One day Shrew called me. Apparently she had bought herself a phone. She told me that she needed a better practice-buddy. She said Liu was too big to practice with. She wanted to learn to fight with knives. And she wanted me to teach her. Well, I didn’t have anything else to do, and I liked Liu’s apartment. So I said yes.
Before staying with Liu and Shrew I had ordered ten kilos of explosives from Juggler. I feel like home when I have loads of explosives around me. I know how I can put up an explosion, and I like to see it.
I noticed that Liu didn’t like to have me around. But he let me stay there for a week, when I taught Shrew how to fight. I think the biggest thing we disagreed on was the food. He wanted his food to be long dead before he ate it. I liked to have my food fresh. Maybe it was the rats I eat. I don’t know, but I wasn't allowed to eat inside.
A couple of nights during that week, Liu made me sleep outside. He didn’t explain the reasons to this, so I protested. I carried dead rats to his coffee. And I didn’t talk to him at all.
After the week Shrew seemed to know something about fighting with knives. I went back home, and decided not to stay at Liu’s ever again. Even though he had a nice and warm apartment, it was too much for me to have to sleep outside. Without a reason. Really weird in my opinion.
After a while I had returned home from Liu’s I got a call. We were offered a meeting via phones. We gathered up in one place and had a meeting with Ronin and Dodger. I had never heard of them. And I still can’t remember which is which. One of them is some kind of legendary decker, and the other one is an older otaku.
They wanted us to go to Hong Kong. They didn’t promise any pay for the job, but I agreed to go anyway, just like others did. I don’t know what their reasons were, but I wanted to see the world a bit. I had never been anywhere but Seattle and the other place.
There wasn't much time there, they said we had less than 24 hours there, but it was an experience I didn’t want to miss.
There was this chief of one corporation. He had been recovering in Tibet for some time, with monks. There were other people wanting to get to the chief also. One was Deus, an evil AI, and Renraku corporation. The man we were supposed to get from the monks was the chief of Renraku. A megacorporation. I was a bit worried, because they said Deus was smart and powerful, just like Renraku. They had resources. But it was somewhere far away, so it was exciting anyway.
When I heard how we were supposed to return, it seemed odd. Something wasn't right with that way. And it wasn't. There’s no magic in space. That’s what Liu told. He said I wasn't able to travel so high up. He told Ronin and Dodger that I had a magical pacemaker. I looked at him a while. I didn’t know what a pacemaker was.
And for the last but not least, we weren't allowed to bring our own stuff with us. They promised to get everything we wanted from Hong Kong though. I didn’t get dikote on my claymore, or special rounds for my shotgun, but it was enough. I got explosives, claymore and a shotgun. And I got to see the world.
The flight was unpleasant. The plane was quite small, but big enough so that I wasn't terrified to be there. But I didn’t have my sword with me, so I was a bit annoyed. I used all the time in the plane to complain, kick and moan. I didn’t like to sit that long. And I didn’t have my sword to sharpen, I didn’t have any weapons on me. It was torture.
Hong Kong was different from Seattle. People were different. And they spoke different languages. They spoke Chinese, according to Liu. He spoke some Chinese to me too, but I didn’t understand a word he said.
When we got there, there was a van waiting for us. The key was there, and the back was half full of things we had requested. And in the front there was IDs for everyone. After examining everything there we found out that we had a small problem. Not one of us knew how to drive a car or van. Shrew didn’t know if she knew, so she was the driver.
We went someplace to eat something. I was forced to eat human food again, because we didn’t have time for me to hunt. After meal I wanted to visit a souvenir-shop. I wanted to buy something from Hong Kong. And I bought a small souvenir and a postcard. Then we made ourselves comfortable and waited for the information about the location of the Renraku chief. Our plan was to grab the man before Deus or Renraku, even though I had suggested that we should wait for Renraku men and Deus men to shoot each other dead and then go, kill the survivors and grab the chief. Nobody agreed with me.
At some point we got the message that they knew the location. And we left immediately. We’d have twenty minutes to take care of everything before the other teams would arrive.
When we got to the place, we found out that we needed a driver. Shrew asked her spirit of it knew how to drive, and it said of course. So we had Shrews spirit in the car with Liu. They said that Renraku was a racist corporation. They didn’t like anyone but humans. Good thing I look like one…
We left the car and entered the building. Shrew asked for the chief and the woman at the reception opened a door for us. It opened to a garden. I couldn't go in because of an Astral wall. I knew that even though normal people, who weren't active in the Astral Plane, could walk right through the wall, nothing magical could. It would stop me. And it could be painful, as well. I tried to look like I didn’t go in because I didn’t want to.
I realized that we were in a great hurry. It had been a few seconds over 23 minutes. Why didn’t I think about time earlier? I notified others via radio. Some moments after Liu told us about two limousines driving to the front. He told that ten people came out, five from each limo. One of the people looked really neat, he had a suit on. Most probably he was the leader.
As others slipped into another hallway, I stepped to the reception desk to ask whether there was another exit. Shrew stayed with the chief and two monks. The woman told me the exit, and realized others had run the wrong way. I told them that and went the right way.
When I noticed I couldn't run through a corner before getting noticed I jumped into a booth. There was lots of booths next to each other on the hallway. At first I thought they were toilets, but as I barged in one of them, I found out they weren't. There was someone in. He was a small, skinny man. He was sitting on a chair, some wires came out from his head, and he drooled. He was so skinny and small that I believed I could throw him out from the booth with my left hand. He didn’t seem to notice me, so I sat on his lap. If anyone looked inside, they would hopefully think something was happening and leave.
Liu was talking in the radio. He was telling what was happening outside. I started to be bored. I heard someone looking outside from another booth. He was commanded to go down on the ground, but apparently he didn’t follow orders. He was shot. I could see the blood on the ground, because the doors didn’t go all the way to the ground. There was some disturbance happening in the lobby, and I assumed it was an elemental.
I started to be greatly bored. So I pulled out my sword, cut the wires coming from the mans head and pushed his head out the door. He started screaming about some woman, but went silent after three bullets hit him. I let him go and he fell on the ground. I pulled him back in and tried again. Nobody shot him again, so I assumed it was safe and looked. No one shot me either. I threw him towards the lobby and ran the other way.
There was a lot of auras in the lobby. Humans and spirits. There was also a lot of smoke. Then Nerdy told he was crawling towards the back door. I waited until he was close, grabbed him by the collar and threw him out the door. He landed on his feet and started running. I went back to the corner and started to think about my options. After I noticed six bullets hitting the wall behind me I decided to go out the door. I told this to other via radio, dropped my shotgun and left.
I cursed myself when I was asked to come back inside. The team needed me. And the door was locked. I thought about kicking the door down, but I decided it was too time-consuming, and it would've attracted some attention. And I didn’t want that. And my shotgun was on the other side of the door. So I started running towards the main door and hoped that the fight would not be over by the time I got there.
I was disappointed to find out that there was nothing else to do when I got to the main door. Our target was in the car with the team, the monks were guarding the door and the car was already moving when I jumped in. We asked the spirit to hurry up, but it said it wasn't the driver for getaways. I noticed that Nerdy and Jinx weren't there. Nerdy had gone to buy a fake beard, and Jinx had gotten trapped in a wrong hallway.
When we got to the airport, Jinx and Nerdy were there too. Jinx had spoken with the police and they’d let him go. They had both traveled by metro.
The others then went to some kind of rocket. I wasn't able to go with them. It had something to do with magic. But I watched them go and waited for a local fixer to come and organize my getaway as well. Luckily I had my sword with me, because it took a long time for the fixer to arrive.
There was this ship, which was full of illegal items. Well, I fit in well, I am illegal. Well, I don’t understand how that is possible, that I’m illegal, but that’s what everyone said. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don’t have any legal SIN.
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