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I don't know, I'm not sure.
Alright, so now that we're recording, we're going to do
the
towards the mountains.
One of them is Procop, the other is Ice.
They are each holding a glass of amber liquid
in one hand and a cigar in the other.
The men are silent until Ice asks,
do you think it'll work?
Procop shrugs and raises his glass
towards the rising sun.
If anyone knows what happened,
it will be that bastard George Vannhausen.
Ice raises his glass as well.
What happens if he's still alive?
Procop shrugs again and says, to Riga mortis,
to the little bastard, Ice responds,
then he grins, I can't believe you're teaming me up
with an elf, a cat, and some talking pericritic
talking horse.
You always were a softfrager, Procop.
Trying to save everyone.
Doesn't work, you know, Procop grins.
Who's talking?
If Riga were still alive,
you know exactly what you are going to do.
They both drain their glasses.
Behind them, the changing angles of the rays
illuminate the woman Nadja standing silently behind them.
And that's it.
Mm.
So we left off last time with Cecile
and Dien Der stayed at the Sanivar.
And Boxer and Grace headed back towards Boxer's safe house,
only to be warned away by the Sensei,
who told them that there had been a gun battle
and that the safe house was destroyed.
So did anybody leave any equipment or gear
or other possessions there?
At the Sanivar?
At Boxer's safe house.
At Boxer's safe house?
Cecile definitely didn't.
Yeah, because Cecile didn't have anything.
And I'm going to go left everything in her truck
like a reasonable person.
Boxer had a whole lot of rations,
all of which I'm going to delete from my character sheet.
Let's see how many they are.
One, two, three, four, five.
There were 200 rations in there with 1,000 new ones.
200 rations?
I buy in bulk.
Why were they all there?
Why were they to live the apocalypse?
Yes.
Haven't you seen what's outside there?
Haven't you seen what's outside?
Boxer is a prepper.
You don't fuck with Boxer in her rations.
I don't think those cool preppers
are not one of the lame ones that make you want to die
when they start talking.
If the ghost dance happens again, Boxer will be ready.
Not anymore.
Her rations are gone.
But she does have enough ammunition to kill God.
Exactly.
Only sometimes.
Cecile's ghost dance.
Approximately enough ammunition to shoot away a hurricane.
You know that crappy movie with the sharks?
Yeah, I should go back.
Sharknado.
Yes.
Just going to do that.
It's a scene with the chainsaw in Sharknado.
So the first thing that I'm going to do
is I'm going to contact Prakka and ask him
about anonymous banking services in this area.
So what time do you get up?
Cecile very early, like 5 AM.
Dindar's already up.
She's just sitting there with a notebook out, writing.
All right.
So when you wake up and call Procop,
he is actually still awake.
So he answers.
You'll just call Procop.
She messages Procop.
She's very respectful of Procop's time.
OK.
Well, it turns out he's awake.
He was literally just having his nightcap up on the roof.
Interesting.
He texts you back.
And so what were you looking for again?
Anonymous banking services in the Seattle area.
Ah, OK.
Yeah, so Cecile probably asks, what's a good one?
Do they have in-person locations?
Can you set that up for me?
He takes you back right away and he sends you another.
He sends you a contact.
Good.
Something to add to the character sheet?
Sure.
Let's make up a name real quick.
All right.
So the name of the contact just comes across as Cilus.
But not actually Cilus, like dot, dot, dot.
No, Cilus, S-I-L-A-S.
Wait, can you spell that for me again?
S-I-L-A-S.
That?
No, S-I-L-A-S.
Oh, OK.
I thought you said silence.
I was like, that's a very funny name.
So I want to make a joke about it.
Especially for a shadow banker.
That would be the perfect name, actually.
I don't say shit to nobody.
I got an angel.
It's in my name.
Oh, you should be aware that these shadow banks do actually
have to be like big actual banks.
They just have to be shady.
The example in the book is given as the Malaysian
independent bank.
Shady.
Well, you'll have to hook up with Cilus
and see what they can tell him.
That's probably going to be an issue since confirming
Cecile's ID would be difficult.
But sure, let's leave Cilus a call at 5 AM, probably not
standard operating hours.
You have ProCops token.
Token?
Token.
Is it like the banking token or like credit state?
Go to GM.
Wait, no, where did that go?
Go to text channels in character.
Ah, the seal.
So it just passed that along to Cilus, then.
Right.
That's like your.
OK.
Cecile will also text that seal.
And what are you saying?
Cecile politely types up a message
saying that she would like to establish an account at their
fine establishment, preferably anonymous.
OK.
And Boxer and Grace, how did you and where did you spend the
night?
Would Grace stick with Boxer when she goes to her apartment?
But yeah, Grace would have wanted to come with Boxer if
she could help because she doesn't really have any
wash to go besides maybe like Greg's.
Well, in that case, Grace could just sleep on the couch.
It's a relatively comfy couch, so she's all good.
What time do they wake up?
So we've established at D&Dare and Cecile are early birds,
but it's been a long night for you, long disappointing night
for you since you found out your safe house was compromised.
Boxer gets up six per day, something that was instilled
in her when she was in service.
And I know about Nightingale.
If she wakes up earlier, it's possible she could wake up Boxer.
Nightingale rises basically almost all the time with the sun,
even if she can't see the sun.
She is, I was going to say, descendant from,
but that doesn't exactly make sense for what she is.
It's more like she lived among rural farmers
for a good bit of her early life.
So she wakes up early.
I don't know if that would be around the time that Boxer does
because I don't know when the sun would
rise in this part of the country at this time of year.
Well, either way, we've established
they're all relatively early riders, I guess.
Yeah, you guys are all up.
Cecil is trying to find a means of establishing
a shadow account of some sorts.
Deander is taking notes, and you guys
are hanging out at the moment, at least in Boxer's apartment.
So just, Cecil, you haven't gotten the response yet.
So what are you guys doing?
Cecil's pacing very uncomfortably.
I think every now and then Deander
looks up at Cecil, but then doesn't do anything
and continues writing.
It takes a good 30 minutes before Deander
is willing to say anything.
She'll be pacing for like an hour.
She'll be pacing until she hears something from Silas,
apparently.
You're going to wear a hole in the floor.
Perhaps.
Well, since you're waiting for something, so nonchalantly.
Why don't we go grab a soy calf?
And Deander hops up and puts her shoes and clothes on.
I'm not a fan of coffee, personally, but sure.
Where are you getting coffee in this city?
The store?
I think this is like as we're walking out, right?
You know, when I met you, I thought you were some two-bit
poser.
Poser?
Mm-hmm.
In what sense?
I thought that was fairly obvious.
Posing to be but.
I don't know.
A rich girl?
Oh, I assure you, I think I'm rich.
At least not that.
At least not that girl from the news.
Isn't it?
Oh, you heard about that?
Maybe.
I shall be rather annoyed if that's the only thing
people recognize before.
Well, I think most people in the city
have heard of you that way and no other way.
Most mages have heard of me a different way.
Well, I'm painfully mundane.
That much is obvious.
Sorry.
Do you think that much is time to your mother?
I can't.
She's dead.
I'm old enough to be hers.
Good for you.
Sorry, Paul.
What were you going to say?
Deander, you, as you're trying to find a place to go get coffee,
you find that there is a place called Older's Pune, not too
far from your location.
I think we get out and then Deander just tosses the second bike
helmet to Cecile.
You're not going to call it a grid guide, are you?
I'm not serious.
I'm taking the death travel.
I'll have you know I'm an excellent driver.
Fine.
Ceil's slowing up reviews for the restaurant
while they drive.
Yeah, Olga's tea room is known for being a Russian style
tea room that serves imported teas and coffees
with a special emphasis on Russian and Eastern European
varieties.
Boxer and Grace, what are you guys getting up to?
Boxer being prepared breakfast for budget.
Probably not be anything especially great.
Hey, Liz.
Yeah?
We've got some static on your end.
It appears to have disappeared.
It's horse magic to get rid of it.
Horse magic.
Anyway, Nightingale is helping like a child.
What?
Nightingale would offer to help with breakfast.
And I added like a child because I
imagine she isn't very familiar with cooking with the ingredients
that medic humans use.
Oh, man.
It's going to be a lot of soy and stuff.
I was going to say, chopped up vegetables that I remember.
So I'll have to afford vegetables.
Your water boils at 150, right?
Wait, can you repeat that?
Your water boils at 150, right?
Right?
That's really weird for a like that.
That is very stupid.
Did the US adopt Fahrenheit?
I mean, not Fahrenheit Celsius.
They tried.
I mean, did UCAS adopt Celsius and metric?
Yes, veteran is all in metric.
And they said Japanese imperialism didn't have benefits.
Oh, my god.
So.
Yeah, so what do you guys want to do today?
You guys want to continue role playing?
Do you guys have anything that you want to accomplish today?
Do you just want to skip forward until you
have to meet the Mr. Johnson or until Silas calls Cecile back?
We know we're going to meet the Mr. Johnson, right?
I would like to scout out the area where we're
supposed to meet him.
The murdered Mime?
Cecile would probably not accompany you on that.
It's not really a stick out kind of gal.
She just was laid out.
That's her sleep, my god.
Let's say she waits in Olga's tea house and lets
Diedra do her thing.
Her cop thing.
Fucking cop.
Gosh.
Are you guys in communication with the boxer and Grace?
Possibly.
I imagine Diedra has forgotten to message them at this point
because we're supposed to meet them at like 6 PM
to the Mr. Johnson, right?
And I try pulling up some intel on ICE.
All right, so you're going to do some matrix searching on ICE.
And Diedra is going to go scout the area of the murdered Mime.
I think that's the plan.
And Grace and Boxer, what are you guys up to?
Oh, god.
No, honey, don't.
Not ICE.
Not that ICE.
Anyway, Boxer's going to do a gear check on herself.
And if Nightingale were a letter, Nightingale stuff.
Nightingale's OK.
Yeah, you can poke my stuff.
And once you can watch, she will explain it because she
is enthusiastic about this kind of thing.
She has many questions about firearms.
And there's just firearms, but equipment in general, all of it.
All right, so Cecile, you launch into your search for ICE.
How exactly are you going to do it?
Right now you know him as ICE.
You did you take a picture of him?
Oh, that's a good question.
I don't think Cecile would be so rude as to take
pictures of her employers associate during a meeting.
Yeah, you didn't pull out your comm and just take a pic.
No.
And you weren't wearing goggles or glasses that
had the capability to do so.
And as you are logging into your comm,
you see that there is a notification.
There's a period of time that aligns with the time
that you spent in the Samovar in which you did not
have matrix access.
You didn't even realize it because you
were conversing with ProCup.
But it turns out that there was probably some heavy duty
Wi-Fi jamming going on in that vicinity.
Understandable.
In that case, detective time.
Cecile would probably try to locate ICE
by trying to find a connection to ProCup
or trying to find rumors about comings and goings
through Samovar, like nearby street cameras or something.
Although she can't hack those yet,
so it would have to be sous-vailence or something.
OK.
You know, any sous-vailence tag, geotagged,
for that specific area she'd be looking through.
OK.
All right, D&D, you set off on your motorcycle.
Let's say it's about 8 AM at this point.
And downtown Tacoma is pretty busy.
It's got the docks.
It's a very blue-collar place.
But you've also got most of the Megas have moved in
and started buying up real estate.
So there's a lot of traffic of all sorts,
commercial and private.
And the murdered mime is all the way up in Renton.
So it's going to be a good 40-minute drive there.
So.
Um, see, I don't think Brown Dog does anything in Renton.
So I'm not going to bother him, especially at this hour.
Brown Dog's pretty small time, too.
Yeah.
Although at this point, you'd probably be ecstatic
if you called him because he's, he really
wants to get in on this action.
He's not allowed.
He doesn't have clearance.
This is a federal operation now.
This is an FBI jurisdiction.
Yeah.
So D&Dare's driving, Cecile's matrix searching,
Boxer's doing a gear check.
About 40 minutes later, D&Dare's pulling into the area
where the, of the murdered mime.
It's apparently quite a fashionable area, Renton.
Lots of apartment communities, you know, gated apartment
places.
Pretty hip, pretty wealthy looking type stuff.
The murdered mime, as you go past by it on the street,
is, looks like it's actually just now starting to
disgorge, like, its last revelers of the night.
Um, party people of all stripes and colors, shapes and sizes.
Um, the building itself is done up in just black and white.
And, not very imaginative reference to the name.
So yeah, it looks like a fairly popular club here in
Renton.
There's security at the door.
Doesn't seem to pay you any mind.
Make a, make, give me a perception check.
Perception?
Yep.
Let's see.
No modifiers.
No, just.
Yeah.
One.
Okay.
You notice that right across the street is a, another
establishment called the Italiano.
And there's a bunch of, a couple of, not a bunch, a couple of
security people around it too.
And, so there's, looks like there's, this is sort of a
happening kind of area.
Are you looking for anything specific as you're driving around the area?
I think she's just trying to get like a layout of the blocks, like
locally in her brain.
Okay.
What's a good place for her to park her bike.
That would be easy to get to.
And the event that they would need to get away quickly and would be
safe enough where she could like start her bike and stuff while it
was, uh, while being in a good place for cover.
It looks like there's valet parking if you wanted to go that route.
Um, there's on street parking in the area.
And, uh, alleyways and it looks like there's even like a public parking
garage right around the corner.
And then, uh, the next thing that she would do is probably like
attempt to walk all the way around the murdered mine, like from the, from one
corner, like all the way around the back of it.
Okay.
Yep.
There's an alleyway, um, around it.
And then there's a sort of a back alley that's a little bit of a larger
alley that has access for, you know, delivery trucks and stuff like that.
And there's also, that's where the service entrances are.
Um, the murdered mime is on the, seems to occupy the lower quarter of the
larger building that looks like it has, um, some fairly upscale storefronts on
the other lower quarter.
And then the upper half looks like it might be a fairly high end residential
type, um, units.
There's a, there's an entrance that has two uniformed doorman and, uh, cameras.
So it looks like a fairly high end, highly secure, well, not highly
secured, but for a residential area, secure kind of location.
I think the, the last two things she'd try to do is like get not a perfect
layout, but like a good enough layout of the like interior of the murdered
mime, like where rooms and doors and stuff are, uh, and then she'd try to
interact with some of the staff, I guess, and just like see what business is like.
Well, you can't get in.
Um, so unless you're, unless you want to try and infiltrate, um, the, the
service entrances are closed and have a camera surveillance.
The front entrance has the, uh, the security guards the night, um, you know,
the bouncers and the guys sort of keeping, you know, making sure there
aren't any fights and undesirables aren't getting in.
So, um, you could interact with them if you wanted.
I think, um, I think D&R would try to interact with the bouncers.
Okay.
They're, uh, as you approach, they look like, uh, well, give me a quick
perception check again.
I want to give everything another one.
Yeah.
It looks like sort of your standard.
A lot of, uh, private security bouncers, they're dressed in, uh, relatively
fashionable high end night wear, um, and are, uh, the variety of metahuman
types, including the obvious orc muscle and, um, you know, elven, elven, uh,
face type people.
Um, you approach and, uh, one of the, uh, one of the elves steps towards
you with a pretty neutral expression on his face and his hand just sort of
barely held up as if to say no entrance were closed.
I think, um, she just like, as soon as the hand comes up, she just stops
and then she just starts talking.
Okay.
You're about six feet from the, uh, she's talking in spirethial, spirethial.
Okay.
Um, as he starts talking in spirethial, he, uh, he grins and he just sort of
mimes like the no abla kind of look at you.
Oh, um, there's, there, there is a, a very, very, very, uh, derogatory term in
spirethial for an elf who cannot speak spirethial.
Uh, she just says it straight up and goes back to talking in, uh, English.
Whoa.
Slur, gosh.
Uh,
I'm actually dropping slur is my favorite thing.
Give me an etiquette test.
I am not good.
I am defaulting on that one.
I think let me make sure.
In fact, I cannot speak a lot of well, any of some Asian languages, but I know
enough to know the slurs.
That's what that's what Diender's about to find out.
Okay.
I get a plus three from glamour, uh, but I don't get anything else and it's
defaulting.
So three, the wrong thing.
It's a charisma skill and it's three, two.
All right.
Yeah.
You, you see a, a sudden sort of a very brief, but sort of narrowing of his
eyes at the expression, but he, he maintains his professional demeanor as you
continue speaking to him in, in English.
I think she's just like, she starts bombarding with just like normal questions
like, oh, I'm not from around here.
Uh, what's, uh, I'm coming.
I'm going to visit, uh, uh, my brother.
Um, he, uh, I was wondering if there was anything anywhere good to eat around.
Do you have, uh, any city speak skill?
City speak.
So that would be like a knowledge skill.
Uh, have a Portland area knowledge, but don't have one for Seattle.
All right.
So he responds to you in sort of a pigeon that you catch some words of.
It's, uh, seems like it sounds like it's a bit of Japanese, a bit of, oh, uh, English,
a bit of Orzette, maybe, but nothing Japanese.
She's just going to start talking in Japanese.
He just keeps talking to you in, in city speak.
Um, but then, then he relents and, and says in English, um, well, we're, we're closed
the last of the, uh, our patrons are leaving, but you're of course welcome to come back
tonight, we open at, uh, 8pm.
Well, what about the other things in the area?
Surely, you know, something around here.
What would you recommend?
He glances over at the establishment across the street and, uh, he says, uh, well, there's
always the Italiano over there.
Um, but they are closing at this time as well.
Um, but I personally am not from this area.
Um, well, thank you very much for your help.
I think she like ends up walking around the street for a bit, trying to find just any
place that is going to stay open.
All right.
So it's about 9am right now.
So at this is the point where most of the retail stuff in the area is starting to open
up.
Um, so there's, uh, you know, there's people are starting to come out on the streets.
The, uh, the retail stores are opening, but most of the restaurants are closed, except
for maybe, um, you find a cafe or a diner that's open.
If that's what you're looking for.
Uh, does it have line of sight on the, the mine?
No.
Okay.
It doesn't help me.
Does the mine, here, I was assuming something about the mine, but I didn't ask.
Does the mind have like a glass front?
Or is it like, it, can you see into the mine from the outside?
No.
Okay.
It doesn't help me.
No, it's basically the mimes just is, is a nightclub.
So everything is solid so that the lights aren't spilling out or in.
Yeah.
It's just like a, it's not a white lock in it, but it's like, there's some lights
filling out because you can't perfectly do that.
It's just like it's black glass, right?
Or like, is it just bricked up in the front?
It's, it's just bricked up.
It's actually not even bricked up.
It's, it's white marble with some, with black, black marble trim.
It's, they're, they're really playing heavily on the whole mime, black and white kind of
thing.
Well, I think I, at this point, I have exhausted a certain amount of my, is the door to the
murdered mime glass?
Or is it like a wooden door or something?
It does appear to be glass, actually.
Okay.
But do you're not, do you can't see in from there?
Oh, I have something that I wanted to, that I thought I bought from spy gear, but let
me check and look in the book and see if it does what I think it does.
Well, you're doing that around 9am.
What are Boxer and Grace up to?
You guys done with your gear check?
Yeah.
Okay.
I imagine Grace has Boxer search for a lot of her burning questions on the matrix that
she hasn't been able to actually do herself.
I can't imagine what those would be right now, but yeah.
But at a certain point, they're definitely going to be free.
Grace doesn't have anything on her mind that she feels she needs to do today.
Honestly, she thinks maybe laying low would be a bit of a good idea.
They don't have any business besides the job they have to do tonight.
Grace is feeling a little paranoid?
Yeah.
A little.
But why?
Well, it could be because Shadowrunners were sent after her.
I mean, she doesn't know it was her that they were after, but obviously the secret
Evo versus Sill.
You know?
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
Grace is feeling paranoid.
How's Boxer feeling right now about the situation?
She is, so we say, rather unhappy.
And why is that?
Well, her safe house is gone, then she costs money and she's feeling it now.
She had to pull everything out of her account, stick it on a credit stick.
So she's feeling the economics.
She wants to escape from that, which means she's diving headfirst into her favorite
addiction.
Yeah.
And probably she might be a little irritated too because she got told pretty bluntly last
night that she wasn't going to get paid for rescuing Cecile.
Yeah.
But at the same time, I can imagine that Boxer might be feeling a little bit, not necessarily
happy, but energized by the sense of maybe being back in action a little bit, right?
Oh, yeah.
That's exactly why she was doing the games, that's why she's so hard in coping with autism.
So being able to be back in the game.
Yeah.
All right.
So let's cut back to Cecile then.
You do find a couple of things actually on ice.
So as you've been searching and sifting, you realize that when you did your sort of in-depth
dive on Procop, you did some of the stuff that you caught and hadn't, you know, weren't
really paying attention to because it wasn't pertinent at the time, mentioned ice as well.
So it turns out that ice was a known shadow runner in the mid to late 2050s in the Seattle
area and is known to have been one of the shadow runners who was on the team that ended
up on the disastrous run that caused Procop to go into hiding for about five years.
Okay.
So he's an old man.
Yeah.
You don't know much about him.
I mean, there's not a lot of detail anymore.
So much information from that period was lost in the crash.
More recently, what you do find as you're, you know, looking at public surveillance footage
in and around Tacoma and especially in the area of the, of Samovar is only very recently,
as recently as three days ago was the first footage that you find in which you see, you
clearly see ice and Procop actually entering Samovar.
And then after that, you see him at regular intervals, intervals leaving and re-entering
Samovar, but not with Procop anymore.
You only see him leaving and entering on his own.
Okay.
That's good.
In fact, you realize as you're looking at the security footage, it almost appears as
if Procop never leaves the place.
Interesting.
Okay.
Can I use those images I got from the security to just widen my search, just look for their
picture in the matrix through Sue's Valence and stuff.
See if I can pick up on any like disparate places that they've been.
Yep.
You search rather extensively and you're not running any special programs or algorithms
that might help correlate some data.
It's really just you searching and trying to pick the other than her integrated browse
program, probably has a lot of those.
And that's how she's like doing the skill and stuff.
It's not like she has an agent or anything.
Okay.
We don't need to roll on this.
This was, you know, you've got plenty of time and the skill to find what's out there.
You think you may have a hit and it's obvious that the person that you know as ICE has spent
the last 20 years or so making a very hard effort to not show up anywhere.
Understandable.
The only thing that you find is a flight suborbital from Boston to Seattle and you'll find that
ProCup and ICE were on the flight from Boston to Seattle four days ago.
And then you do a little backtracking and you see that ProCup had flown from Seattle
to Boston the day before that.
But other than that, the only other thing that you really find that might be ICE and
might have a relationship to ICE is an article about or written by a, actually it's called
a research paper written by a perizoologist who briefly mentions a perichrider hunter
that they had employed whose description somewhat matches ICE's.
Interesting.
And the perizoologist is writing about a, the paper is about the rather inordinate density
of perichritters in the Newfoundland area of Canada.
Interesting.
So, Seelcozette saves that paper for reading later.
Yeah, it looks like a rather interesting paper and like the description of ICE is there
and it just sort of mentions how that they had hired this person as a local guide and
the fact that he was locally renowned as a hunter of perichritters.
Cool.
Okay.
I think that's as much as I'm really going to get at the moment without having more information
to pull at.
That's pretty good anyways.
Yeah, I'll let some time pass so other people can do stuff.
Yeah.
What are other people doing?
How much time is passed?
It's getting late in the morning and it's really up to you guys.
We can, we don't have to play through, you know, the whole day if you guys say, well,
we're just, we're pretty much just going to lie low and, you know, eat and wait for,
for that time to roll around.
One thing I am curious about guys is you haven't really mentioned that you've, you guys are
all sort of on your own.
Is the team going to do anything, any planning together?
All right.
I'm going to take initiative.
I think Nightingale would first message Ms. Magnumfoot and say, just say good morning.
Hi.
I think that I may have some not good people interested in me in Seattle.
I'm probably not going to be coming home for a good while.
When I do, I'm going to make sure I don't bring trouble to Pines.
I don't know when next I'm going to see you or anyone, but be safe.
Heart.
And then she's, let me go read the text chat thing that you, you have posted.
Where is it?
In character.
Ms. Magnumfoot texts you back.
You know from personal experience Grace that this kind of morning that you're having in
January where it's not raining and the air is clear and the sun is coming up is probably
one of those prime Ms. Magnumfoot where she's out and about enjoying the weather taking
in the smells.
She's probably up on one of the grassy hills rolling around.
So you know she's out and about enjoying this.
You can just picture it in your mind because you've accompanied her on some of these John's
Walkabout in the forest and fields around.
And sure enough, a couple of minutes after you send the message, you get a message back
to the effect that, you know, thank you for letting me know.
We were wondering where you were and be safe.
And if you need anything, let us know.
Followed, of course, by a tree emoji.
And then Gelsen sends the tree emoji back and she says, I'll be sure to thank you.
Well, like all lowercase no punctuation.
She still doesn't know what the tree emoji means.
Well, Ms. Magnumfoot likes trees.
That makes sense.
How exactly does a boxer game?
I'm curious.
So is it just like she lays down and then she's just, you don't see anything of her?
I mentioned it's like Sword Art Online.
Yeah, pretty much.
Both of you are.
Both goes on.
There is no, like, screen that one could look at.
I mean, if you ask before she gets on.
Is it a lot of shooting?
It's milsim, so sometimes.
A lot of walking, some shooting.
It's milsim.
It's a lot of sitting, a lot of driving.
A lot of like hurrying up to wait is what it is.
Forget if she has the thing.
Well, because it's, it's, it's hot sim, right?
So it would be able to move faster than real time.
Hot sim is illegal.
Oh, wait, what the fuck is hot sim?
Hot sim is risking actual damage to your self, whereas cold sim is just like stun.
So recently cold sim is pretty, pretty good, pretty good.
They specifically state that it's a little bit like pushing the boundary.
Hot sim may be legal, but I would imagine that most gamers have at least tweaked themselves
really close to it.
Yeah, yeah.
She didn't really serious like movie watchers.
You've got to have those last, you know, 10 thousands of a second to be competitive.
But if you were a fly on the wall or inside the game as is, there would be, yeah, a lot
of sitting around walking, some shooting, some pretty in depth medical stuff first aid.
All right.
So at this point, you guys are basically just killing time until the meat.
I was going to message the group via com link, while probably while sitting at the foot of
Boxer's bed where she has her little sword art online helmet on.
You get her screen.
She may have asked for it, but it's her inner point.
It's going to get boring.
So she's going to text the rest of the group and say, do plan have.
I think at this point, Diender would have like given up trying to just watch the place
and is just like sitting on her bike, playing on her com link, on link moment.
But do plan have.
She probably like immediately text you back.
I imagine we'll go in and if things go bad, we'll bust her way out.
I think then she just like sends a picture of the place.
She just like norm girl, figure out what this is.
Figure out any deets on this place.
Looking at it, how far is the murdered mime from Boxer's apartment?
Boxer's apartment is in Auburn, so she's probably about 30 minutes at the most.
30 minutes.
30 minutes in the meat.
Nightingale's going to actually project.
She wants to at least go look at the place.
Go fly over there.
Look at the place and then probably go right back to her body unless something catches
her attention.
Do you have the magical security?
If she knows the rough direction and like nearby landmarks she should be able to.
Do you have Seattle knowledge skill?
I should.
Hold on.
Let me check my my chummer or well, let me just check this.
Chummer, sorry.
Because otherwise I think you probably.
I have a knowledge Seattle, you want me to roll?
I do want you to roll.
This is a ruleable offense.
No, no modifiers.
No modifiers.
Six.
Damn.
I played the sixth.
Played the sixth.
No.
Which one is the sixth again?
I don't know.
It was a very, very bad dad joke.
Because you rolled a six.
Right to a trial.
I see that.
Wait, does that mean that?
Veronica.
Yes.
Not incriminate also before the right to a trial.
That's weird.
That seems kind of like the other way around, you know.
Anyway, you don't incriminate yourself.
You don't want it.
So yes, you you enter the astral as your your companion and maybe friend boxer has
appeared to sunk into her electronic world and zip off through the streets of Auburn
towards Renton.
Yeah, I guess Astroly, you know, as you're traveling in the Astral, you're sort of flying.
Are you flying as right just basically passing through buildings and.
You want to pass through buildings.
It would be too easy to bonk into a man a barrier like that.
She and so to be spotted like a watcher spirit or something.
She's flying over the city and looking down like from a bird eye a bird's eye view, even
if someone like there was actually perceiving at the time looked up and noticed her.
She's just like a random fucking spirit fucking around.
Okay.
So you're you're always flying over the city like this in Astral is always a bit of an
awe inspiring experience for you.
And just looking down at this sort of teaming massive astral signatures and textures, you
know, over this sort of gray backdrop of the.
You know, I didn't really.
But obviously it takes you virtually no time as you register that you're pretty much there
in in Renton and you even actually make a is Astral perception thing.
Yes, it is Astral perception check.
So well, actually I looked it up perception is used like is used generally for perceiving
your surroundings and noticing things.
A sensing is used for understanding things in the astral.
If that makes sense.
If that helps you know which perception.
Okay.
Where are you?
Do I not have it?
Yes, I don't.
How do you not have astral perception?
Now I have a sensing.
I just don't have the actual skill perception.
I think let me double check before I call that though.
Is it just default then?
Yep.
I'm going to have to default.
It's so unfortunate.
Here I go.
Default attribute no modifiers.
Zero.
All right, so you find the murdered mime by through your knowledge of Seattle and the
streets and the location and so now what are you doing?
I want to see if it has any kind of medical security first and foremost.
Medical magical magical.
It does not appear so at least not at the moment.
I duck in there and check.
What was the difference between astral perception and astral?
Perception and a sensing.
Perception is used just to notice things in general and like you know all that sort of
stuff.
A sensing is used to understand specifically astral things.
So like say if you were trying to notice someone sitting in a field while actually perceiving
you want to use a sensing you would use perception but you would use a sensing to determine if
they're malicious.
Okay.
Yes you see perceive that there are several people standing around the front door.
None of them seem to be astrally active although at least one of them appears to have some
form of be somehow awakened but not observing in the astral and not observing you and there's
no barriers or rewards in the area right now.
So if you wanted to enter through the front door or through the wall you.
Yeah I want to enter through the wall and just look at everyone here.
Confirm that there's no other mages I suppose.
Well actually is that I guess I would make a sensing test.
Is that person that I noticed a mage specifically?
Yeah why don't you go make why don't you make a sensing test.
Okay no modifiers right.
No.
They are not a mage they're probably an adept.
I guess a meat mage.
They're a meat mage.
Meat mage.
Job's done.
Meet the meat mage.
Help me.
The meat mage.
But yeah and she wants to go look around in the actual cafe if there's any spirits just
viving maybe say hi to them ask them like if they've seen anything but otherwise you know
poking around.
Inside the murdered mime.
Are there any like intense astral signatures that she notices or other awakened individuals
or even as I said just like spirits just kind of free floating.
Inside the murdered mime no.
There are very few people in the murdered mime at this time of day.
It looks like the most legious people cleaning, crepping, setting things up for the night.
It's also there's a lot of technology and stuff in here so there's a lot of you know
just sort of dull you know very boring and uninteresting stuff in here that isn't really
registering on the astral.
You don't see any well make another I guess make another sensing test and see if there
are signatures or other.
Three.
There is the astral aftermath let's say of you know a massive party in here.
With all of the highs and lows that come with that you know the happiness the pleasure
the jealousy the anger you know all that kind of stuff.
When she whenever she comes down from like the roof while she's looking at this and
whenever her hooves lands on the floor he immediately bounces up almost like a like
a cartoon cartoon cat and she gives a little shake of her hoof sloshing away a unpleasant
looking slimy miasma of intoxication.
Yeah the whole you know you can imagine I guess you know since we're talking about it
you can imagine what kind of astral signature here.
Paragl, gross.
Party in the botry.
Certainly you know a lot of people were magically active in here but not in a not in any kind
of sense other than just people you know human people doing this.
And Danes leaving their signatures all over everything.
Yep.
You do with three hits you do get you catch you're exploring a little bit right.
I'm just imagining.
It's just kind of floating around the halls and stuff poking my head in the stuff.
You're getting towards more towards the back areas there's it appears that the club has
some back rooms and some upper rooms in some of them you get signatures that are more have
more to do with anger and fear and despair and you also get some sense that there's
there's some things going on in back here and in the upper rooms and some of these areas
there are some bad people that that are here and bad things have happened up there.
Backgrounds.
But I presume this.
How old are those signatures?
They're fresh.
Oh.
Yeah, I imagine I imagine that whatever react that you know the shaking of the hoof reaction
has been magnified 10 times in these areas.
I'm imagining that those those emotions and I presume there's also some dripping of malice
to or at least like a very very inhumane apathy.
It's a.
Oh.
Dispair.
Probably puke if she had a stomach with which to puke if that makes sense.
Yep.
You feel astraly nauseous.
He's going to go at that point.
He's going to go just just up through the roof back up across Seattle.
Just flying for a little while going back in the vague direction of Boxer's apartment.
Okay.
Enjoying the astral sunshine.
Yeah.
And the literal astral sunshine.
Yes.
And also enjoying appreciating the vastness of Seattle.
I imagine it's actually like bigger than the the Gilded City that is to say the the
capital of the question because it's it's a modern city with millions of people.
It's like it's and there's all like squished together.
Like when you're this high up, it's like it's like a painting on the night sky.
And with all the astral stuff going on, I mean, you're catching not just the sort of
the mundane view of it, which is probably pretty beautiful this morning.
Anyways, you're catching this the astral glow of the city.
I can imagine that the whole city sort of glows with its own astral signature.
It's very particular.
It's different from the countryside.
And it has a sort of like just with the sheer mass of thinking life.
It's almost like a living thing into itself kind of like a hive.
But give me another, you know, have perception.
What a bummer.
I can just default.
I have intuition.
Give us a default role then.
Modifiers?
No.
Okay, then.
You blightly go on your way.
He goes home back to the body.
Yeah.
Unbeknownst to you off in the distance, you see the astral signature of a dragon in the
mountains.
Oh, this is one of the last time that this is canonically one of the last times that
has to be was ever seen.
Oh, wow.
That's really sad that I rolled poorly there.
It would have been cool.
Okay.
I'm going to go fly home, go back to my stupid body.
God, can't talk to dragons.
All right, yeah.
But that's that's her trip.
To seal you.
You got D&Dir's message on doing a search on the mime.
Did I?
Yeah, we have like a group chat, I guess, at this point.
I don't know how night and gal would have sent a message to everybody without either
setting a group chat up or sending it not to like everyone individually.
Sure, makes sense to me.
I think all D&Dir said was norm girl, please search this up.
You want me to do a matrix search on the mime?
Isn't that what I said?
Okay, sure.
I guess I'll do a matrix search on the mime specifically looking for like ownership, reviews,
goings on.
All right.
The mime is very easy to find on the matrix.
Obviously, it has its own matrix location and actually its own matrix, you know, VR
entrance and club.
I don't know if you're going there or going into it at all, but you know that that exists.
I don't imagine Cecil would go there in the matrix yet.
Yep.
So that's a possibility for you.
You find multitudinous reviews on all of the local city papers.
The murdered mime is one of Renton's hottest night spots and features lots of up and coming
local musical acts.
It's known for its massive dance floor and it's wide variety.
It's wide and deep menu.
It's sort of one of the places to go if you consider yourself, anybody in the area and
or want to be seen by anybody in the area.
It's just that kind of place.
You do as you dive a little bit deeper, you also find traces that it is probably a Yakuza
front.
The Yakuza are rumored to operate the mime and operate some small time vise out of the
mime and use it as a training ground for some of their younger fresher recruits.
I send that over to Deandra.
I think Deandra just like in the most boomer way possible sends like a laughing till crying
emoji.
That's all I'm good at.
What?
Yeah.
Because that's what my dad does all the time.
I'm adorable.
Ron, because I got a thing in this.
She wasn't talking about me.
Alright, so anything else before the meet?
I think Nightingale is going to inform them of what she saw.
Can I do like before the meet?
Can Cecile do a search on the female associate of Procup?
I've forgotten her name.
Nadia.
There was Nadia and there was Talia.
Two of them.
Nadia was the smaller older one who led you back into the Samovar and Talia was the woman
standing behind Procup.
She is a little bit more interested in Talia right now.
You can send that over to me at some point.
It's not pressing enough to hold up the story for it.
I think Dindare probably drove back to where Cecile is and then like sat and tried to get
in contact with one of her contacts from Portland.
What is it?
What's his name?
Rory Callum, the librarian in Carseer.
Okay.
I think she would probably ask him if there's anything on like paracritters that are horses
that can speak and that he can get back to me at any point on that.
All right, so you both have a request out there.
What I will do is I will get back to you probably on the in-character text board.
Okay.
Sure.
In that case, Cecile is just going to message to the group chat like, so we need to go pick
up ICE.
Do we?
Yes, we have to go pick up ICE first.
ICE?
Question mark, question mark, question mark.
ICE will be accompanying us.
It'll be accompanying us.
I think I'll post a picture of Ice Cubes.
Did we get a contact?
Oh, you're breaking up, Dindare.
Did we get a bad one?
I think it's pretty bad.
In the rest of you guys here, Dindare, okay?
I know it's breaking up.
Got to live that in there.
What is going on?
I'm the only person in this house on this internet.
Not in your neighborhood.
That's right.
I'm using only one of the ICE.
Oh, it's better.
Okay.
Did we ever get ICE's contact information?
No.
However, in the in-character chat, there is a pin at ICE's location.
This way?
Yes.
Dindare will need to pick up internal combustion engine at this location, pin.
Glad that got one laugh.
I think Cecile would probably offer to the group, not Cecile, sorry.
Dindare would probably offer that she can pick up ICE on the bike if someone would come
and get Cecile.
If Cecile could take a taxi.
Yeah, you could take a grid guide.
But Chris being looked upon disdainfully by everyone with a car.
With a vehicle.
But the three of us that have a vehicle.
Cecile could probably also take public transit because apparently even in the cyber dystopia,
public transit continues to exist in Seattle.
And is also better than modern America.
Maybe we're out of dystopia.
Your wage slaves have to get to work somehow.
You're not paying them enough to get a car, so.
That's not true.
That's the British railway system.
Yeah, Cecile probably just pick a bus or something.
All right, so Dindare is going to go pick up Procop.
What how, how are you guys planning to get there?
Not by what conveyance, but are you getting there early or how are you working it?
I think Dindare is attempting to get there early.
But as previously stated, she is picking up ice, which there's a wrench into her get
there early plans.
Yep.
And you have no way of contacting ice.
So she's definitely like at the pin, kind of passive aggressively playing on her.
I'd say she's idling the engine, but it's an electric vehicle.
Yeah, ice is already there.
And there there is a is a pawn shop sort of old dusty pawn shop, and he is standing in
the doorway, sort of pretending to be nonchalant, but not really pulling it off wearing clothes
that fit him quite well and our modern evening wear club wear clothes, but look completely
out of place on him.
I think Dindare like pulls up, looks him up and down and he goes, nice hot norm boy.
He grins sort of mirthlessly and looks at you and he says, so they sent you on.
Well, I volunteered actually.
Well that was nice of you.
Well, you gotta say one thing, I do appreciate your being here early.
I'll give up for you after all.
I still want to be there early.
He climbs on the back and puts on the helmet, which you're not sure how well it fits him.
He's got a big head.
The helmets are wide, like a company big ears.
So I imagine they fit incredibly poorly on norms.
Yeah, he's got a bit of a big head.
Actually, may I ask a question?
Because does ice recognize Dindare as a triad?
Probably not.
But probably considers her an elf with augmentation to make her look the way she is.
Okay, I'm just curious.
He is super sophisticated.
So he hasn't seen a picture of Dindare through a camera yet?
No, he is not augmented in that way.
Okay.
Oh, actually, that's a good point.
That means that boxer would never be able to see the glamour effects through cameras.
Cyber eyes count as eyes.
But if you looked at like surveillance footage with Dindare in it, you would find green tree
girl.
Yeah, or if you recorded an image through the eyes, it would be not green.
It'd be human looking.
Dindare is not green if you take a picture of her.
But you don't know that yet.
What the fuck?
Glamour.
Okay.
All right.
So, Cecil, you get picked up by a grid guide.
Boxer and Nightingale are taking Nightingale's view.
No, I haven't taken a grid guide since Nightingale wants to lay low at the van.
Okay.
Yeah, grid guide mama.
This is a grid guide.
She has taken the form of a dog.
I don't know why a boxer keeps bringing her dog everywhere.
Mark, I serve as animal.
It's my emotional support animal.
It's a legitimate classification of support animal.
Dindare, you get to the area of the mind first, obviously.
You're about, let's say, half an hour early.
Sound about right?
Dindare would probably be there at least 45 minutes early.
And any special actions that you're doing there, where are you parking or how are you approaching?
I think she, like, in her casing of the area earlier, she figured out a place that was
close enough to the main entrance to get there quickly, but was out of line of sight of the
main entrance.
Okay.
So, like an alley nearby.
Yep.
Maybe a building or two over.
But at night, the entire area is packed.
There's heavy traffic.
There is the sidewalks and foot areas are inundated with clubgoers and restaurant goers and late
shoppers and, you know, just people walking around.
This area of Renton's an absolute hive of nightlife at the moment.
Even, you know, even in the alleyways and back streets, there's definitely foot traffic.
I think on the way over, Dindare would probably ask Ice in every language he knows if he speaks,
every language she knows if he speaks any of them.
Which languages does she know?
Cantonese, Japanese, and spirit soul.
All right.
Well, let's remind myself what Ice knows.
Ice is under in peace.
And don't forget about real time machine translation.
Who does that?
I don't think either Dindare or Ice can do that.
Interesting.
Ice has no language skills.
No, he has no language skills.
Nope.
I probably need to go look at his 5e character sheet because that's where I, well, let's not
get bogged down in that.
You are able to ascertain that Ice knows English and French and potentially a smattering
of other odd languages, but not Japanese or anything or Spirethiel.
I doubt he would have spoken Spirethiel.
And he is very short and not forthcoming in his answers either.
I think she just spends the rest of the time talking at him.
Kind of just like recounting stories of what she's done like way in the past, nothing recent.
Yeah, I think that's probably where you get the most connection with Ice is the distant
history type stuff.
It doesn't seem to really get into reaction or interest from him.
If you start talking about the 2050s, he gets interested.
I think in equivalents with Ice, Dindare's 2050s are probably incredibly boring.
Like you have cases cleaned up probably a go-go-go or two, but nothing like Shadowrunner or anything.
So you guys pull up and park in the spot that you had found earlier.
And like I said, this area is just crowded with people and revelers.
Make me another perception check, please.
At least on my end, Boxer has a little bit of echo for everyone.
I don't know if that's fixed.
Let's see.
I think it is.
Oh, well, perception for...
Nope, it's back.
I'll give her a little bit of echo.
Who's making the perception check?
Dindare's making a perception check as she pulls into her chosen parking spot at the Mime.
Am I echoing or...
I hear myself echoing, but I'm not sure where the echo is.
It's coming from her Valerie Boxer.
Is she with us?
I'm here.
Perception or hits, nice.
You know, you go past the Mime and you're sort of surreptitiously using, glancing around,
using the visor on your helmet to cover your glances.
You get the distinct impression that the Italiano on the across the street from the Mime
and the Mime security forces are potentially beefing, not overtly at the moment,
but you catch that sort of vibe from them.
And you also see that there's a line down the block of people waiting to get into the Mime.
And you see that the security detail, different group of people than you saw this morning when you were there,
but you see the security detail, they're eight deep.
Four of them are orcs.
They're all, they're all look pretty heavy and intimidating.
And you, as you pass, you notice that certain select people are going right in rather than waiting in line.
You also notice that there's a valet service that is, you know, taking people's cars.
So, yeah, this is a happening place.
Our Boxer and Grace and Cecil attempting to show up as early as the end there.
About as early as.
Okay.
Not on last night in Galantsists.
Make out does not have a conception of always having to arrive early for things unlike humans, many humans, them and their unhealthy work culture.
All right, so Cecil pulls up as well, the good guy gets out and makes a perception change.
Perception.
One, one, you're not quite as perceptive as Deander was as she passed through here as you get out of the grid guide.
You do obviously observe the giant line of people waiting to get in to the mime.
And you see that there is an exceptional amount of security in front of the mime.
So you recognize it from your matrix search, and that's all that you sort of notice about place.
Cecil starts walking towards the door with Procox symbol on her tumbling.
Okay.
Deander and ice.
So when you park Deander, ice sort of made an appreciative comment on the fact that you had chosen a good location and says something to the effect of well,
this might go okay after all.
I think in like almost a snide way she says back might.
He grins.
All right, shall we?
I assume you're my ticket in.
So let's go.
All right.
You see Cecil pull up in a grid guide and walk towards the main entrance and Cecil as you walk forward,
you see the security eyeing you as you approach probably anticipating actually how are you addressed?
The same as she was.
She hasn't had the opportunity to change her clothes yet.
So she is still not had a chance to.
She doesn't she's not wearing any fancy club gear.
All right, so you're approaching you see them sort of one or two of them get into a posture like, you know, they're not overly signal signaling that they're going to intercept you but you can sort of get the impression that they're like, oh boy, here we go.
And one of them sort of holds out his hand as if to stop you.
And you show him the you flash in the symbol, the seal, and he looks over at one of the other orcs over there and sort of makes a head motion and then he gives you sort of the the thumbs over his shoulder going as if you know, you go in.
The seal.
Feel this not for this environment.
And there's a thing there and ice approach, one of the York steps out to a sort of intercept you. And here's here's the thing.
Ice doesn't have a common link on him.
So he looks at you as if to say, All right, get us in.
And then D and Dery looks back at him not with like surprise but almost like kind of I expected you to do this. A look that says that, and then kind of fiddles with our common link for a second, and then pulls up the symbol, and the guy nods again and sort of shrugs at one of the other orcs and, you know, motions you to
the other orcs are, you know, some of the people in line are starting to lose it and the orcs are just sort of amused by this. D and Aaron Cecile as you enter the murdered mime.
You are just hammered by a wave of music.
And then the exploitation rock is playing at, you know, you're splitting volume, and the, the decor is all black and white and minimalist. There's a there's a massive black and white checkered dance floor that you actually can't really see the dance floor
itself because there's just this, heaving massive meta humanity. And are you in doing anything in AR Cecile.
Oh, always.
Accepting the AR invitation of the club.
All right, so you're getting the full on AR bombardment, which makes the interior of the club even more bombastic with just all sorts of laser holographics, projecting mimes of all shapes and sizes.
The mimes are like walking up the walls as if the walls were the floor and they're murdering each other and all sorts of stylized imaginative ways.
And the place is just a cacophony of, of noise and lights and smells and it's just, it's intense.
And both you and Diender as you walk in are just struck by this and wondering, probably both having exactly the same thought of how in heck, how the frag are we going to find the Mr Johnson in here and how are we going to have any kind of meeting.
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