[Tecumseh]

"What's a penny and why would you pinch it?" Mato asks. Beta explains. Mato nods, seeming to understand.

"So why would we want to work for a racist tacaño?" Mato asks. "If he specifically wants the ork then he's probably trying to frame us for something. And if he's cheap then he'll probably try to cheat us out of payment, or set it up so that he has grounds not to pay us."

Mato puts on his best snooty Johnson voice. "'I didn't want you to bomb the homeless shelter! I refuse to pay!' Boy, if I had a penny for every time I've heard that one!" He looks to Beta for confirmation that he used 'penny' in a sentence correctly.

[gilga]

AM apologizes "I am sorry, but I have some work I need to do for my creditors." She does not seem happy about it, as working for a criminal organization without the protection of the team is a bit troublesome for the fragile elf. "Call me up if you need some matrix support."

...

The next day at Gau's shop
The talismonger shop is 'closed' a sign welcomes the team, along with some freshly painted nasty graffiti of a hanged man drawing, and a gang mark as well as a "Death to anyone that enters graffiti".

Gau welcomes the Mato by "The trog! he says with excitement, "I watched your trid, big fan!" 
He looks at the other two "Do you really need the pixies? It is a trog job if you know what I mean
He is holding a shotgun, Jawsi can tell that Gau did not bother shaving for a few days, he is rather disheveled, perhaps a bit depressed.  He is carrying his shotgun and signals the team to follow him saying to himself "Come come, to the warehouse in the back. Your friend is already there! come come!"

[Jack_Spade]

Bobby nudged Mato: "Eh, don't worry, he has a home address. If he tries to screw us we are totally within our rights to take collateral."

At the meet, Bobby kept to the back of the small group and tried not to cringe seeing how the man used a shotgun as a crutch.
Curious he followed to see just who their new "friend" was supposed to be.

[Beta]

To Mato's question, Jawsey sighed, and said "We work for him because we all need the money, and because he sells to lots of people in the magical community.  We make sure we are careful about what we agree to, and he probably doesn't want the bad rep of going back on an agreement.  After all, he has a business where people are sometimes dropping thousands of nuyen -- who is going to do that with someone who doesn't honor deals?"

What Jawsey doesn't add is that he is hoping to drop thousands of nuyen sometime soon to upgrade his weapons focus to a level that withstand the background count of the barrens, and he hoped that the Talismonger couple would be more willing to be reasonable about the whole thing if he got the team to do this job for them.

Later, at the shop, Jawsey forced himself to laugh at Gao's comment then pointed at Bobby and explained "He's the bear."

[Jack_Spade]

"Strictly in the shapeshifting sense", added Bobby, who had already had an - in retrospect quite funny - missunderstanding during an outing at a popular bar.

[gilga]

Mr. Gau nods, and says "Great performance... I am impressed that you can change into something so big. Impressive... Great performance!

 his wheels seem to turn. Inside, Mr. Ginsburg is already waiting. "Meet your friend, a talent released to the streets recently Mr. Ginsburg".

The warehouse contains shelves on shelves of strange stuff, some of it is likely reagents for various traditions, from feathers and stones to crystals and even bags of sand. Organs from paracritters, and on the table there is a large crate filled with hundreds of daemon rat tails, apparently, that is of use to a talismonger, and one of his contacts have just shipped them in.

Gau places the half-open crate aside carefully and seats. His wife brings a porcelain jar of tea and glasses. Gau pours them some tea and then continues "Look, I brought you here because I am in a bind. I manage to coordinate a deal to purchase an artifact, a tarot card, but the problem is there is somebody else wants that card. He sent some thugs to harass my clients, closed down my shop effectively and warned me that I am a dead man if I step out of the shop. He intends to meet with the seller in my place and acquire the card. Normally I would just back down, but that particular client is quite influential and I am afraid to let her down. She can have the authorities here at my shop, looking for licences for everything and scaring off all the good customers.  Gangers I can handle, but the government guys... these are bad news"

[Beta]

"Risk your life, or risk your livelihood.  You are certainly between a rock and a hard place."

Jawsey stopped there, waiting for Gau to make the proposal.

[Tecumseh]

Mato likes what he hears. "Now you're talking my language!" he growls.

"So what's the play?" he asks. "Are we thugging the thugs? Are we accompanying you to the meet? Who is this that's giving you static?"

Speaking of static, Mato picks up a demon rat tail out of curiosity and gets a small shock from it. He drops it and shakes his hand out until the sensation passes. "Nasty little buggers," he mutters under his breath. "Burn em all."

[gilga]

The rat tail is a bit scorched. Mr. Gau says "Easy there, expensive product good for all sort of things..." When Mato suggests all the options Mr. Gau replies "Look you may need to do all these things, but I really should not know about it. I have enough on my plate."

He says "I have 15k, to pay for the card, this is the agreed upon price. You acquire the card, and then once you have it, deliver it to the client, and I am not leaving my shop. To be fair, I told you that the card is hot."

Can you do this kind of job for me?

[Lorebane24]

Ginsburg languidly stretches his arms as he stands and casually waves to the team.  "Hoi chummers," he mutters before turning to Gao.

"Alright, so it's hot, and we should be ready for the drek to fly.  Good times, and I'm sure down, but it seems to me that before we negotiate price, we need to know more about what we're dealing with.  Who's the client, and who are we picking it up from?  Any protocols already in place - we aren't exactly putting our best foot forward if we wander into Taco Temple and start asking people if they've got a tarot card to sell."

[Beta]

Jawsey smiled, and let Ginsburg speak for now.  He had a lot of questions, and the money seemed grossly inadequate for the likely danger in actually carrying a tarot card -- but if Gao were willing to answer such questions before they'd agreed to take the job, who was he to object?

[gilga]

Gau sighs "It is not a tarot card, well it is... but it is not the kind of tarot card you can just buy. It is an Artifact, it is not known how to make them. They might be powerful, they might be a hoax, nobody knows for sure. They are magical, they have auras and they are not foci. This is what people established, the rest is rumors some claim that you can do all sort of crazy shit with them. Anyhow, real or not - the buzz around them is real which is why I agreed to locate one."

Client's name is Amanda Green. She is with the department of arcane regulation and legislation at city hall. Basically, if she is angry with me, she can make sure that I close down the shop. She is also a known collector of arcane artifacts and a philanthropist.  She made her fortune trading arcane artifacts, so she does not want to miss out on these cards in case they become very valuable.

She... does not know how you acquire the card... Don't spook her, send the pretty one to deliver it.
He frowns, now you know all that I know. Time to commit and discuss payment. Are you in or out?

[Beta]

Jawsey had brought his sword cane, to remind Gao that he was a customer as well as potentially a hireling.  But since it felt like this might take a while, he pulled out a chair to sit in.  "Let me make sure that I understand." 

Taking his time, Jawsey leans his cane against the table, stretches out his arms, then holds up his index finger and starting ticking off his points, finger by finger, as he goes. "First, you were planning to buy this card, from some source who you are not revealing yet but who you have an agreement of some sort with.  Second, you were expecting to pay them fifteen large for the card, and were not too worried about the price going up.  Third, you were planning to turn around and sell the card to one Amanda Green, collector and philanthropist.  Four,th seeing as you are not a philanthropist but a businessman, you were planning to sell her the card for more than 15 large."

Having reached his little finger but still having points he moved to his thumb and includes everything left in one jumbled sentence "Five, due to these threats you propose that we replace your role in this, that you front us the 15 large, we go to the seller and buy the card, we take it to Amanda Green, we get payment, we re-pay you the 15 large, and we make our profit out of the mark up on the card.  Do I have that right?"

Jawsey suspects that Gao was actually suggesting that they steal the card and deliver it to Amanda, and Gao pays them the 15k that he was going to pay the seller.  But at the least he wants to see the other man's reaction to this suggestion.

[gilga]

Gau responds You got that right, Ms. Green pays 25k for the card.  You can keep that 10k as your retainer.  I doubt the seller would jack the price even higher after agreeing to sell.  This is part of the reason why you bring the trog... If he can wrestle bears, he can keep most people honest.

[Beta]

"And you are proposing that we add this gentleman," a nod toward Ginsburg, "to our team for this activity?  I'm sure he is a man of many useful talents, but obviously he can't trust us and we can't trust him, at least not yet.  So while adding him has advantages, it also creates certain challenges.  And of course, ten-kay divided four ways doesn't go very far ..."

He looks at Mato and Bobby, and asks "Any concerns before we proceed further?"  Turning back to Gao he adds "I do have one specific concern: in rough terms, where is the meet where you were to buy the card? That could add a lot to the risk of this mission."