Lone Star Shadowrun
Winifred “Winny” Wiggins - Decker
Autry “Gene” Granger - Magician
Samson “Sam” Hale - Dawg Handler
Eli - Dawg - Hellhound
Officer “Red” Kent - muscle
Things are different in Austin - in 2034, 40 years prior to these events, the Confederation of American States seceded from the UCAS, and then Aztlan invaded the CAS; Texas decided it would just break away - lasting a year before rejoining. The invasion was halted but Aztlan now owns a large chunk of Texas including half of Austin: split by the Colorado river with access across the border via heavily guarded bridge checkpoints and chickenwired riverbanks. 1-2km either side of the river are slums filled with SINless people run by gangs and only visited by the police in force; effectively a war camp.
In the north the city is owned and run by Lone Star Security Services, the largest public security corp in North America, who run police forces for CAS and UCAS. Aim is to crack down on narcotics and BTLs. We’ve all worked our way up from beat cops and fresh outta academy. It’s late summer 2074, it’s sweltering, and we’re in full gear in the back of a police van, a caged hellhound at one end stinkin’ the joint up.
Autry (“Gene” for short) is a white guy with a ‘tache and thinning hair, sits staring at the buttons on his jacket. He seems pretty detached. The gang have all seen him dosing up on Psyche a bunch.
Sam is a troll, not the biggest but still, hey, big guy. He has short horns coming out the back of his head and a thin ridge of bone along his skull. A winfield mustache adorns his face and he is very softly spoken. For a troll.
Winnie is human; very cyberlimbed, with skates that pop out the bottom: chatty about a not a lot and has family in the Lone Star forces who probably bought her in via nepotism.
At the feet of our last character is a bunch of motion sick: an Orc called Red Kent who met Darlene, his lovely wife, he was a brawler till she set him on the straight and narrow, for him to join the force and make pay for the little ones at home.
1km from the river, Lieutenant Haze [40, human, underpromoted, with a chip on his shoulder, definitely looking to get prestige busts to try and climb the ladder], gives us a briefing. Hitting a beta-meth lab (variant of methamphetamine, upper, think faster, suppress appetite, lowers attention span, addicts will be malnourished, illegal due to competition with legal ‘cram’) , run by the ‘Juggernauts’ (known drug smugglers, expected to be armed). 4th floor of Block 124, Apartment 41. Confirmed drug activity. Not expecting it to be bloodbath, but Haze won’t mind if a few scalps are taken - reminding us it’s bad for optics if we light up the residential block and kill everyone.
We bundle out the back, Eli staying near Sam, but Sam still collar-clips to Eli and runs back to his belt. Winny does a matrix search for the floorplans to this apartment complex. 8 stories, 6 apts each floor (3 aside) and they are pokey apartments. The tiny central living area (bedroom and living space) - these studio size apartments will have a kitchenette and toilet/bathroom off. Winny pushes those to everyone in an AR window, whilst Red observes the meth lab may use all 3 apartments given the difficulty of fitting too many in one apartment. Sam waves his big red key as Red suggests hitting multiple doors, and Autry asks if Winny can walk upstairs with skates. Red charges up the stairs and comes up against a woman wearing a purple sprayed armour jacket, she’s leaning over the balcony smoking and turns to face Red with surprise, showing the pistol in her waistband. Red immediately charges her before she gets a chance to pull weapon and let daylight through him. She is not adequately surprised but is shocked to see police here. Red goes to flying kick the ‘threat’ in a bid to neutralise her. He does so in spades, knocking her out cold and sending her flying back. Winny gets to the top of the stairs, skates over (pop out) and connects a medkit to scan for vitals - fine, will be concussed when she comes to! Sam drops the clip on the gun and scatters the pieces, also spotting the knife in her boot and taking that. Winny effusively praises both Red with the kick and Sam finding the weapons, who grumbles in response.
Winny then radars the nearest room with her leg, Red standing at the door: the radar is showing some blocky outlines of the room; Winny reckons from the outline, people moving - maybe 4? (passing in front of one another is tricky on numbers). One is moving loads, the other 3 seem stationary, 2 lying down. Winry is looking for icons and tots up 16 commlinks, 5 smartgun equipped weapons, 2 sets of cyber eyes, 1 cyber leg, fridges and electric stoves as well as 6 A/C systems on the floor, 1 per apt.
Autry summons a water spirit to fly over and stick its head through the 3rd door down to scout numbers: a lot of inorganic stuff and 5 people:
There seems to be a lot of stuff piled up behind a nearby wall.
Winny tries to brute force the nearby HVAC to warm the room up. We’re listening out but hadn’t heard a ton of noise after the earlier dropkick bang. 5mins later we catch hushed voices and people starting to move things. Dragging, banging etc. Then, as Winny hacks some smartgun systems she catches some swearing, which triggers Sam to open the door with the big red key as Big Red stands by. The door splinters inwards and we make out - amidst the must, wave of hot air etc. - a dingy flophouse with an emaciated person slumped in a corner, and at the far end a young woman (also emaciated) unconscious on a filthy mattress. Standing over her is a man who turns twitchily towards us as the door splinters - his pupils are dilated, looking everywhere, pistol drawn waving around his head, with the sight sparking. He turns to the door and shouts “who the f**k are you?” and waves the pistol at us.
Red runs up to the sparky fella and spots another person in shock, sitting up on a bed, unarmed and watching the scene. Scattered on the floor is drug paraphernalia (inhalers, burners, packs of betameth) and Red moves to clinch this guy and succeeds. He falls back and moves to propel this guy back through the open door. He stumbles to his feet, still tweaking (not Jazz-like, more erratic), and fires on Red. Red’s throw helps him dodge the shots which punch into the crumbling wall. Eli the dog watches on; Winny notes the cybereyes are now moving further into the building and seeks to deactivate them to stop them fleeing or flushing. She breaks one cyber eye. Sam steps into the doorway, says ‘bad move, son’ and wallops him with his patrol issue shield. He’s still up but pretty battered. Sam then suggests Eli subdues him. Autry calls the spirit over for assistance and then hangs back, hearing some crunching noises.
The spirit materialises and stands next to the shooter, who takes another opportunity to fire on Kent, who dodges again and Eli springs to the shooter and bites him, sinking his teeth in and shaking the arm, looking to remove the pistol and floor him. The shooter’s forearm bone shatters under the bite and he begins screaming. Winny goes to decommission the second cyber eye as well as a cyber leg, bricking both. Kent sees the shooter is under control thanks to Eli, looks around at the 3 stoned, skinny users in the room, wanders back to the front door and moves to kick the toilet door in, on his toes enough to spot a dwarf holding a pistol and opens fire, Kent ducks back and one bullet from the dwarf shoots through the slumped user’s head, killing him. Kent steps back through the door, looses a choice texan insult and seeks to disarm the dwarf, plucking the pistol from his hand and flings it aside, before he retreats into the corner of the bathroom and he cowers, raising his hands in defeat. Sam calls off the hound and keeps an eye down the hallway for further trouble.
Red kicks the dwarf, turns him round and restrains him, whilst Winny administers first aid to the one with the broken arm. The medkit confirms him as a meth user as he gets painkillers and splinted by Winny. We truss both and stick them on the balcony, getting abuse from the shooter with the broken arm. Looking around the room, Kent is looking for evidence in bulk like a duffel bag of drugs; whilst paraphernalia abounds, and several baggies of it, not distribution level. Autry looks at the lockers (empty) but as they open the locker seems very wobbly. It’s easy to pull over even for tiny Autry, and in doing so skips back as it falls towards him; several gunshots ring out and Kent/Autry look in to see a woman crouched behind a wall taking aim at the lockers, and a man with cyber eyes, looking around completely blind, waving a pistol around towards the lockers emptying the clip. In trying not to be hit by the locker, Autry gets hit by both shots, including being shot by a blind man. Both rounds go into the armour jacket and he falls prone.
Eli charges in and goes for the blind shooter, once again going for gun hand with those steel jaws. Dawg floors another hostile, who is knocked out cold with the force of the dog’s insistence. Red grabs Autry and pulls him out of the pistol range of the lady, then moves to clinch the woman shooter. He succeeds in doing so, and spots many plastic crates with sachets of drugs atop them. The area near the clinched lady there are 2 barrels with warning signs on - “flammable” and “caustic”. Once again their seems to be a hole between the flats - there’s a curtain behind this one instead of a wonky locker. Through the curtain there’s the sound of movement. The water spirit tries to engulf the woman shooter Kent has grappled, but no luck, so the woman shooter tries to shoot Kent at point-blank range. He dodges, and Sam comes to Red’s aid, pulling service weapon in the process. Winny senses two more cyber eyes waiting to be relieved - both destroyed with screams from behind the curtain, and Autry stands back up and peeks round the corner to where Red and the water spirit seem like they’re trying to subdue the shooter lady.
A troll emerges from behind the curtain and tries to chop Eli in half with an axe, but Eli is ready for it, so dodges that and turns to bite back. The troll puts the axe haft into Eli’s mouth and shoves him back; meanwhile Red is engaged in hand to hand combat with the woman. A swift knee to the face, her nose shatters and she drops to the floor, unconscious, so Red steps to the troll. Also water spirit, who engulfs the Troll, causing some damage and holding it. Sam whistles for Eli to back off. The troll takes some more damage but rather than avoid drowning, axes Red who seeks to block successfully. Eli backs off but keeps his hackles raised. The water spirit seeks to take lumps out of the troll but it avoids the punch; Red sees an opportunity to put the troll on his back but doesn’t quite get there with more fists of fury. The troll is reeling, shrouded in water, generally losing things but sees a chance to hit Red again, and flies an axe at Red - cleaving him. Red sees red and Eli sees an opening besides Kent’s wound and leaps at the troll. His jaws wrap around the troll and brings it down. From the next room, behind the curtain, we hear people - a couple of whispered voices, some whimpering…
Red calls out “Winny!” who skates past Autry to deal with Red’s wounds. She puts a cuff on Red from her cyberleg and assesses/repairs the wounds whilst Sam walks along the balcony and tries to kick the door in. With a massive kick, Sam realises it’s barricaded, but the barrels they shoved in fly backwards. He lays eyes on the lab: benches with burners and labware, many barrels, 3 people in rudimentary hazmat gear (well, rubber gloves, paper masks and aprons), unarmed and crouched trying to sneak under the bench. They look rightly terrified. At the far end of the room is a person brandishing a pistol, hiding behind barrels. Sam calls for the dog to join him.
Red looks down at his wounds, decides the medkit is doing nothing (specifically “as useless as a hot dog at a shooting contest”) and runs towards the back room, charging to attack the ringleader of the lab laying on a solid Texas Pound of stunning fist pain. He appears dazed but unbowed. Eli, who’d been hailed, follows at Red’s heels and springs at the capitan. The jaws connect once more, levels another Juggernaut. The water spirit comes in the room, sees no valid targets bar some cowering cooks and bubbles menacingly at them. Sam lowers his service weapon, and moves into the room. Sam gets the cooks to prostrate themselves, which they do. Autry stumbles through the curtain, and Winny looks rather put out, and begins matrix searching for why interrupting medical attention in a battle is a bad idea, to regale him with. Autry makes a Wizard of Oz reference, Red takes evidence pictures, and Sam charges past Autry to look at the void behind - a mostly empty room with another curtain at the back end. Sam hears someone scrambling around on one of the adjoining rooms. He calls ‘one moah’ and Red steps up - seeing a woman in gang colours, crawling around clawing at her eyes, which Winny must have bricked. Red simply hog-ties her as he receives a push notification from Winny pointing out the infelicity of stopping first aid.
As we stand there, a hail of gunfire rips apart the curtain and fills the area with bullets: an orkwoman has pushed a desk over, mounted a 1900s machine gun on the table and has opened fire down the channel. Sam gets hit by blind fire, merely being clipped by one of the stray bullets. Kent and the Water Spirit combine to restrain her.
We get the perpetrators lined up, radio Haze, he checks up the line of crooks and assesses Kent’s wounds, asks about the dead junkie, gets some pictures of him ‘leading the bust’ and calls for backup to take the perps away.
We get a couple of days downtime to recover, rest up. Winny bombards Kent with evidence of him not receiving full medical aid. He asks for a nice rough stitching as that’s how Darlene likes it.
Winny does some digging on Lt. Hayes. Turns out he isn’t particularly popular. He’s been fairly successful but for some reason has not climbed the ranks as high as might be expected.
He does, however, have a reputation for seeing his men as expendable, planting weapons and generally getting results by any means necessary.
6pm - Lieutenant comes in with good news/bad news: Good news: a big deal between Juggernauts and crime family; Bad news: overtime, deal goes down tonight in 15’, time to roll. Red puts down his tusk file and stubs his cigar, and we head to tool up. Winnie asks about the Lieutenant’s desire not to follow procedure and bombards Red with the research conducted.
Sam head down to the kennels to meet Eli. We get to the car park and Hayes is there with an unmarked van, with 2 people sat up front. As we round the rear there’s another in the back - recognised all as Sergeants, senior to us and experienced. 2 women, one man. Hayes tell us to shift. Another warm Texan evening in the back of the van, hot dog making it worse, Red is already vurping. As the doors shut the matrix collapses, as we’re in a faraday cage, and Winnie can’t project something to keep Red occupied. He looks at Sgt. Human Woman (Adams), and removes a wee speaker to play some tunes, 1950s rockabilly, to keep him occupied. During the ride Hayes slides the back panel and passes a datachip through, Adams commlinks it and punches a datapacket to us. The house was a bootleg bourbon distillery, out of commission for 40yrs; we think we’re busting betameth and want videos of the deal going down before moving in and busting. Need a) place to hide to position, get that juicy stakeout footage, then advance.
Autry asks if the Sergeant is coming along - yes, expecting large numbers - and Red asks for more information on the crime family in question. The Muellers - one of only a couple of mafia-style families active in Austin, the smaller of the two; generally, they deal in drugs, arms, some cross-border smuggling (mostly delegated to the street gangs), and don’t hold territory in the border slums of Austin. Red asks if we have to collar and let some go - Muellers get prioritised. Winnie and Red discuss capturing the footage via his cybereye; 40mins into the drive we get some pop-pop of gunfire, including one ricochet in the van.
Building - floor to ceiling except grille walkways around perimeter and NE corner top floor. From 100m away we see no activity and things are winding down, late, and surrounded by former industrial buildings, all lights out. Lieutenant Hayes turns to us and gives us the pep talk: “25mins before meet; hoped to have more time to set up but get over there quick, if people are already waiting deal with them. No advance warning or the meet gets called off; quietly if you can”. Winnie skims the area for commlinks, and after sifting out our gear there are some commlinks and household items the other way - nothing from here running in the former distillery. Red fears being caught so Winnie suggests recording locally/wirelessly. Searching for silent items, finds 2 cyber eyes, a cyber right arm, a smartgun, and reports to others. Red asks to brick the commlink and Autry the eyeballs; and we then move on the building: Red suggests skirting the edge of the building to enter via the rear ramp, and Winnie fires some more malicious code in the direction of the person. Commlink is down. Samson unholsters weapon, and we begin moving round the perimeter. A spirit is summoned but finds no living people so Red moves in and Winnie seeks to explode the eyes simultaneously, and they go bricky. Kent breaks in, and heads up the metal stairs, clanking away as he rises. Kent kicks the door into this supervisor’s office and starts looking out on the wall. Kent looks around and considers building a hideyhole of trash to roost in.
Samson gets a bit bored, sees brass watching, and sends Eli in. He finds the corpse in a bin - elf, woman, early 20s, dead as a doornail and wearing Juggernaut colours armor jacket. He closes the bin and reports the body but not cod. Hayes sends a message after 10’ asking what the 411 is, and gets the lowdown - sending Winnie to check the corpse. Winnie asks Sam to pull the body out, and he obliges and dumps her on the ground. Some blood around the back of the head, Winnie checks that out, one knife thrust to brainstem. Lights out. TOD? Body is still warm! Autry suggests someone wears the armour jacket and pretends to be the contact, but noone seems to be buying it. Hayes messages again reminding us the drop is in 10, and they’re on their way to reinforce. Eli sniffs around and finds a drop of blood on the other side of the window: clearly it was a surgical blow.
Winnie gets the circuit breaker up, turns the lights out, and begins working the machinery, including trying to drop the door on the north face. Lieutenant Hayes says well done to winnie and sets himself up in the office. One hides behind a still, the other at the stairs leading to the upper gantry. The final sergeant stays with the van. We hunker down in cover (stills, barrels) and a few minutes later, we hear the sound of several vehicles approaching from multiple directions. Red and Autry Jazz up. As Autry is also on psyche he gets some glorious disorientation, causing him to feel amped up but nauseous as hell for 30mins. Yay!
3 vehicles pull up at the north side - 2 motorbikes, 1 van. The van reverses up the ramp, and Juggernaut colours hop out, have a cursory look around, looking on edge, reporting into commlink, seeking a response from someone (absent?), and begin unloading. As the last crate drops out of the van, a large black sedan pulls up at the south entrance. 4 people exit: 3 orks wearing charcoal grey suits, red ties, open carrying weapons, also quickly looking around, mostly the Juggernauts; a middle-aged besuited elf lady running the show set back. Elf lady steps up, Red recording away, as the Juggernaut opens lids and shows a lot of blue crystalline betameth: a lot more than we busted at the lab. Elf lady gives a cursory glance at the drugs, then nods stiffly and says “they’ll do. Have you got the item?”. They return to the van, placing a small boxed item on the crates and opens the lid. She peers inside, nods again and then they begin haggling. The money being discussed is disproportionately higher than the value of the drugs: Y1m - and the Juggernauts want more than that! Winnie likes the sound of this, and begins searching for hidden icons (there are some: smartguns, 3x+ cybereyes, ork cyberarm, commlinks, the van runs silent), and the argument gets more heated. After several minutes the negotiations pile on, before Winnie feels a data spike bounce off her deck, and the Orks then pull weapons on the Juggernauts. Winnie moves to drop the north door and the shutters start dropping. The Juggernauts spin round to the door, begin shouting at the mafia ‘is this a setup’ and the mafia look just as confused, and another dataspike pings Winnie and this one is fast and hard. The orks starts to move towards the stills, Autry gets his water spirit to materialise, and just at the point where we’re about to start shooting, a loud gunshot goes off in the upper office, the window shatters outwards, and it seems Hayes just had to get the first shot off.
Lieutenant Hayes fires another shot at a Mueller goon, which skims him across the cheek. Red jumps from above and leaps to spur-kill the Juggernaut nearest the item. The Juggernaut dives clear but is prone, dodging the attack. Third time’s the charm on Winnie’s deck - it gets spiked bigstyle. Autry drops a lightning ball in the Mueller’s vicinity: they all twitch a bit, the orks looking sad, and the Elf resists a wee bit. Autry peers round the barrel and catches the eye of a troll Juggernaut, gets a finger pointed at him and Autry feels his insides boiling. Ouch. Then the villains all spot Red in the middle of them and all pull weapons on him. Winnie pegs the decker in the car, then brute forces the deck. Autry gets hit with some more bullets, then the Orks open fire on the juggernauts. Sam throws a concussion grenade right into the heart of the crowd - on Red - and one mafioso is knocked out, the elf lady reeling, and Eli is primed to attack. Eli springs on the remaining mafioso, eats ones arm, then the spirit seeks to do similar to elf lady but fails. Red, torn between hitting a magic user and punching a guy whilst he’s down, spurs up and goes for the magician. The spurs land and skewer but doesn’t eviscerate the troll magician. Winnie gets another spike attack, resisting. Autry covers Red against spelling then lightning bolts the elf lady, giving her a massive heart attack and dropping her dead. Kent starts getting magecooked before Winnie spikes back on the rival decker. Winnie bricks it and tots up some extra damage to her tally. Winnie gets a sense a punch of that kind will cause some serious nosebleeds. The ork being bitten by Eli tries to fight back, getting a knife to the midriff, but only stunned, then Kent is shot - then the water spirit gets shot 3 times, one time doing nothing. Spirit has taken a damage.
Eli bites the bad man. Good Eli.
End of session
Kent sizes the trollmage, knife in hand, pistol in belt, looking very bloody, so Kent throws some dirt in his face and goes to uppercut him. He removes the mage’s jaw and the now-dead mage flies backwards into the van and boxes beyond. Kent then moves up to the next Juggernaut in line. Peeking into the van, he sees noone else in the front. Eli meanwhile has another chomp on the bad man. This chomp is enough to sever the man’s arm and cause him to bleed out entirely. Eli tears the guy’s throat out just for the flavor. The juggernaut Kent has moved to tries to fend him off with her knife. He moves spurs up but the blade sneaks past his guard and sinks in to the armor vest, causing him to be reverberated. As pleased as she is with the hit she sees the tide turning… Autry flings a fireball into a crowd of Juggernauts who get burned up a wee bit - the prone one catches aflame, screaming and flailing on the ground, the windows burst in and scorches the paintwork, and the heat pops both tires on the off-side of the van. The box of drugs nearest Autry also begins to smoulder and smoke. The water spirit then moves to engulf a juggernaut, causing it to thrash around and smother in water. Winnie meanwhile tries bruteforcing marks onto the rival deck causing matrix damage. Hayes now gets another chance to set off his handcannon, and plugs the flambéed fellow, finishing him off. The woman fireballed recently turns to fire a shot at the sarge near the closing grille-door, and wings him then bolts down the ramp and slides under the closing grille and hops on a bike, taking off. The winged copper moves up to the woman fighting Kent and takes a baton swing, but the shot has made him woozy and he misses. Sam flips up smartlink, draws gun and fires a shot. Sadly the shot goes low and causes the betameth crate to explode, throwing up toxic drugfuelled air which drops a sarge near them and stuns the heck out of Kent. The engulfed juggernaut succumbs to that.
Eli comes to Sam’s side and sits nicely. Kent, meanwhile, sees the women in front of him coughing away, and rises above, punching her instead of spur-punching her, and connecting with a blow. He cold-cocks her and drags her and the downed sarge by scruffs and get them out of the ramp into the open air. He DNIs Winnie asking her to brick the bike before the perp who escapes gets away. Winnie tries to do so - marking her and causing the bike to stop - brakes on, engine off; meanwhile, Kent checks over the barely-conscious punched woman who gets cuffed and sparks a cigar. In the distance a meaty crunch and scream, which suggests some pain, and Kent starts pelting towards the scream. He can see the crumpled bike and equally crumpled traffic accident: the bike is a writeoff and the perp, even moreso. A high velocity head-induced landing with no helmet wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Winnie gets the feed through and sees her handiwork, and Kent asks Winnie to administer first aid to the choking sarge: the bullet bruise is sorted, but the choking on drug fumes is a bit tougher, so some salbutamol does the trick, he starts to come around, sit up and look around.
The decker-limo is pulling away but we’re all looking north. Sam walks that way with Eli and sees Hayes coming down the steps approaching, shouting “good job in there! Is everyone out?”. Sam turns to look in and count bodies in the haze, and turns back to Hayes, cleaning his ears out and shrugging ‘as far as I’m aware, sir’...
Hayes lights a celebratory cigar and Kent DNIs confirming one perp in custody and one RTC dead. We reconvene at front whilst the smoke clears. It plumes away out the top of the building. Kent suggests Winnie, Sarge and the perp all trot round to join the gang. Winnie looks Kent up and down to see how rough he is doing, plugs her leg in and gives some quality first aid to him, and in turn he pulls the box out and covertly shows Winnie the high value item plucked from atop the drug-box: an obsidian statue of a winged serpent in a plush velvet box. Winnie is not picking up what Kent is putting down vis-a-vis stowing it in her leg compartment, and pockets it instead. Winnie stalks off looking troubled. A few minutes later they rejoin the officers and the smoke is dissipating enough to look in, drugs mostly burned out or not combusting.... Hayes congratulates anyone and asks where the small box has gotten to. Sam and Autry comment on the flames and bullets and how the boxes may have gone up. Winnie is looking very very guilty at the question, and Kent proffers the arrested perp to Hayes, noting the bike-corpse the other side, congratulating Winnie on the bike-stop but clearly not the kill, which must be why she looks worried/guilty. Kent pats himself down ostentatiously and suggests it’s all burned up (shucks) but Hayes is keen to go inside and check out what’s going on.
We are directed inside to scour the building for “this box” and is very insistent that it be found. As we’re looking around, Hayes is getting more and more visibly concerned about this, not getting his usual perpwalk/drug pictures in an allconsuming attempt to find the box. Hayes also asks Autry to go to the van and check Sarge Tanner in there - so Autry and the spirit trot over to take a look. As we round the corner we see the van, and as we head towards it, we both look closer and spot from the front we see Sarge Tanner give us a friendly wave. Autry makes a ‘DNI Hayes’ message but she just keeps waving, and Autry sends a DNI suggesting she may be under duress...so Kent and Sam and Eli and Winnie head over to see what’s up. Apparently Autry makes no sense?! So Autry sends a feed of this weird waving and an interrobang. Kent moves to outflank the van and everyone else takes a close look. Winnie sees best of all, fierce empath that she is, and Kent/Sam move to the back of the alleyway to flank it. Kent gets a look into the van from one side, and Tanner is still eyes fixed on Autry, so Kent opens the door, and…
Tanner doesn’t appear to react at all. Kent hails her: still no reaction. Kent taps her on the shoulder and feels instead his vision snap funnily - his hand feels wet and he realises the windscreen has a huge bullet hole in, Tanner is dead (Kent DNIs Hayes), and Red’s hand is red so he pulls back and suggests Autry looks into it whilst Winnie analyses the wound. Autry realises the spell is being sustained in line of sight so DNI’s everyone to look around casually like. Red puts his hand down and pretends to talk to Tanner. As we look around, the illusion drops. Winnie, searching for silent icons, spots something on the van itself! It’s listed as a commlink, under the van...perhaps a bomb? Rather than a person under the van? The humanoids all back away, quickly, and the spirit slips under the van to report on what’s under there, and a fraction of the second later it reports nothing then blinks out as the van explodes. Thankfully we’re outside the 20m radius fireball range, and some of us are knocked off our feet. Kent gets Winnie up and thanks her for spotting the commlink under the van. Hayes shouts ‘what the f**k was that?’ and Kent confirms the van was boobytrapped. An analysis of the wound suggests no angle of attack, head on - human height, large caliber (hunting rifle), armor piercing, ordnance of that size would have been noisy. Silenced? Or because we were in a noisy firefight?
Kent flashes us the obsidian box, and Winnie begins bombarding him with statistics on the effects of police corruption on society, and Kent begins a monologue about ‘what has the force ever done for us’, and Winnie’s disappointment is palpable. Whilst she matrix searches what the thing is, Autry assenses it for magical qualities and it has an aura akin to a living thing, although it’s unclear if it’s sentient or conscious. We have a discussion about sale, repatriation or otherwise, and then troop back to the warehouse. Hayes looks rather dejected, the remaining sergeants have given up searching, and the tapering smoke wisps away, whilst some images are being captured of the bust. Kent suggests he found the box attached to a bike off back, Hayes says “thank god”, opens the box and peeks inside, closes it up and sighs with relief, “that’s good” and shoves it into his jacket. “What is it, boss?” says Kent and Hayes says “I don’t know, did you look in?” and Kent admits to seeing a carved rock. This doesn’t stop Hayes looking dejected at Tanner’s demise, and asks if the body is recoverable: “bits of it”, says Kent. We explain Tanner was executed, and the intention was for us to be in the van.
Kent and Autry are not long off the Jazz wearing off, and we’re soon to slump. Very soon! We both reel and Eli needs a lie down and all. Oh dear. Hayes suggests we all take a breather (great suggestion), and not long after midnight Kent and Autry reel with disorientation till zero dark thirty. Hayes is coordinating the sergeants taking drug bust photos, gets the press shot and Winnie goes round offering further first aid. We notice unusually that the Lieutenant is taking all the pictures, to ensure he’s not in any of the shots. Very intriguing. Winnie spots this and Kent gets paranoid that we’re being left high and dry on this - unauthorised mission, dead cop, in an area not usually trafficked, this seems...dodgy. Because we didn’t do a clean job the lack of clearance would have been no thing, but the blood trails will leave cleanup. Winnie gets some darkweb stashed shots making clear that Hayes was there too. Kent asks mid-camera shots if evac are on the way, what with the van explosion to date. Hayes says ‘we’re 5 miles from friendly territory, so we’re walking’. The sergeants look pretty unhappy - worried! - about this. Winnie DNIs Kent about how weird the Lieutenant is being, and Kent suggests we’re getting thrown to the wolves here. Winnie suggests hacking his commlink (or Kent suggest calling for backup on his authority?), but notes calling for backup would make him very unhappy. Kent asks for interference to be run. Winnie ‘passes out from the Jazz’, dropping into hotsim, and begins to try to hack his commlink. Autry springs up and asks the Lieutenant to pose in front of the drugs for his success shot for the Austin Times and he hands over the camera and moves to pose. In the interim Winnie is into the commlink and begins looking through the messages, downloading them but leaving the mark on his comm for future use. Winnie begins sheafing through the messages but finds nothing incriminating - and finds oblique messages to the sergeants, being carefully worded not to self-incriminate, ‘load up, noone is coming to get us, don’t worry the rookies’ etc. etc. Winnie also searches for Autry and spots a message from some months ago, confirming his voice is annoying.
Listening out we spot Eli perk up, then some of us hear the sounds of motorbikes: since this area has so few vehicles it stands out. As we announce this Hayes burns out the remaining betameth and leads us all out back, gesturing to a sarge to wheel the remaining bike with us. As we hear the bikes approach plus the odd gunshot ringing out, we’re led into the alleyway (without the bombed van in) darkness to await the arrival.
Just after midnight, Lt is leading us in a NE direct, back towards the city and away from the border. Motorbikes approaching…
We have not been to this part of the city before. The Lt has not been here before either. He is using a GPS to guide us on a direct route out of this area.
As we head further away from the distillery we are moving into a more residential area. Occasional lights of peeking onlookers come on sporadically.
We can still hear motorbikes.
Lt glances back to check out the health of the team. He suggests to Red that he leave the prisoner behind. He appears to be more concerned about getting out in one piece than taking the prisoner back. Red decides to continue to carry the prisoner (female dwarf)
The motorbike sounds are all around us, as if we are being hunted.
In the distance, there is the faintest of sounds. One of the Sarges is downed and Winnie skates over to check if dead. Autry runs for cover in an abandoned stuffer shack (we’re in the commercial district), whilst Winnie calls for Red to help (which turns out it’s not needed, she is stone cold dead). Red kicks a door open and throws the dwarf in, returning to Winnie. Sam spots a muzzle flash and a bullet comes towards him- it goes through his shield but is stopped by the body armour, resulting in a whack of an impact, causing stun damage.
We bust into the stuffer shack for cover, it clearly looks like the corp left with all the good stuff and left a bunch of ruined mannequins and the former remains of shopfronts. It goes very quiet outside: no gunshots, no bikes in the alley...we ask if we saw what it was/where - and Sam confirms the flash came from a roof (after asking if Kent was going to be a damn fool like a Juggernaut). Winnie, meanwhile, is biomonitoring Sam to see how he’s doing and confirms the bullet didn’t penetrate but will bruise, maybe broken rib. Winnie pushes Sam some reading about not moving too much with a broken rib, and Sam shrugs it off. Kent looks to the door to see if the shooter can be find whilst looking around and espying a back entrance; he proposes to Hayes that we now use not even streets, but backalleys. At this voice Hayes breaks his gaze from his next deadest Sergeant and nods.
We scout the building, entrance and exit, and looking through the glass-fronted pane we see sarge’s body and the front of the jacket lift up; Sam asks Winnie to round up the others, then pulls leather; as they do so the other jacket lapel lifts as if whatever is out there is rifling through their jacket looking for something. Sam switches over to astral and makes out the aura of a humansortofhumanoid, then fires shots at it. The shots go wild, smashing the pane in the process. The aura leaps back and returns at high speed to the cover from the previous shooter.
Sam calls us to explain what was going on whilst Winnie scans for more icons, and Hayes once again suggests we move on, leaving the dwarf behind. We bust out back and strive for shorter, narrower streets now and keep heading in a suitable direction (meaning some larger streets) and this slows us down further, and he gets more cautious, peeking at crossroads etc. for trouble. Kent uses some suture wire (after a soiled bandage was first proffered) to form a tripwire attached to dustbins as an early warning system. We then propose to move on, although Kent likes standing and fighting. Bikes are in small groups on patrol and in all directions, and as we press on we reach a junction and get lit up by bike headlamps: 5 people, wielding various melee weapons and charge up with 30m between us.
Doggo waits, spirit materialises, pistol shots go over our heads and some lead piping/swords get swung around. Kent times his leap to clothesline two off their bikes as they pass, and he kicks out at them, one careering into a wall. Winnie looks for some things to hack/brick, and applies a front brake to a bike but unfortunately it doesn’t apply, alas. Autry tells beast to get fightin’ and throws a lightning ball at a few bikers and their bikes. They look frazzled. Sam shoots off at some bikers but one breaks through and swings pipe at Autry...who gets clanged. One goes for Winnie too and she gets floored by a hit on the driveby too. Sam kicks one of them off the bike, pow, and another katana-wielding biker pushes through and goes for Kent. No damage, the last swings for Eli and misses and they pass through. As a reaction Eli rips one off the bike as he goes past. The spirit wanders over and claws the biker to death, then Sam eliminates another.
Three bikers race away, one firing a flare into the sky to light up our location, and Winnie seeks to apply the front brake again and this time pure success, and the biker is catapulted through a window, defenestrating himself, and the bike skids along on tarmac; the other bike turns and disappears downstreet.
We’ve only made it 2 of 5 miles so far, and the options are:
Winnie tends to herself as she feels rather ropey. We head at least some distance from the tracer, and a few alleys down look for somewhere to hole up. After a couple of turns (led by Hayes peeking out of corners), warns us that that way looks populated - no gang colours visible but they seem tooled up (disorganised, bats and all) - a civilian mob of locals, noone in charge, arguing over which direction to head. Sam suggests chucking a flashbang to disperse the mob, along with some gunshots and general cacophony. Although he overchucks it, the reaction is surprising - some weapons dropped, grab at ears but freeze in place! Then they scatter like quail, or the Texan equivalent of these. Sam suggests it’s time to move on again and we bolt across this street and head down another alley. We keep on moving but notice a range of civilian gangs, gangers, bikers, and they all seem to be looking for us. We make another mile but it’s getting cramped to move without being seen; we break into a street doc shop but Winnie fails to remove any of Autry’s wooziness. We ask why so many people are looking for us, and Hayes really doesn’t seem to know what the thing is or why it’s so popular (and people scrying intention agree with this presentation of fact). It’s fairly clear that after the deal went south it’s clear an APB was put out for the people holding the thing.
Kent takes the opportunity, as the dwarf comes to, to pump her for information. Sizing the fact up that things aren’t hot here: they spill what they know; it came across the border, worth millions, it’s magical. Kent decides the info is inadequate, so gags her back up again and proposes moving on. Meanwhile, Winnie looks up and spots a lot of icons in the street outside. We get warned...the crowd is outside. Kent looks for a back way out to a yard leading onto a street and ushers us back out out back. As the door opens there’s a storm of uncoordinated gunfire - largely off target - but one hits and Kent sees 15-20 people, 10 with guns all pointed at Kent. He pulls the door closed again and notes we’re surrounded. Up or down? Kent sees a basement, noting there’s no roof - a second floor, detached building, and much much lower than buildings around it. As the mob grows, the noise gets louder. Kent flees to the basement, full of old medical equipment - no sewer access. Sam suggests that we kill a few of the 40 to get them to scatter, and as that is said we hear the front door hinge creak and the sound of several hushed voices. Winnie spots commlinks creeping in and confirms they’ve breached the perimeter, leaving one door between us and them (to the ‘reception’ area, us being in ‘surgery’).
Winnie hacks a commlink in the open space outside the doc shop, and blares out a warning noise from ‘the police’ insisting on ‘dispersal’. This plays out but the several in the front continue to move towards us. Kent threatens the several people who respond with small arms fire, breaking in the glass. Kent responds by warning shelling through the broken glass, blind-firing. They respond by demanding ‘the box’ and Sam taps his remaining flashbang and raises an eyebrow.
Winnie has had enough of being surrounded and rings for some support - a rigger in our Precinct (Thaddeus Chaney) and commlinks him that ‘Hayes got us in some shit’ and he needs to ‘send EVERYTHING’ (off the books), and notes the expense of drones and whether the obsidian statue, or Winnie’s parents, might give him some underwriting at costs of drones, or a good word. He says ‘if you last 9 seconds I’ll be there in hotsim’
Red looks back at us, then barrels through the door and begins to engage one in a clinch. Maniac. He holds his spurs to a throat and threatens him with eviscerating if his friends advance. One backs slowly out onto the roadside again, but 3 others continue to train weapons. Sam also joins the fray, intimidates them and then whistles up Eli. Then the bullets fly! From the townies. Two take shots at Sam, one at Red. Sam cops some shots and stuns, but the bullets fly past Red. Winnie pulls the door to and ducks behind a desk, resorts programmes in her deck and seeks out valuable things in the crowd to start taking potshots in the matrix at, and spots an interesting asset in the crowd. Autry lightning balls the trio avoiding his blue on blue colleagues.
Eli burns a dude
Winnie points out danger to the team then attempts a data spike on a cyberdeck amongst the camo-suited watchmen. Hits and deals some damage, but all of the matrix icons disappear completely.
Eli burns another dude, he takes a tumble outside and collapses by the door.
Thad, ultimate supersonic rescue man, arrives on the scene. At least, an ultimate recon drone does. He marks everything within sight, and Winny directs him towards the now silent running rooftop.
Red runs his hostage through, taking the body to the door and chucking it onto the streets. The final ganger takes the opportunity to leg it.
Thaddeus holds back the cavalry for the moment as he sees the action come to an end. Vans, bikes and such pull up, offering reinforcements and some cover to the squad's assailants as they settle in for a siege. Winny patches up Sam’s latest gunshot wound and Red’s earlier injuries.
Red heads upstairs to have a look around, and also to the cellar to see if ‘squeezing’ through the drain is viable (given the ork/trolls amongst the group). Whilst we were in the midst of all that Hayes made a barricade at the back door, and Sam now moves to do the same to the front. Hayes suggests putting the box on a drone so it flies away - albeit with the risk it gets sniped out the air; Sam suggests giving it to the armadillo? 10-15mins goes by and the recon drone shows the mob getting rowdy, stirred up, it’s a mix of threats and offers of reward. Winnie proposes to Hayes we just give the box up. Hayes is unimpressed, Sam suggests we just put the entire mob down. Winnie asks about Thad’s arsenal - cheetahs and the like - and Red suggests if Thad clears a path we can flee. More chit chat, but the consensus is we’re not fleeing, Hayes won’t give up ‘the rock’, so we hole up.
Fight montage/ crowd brawl! They surge the doors and we commence. Thad’s dronedogs kind of mill around causing trouble, and Winnie continues to seek out the cyberdeck and Red smack-talks the crowd, trying to demoralise them. Autry, looking down, sees quite the pack of people milling around the crowd, some trying to fend off dronedogs. And thinks, “Mass Agony, tick”. He duly ticks and a crowd of people feel like they’ve got the bends and start writhing around; Sam punches some glass and gets to firing at the Juggernauts on the backlines. Some return fire is exchanged but some scatter: Sam gets stunned a bit by the spray. Eli leaps the barricades and tears out some throats. Thad, seeing the crowd are starting to stabilise, pulls two of the cheetahs back, the remaining one he pilots, to get in the midst and shake things up some more. Unfortunately I think one got pinged out by a lucky shot. Winnie continues to seek out the deck and the Beast spirit hears noise at the back - Hayes was holding back the barricade there but some burst through. The beast toddles up and fights off a few people, lashing out with its claws as they come through. As people push over the barricade near to Kent, he also hears the combat out back, and with the breach getting risky, shooes Eli back and falls back to the next barricade. Autry looks down with glee at his bending people and thinks to cast some swarmy bugs on another patch of crowd. Unfortunately the sheer mental power and the stun already taken causes this to fall flat, overwhelms his concentration and the swarm never gets there. Autry starts coughing blood and looking like the people below. Sam sees the surge coming, heads to the stairs and uses shield, boot and gun to drive the tide back. Some are driven away but Sam is battered in the process of repelling them. Sam does see the crowd beginning to break and Eli tunes up his gouts of flame and other guttural monstrosity to intimidate the crowd further. Some scatter further but the remnants continue to drive the cops further in to where Kent is.
Thad is bringing in a second set of drones whilst observing the crowd scatter, using the drones to gun at some of the stalwarts. One of the drones is dinged up in the process but doesn’t drop; meanwhile as the crowd begins to break its resolve but indoors with the fistfighting going on which Winnie is picking up through Eli-cam, Winnie then sources one of the vehicles in the crowd aiming to use it as a cowcatcher on the crowdies. It plows in nicely, thanks to being a big Bulldog van. Armadillo spirit then belches some disgusting noxious breath over a crowd of rioters and the left side of the corridor flee out the back door (except those who drop dead), leaving a few fighting Kent. He keeps throwing fists and feels the pressure lessen as they begin to flee, allowing him time to look back on the corridor of bodies.
After clearing the mob we hear a much more composed voice asking us why we couldn’t let them do it the easy way, and if it’s got to be hard, so be it, then WHOOSH and a gout of flame fills the corridor….uh oh.
A group of juggernauts barrel into the hallway. Thad holds his drones back as this development upon the ground is new(s) to him. The armadillo beast charges down on a ganger pushing in the door, who is bruised but unbowed. Eli crouches near the door and awaits. The drone waits too. Winnie reconfigures her deck and finds a number of silent running items in the reception area: some cyber eyes, muscle enhancement. The gangers then press into the hallway: the one in front of the spirit has a retort with her sword. It runs the spirit ¾ through, specifically. Then another ganger rushes it and puts it 11/12ths of the way through its spirit-life. Kent steps over the barricade to watch the two gangers chopping at armadillo-spirit with its swords and runs at them, targeting the more bloodied one and killing it dead with a flying punch, bam. They fly back across the room. Kent sees a stubby weapon with a laser point and a whoosh leads to a gout of flame get down that corridor. The armydillo is flambéed. Kent survives and looks around for an animal to hang near. One blasts past Kent and he stabs them in the shoulder, stopping them in their tracks - and they swing at him instead, who soaks a bit of the hit, then Sam joins in, steps round the corner and shoots at the one in melee with Kent. He guns the ganger down and whistles Eli up to fight. Autry stumbles in, and hides behind Sam. Drones fly in and then Winnie seeks to brick some wares - the cyber arms go limp and the gun being held points south. Eli does not land a bite; Red gets back into the fray by being approached by another ganger who shanks him proper, and Red wheezes “Winnie! They got me good! Tell Darlene I love her”. The flamethrower bursts again, and Kent drops to the floor after saying ‘I told Darlene I’d be home for tea’. He passes out. Thad gets on his cheetah drones, bounding in and biting away repeatedly. Eli enjoys seeing all this robo biting and does some himself. Winnie responds to Kent’s pleading, tries to drag him in but frankly he’s too much brawn for Winnie. Turning instead to seeing the lady with the sword being wielded at them, she realises that performing first aid here would be terrible, so she draws her service weapon, points, squints and pulls the trigger. Despite the suppressing fire, they all stand their ground, mostly as they don’t want to be eaten by the burning dog also at ground level. Flamethrower gal looks up, shrugs off the fire, points downrange but the thing sputters, out of fuel, and instead tries to pull a knife to stab Eli with. Sam - seeing the dog stabbed - charges in full pelt, shield clubs a ganger, and sends her flying back, headfirst into a wall, sickening crunch, dead as Eli’s waste. Cheetah-drone comes in - dodging bullets flying - leaps through the cone of fire and bites the ganger, whilst Autry opens the back door and takes a look out: no-one. Bodies, injuries, but noone spoiling for a fight! Autry sees no shooters on the roof too. He is praised by Hayes for his vigilance. The ganger stabs cheeta-drone with Thad in, and they cleave the poor drone which feeds back on Thad :/
The ganger sees the tide is turning and she turns to run, but Sam has seen his dog get stabbed, but as she goes through the door, Sam walks up and shoots a few bullets into her back, plus one head tap ‘to be sure’. She goes down and we all get a good drone feed of this police execution.
We drop out of combat and Winnie sets about reviving Kent, who is bleeding out (Eli is merely stunned). The cheetah who is almost out of action retreats. Winnie gets some support from the cheetah-drone Thad is in. After a great deal of leverage they lift Kent up onto a doctor’s gurney, but can’t see how to bring him round from this very deep stun slumber. Amazingly Winnie wakes him up and his first concern is the back door, thankfully Autry is watching it, and Kent proclaims he feels like ‘a corn dog’. Hayes congratulates us all since ‘we drove them off’ (right?). And asks how Kent is at least. Winnie asks Hayes for a quiet word and explains to Hayes how bad Kent’s doing and we need to get him to hospital stat. A cheetah drone skitters under the bed to hide.
We hear a roaring plane on the roof, and a medi pod drops for Winnie to refill her medical supplies. Thad is asked by Winnie to pull up out front so we can load up into his van and scarper; Kent et al limp out front, and we bundle into said van, figuring it’s only as bad as being shot at in the building as a van. Sarge sits up front, Hayes in the back. We’re all in, 2 miles from safe territory, and hoping those pursuing us wouldn’t chase us into the city. We set off, Thad piloting away as fast as possible, Red is super motionsick, we’re sliding around in the back, and Thad’s also distracted controlling other drones, so the potholes and bumping along make Red even sicker: pothole one causes him to spew over the back of the van and ergo us. Lovely. We head off down these poorly maintained roads, looking around and Winnie spots something silent running above our heads in the sky. She goes to brick the thing. Looking out the van and from the support drone nearby, as Thad focusses more on not driving into a wall or lamppost, we don’t spot - directly in front of us - a shimmer of a person in the road ahead with a large gun lets off muzzleflash and the front of the van is hailed in gunfire, smashing the windscreen. Sarge gets triplepunched, centre mass, and slumps dead. A bullet creeps into the back with us, no evident casualty, and Thad looks for a hard turn, but the boulevard we are on has none of those, alas. Thad sees he can’t and instead moves to ram the person in the road full on. A glancing blow from the figure - realising Thad wouldn’t stop - and we get the ‘clipped the thing like a baby deer’ feeling in the van and continue to barrel down the street (Autry does not see this thing in the rear pane). Out the front through the shattered pane Thad spots a shimmering wall 3’ high appear in front of the van (some sort of barrier? Uh oh). Thad knows this is a barrier so looks to see if he can ramp this bad boy. Despite the ludicrous difficulty of doing this on a straight road, Thad somehow seeks to clip the curb to get enough air. The doors open elegantly to give airtime: spotting a streetlamp the drone can push over to use as a pipe to grind the van axles along gives the extra 6” bump to clear the barrier and the van lands with extremely heavy suspension. The loose contents of the van: people and vomit: get jostled, and land. Oof. We continue to head down the road, and Winnie gets data spiked; at the same time a large humanoid creature made entirely of concrete and tarmac materalises in front of the van and tries to snatch it. Us. We reach a rather large halt and get slammed about further, and Kent jazzes up (after getting a promise Autry will antidote it out if it comes to his demise).
Kent gets out the van and sizes up punching this tarmac-beast in the face; meanwhile Thad is considering revving and trying to slam through the thing. Alas the beast is definitely holding the van in place, and we ain’t going nowhere. Kent realises this thing is strong. Stronger than any troll! Sam and Eli go huntin’ sinnahs nearby, assuming there’s some puppeteer making this magical tarmac trollhide going off. Eli starts pulling in a specific direction down the road - this way! - and Sam swaps to astral vision and spots 2 figures moving towards us from further down the road, 20m or so away, pointing weapons. When it becomes clear they’re spotted they freeze and point guns at the van. Sam keeps both shield and gun up. Winnie continues coursing around for the decker going for her, and Autry sees one, proclaims and fires a bolt, most disappointing. They step aside and continue to train weapons on the van. A voice rings out in an Aztlan accent, who says “your work has been impressive, I don’t want to gun you down, if you want to walk away all we want is the box, as it’s not yours”. Winnie concurs, we should give them the box. She pleads with Hayes, who asks if Thad can get us to drive away, why we can’t gun our way out...starts throwing out commands. Winnie stomps and huffs: “this is ridiculous! If you don’t give the box to them right now I will...phone your superior”. She looks furious.
Sam is still looking down-road at them, and meanwhile Winnie spots (whilst Autry doesn’t) as we see Hayes go for his gun and attempt to draw on Winnie! This is an outrage. Winnie dives out of the way, and tries to blind him as he draws with a trid projector. Gun pulled and to Winnie’s head and he demands Sam begins to open fire. Autry sees this, Kent sees this, and he rushes the back door to attempt to disarm Hayes via his martial prowess. However, Autry gets to Hayes first, puts him to sleep with a knockout spell, coughs up a lot of blood, and Kent does the sensible thing and recovers the box, turning to these Aztlan goons, but as they’re invisible he looks to Sam and DNIs the group to confirm we should hand over the box. We secure promise there’ll be no more bloodshed just so long as it’s handed over, not least since the bonus was for a discreet job and that ship has sailed. One appears out of chameleon suit and says ‘last chance’. Kent gets the box up and asks the spirit to be called off before handover. The spirit dematerialises at the front of the van, and after kicking the tires Sam gets in ready for Kent to hand over. He places the box on the road, backs up to get into the van. The invisible one rushes forwards to get the box as the visible one keeps a gun on Kent. Kent gets in and Thad guns it and the Bulldog pulls away, gradually picking up speed.
We look at the box get picked and opened, they turn away, and we return to the city uneventfully. There’s a lot of reports to write, and a bit of blood to clean up.