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CMP 2014-07 Run out the Guns

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Raven2049

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« on: <07-24-15/1919:43> »
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Retrieved Prototype

Survived

5 Karma

10,000 Nuyen

+2 Public Awareness for getting caught by the security and for talking their way out in a very high profile manner.


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Another day in Seattle, the forecast calls for rain today, which is like any other day. Looking at the forecast you notice that next week has this weird yellow round thing with points and a smiley face on it for Tuesdays icon, opening your commlink you quickly send out a message to the news channel your watching telling them they have a glitch on their forecast. Sure enough, few minutes later when you check again, the familiar clouds and rain icon is right where it should be on Tuesdays icon. Glancing back at your link you notice a message from a Mr. J telling you to meet at a street corner for a job. Eh, better pack the acid resistant gear....

 

The runners for this little shindig are as follows:

Watcher: Decker
Hiroshima: Ninja Covert Ops
Skunk: Phys Adept
Valkyrie: Pseudo Face
Libra: Sam
Smiles: Sniper
Fiques: Super Facetm who doesn't know how to use guns but owns all of them.

 

Meeting at the street corner as told, the group starts waiting, unfortunately Fiques and Smiles are off busy together, probably Fiques is making Smiles smile with that silver tongue of hers you figure. oh well, they'll catch up. After waiting a while, and nodding to the other assortment of runners assembled on the corner, the unmistakable sound of HD scorpions approach as 2 Crimson Crush Gangers round the corner, and get off their 'hogs and start "hanging" as it were. One of them starts joking about the guys across the street and how none of them are going to make any money if they all are dressed for the barrens. Valkyrie doesn't like this, and yells some colorful remarks back to the gangers, who immediately start to approach and when they get into shoving distance start egging her on, and once Skunk chimes in saying that they are just here to meet a Mr Johnson, the orc starts laughing and saying that the only Johnson you'll be meeting is the one in his pants. Valkyrie doesn't like this one bit, and says the Johnson we are meeting is much bigger than whatever's in the orcs pants. The banter goes back and forth for a while until Val cant take it any more and takes a swing at the orc connecting and giving him a rather bloody nose and a shiner that he wont soon forget. The tone changes as the other Orc chimes in and attempts to calm everyone down stating that they were only here to rile the runners up and try to find out how professional they are, as Mr J requested. Shortly thereafter a yellow bulldog van rounded the corner and the orcs smile and motion for the runners to get inside.

As soon as everyone gets inside, the orcs relay that Mr J is late, and that they are taking them to the meet. After a short ride the rear doors are flung open to show a Night-sky limo waiting, and a door open. Exiting one vehicle and entering another the runners waste no time in taking Mr J up on his offer of making themselves comfortable and hitting the wet bar. That's when the tone changes, Mr J says he has need of runners to procure a prototype SMG design from a Secret R&D facility, not pulling any punches he states that the lab is underground below a Municipal Administration Building and run by Ares Macro-technology and that the nearest KE precinct house is 4 blocks away. After the initial shock wears off he continues, and offers 10 large for the task. Immediately everyone starts protesting and after a very rough negotiation the initial offer of 10k stands, and then Mr J drops another bombshell, the job has to be done within 2 days, and he would like it if the theft stays low profile, as in no alarms.

After the thrashing that was the business deal, the runners are dropped back at their vehicles and immediately head to a safe-house so they can do some recon and legwork. They find out that yes, there is a secret R&D facility located in downtown Seattle, and it is in fact run by ares. Also regardless of how hard Watcher tries, he can not find the Facility's host. he keeps claiming its not there and he cant find it. Finally they settle on a feed of the cameras in the building and try to identify where the facility's entrance is. After doing some digging in the Public Records they uncover the blueprints to the building and scanning those and comparing to the camera feeds they determine that this buildings blueprints have been doctored and that all references to a basement have been removed, and that the 1st floor staircases don't have cameras in them, and all the cameras in the surrounding areas seem to be pointed in a manner that prevents viewing of the 1st floor stairwell. Putting 2 and 2 together the runners quickly scan for a way to get in the building, and notice all the employees have RFID tags somewhere on them. Following the tags they are able to identify a female elf who exited the 1st floor stairwell that had not been anywhere else in the building. They quickly try to id her, and unfortunately cannot crack the encryption on the employee log file in the host. So they tail her home in the hopes of swiping her tag and getting in under her identity.

During the tail, Libra kept getting strange vibes of familiarity to the drive. Hes pointing out places that he drives by on his way to meetings and when the mark turns into a parking garage he says that the building looks a lot like.... No this building IS his! (very lucky edge roll) and gets everyone inside to follow her upstairs while Watcher lives up to his name and watches the Elf's tag stop at a room on the 7th floor and quickly tells the group the room number. The runners form a quick plan for Libra to knock on the door and flirt with her and then whammy her with a influence spell to "take the day off tomorrow and go do something with her kid." Everything goes off without a hitch, they pick up her key-card, and somehow she now has a cred-stick with 6000 nuyen on it that she and her son use spending the next day living it up in California.

Returning to the Safe-house the runners start making Fiques look as much as they can like the Elf they can. And as they both have quite similar features its not long before they are done, and the next morning Fiques is walking through the door and bee-lining it to the staircase. On the outside of the building, Watcher is busy hacking into the surveillance cam over top of the emergency exit entering the staircase, and when Fiques opens the door, squelch's the alarm. then He, Fiques, and Skunk all make their way down to the basement and after a rather thorough search find a hidden camera eyeballing a rather oddly placed, or at least Watcher thinks so, power disconnect. quickly looping the camera feed by again jacking directly into it, watcher then sounds the all clear to check out the disconnect. After Fiques checks out the box and discovers the keypad, she motioned Watcher over to open things up. And open he does, as he does his Hacking mumbo jumbo the shelving units next to them hinge open exposing a waiting elevator car. All 3 enter and push the only button listed. As the doors open exposing a surgical white hallway with a T junction at the end Fiques start walking down checking whether the coast is clear. Watcher, still trying to find the host and failing miserably states that everything must be wired. and then notices above Fiques head is a camera pointed towards the elevator exit and that He, Skunk and Fiques are all on video exiting the elevator. Subtly is out now as the 3 search for the testing room and the locker they need, eventually locating the fire testing range and the lockers on the wall. Checking out the terminal in the room Watcher finds the locker they are looking for and when going to open it notices an old fashioned combination lock. Using his auto-picker he successfully gets the combination on the 3rd try. Opening the locker reveals a white metal briefcase, and upon removing the case from the locker the room suddenly gets blasted with wind, as an Air Elemental manifests in front of Watcher asking for a password. Hoping for dumb luck, Watcher looks around and finally glances at the case in his hands, there on a yellow sticky note is a single word, "Valhalla." Shaking he mumbles the word and the Air spirit nods, says Access Granted and vanishes. The three look at each other and before they could utter a word, Skunk gets a bad vibe and she screams COVER as 2 flash-bangs come bouncing into the room. Skunk was able to get out of the blast by jumping on the other side of the firing range wall, but Watcher and Fiques are both caught in the blasts, Blinded and deafened Watcher barely manages to hold onto the case, and Fiques brushes off the bang, but is momentarily blinded by the flash.

Meanwhile, Up on the street, Hiroshima is doing his best to be a hobo living in the dumpster behind the admin building, Smiles has found a nice nest in a parking garage next door, and Libra and Val are sitting in their car watching the front entrance. They all hear sirens rapidly approaching, fearing the worst, they all try to contact the team inside, the response is only static. As they sit and watch 2 police cars and one swat armored vehicle drive up, the 2 police cars stop at the front entrance and 4 officers exit and enter the building, around back the swat team exit the armored road master and take up positions covering the emergency exit, right next to Hiroshima. Smiles tries to calm everyone down and tells them to hold position until they know for sure the situation the other team is facing.

Down in the basement the Sargent on duty pokes his head inside the door of the testing area and orders the runners to stand down, drop the case, any weapons, and lie down on the floor with their hands on their heads. He is immediately rebuffed as Fiques yells out for the guards to hold their fire and lower their weapons, then switches gears completely and starts yelling about how they weren't supposed to be using live ammunition and grenades during this simulation, and how the Sargent's superior will be getting a full and detailed report along with the medical bills for her team that she will insist on being paid via the Sargent's accounts. She has him so concerned that hes going to be losing all this money, his job and probably being excommunicated from the company that he opens the door, walks in, and starts to apologize, asking to see the authorization for the simulation and stating that he will do anything he can to make things right.

Fiques, taken a bit aback by the request for proof of the simulation, glances over to Watcher who gets her meaning, and via a very quick use of a word processor, and his forgery skill, whips up a believable document he hands to Fiques on his commlink. He says he would transfer it straight to the Sargent s AR but there's an active jammer being deployed right now, Fiques immediately tries to get a hold of the above ground team to no avail. The Sargent reads over the document and hands it back to Watcher who is now flanked by 2 guards, the Sarge says that this may have been an authorized OP but he never received any documentation about it, and apologizes for the misunderstanding. Then turns to Watcher and says put the case back into the locker, and close the door, your superior and i will go to the security checkpoint and call my superior to check out this story, we also have to make sure the other teams are cancelled. A quick glance between the 3 of them and they wonder just how much fun topside is getting right now...

Watcher moves slowly and deliberately towards the locker taking as much time as he can to put the case back. After stalling for as long as he could, he finally notices something, the noise that was blocking all the matrix traffic is gone, and that Fiques is panicking asking where he got his "all clear code"  he included in the document he showed the Sargent, and says there's an KE swat team outside, and an ARES RRT en route both stating that the code is invalid. Before any of them could react, Fiques pulls up a different document and shows the Sargent the code again, asking if hes sure he has the code correct, and sure enough he has been issuing a wrong code (burnt point of edge) he then patches Fiques in to the conversation with the Ares RRT Captain, and the KE Captain. Taken aback she rolls with the story, and again talks her and her teams way out of the frying pan, giving the correct code, and trying to once again belittle the captains. The runners all are allowed to walk out, and due to some creative editing on Fiques part the document she presented the second time allows them to exit the building WITH the prototype in hand to be taken to a more secure facility.

A very quiet and tense drive to the drop off point in which no-one says a word, or even looks at each other, seems to take ages but eventually they roll into a warehouse and nodding to the black eyed Orc guarding the door meets Mr J inside where they get paid.

 

The End?