Nix's avatar materializes in front of the ticket booth. She resembles one of the detectives or maybe vigilantes from the serials that were dated even before the Matrix went live. A long dark trench coat settles around her, covering a blouse, slacks, and a tie. Her avatar is still feminine, but her face is nearly featureless, save for her pulled back black hair, making her look disturbingly like a mannequin. A dark fedora is pulled low over her featureless face. Look up the Renee Montoya Question for good idea of what she looks like.
She engages her defense and exploit programs and gets to work, double checking the code as Paladin works his way through it and trying to find anything that might help the more experienced hacker. Unfortunately, that means she misses the same thing he does and she barely reacts fast enough to engage her attack program, manifesting a magnum and opening fire on the security program.
I'm using whatever Paladin is. However, since I kind of don't really know all the details of the hacking subsystems in detail I forgot to add the bonuses. Nix mostly has computer skills because she'd logically be trained to disable computer and electronic security as well as physical security.
"We'll see what's what. Maybe it really is just open as a novelty and it gets enough customers to pay the bills. Or maybe the owner is pretty well off on his own and just keeps it open because he likes it." She activates her less than legal programs and comes in behind Nathaniel.
There are Savage World rules for everything. It's pretty great, though I'm not personally familiar with Interface Zero. I might have the book on my hard drive somewhere though. I should take a look. I'm kinda bad at Shadowrun, but I'm enjoying the system, but it never hurts to learn about new ones.
Ah. Right, I have 3 ranks in every program in the books, so I do have a bigger pool. And Nix has a Hot Sim module and trodes to go into the Matrix without a jack, so she can work with him.
Nix finishes her tea in one quick gulp and nods to Tilt. "You have my contact information if anything comes up before the run. Send me the meet up location when you get it. We'll make sure not to dig up anything inappropriate unless the Johnson decides to send a hit squad after us." She straightens her jacket and pockets her generator before following Paladin out to help with the information search.
Victoria shrugs. "Don't care about the Johnson's business unless it seems like he's actually trying to kill us. He doesn't seem malicious enough for that. And it doesn't even seem like he really knows what hiring runners is like." She sits back for a few moments. "I can help Paladin. Nothing to do until the job and I have some training in Matrix work."
Once the Johnson is gone, Nix takes another sip of her tea. "He wouldn't need Runners if this was just about street cred unless he had a very good reason to think that his gang can't do this job on their own. Which means there's something going on he doesn't want to say. But he doesn't seem to know enough to be planning something. I'm more worried that he's a dupe for someone else who needs a distraction. We should also find all the records we can of the theater. Who owns it? Who do they work for? Who do they know? Is there a gang that runs the area and does the theater pay protection? Who will be in attendance for the night he wants us to hit? One high level corper in the audience with a few guards could send things down sh*t creek. There's an angle, but I don't know if he actually knows what it is."
Nix visibly rolls her eyes hard enough that the group can see it straight through her glasses. "Superstitions are for people who don't have the skill to take care of themselves. Jinxes are caused by mages, not random words."
"A acceptable pay for a milk run. If the team is satisfied, then I'm willing to take the job." She had a feeling that a gang that can't knock over a movie theater on their own probably won't be that useful for favors, but they might find something to use them for later.
Victoria puts on her suit again, wanting to look nice for a meeting with a prospective client. She double checks the suit to make sure it's wrinkle free and tucks her HK into the concealed holster under the jacket. It's hard to get more concealed than that.
The dichotomy between the two floors of the tea house is almost amusing. Given the name, that might be exactly the point. She keeps a level expression as she takes a seat at the table across from Tilt and the Johnson. "If you don't mind." She pulls a small white noise generator, small enough to fit in her palm, from her jacket and sets it on the table, flicking the on switch. "For privacy." She accepts a cup of tea with a small, polite smile and delicately sniffs the cup before taking a small sip. Beneath her glasses, her eyes dart over the tattooed man, curious as to what their new employer might be after.
Hey. Quick heads up. My sister is going away to college for the first time this weekend and the whole family is going with to help her move in. I'm leaving tomorrow morning and I should have internet, but my posting may be slower than usual until Sunday.
Victoria spends most of the day getting used to her new eyes. The sun seems almost obnoxiously bright and she ends up picking up a new set of sunglasses with some... interesting add-ons to replace her old pair's night vision set up. She can't help but notice that her eyes seem to have a sheen now, reflective like a cat. "I wonder if dad had a different night vision aug or if he never bothered," she absently wonders, seeing the unfamiliar glow. The evening brings both relief and a chance to see just how effective her new implant is. The doc's work does not disappoint.
The next morning, she listens to their new fixer's message over breakfast. By the end, she's having trouble deciding if he's the humblest fixer in Boston, or just nuts. Considering that he keeps a Red's stolen katana in his house, or maybe a trophy of a kill, he just might be crazy. Still, she can respect crazy as long as it's in moderation. When the second message comes, she taps out a quick reply.
Nix climbs into the chair and leans back as the doctor takes a look at her eyes. "I wasn't planning on telling you unless it was really, really important," Nix agrees. The less people who know the details, the better. "Make sure you take it quick. Samples from me have a tendency to spoil real fast." She chuckles slightly. "I have a feeling you're going to be poking around in me a lot more in the next couple months. I'm sure you'll learn something interesting in the process." She offers one hand to him while she slides her glasses back on with the other, letting the tinted lenses cut the bright light back a bit. "Good to be working with you doc."
I've already added the aug and taken out the money and essence for it, so I should be good to go.
"I'm not surprised dad never mentioned me. He's always been... careful with me." Victoria's lips twitch up into a half-smile. "But if anyone can survive anything, it's dad," she agrees with an almost wistful tone to her voice. "But until he gets out of whatever trouble he's in right now, I need to take care of myself. That's why I'm here today." She slides the card away again and pulls off her sunglasses. "I need every edge I can get and I've recently gotten a new job that pays very well, if you get my meaning. So I'm looking to upgrade. Just something small for a first op. My eyes were prepped for a night vision upgrade years ago, but it never went in. Think you can finish the job?"
Nix lets one of her eyebrows pop up. "Oh joy, he's a paranoid one. Well, at least that means he's probable nice and discreet..." She heads inside to see the wheelchair bound dwarf. Her eyes reflexively scan him for a weak spot, falling over the brace on his leg and his hand. Underestimating him just because he didn't seem to be able to walk would be stupid, especially for a doctor, but he seemed manageable. "I'm his daughter, Victoria," she says. "And you haven't heard from him because someone disappeared him last month. I'm gonna pull out something he left me, alright?" She very slowly pulls out the card with the doctor's address on it and holds it up for him to see. "He said come here if I needed help with my augs."
Nix was less than impressed at the doctor's, assuming they could actually be called a doctor, office. Not that she had a lot of options. Any 'reputable' doctor would be tied to a corp, and she didn't need that kind of scrutiny anywhere near her body. Still, if her father thought he could be useful, she would have to trust that he'd found someone that wouldn't chop her up for parts while she was out of it. "Damn it dad. Why didn't you let me get work done while you were still around to keep an eye on me?" She pockets the card and looks up at the camera before hitting the intercom button. "Hello? I'm looking for the doc. David Bateson sent me."
"I'm glad our new fixer has a level head on his shoulders," Nix says with a small nod. She gives him her contact information for one of her aliases, the same info that the Muldoons had gotten earlier, before he heads out. "I'll be looking forward to it." She flicks open her comm and checks the time. "And I've got an appointment too. I'll catch up with you later today or tomorrow. I'm going to be late to my doctor's appointment if I don't get moving."
"A day off would be good for me. I have an appointment at a bioware clinic and I'll be much more effective after a night to recover." Victoria glances over at Paladin and nods. "I don't work for Evo. They have... problems with my family and would very much like to know where I am. So unless you're trying to get me disappeared into an Evo strike team black bag, I'd like to stay away from them."
Nix nods politely to Mr. Muldoon and lets him introduce the last new arrival. "I like payments," she says once their potential fixer has given his pitch. "And so far we've made a competent team. Don't know about the new guys. But consider me interested."
Victoria's hand reflexively shoots to her concealed firearm for a second before she processes the sound. She shakes her head and settles back into her chair. "That's new. I've never seen her get shaken up by anything like that." She gives him a look. "You're not all that scary. We put down someone much bigger than you yesterday."
"Another talkative one I see..." Nix can't help a small sigh as she rubs her eyes under her glasses. "Yes, I'm new. No, I don't know what's happening any more than you or anyone else here does. If I had to guess, they want to hire us to do something else for them." She sets her briefcase on the floor and takes a seat then absently starts to clean her glasses. Her eyes flick between the two newcomers, carefully taking their measure while they introduce themselves.
Nix doesn't drink much, mainly because she hasn't actually gone drinking before. The perils of being underage. Once the little after party winds down, she gets a taxi and has it drive her around a bit before being dropped off a good few blocks from her apartment. Always better to be careful not to pick up a tail.
She's right on time the next day, dressed in her freshly cleaned suit and glasses again. "Nix. Just Nix," she introduces herself.
Also banking my Karma. I'm still looking through piles of Bioware to decide what step towards not being human Nix wants to take next. I might save the cash too and hold off until I can buy something a little juicier.
Victoria raises an eyebrow as Johnny suddenly finds himself missing a kneecap, but doesn't respond other than that. "A pleasure to work with you Miss Muldoon." She fights the urge to smile. Working for the mob wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, but it paid well and she needed the cred. "I'll have to put off hitting the clinic until we see what other jobs we might have coming our way..." she mutters, eyeing the bonds.
I didn't really have any problems. It was a little bare bones, but we were basically just hunting down some small timer who ultimately wasn't important to anyone, so it makes sense to be simple.
While the party has several people who are excellent at very obvious murder, Victoria is supposed to be good at sneaky murder. So I'm more or less going full Infiltrator with the combat skills to take care of herself. Not a lot of branching out other than the computer skills to handle electronic security systems and the like.
Nyx stays quiet, letting the others do the talking while she stands there and tries to look menacing with a shotgun. She's actually not bad at it, all things considered. "I imagine they're still going to want to talk to Donny, but I'm not going to complain about more work. I could use the nuyen."
Victoria cocks her shotgun and keeps her eyes firmly on Donny. He certainly doesn't look like much. "Let's ask a few questions, just in case someone tries to stop us from getting him back to our employers. If he gets capped before we get him there, we can at least hand over what he tells us."
"If they're asking their 'friend' to take out the trash for them, it sounds like they're done with Donny as well. Assuming it's not a trap of course." It's likely that whoever's contacting them doesn't know the fate of the original owner of the commlink, but it never hurts to be ready for the worst. She gets up and checks her weapons, reloading her shotgun and pulling open the compartment to check her infiltration tools. Hopefully they can actually handle the situation quietly this time. "Well, let's not leave the trash lying around until it starts to stink up the place."
Victoria stirs. It seems like she actually managed to drift off for a little bit while Nathaniel was working. "I guess we don't really have much else to go on," she says with a yawn. "I hope the other two had more luck than we did, because this really doesn't seem to be going anywhere useful."
"Good luck with that." Victoria goes to the kitchen to find some dinner, then comes back and finds a chair in the living room where she can sit and wait for him to finish up with his work.
"I suggest we try to trace the comm number first. It might take a while to figure out what's going on with the card, but a comm number shouldn't take long to track down."
"Hopefully it will give us something, because there's not much else in here." Nix grabs her briefcase and tucks the card inside along with her shotgun. "Come on, you can take a crack at it when we're not here anymore."
"He did what? Idiot. We better really hope that's not our guy, otherwise we just lost our payday. Let's finish up and jack the body before anyone calls the cops."
Victoria lets Paladin run after their target, but doesn't immediately follow. He can take care of himself and there might be something useful left in the apartment. Given that the authorities are likely already on their way, it's better to try to search the area while he runs down their target than to potentially leave something useful behind.
"Orcs are usually good at that," Victoria says dryly. "Let's just get in there and see what we can find. That was a lot of gunfire and I don't want to be here when someone investigates."
"I don't know why we didn't do this to begin with." Victoria raises her shotgun and unloads into the screaming ork's chest. "It's not like this idiot was going to be of any help anyway."
"This is a terrible idea..." Victoria mutters. She pushes back her hair and tries to look as deadly and professional as she can muster in roughly three seconds. She pops her briefcase open and pulls out her shotgun, absently clipping the stock on and stepping around the corner with Nathaniel, flanking Anya and trying to look like a bodyguard. Or at least her muscle.
"Is that English?" Victoria absently wonders as she follows Anya and Nathaniel to the apartment complex. They certainly seem to know what they're doing and despite the large woman's... oddities, she's been rather competent so far.
Out of character, I think that having the social option is probably a useful thing that we want to have. Given that I'm new to Shadowrun and not terribly good at character creation, I defer to anyone else on the solution to this problem.
In character, Victoria is vaguely sociopathic and more than likely to just suggest discreetly eliminating everyone who even remotely gets in our way. Being a living weapon doesn't make her particularly disposed to diplomatic solutions to problems. She'd much rather just deal with things directly.
"Very little," Nyx replies, dropping down on Nathaniel's couch without bothering to ask. "Contact was cagey, mainly told us to poke around Donny's hangouts and see what we dig up. Since we already knew that, I'd say he didn't know anything, or was being deliberately unhelpful."
