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.
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