You wanna know about who? Yeah, ha ha, who's askin'? No no no, don't get up, I'm sure your nuyen is just fine. Look, I'm gonna level with you. Good kid, about as nice as they come. Easy smile, infectious laugh, but a real fist-in-the-air blowhard really. But I'll tell you what, I'm trying to sell him, right? Here's the thing, you keep him off politics, and he'll keep his lips tight. I guarantee you tell him I sent you over, and he'll say, "Who?" I fuckin' guarantee it. "Who?" with his little dumb street kid cock of the head, like "Larry the what? Who'd call themself a rat in this biz anyway?" Kid's been doing odd jobs, you know whatever comes up, for me for years, but he won't admit to it. I mean, he'll take your money, and he'll do the job too, just as ordered, but he'll never admit to knowin' me, I tell you what. He won't be like that with his team. He treats those chummers like family, but you move up the food chain, and he's all, "I've never heard that name before." He's like that with his more political activities too. You remember the food riots last winter? Yeah, so somebody hit a damned food truck destined for Ares, and re-appropriated it down Deerfield way. Anyway, some of the residents put together a little care package, some spare ammo, burner commlinks, that sorta drek, and this old lady pulls him aside, and is all here take this. Easy as pie, right? Even those anarcho types got their mutual aid thing going, but he won't take it. Says, you should probably get that stuff to your local Anarchist Black Crescent chapter. Lady's like, you got the patches right there, pointing at him in the chest now, and Baby Hardcore says, "I just think it looks cool." Walks off. What sense does that make?
Another thing, that street rat with a heart of gold thing he's got going, that's led to more than one chummer getting their hoops knocked off. Used to know this cat Vip, you know, like V.I.P. and he used to sling a little out near Evanston. Way I heard the story, Vip roughed up this corner kid cause the kid got some bad 'links in trade and really fucked up his inner ear. So Baby Hardcore posts up like he's gonna clean this guy's windows, right? And he's like right in front of Vip's Shin-Hyung with his little squirt bottle and some dirty ass rag, and Vip's all screaming at him to get outta the way, and Baby Hardcore's acting like he can't hear the guy. Ironic right? So, Vip ends up losing his cool and steps out of the car, and Boom! there's Baby Hardcore with a sawed-off Defiance. That was that. Ghouls took care of Vip, and that sweet car -- good Ghost Vip put a lot of nuyen into cherrying that thing out -- is now some kind of swift response vehicle for the ABC. Not sure what happened to the cram. You could ask our boy, but you know. . .
I tell you, you look at that kid, and you're gonna think of your son, or some nephew with bad fashion sense, but as much as Baby Hardcore talks about the worth of metahuman life and equality, and all those other dreams people like us gave up a long time ago, that boy is a hardened killer. To be honest, I don't think it bothers him. He might not be a moral guy, not really, not like you'd think. It's like he understands that there should be standards for behavior, doing decent things and all that, and he's decided to hold himself to that standard, but I don't think he does it because he feels it. I think he just talked himself into it. I mean, have you ever killed somebody? Don't answer that. Let's say, hypothetically that you have, eh? You know how hard it was to get to sleep that night, after that first time? Or how you felt pumped up about it, but then felt like shit because you felt pumped up about it, like your own adrenaline was just making you sick about what that said about you? Yeah, I don't think Baby Hardcore has that.
While we're on the topic, let's talk a little about what you've got planned. Kids are out, omae. And the SINless, well you'd better be prepared to provide some very real evidence of some very real wrongdoing, cause Baby Hardcore isn't going to go after one of his own. Class struggle, or class unity, or something like that. But you wanna hit the corps? Shit, it doesn't matter if you are the corps if you wanna hit the corps. He's in. And if you have some of that Robin Hood drek going, you couldn't ask for better. Kid's silent, he's quick, and he knows his way around a firefight. I've seen faster, I'm not going to lie to you, and once or twice I've seen some that shoot straighter too. Sure, I've been doing this for a long time, omae. But not many, and definitely not that young.
So whaddya say? You want a solid runner who'll see it through, keep his mouth shut afterward, and keep the, uh, collateral destruction to a minimum, I wanna see some numbers. If not, null sheen, I'm sure you can find the door by yourself.
