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.