[adamu]

Wednesday, 20 November, 1515; Korean BBQ House, Capital Hill, Downtown Seattle

A peculiar facial expression evolved across the big Korean's face. Appreciation. Fascination. Lust? He spoke: "Yours must be a superhuman will to live, not only that you managed to cling to this mortal coil, but that you have not given up the will to live now that you find yourself in this predicament. Lesser men would have sought the peace of the next life by now. Do you feel no sense of calamity, of loss?"

[Jack_Spade]

"I don't think so. Sure there are some things you can't do without a meat body, but on the whole it's pretty cool. After all, I can experience everything I want within the matrix just like regular folks. And there are enough people who choose to stay online without having to. I am more alive then them - better yet, I have now centuries ahead of me to perfect myself. And even if earth gets to boring I'd be in a prime position to visit Mars or the Moon.
I am not the one who has lost - it's the rest of you meat puppets who will die - sooner or later.

But until than I've still got work to do - starting with your problems. So tell me more about you and your operation. What's going on?"

[adamu]

Wednesday, 20 November, 1515; Korean BBQ House, Capital Hill, Downtown Seattle

"I am a small cog in an organization called the Komun'go. You may have heard of us. We are currently under savage attack. Many of our people have been killed. We do not know who is attacking us, or even why. We know that a great number of our attackers have been women. And that almost all the attacks have been magical. Finally, we have a small lead, a thin wisp of a lead, that might lead us to these assailants. The first two operatives we sent after this lead died suddenly and mysteriously, apparently targeted from a distance by some sort of ritualism. You, however, might fare better. As I said, dangerous. You would have to work alone, lest you be tracked astrally by your companions. But the rewards for information about our attackers would be generous. Are you interested?"

[Jack_Spade]

John nodded - the movement was a bit to exaggerated for his taste, he made a mental note to tighten the lead ring around the neck servo at his next maintenance session:
"I see. And yes I'll take this job - working solo is one of my specialties. 
Could you provide me with footage from the deaths of you operatives? Ritual magic killing curses usually need a spotter to be effective.
Better yet, give me all data you collected so far. I have someone reliable who is amazing at number crunching."

[adamu]

Wednesday, 20 November, 1517; Korean BBQ House, Capital Hill, Downtown Seattle

The fat man nodded, his double chin tripling. "I will have the data compiled and sent if you will designate a secure address. But I must insist you not share with any associates or subcontractors. We are embroiled in a delicate information-sharing controversy ourselves, so our intelligence must be kept within an extraordinarily tight circle for the time being. But you are already on the right track, I am impressed. Here, let me show you."

An AR display appeared between the two men. It split into quadrants. Each quadrant showed a grisly and very public death: immolation, dismemberment, melting, and...inside-out-turning. Throngs of onlookers stared aghast at each. The Korean flicked a finger and red circles appeared around the faces of four different women, one in each of the crowds.

"We have number crunchers of our own, I assure you."

The backgrounds disappeared, leaving just the four women. Two humans, an elf, an ork. There was no resemblance in terms of hair color or attire, but when the AR image overlaid the four images and the facial recognition software pointed out the key markers, it became clear that all were the same woman.

"We cannot identify her in any database. The two operatives that were tracking her previously each met their grisly ends just as they were about to report on her movements. However, we were able to retrieve some data from devices recovered from their corpses. Much was corrupted along with the destruction of their bodies, but we have pieced together enough to know that this woman has at times frequented three locations. All verdant spaces in public parks. The exact coordinates, one each in Snohomish, on Council Island, and in Fort Lewis, will accompany the data I send. We have no indication of the frequency or timing of her visits to these places. As of about twelve hours ago, we set up drone surveillance on all three locations, which we can patch you into with certain limits to your access. And of course we are doing our best to access public surveillance all over the metroplex with a tie-in to facial recognition applications. But so far we have found nothing."

He closed the display.

"As I said, thin. Our best successes have been with human operatives, but they all died. While our automated efforts have turned up nothing. I am therefore hoping you, with your unique nature, can somehow bridge the gap. Finally, I remind you of something I said earlier: information about our attackers would be rewarded generously. The death of this one would glean us nothing, and I fear her capture would alert her handlers to change their plans. If you acquire this target, learn what you can without direct action."

[Jack_Spade]

"I see. Observe but not interfere. I can do that. Hm - probably no ritual magic then. More like a powerful sorceress or someone with a very powerful spirit at their call - possession or channeling. The gruesome nature is a weak indicator for blood magic - especially the inside out turning.
Combined with a strong detection spell to recognize interest or malevolence towards her it would have been relatively easy to pick out her tails.

Regular appearance at those locals indicates either some kind of racket or other profit scheme that needs personal appearances to keep the marks in line or she is shadowing someone herself.

That's all speculation of course - I'll go and have a look at those locations.
There, I've sent you the account number of a matrix post box you can use to contact me and where the life feeds from the drones can be directed.

If there is nothing else, I'll take my leave now. I need to recharge and do some maintenance before I start this job. I'll contact you as soon as I find anything.
If you can get me a visa I'll start on Council Island since this is the smallest of the three areas. Otherwise I'll tackle Snohomish first, starting with the murder site and make my way outwards in a spiral until I find something."
John looked at the Korean with a quizzical (no.4) look.

[Jack_Spade]

"All you need will be provided. Now go."
John shrugged and left. The offer of a ride he ignored, but before he left he winked at the nephew and grinned: " Sleep tight, see you later."
And with that vaguely threatening/creepy greeting he started to jog away, gradually speeding up until he was just fast enough to impress joggers but not fast enough to create a scene.
While he left the steering to the drone pilot he began to read through the material.
It wasn't much. Nothing indicated why the Koreans had been attacked, nothing hinted how the situation had come to the point that people had been turned to goo and inside out.
The connection to parks and reservations indicated that this mage had something to do with nature or natural based magic. Geomancers, Druids, Voodoo and dozen other types of practices were viable culprits.

John noticed that his body had started to cut through back alleys, automatically jumping over walls, using the climbing claws where needed, crossing busy streets and generally taking the directest possible route to his home. With a mental command he slowed his movement down a little. Once done he concentrated again on the files

Ok, two weeks ago the first hit - no name given, just that it was a member of the organization. Great, that was as helpful as a nail through your kneecap. From the images he could at least lern that all victims had been male between 25 and 35 years old, somewhat fit and armed.

He again stopped reading, this time to send a text: <<Hiho Nachthexe. I'm still alive... ish. The Koreans hired me to do a job for them - everything hush hush. I'll tell you about it when I know what's going on. Until than I'll be out and about for a while, so no four hour raids at MDK for the foreseeable time. Have a good night.>>


At least the timing of the mystery killer lady was somewhat consistent. The visa the Koreans could provide wasn't much use to John - biometric data was hard to come by for him. So Snohomish it would be.

He reached the backyard of his small house. He seldom went inside - most of his time he just spend in the garage, sitting in his car and getting his drone recharged while he went into realignment - or sleep as a human would call it. Funny, sometimes when he awoke he actually could remember fragments of a dream - or maybe that was just a glitch from stuffing his experiences into long-time storage.
Whatever it was, he had to start now if he wanted to do his maintenance tomorrow and be ready to drive into the rural wilds...

Thursday, 21 November, 0911; Somewhere in a field in Snohomish county

A slight drizzle had set in as John finished the second circuit of his route. So far he had seen many cute woodland critters, a few farming drones going about their business and a whole lot of dirt. He was glad his chassis was a real amphibious model, so a high pressure hose would be all it took to get him clean again. After a few minutes sitting in the car to top up his batteries, he went out to start his third circuit...

[adamu]

Thursday, 21 November, 0911; Small wooded area in a field in Snohomish county

John's circuit around the grid coordinates included a mix of farmland, pasture, and woods. The forested area was dense. A search would be a major project, and time spent within the copse would be time without the rest of the grid, which was largely open, in sight.

As such, John had decided to balance the task by making his way through sequential swathes of the woodland, hoping to cover it all reasonably well in six passes.

But it was on this the third pass that he found the clearing.

Surrounded by dense foliage, he was lucky he spotted it at all.

Looking in from the outside, all he saw was an open circle. There was no sign of machine or tool work, nor of twigs cut, branches sheared, stones removed, or grasses pulled. Yet the circle - about five meters' diameter of bare earth - was perfectly round. Looking up through ten meters of tree growth, not even a single limb or leaf dared stray across the clearing's circumference.

In the center were stones piled loosely to form a waist-high mound with a flat, level surface.

[Jack_Spade]

John's recording function had subconsciously activated while he made a slow walk around the circle, recording it from every possible angle.
'Well, well, what do we have here. Seems like someone created an altar." He setting foot into the circle just yet. He'd need to download a compendium on magic theory, once he was outside this matrix zero-zone. For now he could only speculate. 'Could be Druids. Those guys can control plant spirits. I wonder if I'd find blood on the surface of the altar.'
But before he entered the circle he looked closely for any signs of footprints indicating a larger group using this site - as a ritual circle for example.

When he had done that, he moved close to the mound, trying to leave as little traces as possible.
When he was on top of it, he engaged the olfactory booster senors to sample the surface.

[spoiler]
Electronic Warfare (Perception): 12d6t5 4 [12d6t5=4, 6, 1, 1, 2, 6, 4, 5, 5, 2, 1, 2]
Sneak (Manover): 15d6t5 4 [15d6t5=4, 1, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 1, 2, 6, 6, 5, 3]
Olfactory booster: 15d6t5 3 [15d6t5=4, 6, 2, 3, 6, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 5, 2]
[/spoiler]

[adamu]

Thursday, 21 November, 0911; Small wooded area in a field in Snohomish county

Sensors sweeping for any sign of other presences, all he picked up was birdsong and wind. And although no tracker, the bare ground within the circle was smooth enough that it was clear there were no  great crowds passing through.

Within the circle things were quiet, and as he approached the stone table he realized he could no longer hear the birds. Had they stopped singing, or was it just very distant now?

The rocks at the center were bare, however, and bore not scent of blood, just various herbs.

What was that voice saying?

He checked his auditory sensors - they registered absolutely nothing.

So why was he hearing a voice? Not really hearing. Feeling?

It was just clear enough that he was almost sure that maybe it wasn't his imagination.

He ran diagnostics on his sensors. No red flags.

If there were words to it he couldn't make them out.

Then it was quiet. He was standing alone in the center of the perfect woodland circle beside a pile of carefully placed rocks.

[Jack_Spade]

'Shit. Either there are gremlins about or I might be not as impervious to magic as I thought. Well at least it's not blood magic - small consolation if you are confronted with "turn you inside out" spell slingers.'
Despite this sobering thought, John fished out of his bag two small sensor tags he had procured before this trip and placed the one with the microphone in a small crack in the altar stones.
The other one with the camera he placed in a tree outside the circle. He made sure not to disturb the vegetation too much, checked the feeds on both to make sure he got everything that happened inside the circle and then used a piece of cloth to erase his own tracks far enough so they wouldn't stand out.

That done he deactivated the wireless on the two sensors. They would record for 24 hours, so he'd have to fetch the data manually before it got over written. 'Let's see what's going on here. Probably Hippie shit of the finest caliber.'

[spoiler]
John has the Pilot of his Drone on overwatch for any surprises
Electronic Warfare Drone Perception: 14d6t5 6 [14d6t5=5, 4, 6, 3, 1, 3, 1, 5, 4, 5, 4, 2, 6, 6]
[/spoiler]
With that, John began to walk back towards the car. Load the batteries and maybe get the realignment sorted out early. Yeah that sounded like a good way to spend the rest of the daylight...

[adamu]

Thursday, 21 November, 0911; Small wooded area in a field in Snohomish

John had scarcely left the confines of the clearing when he was confronted by an elm tree.

An elm tree with two distinct eyes, a small twig for a nose, and an old knot for a mouth. Its myriand limbs gesticulated as it spoke aloud.

"Who is it that disturbs the sacred grove? Are you a supplicant, or a doer of mischiefs?"

[Jack_Spade]

'Really? A fucking Ent?'
John had stopped and was completely frozen for the half second he needed to form a response.
"I did not intent to disturb anything and I certainly didn't do any mischief. Who are you that you claim the right to confront me"

With a certain trepidation John went mentally through his available arsenal: Climbing claws - sharp enough to damage but probably not very effective against an awakened tree or manifested spirit, Shock Gloves - probably little effect against dry bark, but might work against a spirit, Taser - likewise.
Best option: Engage Jump Jacks and outrun opponent - come back with a flame thrower.

[adamu]

Thursday, 21 November, 0911; Small wooded area in a field in Snohomish

"I derive my authority from ancient lines far beyond your mortal..." and then in mid-sentence the creature struck, branches striking out at John's arms and legs.

At the exact same moment, his sensors suddenly picked up sound and movement directly behind him, although he had detected no approach.

[Jack_Spade]

[spoiler]Ini: 14+5d6 31
-10 Ini: Full Defense: 19d6t5 5 [19d6t5=4, 1, 4, 6, 6, 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 2, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 5]
-5 Ini Disengage Maneuver + Pilot: 14d6t5 4
Jump: Maneuver + Pilot (Jump) +Rigger Control: 15d6t5 6 [15d6t5=6, 3, 6, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 1, 5, 6, 4, 4, 4, 5]
=> Jump 3m high and a few meters to the side
[/spoiler]

John had expected an attack - but not before the talk was done. Sneaky Ent. Luckily his Jump Jacks were already at full capacity and it only took a flicker of attention to engage them. The result wasn't unlike a startled cat: John jumped three meters high and to the left. His claws where already extended, but in this case there was no ceiling he could cling to. So instead he crashed into the brush, while he also tried to get a focus on the second attacker. A message plopped out into his field of view: "REMEMBER - they don't want a fight they want information. Don't do anything stupid!"
Annoyed he thought his own message to him away. Now was not the time and also it wasn't as if he had attacked anyone. This was clearly a case of self defense. Finally the combat program had loaded and John crouched with extended claws, ready to counter attack or dodge away.