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.