpture out of me.

...Gods DAMMIT, Henrik. He really needed a fixer when this was all over- this solo drek was too much trouble to be worth it.

He finally reached the warehouse he was supposed to infiltrate. Or would have had to infiltrate, if those corpses were any indication. And just inside, his new best friends for the evening, standing amid their handiwork. Or hanging from the ceiling like Spider-Man, in one kid's case.

Cute. Reaper pondered his options. There were obviously too many of them to take on his own, even if they hadn't been so equipped as they obviously were. Full-frontal wasn't an option. Of course, neither was indirect- from the looks of things, they were already upon the paydata he'd been sent to boost. It wasn't like he could just invisible himself and yank it away, especially if one of them was a mage and could sniff him out the moment he started pulling in mojo to cast something.

So... direct won't work. Neither will indirect. And flubbing my first job back in The Crescent City sets a terrible precedent, and also severely limits my chances of getting rehired. Hm.

Neither direct nor indirect... maybe I could do both? Reaper unbuckled the machete from his belt, still in its sheath, and pulled his Ares Predator from its holster, grabbing it by the barrel so it couldn't be construed as threatening, then, taking a deep breath, and putting on his most winning smile, stepped inside.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!" he said cheerily, dropping his weapons on the ground in plain view, raising his hands to appear non-threatening. "I am here to negotiate not being shot in the ass, if you would care to listen!"

Kyuzo watched at amidst all of the carnage, as bodies just started dropping. Part of Kyuzo was upset, that animalistic, primal, raging ork that wanted nothing more than to just walk through paths of enemies and gun them down until his rounds were out, only to start walking into them with his sword.

Then there was that logical, rational side of him that recognized this was easier, safer, and it saved bullets. What it DID do to him, as he watched backs snap, limbs contort, and bones snap, was take a bit of comfort in the high end chrome and software he had. Cutting edge ware from Ares and a shit ton of nuyen dumped into him after it made him happy.

He didn’t trust Traction, or any decker. And would he be able to stop a full blown assault from someone like her? No. But he had enough firewalls, failsafes, ICEs and custom ware in their to at least make even the most capable trixies struggle or maybe overlook one thing. Hopefully, if that happened, it would be enough time for him to dump a magazine into whoever was working him.

Kyuzo moved ahead and into the room, putting a few rounds into those that were dying to finish it quickly. He moved his gaze all around the room, letting his vision and HUD both work together, ensuring there were no more targets. The fact that the facility was clear was emphasized by Recluse’s BLAST ripping through the building. The noise dampeners he had running nullified the sound so that it was not harmful, but anyone else who didn’t have that luxury would be stunned and most likely have a nice ringing in their ears for a few hours.

He was walking the perimeter at this point, knowing that ultimately, his job was done. At least anything other than killing anything if it moved. Not a moment later, he say an elf walking in, weapons raised in a non-threatening manner, which immediately told Kyuzo that he was a threat. He took several steps and raised his weapon up to the elf while looking around to see what other threats were coming. He didn’t fire, he knew the group was behind him, but if given the word from anyone, or at the slightest threat, he would open fire.

He wasn’t sure who saw what, but he knew at least Traction had eyes on him through his cyberware, and that meant it was most likely shared to all, so there was no need to speak.