[CanRay]

November 2^nd, 2064:
Flying Over Auburn, Seattle Metroxplex

Fred T couldn't believe his luck as he clung to the handle on the Nissan Hound military transport helicopter.  He remembered looking at it while getting set up for the Shadowrun, jet black with radar absorbing paint that looked like it just drank all the light up and didn't let any go, bulbous protrusions where the machine guns were supposed to go.  “ECM, they'll make us look like whatever we want the radar wants them to.”, the rigger, Slipstream, had told him.

Two years ago, his sister and he had run away from the Catholic orphanage in Redmond after, well, too much.  Six years more years for a System Identification Number and a welfare line had been too long a wait for him and the Dwarf girl that had been taken in at the same time, and thus were siblings according to the culture of the orphanage.  The Penguins were still collecting the money for raising them from the church and the United Canadian American States while he risked his life running dreky jobs that no one else wanted to do, living on cheap nutrisoy and sleeping where ever he could fight off the bums for shelter.  His Sister, Janice U, had gotten on the bad side of a pimp that was determined to break her, but screwed up on the amount of drugs to get her hooked, and ODed her.  Fred had settled that Troll bastard's hash.  The pimp had used a spoon and a needle for the drugs, Fred had used a frying pan and a turkey baster.

Suddenly, he gets a call from the smelly wretch of a fixer he knew that gave him the courier jobs that no one else wanted to do.  Low pay, high risk, no reputation.  Perfect for a punk runaway teen.  Turns out a drek-hot team of actual Shadowrunners wanted him for a 'Run.  A real one, against security and everything.  Not just bags of whatever from Point A to Point B for a few dozen nuyen.  He was only getting a half-share compared to everyone else, but they had laid out a good deal with equipment just for him.  An armoured vest with plates that actually fit, a CommLink that put him in contact with everyone through a BattleTacNet (Whatever that was), bullets that made his .38 Colt Asp revolver a thing to be feared rather than sneered at.  The weapon's guy called Rabbit had been been happy when Fred had swung out the cylinder after Rabbit loaded it to check the rounds, and reload it himself.  Good thing, the guy was dripping in weapons that somehow disappeared under his duster.  Not a person Fred wanted slotted off at him.

He just wished everyone would stop calling him...

“Puppy!”  Janice called out.  She was the leader of the group, as much as they seemed to have one.  A hard ork woman with blades in her wrists.  She had popped them out to demonstrate what would happen if he screwed them on the 'Run.  Fred had no inclination to do so, this was the big leagues, a major boost to his reputation, maybe a way out of cheap 'Runs, “Here's where we tell you what's going on.  We got the biometrics for a security agent of a Corporation near the Puyallup Barrens.  All of them except his face.” she added, with a dirty look to the cockpit, and the sleeping Slipstream.  Or apparently sleeping, she was plugged into the combat helicopter and flying it with just her mind, as they showed on the 'Trid that Fred saw on rare occasions at stores before the owners kicked him out.  “Everything except his face.  But computers are stupid, you get someone that's close enough, with the right bone structure and such, you can get past that with a little extra hacking.  That's where you come in.  When you brought in some packages to Rabbit here, he took some pics of you.  Your face matches almost exactly.  Enough to fool the computer long enough for our decker to make it think it's got the right person after all.”

“That's right, Pup.  The only reason we want you is your pretty little face.  Humbling, isn't it?”  Rabbit said.  He was a human, average in the looks department, but built like a small tank, only with a lot more weapons all hidden away under that coat of his.

“Anyhow, as I was saying...”  Janice started, but was cut off by a beep on our headsets.

“SON OF A SLITCH!  Janny, we got chaos and destruction going down in the Matrix right now and I just got spammed by ShadowLand!  There's a NUKE IN MOUNT RAINIER!  And the only people that might know are, well...  Us.”  Came a male voice I hadn't heard before, apparently the decker that was running overwatch for us.

“Mount Rainier is a volcano.  If a nuke goes off in it, that'll flood Seattle in lava.”  Slipstream said over the comms.  She sounded concerned.  Hell, I was trying not to drek my pants, “We have fuel enough to easily get there, even at top speed.  Getting back, we'll have to refuel at a place I know, but...”

“But the job.  We have to do the job.”  Rabbit said, a touch of panic in his voice.  I felt very small in the troop compartment of the helicopter right now, a half dozen Shadowrunners started arguing over the situation, Janice trying to override them through volume, shouting loud enough to be heard over the engine.

Then the commlinks got cut off, “Janice, there's something eating the Matrix and satellites are falling out of the sky.  You're going to lose me any...”  And dead static came over the system.

Silence except for the engine straining for full speed, as I saw the other 'Runners plug their headsets into ports near each seat.  I didn't get a seat, but there was a port near the strap I was hanging onto, and plugged into it as well.

“...  Crash the Matrix, again?  Frag it to hell, Rabbit, this is bigger than jacking some damned tool and dye specs!”  Slipstream said over the comm, despite her body being ragdolled and drooling in the cockpit.

“I need this 'Run, frag it to hell!”  Rabbit said, unstrapping himself, and striding to the cockpit hatch with his data cable trailing behind him, as we all stood in shock, drawing a huge pistol and pointing it at the rigger's head, “We keep with the plan, 'Stream.  Or I geek you and fly us there myself.”

“Frag it to hell, you son of a slitch!  Rabbit, stand down!  What good is the job if we're buried in lava or choked in ash!”  Janice cried out, unhooking herself as well, but Slipstream was far from helpless in the situation.  She jinked the helicopter to one side, shuddering Rabbit to the side, as well as Janice who hit me, hard.  She bounced off the hatch just before it slid open.

“No one tries to hijack me.  Someone throw him out the damned door!  We don't even have the fuel to get to Cuba!”  Slipstream said calmly, flying straight and narrow again.  I chanced a glace outside as I tried to get my own footing, watching the falling stars.  Then I remembered the deckers words.  Those weren't meteors, they were satellites falling to Earth.  Some were very, very close.  By the time I turned back, three people were fighting with Rabbit over his pistol.  I was watching very intently when the laser blinded me for a second, and I felt an impact into my forehead.

My body went limp as my hand was caught in the strap I was holding onto, feeling a leg dip into the early morning air.

“Kid!”  Rabbit yelled.

“Aw no, PUPPY!”, Janice followed up as I felt something wet slide down my face, my eyes seeing red without being mad.

Then the helicopter bucked again, and I felt like I weighed nothing at all.

[CanRay]

I lay naked in the snowdrift that I landed in, the virgin white snow flecked red with my blood.  I was so cold I stopped even shivering, just laying there, alone, as the wind blew stray snowflakes over my body.  So cold, they did not even melt on my skin.  The only part of me that had any feeling was my forehead, which hurt.  A lot.

I closed my eyes, and awaited the inevitable.

I felt a warm tongue on my face, but could not even get the strength to look.  “Man.  Wake up Man.” came a voice beside me, tongue still licking at my face.

“Cold.”  I said, calmly, without even a chattering of teeth.  I was starting to feel my head stop aching.

“That's because you're dead, Man.”  I opened my eyes and saw a large, furry Saint Bernard.  “But death is easy.”

“If I'm dead, then how are you talking to me?  Why not just let me be?”  I asked, my head no longer hurting at all thanks to the licking.

“I'm talking to you because you are dead, Man.  Call me Dog.  That is what I am.”

“What?  Not whom?”  I asked.

“Weird questions to ask while you lay there dead, Man.  That's good, questions are always good.  Here's a question back at you.  Do you want to live?”  Dog replied, now answering me at all.

“I'm already dead.  How could I live again?”

“Dying is easy.  Living is hard.  Are you going to do the easy thing?”

With monumental effort, I moved, opening my eyes reminded me of lifting a troll I had hit with a taser off of me.  I looked at the Saint Bernard that was Dog once more, his big shaggy grin looking at me as he licked my face once more, “Never done the easy thing once in my life.  Not going to start now.”

“Good attitude.  But, can you follow through?”

I moved arms that were made of lead and grabbed onto Dog's collar, and he dragged me through the snow.  Soon I felt gravel and broken glass tear through my naked body, and started to shiver from the cold as Dog's body warmed me up.  Soon, I was brought to a burning oil barrel, where a number of dogs, all different breeds sat around.  I realized that they were all Dog, and that I was now Dog as well.

I lay there, shivering, naked, helpless.  Next to the burning barrel as they all howled in song.  A song of healing and power.

[CanRay]

“Damn if he still ain't in one piece.  Going to get some good cred for his body from the cutters, Johnny.  Good cred.  Maybe even get a bottle of something that has taste this time.”  I heard the voice next to me say.  I smelled his breath and body, rot and decay was the majority of what there was.

“Like you'd know taste.  Your tongue is dead from that drek that you dump down your gullet all the time.  Chips, now those are the way to live.  You can taste the real quill of booze with them!”  Came another voice, and I heard the rasp of a blade coming out of a sheath.

My eyes snapped open and I sat up, my face sticky and feeling like it cracked in places where the dried blood was.  I saw the pair of them, in soiled rags that were flats, clothing that was a combination of hemp paper and recycled plastic bottles, waterproof and fairly warm, perfect for Seattle's weather.  They were good for a few days of wear.  Looks like these guys had lived in them for years.

I stared at them, and they stared at me, unsure of what to do.  One held a knife at the ready, while the other had a meat hook.  I just stared hard at them, and finally spoke, “Unless you're more intimidating than a bullet to the head and a fall out of a helicopter, you might want to choose this fight carefully.”

They buzzed turbo.  I don't know if it was what I said, or just the fact that I had survived those two things that scared them away.  I looked around now, seeing the hole that I had created in the rotted floorboards.  Splinters covered my face and hands, the only exposed parts of myself before I had fallen down.  And I sat next to a oil barrel filled with burning wood, naked as the day I was born.

Today I was reborn.  In pain, cold, confusion, just like a child.  But I felt Power, too.  No idea what to do with it, but I had it.

I stumbled away from the tenement building, trying to figure out how I survived the bullet and the fall, and then reminding myself that I hadn't.  I stumbled through the streets, my bare feet hurting from the broken and trash strewn concrete.  Images didn't look right.  I was smelling in colour and listening to smells.  Emotions came at me in strange ways that I couldn't describe.  But soon I found one that I was intimately familiar with.

Anger.

I followed it, sniffing at the air for it.  It was rich in the air, but so was fear, another familiar scent.  I growled deep in my throat, feeling my own rage build as I moved through the doorway that was the origin of it, past a series of motorcycles that were parked nose-out from the front of the building where they could easily be seen from the one-way mirrors.

It was a sleazy strip bar, bad even by the neighbourhood's standards.  Had the neighbourhood attempted to claim standards, that is.  No one was paying attention to the half-dressed women on stage, nor the canned music that came out of the half-blown speakers.  A naked kid with a bullet hole in his forehead didn't attract any attention at all.  It was all focused on a guy backed into a corner, holding one of the strippers tightly with a knife to her throat, “I said that she's mine, and if I can't slotting well have this slitch, then no one can!” he cried out, sounding far from sane.  A few people had pistols out, mostly cheap streetline specials.  None, obviously, felt comfortable enough a shot to shoot him without hitting the woman.  The bartender was holding some kind of shotgun at them, the wrong weapon for a situation like this.

I moved through the crowd like a ghost, sizing the man up.  He was a bit bigger than I was, but had small feet.  How did that line go again?

“I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.  Please.”, I said, calmly.  Looking intently at the knife wielding nutcase.  Then I shifted my perception to just the right of him.

“My, what?”  Insane was the meal of the day for this guy, but a naked person covered in blood demanding such things was obviously beyond even his capacity at the moment, “Look, drek for brains, I get this woman and we leave here together so we can be happy, so I'm going...  What the hell at you staring at?”

“The man standing next to you.”  I answered calmly.

“I got my back to the wall you...”, he never got to finish his retort as a hand came out of the wall.  Strong fingers like a stevedore, the ham-sized fist enveloped the maniac's hand, crushing bones and the faux ivory handle of the knife, moving it away from the woman's throat.  The guy screamed as the woman ran away from him, and a knee followed out of the wall, slamming into a kidney and dropping him to the ground.  Soon, the form of an ork that was every bit as dingy and dirty as the bar itself came out of the wall, just staring silently at the person he had in his grip.

“Now, you can give me what I asked politely for.  Or I can just leave, and not even bother trying to talk to the nice person that can walk through walls and crush every bone in your body without even half trying.” I said, smiling.  The guy pulled his keys out of his pocket with his off hand, and tossed them to me.

I caught them with a flick of my arm.

The leathers were a bit big on me, but the boots fit fine.  I went from bike to bike, trying to find out which one the key worked with which.  Finally, I found it in a raked and stretched chopper, I could barely reach the apehangers the guy had on the bike, but it would be better than walking.

Fighting with the kick start, the bartender came down from the club, “Hey, look, that was my sister you just saved.  What, what the frag did you do, man?”

I stopped, and thought for a moment, then walked up to him, and grabbed the red cloth he had in his hands with a jerky motion, rubbing my face clean from the blood on it, then tying it around my head like a bandana, “Me?  I did nothing, just talked to the bar.  You know, some work might be in order for this place.  After all, healthy body, healthy spirit, right?”

“Yeah...  Right.”  The guy said, obviously in shock.  I jumped on the massive Harley-Davidson, and kicked it to life.  The engine rattled horrendously from the badly maintained engine, the mufflers apparently making more noise than preventing any, and I roared off into the chaos that was enveloping the world.

[CanRay]

November 2^nd, 2070:

Pup backed the bike up manually while it was in neutral, then set it in park, turning off the automatic controls.  The aftermarket gyroscopic system of the 2053 Harley-Davidson Scorpion kept it upright without the need of a kickstand.  Pup took his helmet off, placed it on a handlebar, letting his blood red headband fly free in the wind, and smiled while looking at the chopper.  It had been nearly a wreck when he had taken it away all those years ago from this very bar.  The forks and handlebars were shortened now, the body stretched, the engine replaced entirely.  Repainted a full black, dark and harsh.  The twin headlights and the chopped front fender gave it the look of a predator from those seeing it from the front, he nearly invisible on it behind the lights, in his armoured synthleather duster and helmet.  The system upgraded to modern capabilities, the bike could even drive itself.  Better than Pup could drive it, in fact.

He had spent more on the motorcycle than he had the various apartments he had over the years, even including the constant need to destroy and rebuild the medicine lodges, the places of long magic and communing with Dog.  It gave him legs to run fast, which made him harder to find, harder to hunt, harder to kill.  Of course, he had proven to the world just how hard it was to kill him six years ago by dying, and getting better.  Pup himself moved like the motorcycle, like a predator.  An angry one, always on the hunt and hungry.  Dog warned him of the rage inside of him, but he could never get around it, escape it, get away from it.  Ever since that first day he had found magic, he had also found his hatred intensified, and he had never known much in the way of kindness or happiness in life before that event.

Despite the raw emotions that bundled underneath the surface, the street shaman smiled and was friendly at the bouncers and the few folks hanging outside “The Healthy Spirit”, his usual hangout.  Mike Hardeski, the owner and bartender of the strip club had taken Pup's words to mind, fixed up the place from a dive and turned it into a form of respectable place.  Not high class by any stretch of the imagination, but a hangout for the foremen and lower-level managers that ran the factories around southern Tacoma.  There were more of them now, as the Technomancer scare earlier in the year had changed corporate attitudes to drone-run factories.  Metahumans may complain about things like safety equipment, there may be some graft, and so on, but they couldn't be hacked and taken control of.  Not all of them, not all at once.

Pup shook the hands of a few of the regulars, people outside to try and have conversations rather than shout over the music, or just getting a breath of air that stank only of the “Tacoma Aroma” instead of stale smoke and cheap beer.  He knew a few by sight, and one or two by name, but no more.  Just good folk that had no place in the world of running in the Shadows like he did.  They didn't know his business, he didn't know theirs, and everyone was happy.

There were a few Shadowrunners that came to the place, as well as a few bounty hunters that used the place as a base of operations of sorts to go after people hiding out in the Barrens, the lawless zone that the bar technically sat in.  It was an outlaw operation, no licenses for liquor or the dancers, but the cops might come down this far if the trouble was bad enough, or the prey a big enough score to bother pulling out the heavy armour and rifles rather than just the regular patrol work.  Maybe a bust of the place every now and then, finding only a few shiftless low-lifes that had pissed off the Vory.

Mike was a UCASer, the son of Russian immigrants, but wasn't a member of the Vory.  His only connection to them was paying protection, occasionally giving one of their members a job when he needed to lie low (And let their hackers implant security footage showing that he was a bouncer, and doing his job, at certain important times into his computer records), and letting the cops catch a few people that had slotted them off a little bit.

Walking inside, he was accosted by sound and flashing lights.  The stage was lit up brilliantly, with some effects going off to accentuate the women that were on it, an elf and an ork that were very intimate with each other to the joy of the people in pervert's row.  They had a garter on each leg, one with a credstick slot for those who still used the old stand-bys, and another for the more traditional hard cash, usually UCAS dollars or some kind of Corporate script, each was spendable if you knew the right people.  Mike did, and so did Pup.  Pup closed his eyes for a second, and opened them again, seeing the astral plane of existence, where emotions could be seen more than lights.  The people in pervert's row had joy and lust filling them, as well as a core of boredom and resentment, the usual.  The two dancers were full of joy, their hearts literally connected to each other.  Their dance together was no act to get the testosterone-filled patrons to pay more.  Pup drew his perceptions back into the real world and sighed.  'Wasn't it supposed to be a lone wolf, not a lone puppy?'  He thought to himself as he walked over to the bar.

Mike smiled as he saw Pup come close, and cut a conversation short with Iosif Kirov, a mean bastard of an old man who mostly just complained and swore.  A lot.  He had fought in the Eurowars in the Russian Army, and had worked as a sailor on more than one freighter afterwards.  He could swear in more languages than anyone in Seattle, an exceptional feat.  Despite Pup's usual tendencies to take offence at anything, he felt a kindred feeling to Iosif, both had been used practically since birth after all, or maybe it was just that Pup knew he was looking at himself in the future.  Iosif swore at Mike loud enough to be heard over the music, in Or'zet, a new language for him, apparently he still worked on self-improvement despite his age, but he had a full glass of good vodka, and that was mostly what he wanted.  Mike pulled a bottle of Gutbuster out for me, wiping frost off the label to show it wasn't a knock-off, and popped the top as I pulled out some Horizon script I had been paid in last week.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Pup.  Your money is no good here.”  He said, smiling.

“Then I'm a big tipper.”  I said, laying enough script on the table to pay the usual rate for the beer.  It was an old game with us by now, The Vory protected this place from crime and gangs.  I protected it from the idiots too stupid to know otherwise, as well as handled things that the bouncers couldn't.  Like the magically-capable Catholic Priest that decided the place was to be given the Sodom and Gomorrah deal, seems he had walked into the place by “Accident”, saw a women, and felt something he “Shouldn't”, and blamed the bar rather than himself.  I hated Catholics for a lot of reasons, but the smell of a toxic taint off of him as well.  Power corrupts, and sometimes that corruption drives people insane, or the insanity corrupts the Power.  Dog speaks in circles like that sometimes, but He was happy that I had stopped the fellow.  I got a belly rub.

Mike looked around for a bit, still smiling, then put a serious look on his face as he caught the attention of Janice, the topless bartender that worked with him, and gave her a nod.  She nodded back, and he grabbed my shoulder gently and lead me into his office.  It was a small, tight space, with a desk that was old enough to have once held a desktop computer, rather than the old, cheap commlink that was almost twice the size of an old pocket secretary.  He closed the door, leaving the room in near silence.  “I found one of Jersey Janice's crew is still alive and in Seattle.” he said without preamble.

I could feel my demeanour change completely, the friendly, happy mask I usually wore giving way to my true self, full of hatred and rage.  Mike shifted uncontrollably.  I unsettled people when I showed who I truly was.  “Who?  Where?” I asked, my voice hard and controlled.  I liked Mike, I really didn't want to scare him too much.

“Guy by the handle of Rabbit or Bunny or something.  And the address is going to your commlink now.  Did you know him well?”

Pup took off his headband, revealing the ugly bullet scar that was in the centre of his forehead, “Rabbit is the one that did this to me.”  Was all he said before tying the strap of red fabric back on and walked out of the office and bar, into the streets of Seattle.  His movements much changed from when he had come in.

Even the hard boys three times his size got out of his way.

[CanRay]

A tenement building in a bad part of the southern Puyallup Barrens.  Not the worst part, close enough to Tarislar that there was some kind of street law that still happened, mostly by the gangs that protected the elven neighbourhood.  The place was a drekhole, however.  Bricks missing from the sides, the foundation starting the crumble, even a slight lean to the place.  It was held by by what looked like small sewer pipelines that jutted to one side so that it didn't fall over and take out the building next to it.  Probably stolen from some road construction work in another part of the city.

I really didn't care, and just set the security on my Harley.  It wasn't the best system I could get, but I couldn't afford any better, I was still setting up a new lodge after my last squat burnt down.  I wanted to go in guns blazing, spirits flying, and kicking down doors.  But, well, the door was already kicked in, and at 1.8 metres and 50 kilos in my clothing and boots, I wasn't about to really do any serious door kicking anyhow.  Of course, I had a trick with walls.

After I had found my Power, I worked with an ork called Gentle Johnny.  Apparently he was quite the lover with the joytoys, who gave him the nickname.  He did wetwork, not exactly what you'd expect from someone who was so kind and delicate a person.  Of course, the people he “Serviced” didn't suffer anything at all, so he was “Gentle” in that way as well.  But he had a serious problem, mainly dealing with magical security.  There were ways of setting things up so that bullets wouldn't hit someone while they were between home and vehicle, and trying anything at those two places held too many variables for him.  So he was stuck with the low- and mid-level jobs, people too poor to afford magical protection.  Enter me.  In exchange for learning how to really use and care for firearms, and a reduced cut, I figured out a way to work around the problem of getting to those targets.  Magical protection was expensive, and even the little bit of work for between a door and a car was very pricey, and there were so many protections you could work with a building that negated magic.  So, they were lax that way.  I was able to figure out where the person was inside the building using spirits and magic, waited until they were in a place that they weren't moving, like sitting down to watch the game or lying down to sleep, gave him a laser target to hit, and blew a fist-sized hole in the wall with a spell.  It was hard to do for me at first, sometimes taking multiple spells, but I worked and got better at it.  I never was able to do it in just one spell through a wall, but chipping away at that through the serious walls never made any noise inside the building.  Well, not until the last bit went through, but by then the targeting laser would tell Johnny's built-in rangefinder that there was no obstruction and he'd have taken the shot.  Better killing through magic.

When I was really slotted off, and didn't care about how badly it hurt to move the Power through me, I could blow a hole the size of a door in a hardwood wall.  The cheap drywall, softwood, and paper-based insulation was only a minor challenge for me now.  The wall slammed inwards, spreading drywall and paper everywhere, as I stepped into the room, moving my Ruger Super Warhawk revolver around looking for a target.

I found Rabbit.  Or what was left of him.  I remembered him quite well, smiling and watching me handle my small Colt pistol.  Looking massive in his armoured duster and dripping in guns and magazines.  On the floor of the helicopter fighting with the other Shadowrunners and pointing a pistol at my head.

That wasn't what I saw here.  He wasn't even conscious.  He wasn't big.  He was a shrunken shell of a man, just lying in a pool of his own urine, covered in cheap insulation.  Obviously he had tried to move from his couch to the toilet and not made it.  Even with all that he had done to me, even with all the hate and rage filling me every waking moment of my life, I found it quite hard to keep wanting to kill the person that killed me and dropped me out of a helicopter.

I did find enough, however, to kick him awake.  He rolled over with a groan, and coughed, blood and some kind of black ichor came out.  “Huhwha?” he asked, confused, his eyes glazed with pain and humiliation, the last of my emotions drained out of me.

“Rabbit.  It's me, Puppy.  Long time no see.”  I told him, the pistol in my hand shaking as I pointed it at him.

“Puppy?  Oh dear Ghost, PUPPY!”, his voice was barely a whisper, as if his throat hurt, but the last word came out as a shout, almost as if he was happy, “Thank Ghost it's, wait, am, am I dead?  No.  You've grown, you're a man now.  Ain't no Puppy no more, a full on Dog now.”  He said, pride in his voice somehow.  That brought the rage back up, he had no right to any of the fighting I had done to survive after what had happened, and I kicked him again.

“You shot me, Rabbit.  Right in the head.”, I pulled off the headband and let him see the scar, “Dropped me right out of the 'copter.  I died, Rabbit.  You killed me.  But I came back.”

He looked at me, confused, and then coughed some more.  The black came out more than the red, “Good.  Good that you came back then.  It's right that you end me.  I didn't want to shoot you, Puppy.  You were innocent of any of that.  I had my finger on the trigger as we fought with the pistol, and, well, we moved wrong.  Went off at the worst time.  Trigger discipline, always remember your trigger discipline.  I killed you, Puppy, and that snapped me out of my desperation, you were all right.  We had to stop what was happening.  And we did, Puppy, oh dear Ghost, I'm glad you weren't there.  Slipstream burst into flames in front of us from nothing, not even magic!  Janice, she was taken out by a damned battleaxe that had to have come from the iron age!  Marcus, he found the thing.  It wasn't a nuke, but some magicy thing.  He, he killed himself defusing it or channelling it, or something.  All I know is that whatever it was supposed to do, some of it got into me instead of into the volcano.  It's been killing me since.  They didn't trust me that much, and left me as rear guard, so they all died instantly when it went off.  Every one of them.”  He rambled on, not even seeing me, but the horror in his eyes showed what they truly saw, through the years they once again saw the death of his team and friends.  I looked back and saw that I was getting attention from the tenants of the building, I growled at them, and we were alone again.

“And all that about money, Rabbit?  That you needed money or else you'd shoot Slipstream?”  I asked, the last reserve of my determination holding stead.

“Debts.  I owed the Yakuza.  Didn't know it was them at the time, until I missed the first payment.  Some big ass guy, bigger than me, came up to me and explained the situation to me by banging my head against the wall.  Explained that fingers and kneecaps were next.  The funny part, Crash 2.0 killed the guy that held my marker, and the computer it was on.  I'm free of it, and, and, and I shot you for no reason.  Dear Ghost, Puppy, if anyone has any right to shoot me, it's you.  Go ahead, I don't just give you permission, I beg you to do it.”  He started blubbering at that point, unable to talk any more, just cry and cough up the poison.

“What the frag is going on here?” Came from the hole I had made.  I turned and looked at an overweight ork in a greasy wifebeater, “Who the frag is going to fix the hole here?”

“Whoever you hire.”  I said, pointing the revolver at him, then thrusting a few hundred nuyen in Horizon script at him, “Then you're going to be less of a stereotype of an idiot landlord.  And then you're going to give me and my buddy here all the privacy we need.  How long is he paid up to?”, I asked, and shifted my perception into the astral, watching his aura.  It was sickly, full of greedy and petty power.  He was a small man in a big body.

“Two weeks, then he's out the door.”  The ork said, but his aura shot full of the disgusting pus-like colour of greed.  I pulled the hammer back and pointed the muzzle right at his oversized belly.  He gulped and fear filled his aura, along with other emotions.  Fear was most of it, strong enough that I could smell it as well, “Two months, and a bit.  He overpaid by mistake.”  Reading his aura, it was likely the truth.  I pointed the barrel at the ground and carefully put the hammer down.

“Then what's left after you fix that wall goes onto his tab for a longer stay.  Now, privacy.” I said, scowling at him.  He faded away like a bad smell, only the fear lingered.  I walked back to Rabbit, and saw his aura for the first time, it was shot through with blackness.  Not the dark, dead parts that usually denoted cybernetic replacements, but a living darkness that was eating away at him.  It was cruel and alive and mean.  I had seen cancer in a person's aura, and that looked downright friendly compared to this.

I holstered the revolver, and knelt next to Rabbit, and started singing, seeking, sniffing.  Somewhere in this building full of broken and hopeless lives there must be some little bit of good.  I found it, nurtured it, and brought it here.  I opened my eyes and saw a little girl holding a teddy bear, only she didn't have any feet, and hovered over the floor.  She had a bullethole in her head just like I did, but she also had an exit wound that was the size of my fist.  She smiled at me all the same, a fighter.  “Please, dear Spirit, look with me at this sickness, and help me remove it from this man.”  I said to the spirit, she looked at Rabbit and made a face, then looked at me and nodded.

Together, we reached in with astral hands, and started the slow, sick work of taking the blackness out piece by piece.


I stumbled home, exhausted as I had ever felt in my life.  Weaker than I had felt after getting shot in the face and dropped out of a helicopter.  I wanted food, I wanted my bed, I wanted a pint of synthrum.  Instead, I collapsed into the centre of my medicine lodge I had built into the floor of the main room of my squat.

“Man Who Smells Of Rage, you give me faith again in your kind.”  Dog said, coming unbidden.  He sat on my couch, sniffing at the strange stain on it.  I had no idea what it was, I had gotten the couch out of a dumpster.

“Why is that, Dog?  All I did was heal a man who had been suffering for many years for doing a much required task.”  I was out of my body now, kneeling at the feet of my Mentor, but still exhausted.  I looked at myself on the ground.  Drekkicked would have been describing me nicely at this point.

“This was your test, Man.  This was your point where you would choose how you went down the path.  Would you chose to stay clean and pure, or would you turn down a dark and twisted path into darkness.  I am proud of you Man, you proved Loyal to Me.  And not Rabid.”  Dog said, His tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as he hopped down and looked up at me, and licked me in the face.

[Deepeyes]

Very nice!! Wish there was more!!

[CanRay]

Thanks, maybe someday.  Trying to RP Pup, however, brings me to some dark, dark places.

[Deepeyes]

I hear they're goodies at those dark dark places.... like cookies for instance!

[CanRay]

Wrong dark side.  And the Dark Side of the Force looks bleached white compared to what dwells inside me.

[Deepeyes]

Sounds even better then!!! Never was a cookie fan anyway

[CanRay]

Necro for the hell of it.

[VuuduuHedd]

Every time I saw Dog mentioned, I couldn't help but think this:

[CanRay]

What makes you think Dog doesn't do that very thing?

He is a Urban Totem after all, fully able to understand human technology.  It's also why I argue that Raven is one as well.  You better believe Raven and Coyote are whooping it up in Vegas constantly! 

[Ugh]

Great story!

[CanRay]

Thanks, too bad I'll never get to play him.