CAPTCHA reclined in a chair, one hand lazily resting atop the seat controls whilst the other rested over her eyes. By all appearances the woman had drifted off to sleep shortly after the flight had left the ground, and while in a sense that may be true it was not totally so. Her body lay still, but her mind wandered afar. It ranged across the matrix, hopping from grid to grid with only the slightest speed bumps of data trail intersections slowing her down. The Global Grid was always a mess, and being so high in the air meant that general distance noise and altitude chatter was interfering with her Persona-- even so, leaping across the globe via the Matrix was a simple affair and CAPTCHA knew where she was going.
Shifting onto the Seattle Metroplex Grid was effortless, her persona's subscription key being recognized opening the proverbial gates to the city for her as soon as she reached for it. From there, locating her downtown apartment was child's play. She ranged through the security cameras, pulling up data feeds from her hasty exit a few days prior. With the speed granted by raw data contact with her mind, she fast forwarded through and overlayed multiple days of visual feeds at once as she hastened through the week of time since she left. Four days after her exit, three days before the present, the door to her apartment suddenly exploded inwards as smoke filled the room. She waved her hand over the virtual stream of the data, switching the feeds to thermal imaging-- only to find that the smoke was heat-laden, smothering even the thermal imaging feeds. CAPTCHA digitally chuckled and shifted into a separate device in the living room.
The motion sensors installed in the floor paneling of the high end apartment's walls combined their datum feeds with the cameras, granting outlines of forms within the smokey visuals. Heavy footsteps, a stooped figure, lumbering gait- a heavily armored troll. It had put the boot to her door and come in first. At the troll's back came a diminutive figure, some dwarf variant if the gap in footsteps was anything to note, and finally footfalls that barely registered. She brought up the MAD analyser in the doorframe and noted that the dwarf and troll were carrying heavy cyberware, but not the third figure who came into the room.
Next came the audio feeds. Three omnidirectional microphones- the doorhandle, which was giving fuzzy feeds after slamming into the wall, an obvious game station setup on the home entertainment station below the trid, and the final one a concealed skimmer drone above the chandelier concealed in a light fixture. The trio of data feeds provided a complex overlay of accurate positional data and completed the previously obscured image for CAPTCHA.
"Slitch is gone." The troll barked, sweeping into her bedroom. "Recent, too, soykaf's still on the nightstand."
"Quiet." The dwarf- a woman- hissed in a shrill voice. "Any sign of her, Slant?"
Slant. She knew that name, that explained the third figure. Slant was bad for business. The thick southern drawl of an ork spoke, finally concreting the position of that lightly-stepping third figure;
"She's long gone, two steps ahead."
"What now?" the dwarf sounded exasperated.
"If the hen's not at roost, then she's on the range." Slant clicked his tongue. Already the smoke was beginning to clear, and she could make out the infuriating stetson hat of the tall ork through the clearing feeds. "'Sides, you really think this was gonna be this easy--"
The sound of a shotgun erupted from her bedroom, and CAPTCHA chuckled to herself as she watched the scene of chaos unfolded. A troll, wrestling with a Doberman drone toting a double-barrel shotgun. Said troll lifting the drone and hurling it out of a window, causing an alarm to trip. The dwarf drawing two machine pistols and hitting the dirt as a multi-armed serving drone in the kitchen whirled to life and began to throw a series of knives into the living room. Slant narrowly avoiding a cake knife by casually leaning to the side. The blazing sight of a fire spirit as it appeared before him, its flaming hands grabbing the serving drone and melting its limbs to slag even as it continued to flail its appendages. The dwarf firing two streams of bullets through the glass of her coffee table, a series of micro-explosions ripping into the sentry turrets that had just deployed from their housings in the roof. The troll barreling into the living room with an Ares Duelist on its back, a sword-arm thrust deeply into its lower body while the other tried to coil around the troll's neck. The troll twisting in its sprint and leaping, slamming its back- drone, blade, and all- into the concrete support beam in the corner of the living room. His howl as he ripped the blades from his body and slammed the barely-functioning Duelist into the floor, then crushed its pilot-housing underfoot.
"Mm. Torch the place." Slant drawled, turning to stride from the room. On the way out the door he kicked a hairbrush deftly off the ground and into his hand. He paused at the threshold, lifted the brush to the nearest camera, and lifted his head to let his red eyes pierce into the camera feeds. "...Be seein' you around, CAPTCHA, can't run forever."
And the last thing in the data stream was Slant and his crew making their exit as that fire spirit spread its arms, flames growing as if bidden from the floor itself, and engulfed the entirety of the apartment in.
CAPTCHA yawned, sitting up in her chair as she thumbed the seat controls and sat up. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms, her legs trembling as they mimicked the motion. At last she smacked her lips and rolled her neck, sitting up straight in the chair. Without even opening her lips, she spoke to the others on the plane in a private manner;
Hoi there chummers, having a nice flight? CAPTCHA introducing herself properly at last.
The message would seamlessly, and simultaneously, flow into each member of the team's commlink-AR field. It would be visible as a benign scrolling message in cybereyes or as a simple text message on the physical device itself, but as an addition to her message the trid screen before Tenno and Bomoh would distort its news broadcast as CAPTCHA projected her Living Persona onto its screen, lounging on the news table and counting the flowers in her bridal bouquet. The equally attractive, though distintly corpse-ish, figure on the screen winked at the two in front of the trid display in a coquettish manner.
I don't know this J well, but international work is always messy. Just glad that I could fit the Excalibur on the plane. I run recon and matrix support primarily, but in a pinch my babies can act as fire support too. Don't be a stranger, I don't bite.
