The running, part 11

A short while after we had united Tracy with her dad I got a call from Juggler. He offered a job. He said someone was missing, and he didn’t even want to know much more than that. It sounded interesting enough so I agreed to a meeting in a bar in Touristville. I didn’t get more that I’ll apparently know who I was going to meet there. Nerdy, Bobby and Shrew came with me.

We arrived at the bar. Normally weapons had been allowed there. I had visited the bar occasionally, and this was the first time the bouncers wanted to take our weapons. Well, I was a bit hesitant, but I knew Shrew had something up her sleeve if something would go wrong. So we dropped our weapons and entered the bar.

Juggler was wrong. I didn’t know. Others did though. There was this crazy-looking orc with white hair and a really weird guitar. Then there were two trolls and a dwarf. They were a band. Making music. I had never understood the concept of music. But apparently most of the world did understand, and the best were really rich.

The orc was the leader of this music-group. His name was Ludwig Von Beholder. He said that they had a band member missing, and they needed her back as soon as possible. It was Wednesday and they had a gig on Friday.

Apparently this band was famous for not having humans there. But now they had taken a human female to be a part of their band. Her name was Linda Gordon, and her stage name was Nix. But they had kept it a secret and made her undergo some surgeries to make her look like a medusa. With snakes as hair. I didn’t understand why, but it wasn't important. They needed help and were willing to pay to get their member back.

We got Linda's address and decided to start from there. Oh, and we got all the information about Linda we needed. Apparently they didn’t believe she would have taken off on her own. She had entered a singing contest or something, and this band had heard her and thought she was very good. And they had recruited her. Well, I think there wouldn't be many possibilities for a human who looks like a freak anywhere else.

We drove to the neighborhood Linda had been staying after her surgery. It was a dead place. Nothing ever happened there. We had left Nerdy to do some internet-searching about the neighborhood. Apparently there had been some disturbances with some local gangs, but it was hard to believe when we went there. There was no one anywhere.

I spotted an old man further away from the apartment. Bobby and Shrew went to search her apartment and I decided to talk with the old man. Nerdy had found out that in that neighborhood there was three newcomers, and elf, orc and a human. Well, one went right, almost. So it was so dead here that even strangers were news.

The old man didn’t know anything but thought Linda was really strange sight. I spoke with him a while, but he was annoying and I wanted to bash his head in. I was happy my neighborhood was not this dead. Well, neither of my neighborhoods.

Bobby and Shrew didn’t come up with anything in the apartment. Bobby decided to try and talk with some dog-walker and I knocked on Linda's neighbors’ door. Shrew started from the other side.

Door was opened. I asked if he knew anything about his neighbor and he asked me to step in quickly. I stepped in and saw this was some kind of teenager. He told me that there had been some gang outside last night. They were making a lot of noise and drinking. Linda had screamed at them, trying to make them go away. Police didn’t help. Then there was something that sounded like a struggle. That was all the teenager knew. It was enough. We should find some gang, I thought. I thanked the teen from his information, told him that police was no good and that they should trust only themselves.

We got a location of a teenager-gang from Nerdy. Apparently that small gang was hanging around in some area a little further. We went there to talk with them. Maybe they knew something about last night’s disturbances, or maybe they were the reason for them.

We met some teenagers who were gathered around a moped. We went there and asked around. They told us that there was this new gang. It was more violent and they were trying to take the territories to themselves. Teenagers told us that they had told them to go away and a bit taunted them. They said that the other gang was too afraid to go further, but it was obvious that these guys just drove away very fast from any confrontation. I promised to go and kick their ass as a thank you for all the info.

We met the other gang. They were dressed quite distinctively. We demanded to have some info, and they wanted to fight. So we decided to beat the info out from them. Oh how badly things turned out for them… And for us, too, for that matter.

We went to a small alley. There was seven or eight gangers, Nerdy went to the car because he didn’t want to fight. Shrew said she didn’t fight fair, but I hoped she had understood the rules here. Apparently no killing.

One of the gangers stayed to watch for possible police. And then they started yelling at us, mocking us. I mocked them back. Bobby tried too. Shrew was silent.

After a moment Bobby decided to change the “rules” and hit the gang leader to the face. All the others were shocked. They attacked and I noticed a knife. I hit hard, and took some hits as well. Bobby had most of the gangers. Shrew tried to evade all attacks, telling she didn’t fight fair. I hope they would've believed her.

Shrew got enough. She made a fireball. Some of the gangers tried to escape. One kept attacking Shrew. I tried to subdue the leader and went on the ground, wrestling with him. Bobby seemed to do fine with his opponents.

Shrew decided to make another fireball. Now she didn’t even try to avoid hitting us. She got her spirit to help. Fiery aura, the bird, the spirit. And the fireball exploded right in her feet, and all of us were consumed. I managed to avoid most of the flames but got burned. So did Bobby. Shrew got some burns as well. Almost all of the gangers were dead. I decided to kick Shrews ass later for that and Bobby grabbed one surviving ganger who was trying to crawl away.

The ganger told us that they had kidnapped Linda and sold her to the Death Zone. She had seemed freaky enough. That was all we needed to know and I slit his throat. Then we went to the car and I called Death-Zone-Jinx. He agreed to a meeting right away, and away we went.

Jinx told us that it was some stupid person in a summer job who had bought the medusa. They had realized she was just a freaky human. They had sold her forward to some mob-person who had a brothel with freaks. So she had been sold to a brothel to be a prostitute. I disciplined Jinx about having a non-magical person doing purchases. He offered me a job as an assistant. It sounded interesting, but I turned it down for now. Maybe later. Jinx was also happy to have sold Linda, because he didn’t want to be mixed in some kidnapping of a person with real SIN.

I called Juggler and asked him to organize a meeting with the mob-person or someone in charge of the freak-brothel. He promised to do just that. We had actually thought about breaking into the brothel, but it seemed easier and quicker to buy Linda.

Nerdy and Shrew met with the mob-people. They had a long dinner with them and agreed to a sum of money, a place to make the transfer and all the other small details.

We waited in one corner of a street for the mob-people. They drove by on a van. When the van got to us, the side door was opened. Two people pushed a woman out from the van. She had a bag over her head and her hands were tied. We caught her and took the bag from her head.

Shrew spoke to her calmly and got her to understand she was safe, and we would take her back to the band. She seemed a bit shocked, scared and puzzled. She still believed us and got in our car with us. I talked to her about screaming at some idiots at night. She told us she had wanted to sleep, and the gang was making it next to impossible, so she had tried to make them quiet by going out and yelling at them. I told her that in her case it would be best to call the police, put on earplugs and wish they would be silent. Or get a bodyguard or a big gun.

We arrived at the bar the band was staying in. We took Linda in. The band seemed very happy about the results. Ludwig gave us VIP-tickets to his oncoming show. Also some fan-set including posters and video and things. I thought it would be wise to stay in touch. Even though they looked weird and played music, they seemed to be famous and rich. Staying in touch with Ludwig could prove to be very beneficial.

I gave my share of the tickets to Juggler. He kept one set for him and was happy to have paid for the mob-meeting and information and Linda. Apparently he is a big fan. He also sold my tickets forward and I got some money from them. Others sold their tickets somewhere else.

The running, part 10

Actually Morgan had some other ideas when she came to help us. Apparently this small dragon-person had contacted her by flying through her window. The dragon-person, named Tracy Callahan, was looking for Bobby. Because Bobby was with us in the woods, Morgan needed to get us out to get rid of Tracy who had decided to stay at Morgan’s place until Bobby came.

After we arrived to Seattle I immediately contacted my trustee who said Billy had been giving speeches about a leader who didn’t go away on a regular basis. Again! I decided to get rid of Billy as soon as possible. And also, I wanted to have trustees I knew I could trust. Maybe Juggler could help with that.

Me and Juggler spoke for a long time about my options. He said maybe assassin was too professional, because Billy wasn't that big of a fighter. He was just a regular person with no body guards. So Juggler suggested a gang. He would hire a gang to beat up my followers and “accidentally” kill Billy in the process. That sounded awesome. We decided to do that. And Juggler also promised to get me snitches to my base. Other one was someone to stay at the base, some bum who looked after empty bottles and whatnot. And other one who knew a bit of fighting and could go with others to find someone to beat up.

I didn’t want my snitches to know about each other. It would prove useful for them to be completely ignorant about each other. They would just try and listen and find out about common thoughts. And some idiots trying to get my place. They would also try and smooth things down when I’m gone.

When I had gotten all the things in order for Billy to be killed and my snitches arriving in the near future I could visit the current place Tracy was in. We usually had a place we used as a base when we planned our jobs. No one wanted others to go to their homes normally.

They told me Tracy was a small dragon. I found it hard to believe. Her aura looked like a normal aura. She wasn’t active in the Astral Plane. She seemed to have cyberware in her head. And she didn’t know I was a shifter. Or at least she didn’t seem to react. I didn’t believe them until I saw it with my own eyes.

Oh, and maybe I should tell why she even was there. Apparently the team had met her earlier and she had went to train with a big dragon. She was the daughter of one of Renraku bosses. And she wanted to meet her dad and talk and get her SIN, phone and credit cards and clothes back. Apparently she had lost all contact with her dad when she went with the dragon. She wanted us to help her with the meeting.

We knew where her dad lived. And we knew where her old apartment was. And we knew who her roommate was. We tried calling the roommate. She didn’t want to talk. Apparently there had been Renraku people, lone stars and runners, asking questions.

Oh, and Tracy introduced us to a spirit named Naru. It was apparently her little helper, and didn’t seem to like the task very much. It had a nasty attitude. I was happy Shrews ally spirit was quite easy-going.

When others suggested that Tracy would be put in a lab to be a test subject I got a bit scared. I planted explosives on the walls of our place. I wasn't going to go down quietly, and I didn’t allow Tracy to be caught either. I didn’t even want to talk about test subjects and lab. I refused to take risks and made my point clear to the others as well.

Well, she finally agreed to transform, but she didn’t want us to see. So we went to another room and she promised to call us there when she was ready. A few moments passed and then we heard flames. We went back. There was this big lizard-like thing which looked a bit embarrassed. She had torched the walls but managed to miss my explosives.

She really was honest. She was this strange dragon-person. And now she was active in the Astral Plane. She seemed to be very surprised by my appearance. Then she made these strange sounds and called Naru there again. It worked as an interpreter between us. They seemed to share same kind of telepathy Shrew and her ally spirit shared.

She transformed back, and we had to be in the other room again. Then she demanded to know why she wasn't informed about me. We told her we thought she knew. I had read her aura when she was in her other form and it was her aura, but bigger. And she did have cyberware in her head. I wanted to know if it was active and that she could use it in both forms, but she told that the skin of the dragon was too thick. I didn’t quite understand how the cyberware could be there, during transformation.

I asked a lot of questions. About her being some kind of shifter or half dragon. Apparently she had noticed that later in life. She had lived a happy life as a human and one day noticed that she could transform into a small dragon. She didn’t heal either. I asked her about it, and she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I showed her. I took my knife and cut my hand open, showing her the healing-process. She seemed interested. She wanted to know how I did it. I told her it was something I was born with. She didn’t possess same kind of power. Then she wanted to know if it was disturbing to see in the both worlds all the time, because she couldn't. I didn’t know how it was strange, because I grew up with that ability.

Finally I persuaded Tracy to transform at the same time as me. Others went to the other room again. We took our clothes off. We transformed on three. We counted and then poof. It was amazing, actually. Her aura changed, but yet it remained the same. There was just more of it.

I alerted the others to come back from the other room and walked around her. I sniffed her. She sniffed me and sneezed. Maybe because of all the hair. I examined her wings that were folded neatly. I poked them and Shrew asked her to spread her wings. She did what was asked. The wings were huge.

After all this examining and things we returned to planning. She wanted to see her dad. I told her Renraku had racist ideas, that they only accepted humans, so maybe his dad was a racist too and didn’t like her new self, but she didn’t believe it. I didn’t trust humans, and apparently Naru didn’t trust them either, because she said that Naru said the same thing about people not being trustworthy.

We visited the roommate. They checked their clothes and Tracy got some of her clothes back. Then they went shopping with Shrew. She found herself a belt after hours of looking. I was happy I was in my base plotting some other deeds. The gang Juggler had gotten to kill Billy had been walking around in our neighborhood. There were talk about going and telling them they weren't invited. They were some kind of orc and dwarf -gang. There was some information about them hanging around in a certain area on Friday. My followers wanted to go there and kick some ass. I told them it would be a perfect opportunity for Billy to show his leadership-skills. We agreed he would take some people to go there and kick some ass. I was eager to get to Friday, so that I would get rid of Billy. It wasn't that easy though… It was only the beginning of the week. Oh, and somewhere around that time we got our bum. He had wandered in and others thought he would be good to stay I the base and look after things, just like I had talked about before.

We had some plans on how to get Tracy to meet her dad safely. We decided it was best if we took her to her dads place. Then there was the problem of how to get her there. Nerdy suggested we’d use her as a taxi and fly there. Seemed like a good idea.

We decided to rent a boat and lie our way in the house. It wasn't an island, but the way there on land went through Salish-Shidhe, and we had already made one incident, and we didn’t want to make another one so soon.

We got on the boat. We had also hired a person to drive the boat. So we weren't going to end up swimming back on shore. While the boat swam forward we got a message. They wanted to know what business we had there. We thought for a second and told the driver to go faster. We decided to deal with that later.

We walked to the big house where Tracy’s dad lived. She rang the doorbell and was asked to ditch us and get in. We didn’t want to let Tracy there alone, so after a brief talk they allowed Shrew in with her. The rest of us waited.

It felt like forever. When I realized it had already been half an hour I rang the doorbell. I wanted to know what was happening and should we go in and save them. Apparently everything was fine and Tracy wanted to stay there with her dad. We left her there, after agreeing on a meeting on the next day. I didn’t trust her dad, but I hoped for the best anyway. Besides, what’s it to me if she couldn't trust her own dad. She had been warned, so if they wanted to take her to a lab and poke her with knives it wasn't my problem anymore.

The next day we went to the place where we had planned to have the meeting with Tracy. We didn’t want to go in. All of us just kept an eye of the place. She was ten minutes late, and we were already thinking something was wrong. Then she arrived. We waited for a while to see if there was any foul play.

Tracy was happy to have been united with her dad. She also said she had a street name because all the cool guys had one. She had picked Pepsi to be her street name.

Tracy gave all of us a bit of money to thank us for everything. She seemed so perky and out of it on occasion I didn’t know if I wanted to keep in touch with her. Then I thought she was quite strong in her other form, and her dad was some rich boss from Renraku, so maybe she had some important contacts and was in fact important enough to prove useful.

That wasn't quite the job I had expected. It was so easy it felt like it was wrong and we were in huge trouble. I don’t like easy jobs. It just feels wrong if we don’t have to fight our way in or out from somewhere.

The running, part 9

I tried my best to lead my group. I spent lots of time with them, I tried to get to know Billy, and I trained with him to learn his skills. I had heard that he spoke to my group when I was away. He was preaching about a good leader who doesn't leave. Well, I was kinda bad like that, but I tried my best. Now that I could be fairly sure no one was listening me in my office I could talk more securely with my followers. I got to know this guy who seemed trustworthy. I thought I’d make him my trustee. Well, at least I contacted him every once in a while when I was away. He told me what was going on and what Billy has said that time. I knew I had to kill Billy, or at least get someone to kill him, but I took my time.

One day Jinx called to offer a job. I accepted. It gets boring, really, to pretend you are someone you are not. I had to cut back on my hunting. I had to start eating human food to make my new self believable. Yuck. And I still have that apartment with Shrew, but I’m rarely there anymore. Nearly all my stuff is in my headquarters. Well, of course I have my most valuables in Barrens, like most of my explosives and such, but I need my stuff I the headquarters too.

I’m not quite sure if my followers know I’m a runner. I hope they don’t. I don’t know what I want them to think I am, but I think being a runner is not a good thing, because I often come in contact with metahumans. And my team consists of humans and metahumans. Hopefully my followers don’t follow me on my jobs…

I went to a meeting with the others. We met this person who said we had to steal an apartment of an artist, keep it a few weeks so that it was out of reach. Maybe hide it or something. Well, it really was an apartment, but it was a boat at the same time. We agreed on the terms, money, equipment and such and went to our base to plan.

We didn’t know much about this artist. He lived on the docks of Seattle, went to work and came back home. He was supposed to be a normal human, no magic or anything, if I recall correctly.

We decided to get to know that guy first, then get him out from his home and drive his apartment to some island somewhere on the edges of UCAS. We decided to get the apartment north.

We rented a boat and a place in the same dock. Shrew did some talking and got to speak with our artist. She didn’t find out much, but enough. We decided to get tickets to Dante’s Inferno. That would surely get him away from his home and enough time for us to ditch him there and steal his boat.

I and Shrew went with the artist. We had three tickets. He wanted to bring his friend, but we didn’t have tickets for his friend, and neither of us wanted to go there alone.

So on Friday evening we got to the artists place to pick him up. He got us a taxi, or a limo, I don’t remember. Anyway, it was way too small for me to feel myself comfortable. Luckily it didn’t take us too long to arrive to Dante’s Inferno.

We went in, and there was this big hairy thing. I don’t know what it did, but it did some weird sounds. We dropped our jackets there; I was checked magically, so they knew I was a shifter. In my amazement no one cared. I had a ticket. Strange.

We spent time with the artist, he got us drinks and we talked a bit. Then he popped into the Astral Plane. His eyes were funny when he noticed my true self. I smiled at him. Apparently too well, because I had some trouble getting rid of him after that. He wanted to dance and talk and drink and who knows what else. If we didn’t have a job to do I think I would've stayed just to see what his plans were after this huge information.

Shrew got me to dance floor, but the artist followed. Then she got an idea. She told him that we needed to use the toilet. He went to a table to wait for us to return. We got out as fast as we could.

We got quickly back to the docks, jumped in his boat and sped away. Well, it wasn't that fast, but anyway.

There were two boats. The one we had rented and the apartment-boat. Bobby was driving the other boat. We had figured that we needed to get out somehow, and we didn’t want to swim or walk.

We explored the apartment. We found a plant. It was strange. It had some threads in the Astral Plane as well. I thought it would be a good thing to sell and we decided to take it with us. We carried it to the living room or whatever, because I stayed there. There was the other item of interest. A strange water-creature. It had a big aquarium, because it was human-sized. I tried to communicate with it, but had no luck. It seemed to react to us, but it didn’t try to communicate.

We were talking through radio. I was sitting there, watching the water-creature. I told Nerdy to find out things about it. I wanted to know if it was intelligent. I didn’t get the information I wanted. Nerdy gave me some info about them. They apparently killed people on sea. But it seemed they were like animals, a bit different than normal pack animals, but still animals.

We managed to interest a coast guard. They wanted to come to our boat and see what was happening. I stayed with the creature. I had found a button that fed it. When I pushed the button the creature noticed something and sprang somewhere behind the plants. Apparently fish.

I heard that Shrew didn’t have a proper SIN. The coast guard spoke with Jinx. They wanted to look around in the boat. I felt like I was naked without my weapons. Yea, my weapons were in the other boat. So I decided to transform, just to be stronger. I took all my clothes off and put them in a closet. I also hid the plant. Then I transformed. The creature seemed more interested in me. It came next to the glass and put its hand on the glass, scratching it slowly. I sat down, staring at the creature.

I failed to notice the door opening. I had focused on the creature. It pointed something behind me. I turned around to see one coast guard and Jinx. Coast guard asked something about there being four people on the boat. Jinx walked to me immediately and petted me. He told the coast guard I was like a family member, I was one of them and he didn’t think of me as an animal. The coast guard didn’t seem to be buying it. I was ready to kill him, but decided to wait. They left me in the room.

The situation resolved after Nerdy promised a favor to the otaku. The otaku broke in the coast guard security thing and told them that everything was fine. I don’t remember which one had a spirit or an elemental there to help make things even more confusing for the coast guard, but one spirit was there to do exactly that.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Shrew tried to find out things about the plant. She called her ally spirit to help. It picked the plant from the closet. I growled at it, but it stayed out of reach again.

I spent a lot of time there staring at the creature. Then I heard Bobby’s machine gun. The team seemed to have some trouble. They had killed a spirit before, apparently the artist knew something about conjuring spirits. The second one seemed strong. The team fought hard, and I decided to go and help.

Everyone was on the deck. The spirit was there too. It seemed watery. And huge. I ran to it. I jumped and killed it. Then I almost fell off the boat. I managed to grab the fence-thing and climbed back aboard. Then the other people came, alerted by the machine gun. Navy people. I thought it was the best moment to transform back and be ready for more action.

We drove the boat on shore. It was on the border of UCAS and I believe Salish-Shidhe Council. Before the boat crashed we jumped off. I had packed the plant in a plastic bag. I hoped it was OK, so that it wouldn't be damaged by the salty seawater.

Swimming was difficult. I hadn't done it much, and with all my clothes on and the plant there I had trouble. Finally Bobby pulled us out one at a time. Then we drove to the shore and took off into the forest. Shrews spirit stayed to drive the boat around to confuse the navy. They had tried to make us stop and surrender. We didn’t plan on doing anything like that.

We ran, trying to get away from the navy. Well, we had managed to make an international incident out of stealing a boat. The artist wasn't going to get his boat back anytime soon… Then we just really hoped our fixer would be happy enough with our solution to the problem.

After a few hours in the forest we decided to stop and rest. The spirit had said that the plant had started to die or something. Its aura seemed to wither. I opened the plastic bag, found two fish and tried to get all the salty water off the plant. I put the fish in my pocket for later use.

People were trying to make fire and get themselves warm. I took all my clothes off for others to dry and transformed. I started to dry myself and felt quite comfortable. I decided to try and hunt something. Others had asked me to do something like that anyway.

I found a rabbit. I carried it around for a moment, trying to find another one. I didn’t so I ate the first one, sniffed around and returned to others. Shrews spirit had materialized. It’s a terrible being. Human-shaped but fiery. It looked like it was on fire. One more reason why I don’t like it.

I transformed for a second to tell everyone I didn’t find any rabbits for them, but I gave them the fish from my pocket. Then I accompanied Shrew in search of fresh water. I tried to sniff around to find more rabbits. Then I realized the spirit followed us in physical form. I transformed for a second to shout a bit about visibility and stupid spirits. I didn’t find any more rabbits, and we didn’t find enough water either.

We had a long way to go. We needed to walk back to Seattle. And then cross the heavily-guarded border. It seemed awesome. We had to walk there, take on UCAS army and navy and Salish-Shidhe-Councils army as well.

We contacted Morgan. Mostly we kept our phones off so that no one could trace us, but she promised to help us when we got there. So now it was only the matter of running from the army behind us and arriving in UCAS border.

I stayed in my leopard-form. I found it easier to avoid being seen and running quickly. Luckily Bobby carried my stuff. I kept my distance to the others, and they didn’t walk in a group either, but further away from each other.

We kept running forever. At least it felt like forever. Then we heard a chopper above us. Bobby started building his machine gun, or at least assembling it to shoot the chopper, but it flew out of range. Then Shrew destroyed it. It was quite the sight. First Shrew seemed to be gathering magic from the Astral Plane. Her spirit materialized above her. Flamy aura surrounded Shrew and the spirit. Then she pointed the chopper. Then a bird appeared above Shrew and her spirit. It was huge and flaming as well. It opened its mouth. Fire flew across the area and a huge fireball surrounded the chopper. It exploded and fell. The aura was gone. Spirit had disappeared. Shrew fell down unconscious. Bobby picked her up and we kept going. That’s firepower for you…

Some army people were tailing us with dogs. I think Jinx called his elementals to help or something, because after a few moments we managed to shake them off and met this group of smugglers. They had been contacted by Morgan and they were there to help us.

We went underground to a bunker. Bobby dropped Shrew, maybe accidentally. I grabbed her by the trousers and pulled her to the room. Then I decided to transform and dress up. We had the most difficult part still coming. To go through fully armed border.

Morgan was ready on the other side with some more firepower. She was ready. We were ready too. It began.

There was a lot of shooting, and we snuck to the trenches and past. Turrets were blasted off, so that we wouldn't get hit. People in the trenches were shot from two directions. Morgan and her friends shot grenades. At first I was a bit doubtful, but soon we noticed they shot smoke-grenades.

I was shot. I had been running in the middle of trenches. I had also been shooting the soldiers with my shotgun. Then they noticed me and shot me down. Too bad I was very near of the trench. I got up and jumped in. There was smoke everywhere and the soldier inside shot me again. The bullets went straight through me. I fell down laughing. He had emptied his clip and was defenseless when I got up again.

The soldier seemed like a kid. He didn’t seem to have any experience in situations like this. He had been shot a few times by me. He was terrified, screaming and cowering. I stared at him. I knew I had to be on my way, others were on the chain-link fence by that time already. “If I were you, I’d shut up” I told the kid. He gasped and kept his mouth shut. I kicked his nose in and climbed off the trench.

Others were closing in on the fence. But there was a mine-field. Bobby was first. I followed their tracks and managed to avoid the mines. The wounds had healed already, but I didn’t feel like getting blown in the air just then.

Bobby managed to trigger one mine. But we kept going. The first ones squeezed through a hole in the fence. Bobby made the hole bigger, if I remember correctly. I was the last one to go through the fence. Then we met Morgan and her friends and left the border in chaos. Hah!

The fixer was really happy with our mission. We had managed to make some sort of big international incident. The boat was there, and not going to be recovered any time soon. We got our reward double. Ohh, the joy. And I got back to my followers.

I asked Morgan if she knew anything about assassins. She promised to help me, but later on her contact suggested me to use Jugglers contacts, because he thought there shouldn't be too many fixers in one case. Well, I contacted Juggler. He was eager to help me.

We had some florist take care of the plant. Shrews talis monger Rose looked at the plant afterwards and told us that she could give us 10 000 nuyen right away or something later. It could be much more, and we decided to wait.

The running, part 8. New names to the kill-list. Glittering coward and his cook.

I was contacted one day. We had a job. I was happy to accept, I had started to get bored on hating metahumans and talking about kicking their ass and dreaming about the world without magic and metahumans. I agreed to a meeting and went there, happy for some other activities than training my followers and being a leader.

We met one new person in our team. I don’t know if anyone knew her, but she seemed professional enough to fit in our team. She used rifles and seemed to know something about first aid.

Our job was to kidnap this cook and transport him to the elf-nation, Tir Tairngire. I don’t know much about that, only that only elves are allowed there. Well, humans and other races too, if they apply for some permits, but only for a few days. Elves there seem to think they are better people, and don’t want to interact with other races. Well, I have heard about a dragon that decided to move there. No one disagreed, even though I don’t think they liked that, they just had to accept. Dragons are interesting like that. If they want something, no one dares to oppose. I would like to hear the Humanis Policlubs’ plan to destroy the dragons, because they are magical beings.

We made a plan to take the cook when he was in some round-trip on a blimp. He wanted to be kidnapped, so he was going to make our job easy. Or so we thought. Apparently the cook had a long contract in Seattle, and he wasn’t able to get out easily. So the only choice was to kidnap him and take him to his new employers. I didn’t know cooks were so valuable.

Our contact told us the cooks schedule, and that when the blimp would be close to Tir Tairngire, the cook would be in position. Still easy, right?

We were “hired” to be waiters in the blimp. We had choices too. We could either dress up like chickens or like pigs. We chose chickens. Our job was to do waitering there, to other customers, and when the position was good, do our real job and grab the cook, take an escape pod and go to Tir. Still easy.

We packed up, I tried to find out if Humanis Policlub needed some information or something from Tir, but apparently they weren't that organized. Or how would I know, I’m just a small leader. I have no idea what the big leaders are planning. Maybe I should try and climb there…

In the blimp we looked around carefully. We needed to get to know the premises, and make final plans for the kidnapping. There wasn't much to plan though. Just routes to check and waitering to be done.

There were other waiters as well. They were dressed as pigs. They handled the other side of the restaurant.

I found it quite difficult to move around and do a job I had never done before in my chicken-suit. I stumbled around a bit, but managed to do my job decently. Some of us pointed out that the pigs didn’t do much better job than us. But Bobby seemed to do the worst job. He didn’t seem to know where his limbs were. Good thing he didn’t attract too much attention, because he was in his chicken-suit.

At some point someone noticed some weird sounds in the engine room. Nerdy went there with one of the employees of the blimp to check the engines. One of the employees was found dead. He had a knife through his head, if I remember correctly. We never caught the person responsible though. Shrew told her spirit to go inside one air-vent. It went there and died. We didn’t know the reason, but Shrew would find out after one month. That thing in the vent would make some problems to them later on. I thought about climbing there myself, but it seemed too small for me. I wouldn't have been able to do anything but tremble and be terrified. And if there was some creature that I had to fight against I would've gotten my ass kicked.

The trip took ages. We had a chance to eat something from the kitchen. I asked for a raw steak. They didn’t give me a raw steak. They gave me a meal with raw steak covered in some spices and oil. It smelled terrible. I washed all the spices off as well as I could and ate the steak. It tasted a bit watery. And it also tasted like spices. I didn’t like people ruining good meat.

When the blimp was in its position we took the cook and left. We also left our chicken-suits in the dressing room. The cook came voluntarily with us. Still seemed easy.

My memories about the fight and the capture and things are a bit hazy. I think it went something like this though.

The pigs were some other team trying to kidnap the cook to another place. Apparently to some tribe-country. The team consisted of orcs, so I think it’s safe to assume the tribe was some orc-tribe.

We had to wrestle our way to the cook. And then there was one other team. They seemed really strong, running around shooting people on the head with their pistols.

The cook was in the pod, we had killed all the orcs and Shrew had tried to summon a big spirit which had gotten out of control. It raised a bit of hell there, others were fighting and suddenly Shrew told the spirit to carry me to the pod departing the blimp. Well, it was the only way to get our money. I didn’t like the idea of falling but I decided to jump anyway. I managed to climb through a broken window, ready to kick ass. We didn’t know whether the cook was alone or not. But he was.

I climbed to the front seat and noticed the thing was flying somewhere it wasn't supposed to fly. Others contacted me through the radio and told me what I should do to change direction. I unfortunately had never driven that kind of thing, and it was a bit too small and I was sweating and feeling terrified. I tried to make the cook to program the thing to drive to Tir, but he seemed to be worse than me. So I tried to push all the terror out from my mind and do what I was instructed to do.

I managed to make the thing turn and go to Tir. I was quite satisfied, for a second. I felt terribly trapped, horrified and all. I wanted to get out. I tried to distract myself with talking with the cook. It made me want to bash his nose in and throw him off the thing.

The cook was full of himself, stupid, arrogant, annoying. If I wasn't supposed to bring him to Tir alive I would’ve at least bashed his head on the window a few times. He was an asshole.

When we finally got to Tir, we had some elves there to welcome us. They took the cook I swore in my mind to kill someday for being so annoying, and then they noticed what I was. There was this elf-man with all this glitter and fancy clothes and a sword. He glowed in the Astral Plane. And then there were some other elves pointing their guns at me.

The elves told me to go down and put my hands behind my back. I figured I couldn't take on all the elves so I did what I was told. I memorized the glitter-dude, and he got to be in my to-kill- list. He was some paladin or knight or whatever. In my opinion he was a coward.

The elves examined me, took some blood and did some tests. Then they escorted me to the border. There the glitter-dude asked if he could do some other tests on me. He wanted to see me heal. I asked if the blood-tests weren't enough. He wanted to try a bigger wound. I put all the hatred and anger in the word “No”. I think he understood. They told me never to come back, or maybe try and get a permit next time and left. Cowards. I hate them.

I took a bus to Seattle.

When I got back home I found out that the blimp had spiraled down on some army-base in Seattle. And a month later Shrew s spirit told that it was some fairy with a katana who killed him. Yeah, apparently ally spirits don’t die permanently. They just go to their plane or wherever and heal there.

We got the reward, I got to put two names to my to-kill- list and then life went on like always.