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View Full Version : Journal Runner Tales : With great powers comes great insanity



Alberic Strein
2014-05-01, 04:08 PM
So, I found Telasi's thread to be the best thing since sliced bread, and since I am an active player in a Shadowrun campaign, I thought i would share too. Mainly for the utter madness that is our current campaign.

[ XX, XX, 207X, Montreuil's Military Base, near Paris. Three months after everything went to hell.]

Damn weather.

Even in this underground, sealed off room, he could hear the pitter-patter of the rain echoing right at the edge of his thoughts. Silence eluded him once more.

Sighing, Roberts let himself fall on a chair. He was bored. Something he thought could not happen in this day and age anymore. No feed. Absolutely no connection with nothing. If only this damn rain accepted to shut up, there would be perfect silence. And Roberts was bored out of his mind. By force of the habit, he took out a cig and wondered how he got here. First, the mess in DC, where he did whatever he could. Was it not enough? Was it too much? Anyway his superiors wanted him put on a plane to Paris once issues started to appear there. But by the time his team was formed and operational, things were already past the point of no return. He controled the damage as well as he could but...

Pit-pat, echoed the rain as he sighed, letting white smoke dissipate in front of him. It was not why he was here. In this room. Waiting for that damn rookie. Waiting for hope. For a lead.

A light shone, a ring echoed, and the door slid open, and then closed with a faint whirring noise. In the meantime, a rather lithe ork entered with a tattered book in her hands. A book! What was her lead, some kind of compiracy nutjob that refused to believe in technology?

After a curt salute, Sonia dropped the book on the table and, without further adue, started reading the first paragraph, intently looking at Roberts as much as she could.

He was weird. In my long service as a barmaid, I met many weirdoes, but if someone asked me who was the weirdest guy I ever met, it would be him. He came in one evening, in the never-ending rain, and I wondered for an instant if I had been transported two hundred years in the past. He wore an old duster, a rather large trimmed hat, a stuble, and a somewhat fierce smile. I had seen my number of cowboy-wanabees, sure, but not one of them wore a headscarf and a pirate eyepatch. This unlikely combination took me aback long enough for him to come to my bar, drop a credstick and ask in a surpisingly soft and suave voice something to drink and eat, with a large helping of information.

This was how I first met Kain.

Surprisingly enough for him (I would later learn) things did not spiral down to hell straight afterwards. It took months, during which we had started seeing each other, to my never ending surprise. But back then I did not know him. Not really. I had never seen him work. To me he was just a somewhat oddly dressed gentleman, back then. Smiling more often than not, nice, a bit of a loose tongue, but never threatening, never swearing.

Then the cops came for him. The transformation was disturbingly fast. He slowly finished his drink, took out one of those weird Lačs cigs, slowly inhaled as the Lone Star called for him, threatening to storm the place, and as he finished, the man I knew had disappeared. No odor, a crazy look in his eye, and a toothy grin glued to his face mouthed a goodbye as he walked out.

Truthfully, I half expected him to take on the Lone Star now and then. But instead, he came back the same evening, and after I closed the bar, started talking.

"I dunno what the drek those Lonies wanted. First they round us up, me, two guys and a gal, and then they bring us that paper puncher. Small, underfed, bags under his eyes. I half expected him to ask us to call him Johnson, that dimwit. But no, he took out our files, and told us some shmuck, EOZ, was willing to let all this disappear... If we did a little thing for him, of course. So hey, I told him "Chummer, we don't speak Biz in the slammer!". He looked lost. A handful of seconds later, he suddenly caught on, and had us released, claiming EOZ counted that as accepting the job. Amy my girl, we weren't three steps out in the streets that the Sam decided to get the frag out, and Marx, the mage, to grab the paper puncher by his white collar and do something... Unethical to his mind. I didn't like that. I didn't like working with someone who could do that. But we needed information. Turns out the paper puncher was named Francis (poor guy), and was simply a gambling addict with some huge debts that EOZ blackmailed into representing him. Well, after that, we took each other's commlinks' numbers, and went home. Or more accurately, I drove home the two remaining pedestrians, Marx, the dwarven mage with the charisma of an oyster, and about as much ethics, and Pomy, a techie..."

I took exception to that.

"A cute techie?" I asked him, daggers in my voice.
"A flat-as-a-board recluse. She has nothing on you, my cute barmaid." He reassured. Why, oh why did I feel compelled to trust him?

Anyway, the conversation didn't go much further after that. And I wasn't to see him before two weeks, smoking heavily in my appartment after my service. I knew I was going to see him soon. The report about the burning skyscraper was evidence enough. He didn't wait much before spilling the beans.

"The Biz... Drek, what stupid slang about everything... It wasn't a "Biz" it wasn't a "Run", it was a "Hit". That... EOZ guy... Or EOZ gal, I don't know... Anyway, EOZ wanted an artifact. Some magical drek of great power. I shudder to think what kind of destruction that kind of drek can cause... Anyway, it was in posession of a mage. Robert Delawney. Some kind of magic theorist that had just published a new book on magic theory. Silver lining, that guy was an asshat with ties to some disturbing groups. And before you say anything, I would like to stress that no, we did not in fact geek the guy without thinking twice about it. Remember Sam? The guy I was in the slammer with and who turned down the job? Well, he is swiss cheese, or whatever soja-based drek that stands for swiss cheese nowadays. Could have been a drone, or a few drones... Or a mercenary squad. Or some more runners. I don't know. So we had to do something. So why not infiltrate the skyscraper and warn the mage instead of geeking him? Because, as always when I make a good choice, I made a graph. The guy had absolutely no reason to let us live once we blew our chance at a surprise attack and let him live. We would be nothing but a liability to him. Pretending to geek him while letting him live and still stealing his artifact would give us nothing but more troubles. The... Sort of "best" course of action was to do whatever that EOZ bastard wanted until we had a chance to take the upper hand. And of course, since he was blackmailing us into working for him, we couldn't expect a single nuyen as a reward. But since he still had interest in letting us succeed, he supplied us with two tickets to the party organised on the penthouse of the skyscraper, for the release of the owner's new book. Once there, the run... The hit, was simple, get an audience with the guy, geek him and his two guards, grab the artifact, cause a diversion and walk out. Pomy... Oh, don't give me that look! It's a colleague! Swore to us that she could use a drone to drop some equipment on the top floor. We couldn't choose much, so i took my Ruger Thunderbolt with gel rounds, and an incendiary mini-grenade. Marx chose to keep everything on himself, since he is a mage and all."

I could see him noticeably sigh when he recounted that particuliar part.

"Anyway, we came at nightfall, mingled with the invitees, I let Marx field the magic techno babble, while I pretended to be his sponsor. He had quickly put together a thesis look-a-like to show our target. It was... Terrible, and I don't know jack about magic. But with the headline "Magic does not, in fact, exist." it was sure to catch our target's intention. Well, actually, everything went well until we reached the upteenth floor thank to the lift. Turns out they had placed a warding rune or something. Which reacted to Marx's active foci. For an instant I feared the rune would reject him and he would be crushed between the lift's forward momentum and the magical ward. But it ended with his foci... Breaking? Well, the "zap" sound indicated nothing good, and I could see all color leave his face. But he still held on and we finally reached the top floor. After tasting the food, we approached our target and presented him Marx's bogus thesis. He proved very, very skeptical, but interested, and invited us to come to his office a bit later. So we quickly went to the blindspot (a cute little private mini-garden, with trees blocking the view) we had found during our investigation, got our equipment, and proceeded with the plan. Marx turned invisible and planted the mini-grenade in the kitchen, came back to me, turned visible again, and we got out of the blindspot as if nothing happened. Well, I'm pretty sure a bunch of people actually saw us, but... Well, I don't want to know what they thought we were doing there. And don't you dare smile at me like that, omae!"

"Anyway, the rest was straightforward, we said hello to the secretary, went to the office, the target awaited us with two guards, so we did some small talk, listened to him destroy Marx's thesis, quick drew my gun and slugged him three times... I also slugged one of his guards, but not enough to drop him. Then Marx let loose the manapulse, or mana bomb, oh well, whatever it was, the two guards' head, without the help of their boss's countermagic exploded. Our target was knocked down but still breathing, so we... Well, we looked for a blade of sorts and geeked him while he was unconscious. Not my finest moment, I know. Marx had some ungodly troubles with the barrier protecting our target's "sanctuary" or whatever mages call their fortified laboratory. Probably something in latin or such. "Sanctum" is it? Well, anyway, the drain had not been nice on Marx, his nose was bleeding, his foci were down... And he was bad at destroying barriers anyways. So after checking if I could get in, and lo, I could, I simply went in, grabbed the artifact, a statue or such, Marx took a jewel, and we went out. The secretary was suspicious of us, so I pretended to pull out my card and... Slugged her. Hey, don't give me that look, I had gel rounds, I might have cracked a rib or two, but she didn't die. We took the lift down quickly before getting busted, and once on ground level, triggered the mini-grenade to give us some time before anyone thought of pursuing us. EOZ took the artifact by way of drone, and lost the watcher Marx let loose on his trail. Marx had to give up the jewel, unluckily, magically tracked or something, but sold the info for a rather hefty price and causing a mexican standoff between most magically active crime organizations, which was, as he put it, a reward in itself. The issue being that EOZ revealed to us there were 3 more artifacts he wanted us to find. It's not the last time I hear of him."

I can't help to remember he seemed concerned. Not worried, not scared. Concerned. I was scared. And unlike him, I didn't understand yet the scope of what he had just been pulled into.

"... The end. Of this chapter anyway."

"We can't trust what's written in there."

"But it coincides with what we know."

"Yes... I'm not saying it's worthless. It's just... Unreliable second hand information. But yes, it could give us the insight we need. What is the next chapter about?"

"The deal with the Grand Hotel."

"..."

Roberts scratched his chin, maybe things were in fact looking up. The Grand Hotel case had been rife with information, unlike the Delawney case. They had always been that close to cracking it open, but lacked a decisive piece of information. Maybe that... Diary could be exactly what they needed.

Alberic Strein
2014-05-01, 06:31 PM
[ XX, XX, 207X, Montreuil's Military Base, near Paris. Two hours since Sonia brought the diary.]

The room looked vastly different from when Roberts was waiting, bored. The room was now bustling with images, sounds, still no direct incoming feed from outside, but the AR of the room was working to the maximum of its abitiliies, graphs, photographs, voice samples, carefully picked footage from what was leaked to the Matrix, amongst which the most shared humoristic trid for four months straight, featuring that nutjob Kain.

Kain.

Roberts looked at the different information he had on the man. The results of his background check on the runner stil hadn't returned. He just had his most recent aliases, Karl Ein Teuton, Rory Batty... The man clearly wasn't the sharpest tool in the box. Oh, and completely mad, too.

"Who the hell decides that blowing up an incendiary grenade in the kitchen of the top floor of a skyscraper is a good idea?"

"Luckily, besides the two guards and Delawney, nobody died. Is it slightly less mad if the floor is filled to the brim with mages?"

"Ever so slighly. Anyways, was he also responsible for the mess at the Grand Hotel?"

"Yes, but not in the way you would want it. The narrator... Amy, is very clear :

It was not him this time.

As the feed came into my view, filled with images worthy of the end of the world, my first reflex was to look back at the man lounging on my couch, where he had been for days. He looked as dumbfounded as I was. Well, maybe not quite as dumbfounded, but still.

I sighed in relief. A whole block, in the middle of it the Grand Hotel with hundreds of people was quarantined, the relevant authorities (which corporation did this block belong to? I can't remember) were still silent but had waited no time to erect a huge barrier of concrete and magic.

And for once, the man who shared my bed was NOT responsible of this mess.

... It says."

"Well, this Amy and us do think alike, don't we? I don't think we can be so sure that he had nothing to do with it already, but it's a start."

"If not him, if not EOZ, then who?"

"Well, we're not lacking candidates, are we ? Insect spirits, the Black Lodge, The Illuminates of the New Dawn, Winternight..."

"... Wait, there is some information on a Winternight member right there! Listen...

And he had the gall to brag about it! How did he think I would react? "Hey, today I chatted up a girl and invited her to go eat some pizza!" What was he thinking? I don't care if that Kat-something is a winternight member and that he busted her cover at the draco association! Does he need to tell me everything? Am I his personal recorder or something? Is that how he sees me? Why do I care about him anyway?

... Cue a few paragraphs' worth of ranting."

"Wait, Katarina? She was a major player during this whole mess... And to say the least she was extremely, oh so extremely dangerous. Not only was she a very powerful adept, but she had had access to enough information to be a direct threat to a lot of very important people. The fact that she could slaughter strike teams like nobody's business was merely a bonus. And she was undercover at the Draco Association too?! What was she working on? Do we have data on that?"

"Not really. She worked on the containment of the "no man's land", as they called it, centered around the Grand hotel. She also had access to some rather sensitive information... How did she get such clearances? Anyway, she was muted after the... Resolution... And never heard of from again. The Association isn't exactly working with us, so we don't know much. But we had a hit on Youtrid, about some guys chatting up a beauty in front of the contained area."

Sonia started the trid. The quality was bad, and static melded with the pit-pat of the rain to give Roberts the beginning of a headache. He recognized Katarina instantly, she was, after all, quite the beauty. She was leading a team, but none of it's members, all members of the association, rang a bell. Soon, two men came close to her, Kain and Marx were easily recognizable. They started speaking but the sound was too damaged to make much of it. Only bribes of sentences were understandable.

"You remind me of someone" claimed Kain, seemingly concerned. "She had issues with her workplace, some bad rumors about spying for another corporation... She was in quite a pickle, what a shame."
"Isn't that the story they aired a few days back?" Katarina slowly answered "Didn't it end in all the gossipers' slow and painful deaths?"

The static, and the laughing males filming the video made the rest inintelligible. When they finally shut up and Roberts could understand again, Katarina was speaking.

"Anyways, you cannot enter. Classified information as to why. What was your business anyway?"
"We are... Showmen of sorts. We liven up dinners, we make surprises parties... You know the kind, you come back home, and suddenly... Boom, some fireworks, a few dancers, all your friends joining you..."
"Like clowns, of some sort, then."
"Precisely! I can't accound for our humour though, we're falling on hard times... By the way, if you ever need something, we also liven up anniversaries, barmitsva's... Funerals... If you're interested, why not give me a call? Here is my card."
"Oh, I have a better idea, how about you follow me to grab a bit to eat? My break started a few minutes ago. You wouldn't turn me down, would you?"

The trid ended with the roaring laughter of the males shooting the video, disbelieving the beauty accepted to what they believed to be a date.

"So they made contact." Mumbled Roberts, still trying to remain serious in front of such an outwordly situation.

"Yes. We also know that someone started to gather information about winternight around this time period." Sonia seemed to have no issue with keeping her calm.

Roberts silently opened up the data they had of the small armaggedon that went down on this block. He didn't know what was the scariest. A shedim infestation so close to Paris, or that two runners and a non-fighting drone went in there and won.

"Shedims are extremely dangerous for their ability to posess humans, starting the magical equivalent of a zombie apocalypse. Mages are even worse thanks to their ability to call more shedims. They can't be reasoned with, and if a single magician is infested, a whole city can be wiped off the map. But in a direct fight, how strong is a shedim mage?" she asked.

"As long as they don't over cast, they can make spells with a force of six or seven rain down all day, they are unnaturaly tough, and they can ignore benign wounds. So... A lot."

"I-I see..."

They both looked up to the trid that was playing a bit above their heads, and cold sweat started running across their backs.

"W-What does the diary say?" Roberts coughed, cursing his voice that had trembled for a moment.

Sonia cleared her throat.

"Today I learnt Kain is dying...

Alberic Strein
2014-05-02, 06:44 AM
...Or more precisely, he has been dying for close to a week, and is being patched up at Doc's and T.T.'s place, whatever that means. Truthfully, I had been worrying. Kain is not the stealthiest runner on the market, as a rule of thumb, if a building is burning down, then he probably just finished his run.

Usually he shows up the same evening on my doorstep, tired and a bit sad, and tells me everything that transpired. But not this time. This time, I had been kept in the dark for a week. Needless to say, when a few days later we finally saw each other and he took me out for a ride, I was rather angry.

But I said nothing. I could not. He was... He felt different. Burnout.

We were still driving when he started telling me everything, slowly, his gaze lost in the distance.

"We saw the newsflash together, remember? About the whole block being quarantined. EOZ contacted me right after. He needed us to get the second artifact, which was kept on the highest floor (again) of the Grand Hotel. Yes, the artifact was the reason the place had been blocked down, no he was still not going to pay us, but he could fix us a contract with a runner he knew, Jinx, and she would pay us for the side mission. He introduced us to Doc and T.T. too, the first a troll mage whom can blow up fridges just by being in the general vincinity, the second an elf rigger who knew more than anyone else about drones. We got our mission from Jinx : She had ordered a very powerful sniper rifle, which had been delivered at the Grand Hotel, which was sealed off before she could go and pick it up. So we had to bring it to her. EOZ never told us what awaited us there, so we had Doc go for some magical reconnaissance. He got a bit angry when he realized the magical barrier was holding off a drekload of Shedims. Shedims, he explained us, are spirits with the ability to posess metahuman bodies. Either dead bodies, or mages whom left their bodies to go wander in the astral plane. If their confinement was a tiny little bit sloppy, we would have a zombie apocalypse to deal with."

"Just getting in would have been suicide, Shedims could feel "heat" our lives. We would have been swarmed endlessly until the bodies of every single person in the block was destroyed beyond use. Or more likely, until we died. But luckily for a rather modest fee Doc accepted to create a lower magical item, which could mask our presence to shedim senses. But not to their host's sense, so while we weren't swarmed, we could still be spotted and ambushed. With that charm in our pocket, I made a short trip to the nearest armory and had a flashlight attached to my gun and we went in. Yes, just like that. Well, Mark and I were broke, so even if we wanted to prepare more, we simply did not have the funds to. Particularly, I was very low on ammunition, especially considering that half of my reserves, gel rounds, were ineffective against shedims."

"Anyway, we wanted to avoid being seen so we infiltrated the place at nightfall. The subway -which had been suspended- led right to the Grand Hotel, and wasn't very well guarded. Everything was calm... Dark. But not oppressive, it was peaceful. We knew we were safe. Then we entered the magical barrier erected by the Draco Association, and suddenly the atmosphere became extremely tense. Now we could be attacked out of nowhere without the slightest warning. We went from the rails to the station, and were immediately blocked by a freshly made wall, with two turrets equipped with heavy machine guns staring at it. Pomy got into their system, and, while she couldn't control them, she hacked their safe targetting system and added Marx and I to their database. Then Marx used a few spells to open a hole in the wall, and we finally entered the Grand Hotel proper. I'm sorry, did I say the atmosphere was tense? because compared to the Grand Hotel, the empty subway station was nothing. It was a scene straight out of a catastrophe trid. Bodies, bodies everywhere, the dim light of the night sky raining down from a gaping hole in the middle of the upper floors. Right in front of us, a crashed helicopter, it's passengers frozen in a desperate struggle to get out, to survive. And suddenly, a shadow jumped me. I had no time to react, I screamed out of fear and... Some feeling I can't quite describe, some sort of primal exhaltation. The visceral joy in the simple struggle to stay alive against impossible odds. I rolled out of the way while Marx was having troubles with a second shedim assailing him. He tried his spells but shedims are still spirits, and so he had issues affecting it. On my end, after a few very, very close calls, I finally managed to make some distance between us and shoot it in the face. The morther, her lips, her vacant gaze, her brows, her cheeks, disappeared. Only red remained. But the shedim was unharmed, I swear I could have seen him simply slip out of the corpse, giggling, slithering in the night air, going to his pals to warn them that the slaughter party could finally start. Marx's screams in his desperate efforts to take down his shedim pulled me back into the action, and a few rounds later, the boy's corpse was properly desecrated and the shedim slid out into the air."

"Words weren't necessary. We were busted. We had to hurry. We ran up the stairs clogged up by dead people and reached the second floor. There, four more shedims awaited. I had had time to reload, but I barely had four spare clips left. Marx saw the shedims first and, with a genius I had forgotten he had, made two of them levitate, neutralizing them. I made short work of the hosts of the two others, before taking my time shooting down the ones he had immobilized. Three spare clips remaining."

"We reached the floor where we had to get Jinx's gun. Incidentally, there were a lot of shops on that level, and Marx decided it was extremely important to search them. I strongly disagreed and made a beeline for the gun. Two more shedims stood in my way. Luckily, there was some distance between us, and before they could close it, their hosts were reduced to red paste. Two spare clips remaining. I found the gun, and Marx finally joined me. That was the good news. The bad being that we took waaaay too much time and shedims were swarming us. I pulled out my grenade launcher and introduced them to frag grenades, but while I took down a few of them, my couple of grenades didn't even slow down the undead wave rushing towards us. At the very last moment, Marx erected a physical barrier that stopped them right before they entered the room we were in. But barriers weren't his strong points, and the swarm was already starting to take it down. We had no time, so as a makeshift trap I dropped a few grenades in front of them, I would trigger them with my commlink as soon as the barrier went down, so as to gain a few precious seconds. But the situation was still dire. The store had only one way out, and it wasn't exactly an option. So what were we to do? Well, shoot down a wall with some high explosive grenades to run make an exit, of course! In a rare moment of perfect teamwork, we pulled it off spectacularly. However, as we ran through our makeshift exit and the subsequent store, we noticed that even if we had blocked, killed the momentum of, and damaged a swarm of shedims, the remaining ones wandering aimlessly in the level were still enough to swarm us. Then, Marx reminded me why it was awesome working with him. He simply lifted us up right until we had our backs against the roof of the level, and made us harmlessly pass over the heads (and the outstretched arms) of the swarm of undead. I never thought I would see such a look of disappointment on the face of a zombie."

"Remember how I told you we could see the night sky a few levels lower? I don't know if you've ever been in the Grand Hotel, but as our lone stars friends would put it, the levels are in square donut form. So throuch the central well, we could raise up to the higher levels without running into shedims. Or so we thought. As we were slowly sliding up, some crazy shedims decided to kamikaze attack us, leaping at us from a few levels higher! Yes, it was litteraly raining undeads (and cats and dogs at that!). Of course, Marw dodged them easily, but I saw my kamikaze undead at the very last second and was too dumbfounded to avoid him grabbing my leg. The rest is history."

At that moment, Sonia could not help but to chuckle, raising her eyes to the trid of a flying cowboy pirate franctically trying (and failing) to shoot off a kamikaze shamanic zombie which itself was trying (and failing) to claw at the human. Their ineffective attacks and crazy dodges, with a nice helping of old school cartoon music was comedy gold. The thing went on for. Fifteen. Real life. Seconds.

Utter madness.

Clearing her throat and fighting her laughter at the edge of her lips, Sonia went on.

"And yes, in perspective it's very funny. The issue is that it cost me all my remaining ammo. I litterally got him off with my last bullet. Well, my three last bullets, since the Thunderbolt only shoots in burst fire mode but... The point was that at that point on, my only weapon was my grenade launcher. Which, in the confines of a building, is not the best choice."

"Anyway, we slowly rose up to the casino level. We should have been stopped by the glass roof, but the helicopter crashing down had taken care of that for us. The view of the ciry from the half broken down building was magnificent. The four yakuzas waiting for us? Less. All had cyber, and were immensely more dangerous than the previous zombies. I took one down with grenades, and damaged another before they rushed us. Marx saved our arses again with his quick thinking and physical barrier spell. It wasn't going to hold, but it did long enough for him to levitate two of them and made them follow the path opened by the helicopter. If the shedims could have insulted us, they would have. When the last one, half dead, broke the barrier, a highly explosive grenade did the trick. I took a bit of the explosion, but not enough to wound me. Once again, right after having been awesome, Marx decided to be stupid and search the whole floor. In particular, there was this one shedim, blocked behind a door. Marx formulated a plan : He opens the door, I blow it into oblivion. Cue me asking Marx which grenade he wanted me to use, since he was going to eat it as I would blast the shedim. We argued for two full minutes until the shedim decided to open the door. Because yes, they're not that stupid. So what, I followed the plan, I shot it! Of course both took the blast, and unlike the shedim, Marx was not meant to take such punishment. He took some damage, nothing life threatening, but still. As a result, I ended up being chased down by the shedim, the biggest, most cybered one we had seen all day. It was a lethal game of whack-a-mole. He would charge me, I would dodge, jump out of his reach, dodge the second attack as I retreat, then shoot him with a dangerously unreliable weapon. I could only use high explosive grenades if I didn't want to kill myself with my own weapon, so the slightest deviation meant that I wouldn't damage it at all. Repeat. After taking a few hits and almost going down a few times, I finally took it down. And Marx? After waiting, doing NOTHING to help me, did he high five me for my victory? No. He sulked. Because I had hurt him. Well, duh."

I remembered the atmosphere at Doc's, when I had come to pick him up. Heavy. Kain and Marx refusing to even acknowledge each other. Well, at least now it made sense.

"At this point, Marx decided that he was too tired and would not cast any more spells. And even less healing spells. Not for me, neither for him. But it we were to keep at searching this floor. Because it was a casino, you know? Credsticks should have abounded, no? Or at least a safe. Well, before we found a safe, we found another DAMN SWARM of thos damn shedims. This time, we were fighting in a large room, so I had time to load my frag grenades, shoot them, slow the swarm (well, when the guy in front of you collapses, you trip, no? At least shedims do. Exponentially so), and I could keep at it while running away. Good, no? Good enough for me to take the time to shoot down the ones after my way slower dwarf partner. Which took exception to taking every little tiny bit of damage from the blast, all the while he refused to cast spells and I took down swarms of zombies. So yeah, that happened. But wait, you know what's even better?"

"We DID find a safe. Which neither of us could open."

Kain sighed so hard he decided to pull over, got off the car and went for a smoke, looking at the sky painted in red and orange by the setting sun.

"We decided to take a short break, Pomy used one of T.T.'s experimental drones to deliver us a medkit. I had seen better days, but my open wounds were temporarily patched up. Marx too. But he still refused to cast spells. Anyway, we started our ascension of the last floor. At the entrance, we were greeted by a dead guard, which, surprisingly, did not animate itself to kill us. Pomy sent us the layout of the floor. Once out of the stair room, there was a corridor, which gave to a very big room (heh, penthouse) through two possible doors. Slowly, ever so slowly we started walking out of our room... Well, I. Marx remained behind me. I glanced over the next room and... And I was shot down by a lightning bolt. Still I held on and shot a white phosphorus grenade back, before tumbling to cover to the left. Marx saved my life right there. If not for his counterpselling active on me, I would have bit the dust. But thanks to him, the lightning only left me half dead. Beaten, tired, but alive. And right in position for the sneak attack of the century. I hadn't shot my grenade to kill the shedim, but for the smoke to clog up his line of sight. Of course, to defend himself against the fire, he would have erected a physical barrier, but as a wall in front of him, if not, the flames would have devoured the floor all around him, and he would have been in for a very unpleasant fall. So I ran straight through the second door, right on his flank, and took my shot."

"Everything hinged on this one shot. Marx had no hope of defeating the shedim with magic, and if he had the time to counterattack, he would kill me in one shot. Kill or be killed. Honestly, it was a tossup."

He took out a cig, a normal one, seemingly at a loss for words.

"Well, what can I say? I won."

He was not boasting. There was simply nothing more to say from his point of view. Of course I had seen the trid, I knew what had happened. I, as a spectator, had so many things to say. Yet I also felt that there was an emptiness in Kain as he recounted the events. Why? Why was his reaction so different?

Anyway, my knowledge of the events stopped there. There was no trid about what had happened next. So I was very curious to hear the conclusion of this unbelievable story.

"The building was burning down all around me. The winds picked up. Marx grabbed the artifact as I gazed down at the city. Pomy had contacted EOZ, his extraction team was to be here any moment now. Good. The building wasn't going to hold much longer. Then, out of nowhere, a Thunderbird rose to our level. I sheepishly walk towards it, completely beat down. This is when Marx had the great fragging idea to abandon me. He levitated to the T-Bird, leaving me stranded on the collapsing building. An ork was making signs for me to jump, but I could only shrug. I had absolutely no strength left, and athletics were not my cup of tea even in my best days. It was impossible."

"Well, I don't know much about this ork, not even his name. Yet, I know that he dislikes two things. First, cocky dwarven mages who abandon their teammates, since he punched Marx's lights out. Second, puny humans who can't even make a seven feet long jump. So he jumped to me, out of the T-Bird and right on the collapsing building, put me on his shoulder, jumped back to the T-Bird, and ordered the pilote to get us out of here. Before finally collapsing out of sheer fatigue, I buckled up Marx, and took the artifact out of his pocket. The End."

"EOZ got his artifact by way of drone again, Jinx got her rifle, Marx survived, Doc got paid, T.T. tested her new drone, and I have you. Perfect."

That damn smooth talker.

"Oh, and Pomy made some heavy cash on YouTrid."

... That damn idiot. Wait.

"What? How?!"

"Well, you know the trids about us fighting the shemids? She filmed that with a small drone that followed us everywhere, edited our faces out, redubbed the sound, and posted them on youtrid. I think the one where I fail to kill that shemid for fifteen seconds got two millions views by itself... The one where I kill the master shemid is unpopular though. It's "obviously fake" by general agreement..."

I could not help to chuckle. Then I took out a rather large present from my bag and handed it to him.

"Don't you worry about that. And here. Congratulations on getting out alive."

He frowned, then opened up the present like a kid. It was only a Bust-A-Move drone, but I thought it would make him laugh.

It did.

... And so it ends." sighed Sonia.

"This is a lot to take in. We learned a lot. Even if we already had access to the trids, it seems some key information was edited out to keep us from understanding how things went down."

"You think Kain was aware of it?"

"Probably not. It would mean nothing to him, since he saw everything with his own two eyes. But this "Pomy" girl... The odds of her manipulating her teammates for EOZ are rather high."

An uncomfortable silence followed Roberts' sentence.

Sonia was the first to break it, after shortly glancing at the trid still a bit over their heads.

"So... He really dueled a Shemid Master to death... And won."

"Well, it's not the craziest thing we saw him do, is it? Like this time he killed a Chrome Lord before the other even had time to move. Or when he hunted down a rigger through an asylum, shooting down medical drones left and right, dodging every single attack directed against him..."

"... And then he started dueling spirits. With an actual sword."

"...Yes."

Roberts would have usually sighed, but he was excited. Things were finally coming together.

That runner, Kain, was not a static being, he evolved according to his experiences, if they could retrace them, they could understand who exactly he was up to the point everything went to hell. Maybe more importantly, they could predict his evolution. Or at least, they should be able to. If only... If only he wasn't so glaringly gone in the head.

"The background check on Kain should be due tomorrow." Sonia informed him.

"Very well. What's the next entry? If it's important we should look over it, but if it's just rubbish, we could call it a day."

The uncomfortable silenced returned. And this time, Roberts had to call Sonia a few times before she would break it.

"It's... It's four pages worth of rant. It seems Kain told his girlfriend he had dinner with another woman again..."

"Well, it's perfect! Tomorrow, then!"

"...Said woman being Katarina. AFTER we lost trace of her. And he kept saying they talked business."

Roberts fell silent. Sonia refused to utter another word. They stared at each other. They stared, stared, stared again, stared some more, until it wasn't staring anymore, it was a battle of slight pupil changes, of blinking, of slightly avoiding the other's gaze. Then, finally, they both lost and right before dropping his face against the table, Roberts surrendered a small "Let's get over it then...".

Needless to say, it was not a pleasant evening for anyone.


*

Well, I am ungodly tired, so this is all for now. This version wasn't proofread yet, so please bear with it until I get some sleep and correct it. Also, do feel free to express your thoughts and opinion in the thread ^^.

DigoDragon
2014-05-02, 08:02 AM
It's interesting. I love the gritty world of Shadowrun and have quite a few tales of my own. YouTrid is amusing. My players and I have come up with various media analogs for the 2070s:

Johnny Nuyen ~ Musician/singer who tried to make classic rock-n-roll a thing again. Has a cult following for his music.
Homogeny Brand Foods ~ A UCAS food company that sells food made from sea-based plants. A little pricey, but it is sustainable.
Gettysburg 3023 ~ A sci-fi show about the first metahuman colony outside the solar system. After losing contact with Earth, the colony broke into two factions warring for dominance.


If your have more nifty little cultural things, do add them. It's what really colors the edges of the genre. :smallsmile:

Alberic Strein
2014-05-31, 06:46 PM
[ XX, XX, 207X, Montreuil's Military Base, near Paris. One hour since Sonia and Roberts decided to call it a night.]

Sonia was gone, and the resounding sound of the rain was back. They would have to resume their investigation as soon as the background check on Kain came in, and it was the right time to hit the sack. But Roberts could not bring himself to it. They learnt much, and yet so little it frustrated him.

After their initial contact in front of the quarantined city block, Katarina had gone through their usual fixer to contact Kain and Marx. A.k.a. EOZ. The meeting was to be inside a sushi restaurant, early in the afternoon, one day from when she contacted their fixer. Marx was only going there with the intent to bloody murder her. Kain did the legwork... In his own crazy way, cooking up some sort of stupid excuse about being iron intolerant and demanding to know the concentration of iron in their fish dishes. It went well enough, since he learnt the basic layout of the restaurant, who actually had a lot of small rooms closed with sliding doors, not many cameras and not even a basic metal detector at the entrance. It smelt like a trap, but both still decided to go to the meeting. They had the layout, the possible ways to leave in a hurry, and the block's immediate streets and alleys mapped out. But right after going to the meeting and sitting in front of Katarina in one of the small booths, things went south. Katarina used an adept power to command them to give her their weapons. The could not resist and complied. Weirdly enough, she did not try to kill them immediately afterwards, but started the negotiations. She was pleasantly surprised to learn they did not identify themselves as EOZ and would agree to work for her... For a price, of course. Right when things started to get good, a spirit manifested, and the voice speaking through it claimed to be “EOZ”. Weirdly enough, “EOZ” and Katarina started to hit it off, which infuriated Kain, who asked for the conversation to go back to speaking business again. And his wishes were given ample satisfaction. Katarina wanted information about her, kept in a New Dawn Illuminates stronghold destroyed. If possible, the leader of the cell was to be killed, for a bonus.

Remarkably, neither Marx nor Kain were very enthusiastic about the whole mission. Marx wanted Katarina's head on a pike, not work for her, and Kain disliked the whole “hit” part of the mission. But in the end, they asked “EOZ” if he did mind them taking the job, he/she/it did not, and they resolved to give it a shot.

The particularity of the run was that the information was stocked in paper form, which was highly unusual, of course, but in line with what one could expect of some Hermetic Magi Supremacists. Marx was very keen about finding the data on Katarina and using it against her. Kain was not one to mind, according to the diary, but he wanted to be more cautious. If Katarina was ready to use a team of runners to destroy the information in the Illuminates' hands, would not she do the same with them if they took the information for themselves?

With these thoughts and mind, they went to the stronghold, a manor at the edges of a forest, a few hours from Paris by car. The plan was simple, create a diversion, get in, find the information, murder the leader, and get out. And... That was it. The diary was not clear on the run, but it did not have to be, since Roberts had the feed from the different cameras right under his eyes.

He could see Kain locked into a desperate fire-fight, right after showing himself with Marx at the front gates. However, something gave the alert immediately and Marx disappeared, leaving Kain stranded, alone but weapons blazing, against the small army of guards, and soon the assaults of a mage.

Sonia had gone to sleep after watching the different feeds, showing Kain carve a bloody way into the manor's garden, firing a white phosphorus grenade inside the manor proper, burning it to the ground and destroying the information on Katarina, completing the run, before slipping through the disorganized and panicking security forces. He reached the back of the manor, adorned with an heliport, right as the T-Bird rose in the air, the leader of the cell on board. Kain aimed his grenade launcher and shot. While the cameras did not capture the results of his attack, the falling T-Bird and its debris were. Nobody survived that and Kain slipped back into the panicking mob of guards, house personnel and magic researchers.

Sonia had advanced the commonly accepted theory: Marx had betrayed Kain and EOZ for his Hermetic Magi brethren and a chance to have a shot at Katarina, blowing their cover and alerting the magi, prompting the fire-fight and the complication of the mission. What he did not expect was Kain burning down the manor and destroying the information on Katarina he coveted. He either died at the scene, or in the T-Bird, or was hunted down by Kain afterwards. Anyway, he completely disappeared, his place was destroyed and sensitive information about Kain, his SIN, the place where he used to live, his hideout, etc... were leaked to the police. Unluckily, nothing much came from the resulting investigation, Kain having vacated his place and switched hideouts, the trail was cold. Well, not cold cold, but cold enough for the Stars not to look more into it.

Roberts did not disagree with her opinion. It was completely in line with what they knew of the bunch, and the facts were in concordance with her theory.

But somehow, he felt something was wrong with Sonia. For some reason he recalled a scene a few hours back, when she had found a particularly cheesy paragraph in the diary.

The man in my bed woke up. A man I did not know. He lazily opened his almond shaped eyes, but he could not see yet, he was not awake yet. His sight slowly became more focused on the ceiling and his face slowly changed. His half-smile turned sardonic, a fierce strength welled up inside his reddish brown eyes; He put his ash-blonde hair back with his hand and, his palm still covering one of his eyes, had his sight fall on me. At that instant, “Kain” woke up, and smiled warmly at me, like always. Like he would when nobody with whom he worked with would be around.

The paragraph in itself was nothing much, if not particularly cheesy, and gave a short description of Kain, nothing new, but it's always good to make sure the Kain in the diary is indeed “our” Kain. There was not much to say about the information gleaned from that paragraph. Like many Runners, Kain had a “job” persona, that much was made evident with the first paragraphs of the diary. What was new, however, was that, seemingly his “off-the-job” persona was not his real one either, his default one. Nothing ground breaking, yes, but still good to know. But what was Sonia's reaction at the passage? She was dismissive.

“What's the worst” she said “That this dumb girl seems to actually care about the man, or that Kain looked sane for a second, there?”

If it had been anybody else, Roberts would not even have remembered the incident, as the disdain Sonia expresses for Kain was nothing out of the ordinary. But it was the diary, the information contained in the diary towards which she was being disdainful. Except the diary was their, no, HER big lead, her big contribution to the case. So why? Why, as long as Kain was concerned, did she feel that he was just a lucky madman and that there was nothing more to see? Not that she was necessarily wrong, but feelings of that magnitude presented a real risk of blindsiding her.

And just as Roberts was having this ominous thought, a “bip” resounded in the room, occulting for an instant the sound of the rain. Kain's background check had just come in.

Roberts scolded himself. There lost in thoughts and empty leads he had wasted a particularly good opportunity to rest. Damn him and his obsessions!

Alberic Strein
2014-06-01, 03:39 AM
[ XX, XX, 207X, Montreuil's Military Base, near Paris. Two hours after the background check's results came in.]

Sonia entered the buzzing room with worry painted all over her face. Unlike what they had agreed to do, Roberts did not summon her the moment they received the background check on Kain, two hours ago. While on the spur of the moment she had welcomed the opportunity to sleep for a few more minutes, now she was getting worried. What went through Roberts' head? She looked at him, his eyes glimmering, his hands organizing information from a few dozen sources... And properly ruining the work they had done over the past few days. Luckily she had some back-ups, but still.

She wondered what kind of weird chip he had put in his head, and what the drek he was seeing with those mad eyes of his. Was the info on Kain THAT insane? She would not have been surprised. Unlike most chip-heads she had previously seen, however, he was not keen on explaining his new found revolutionary view of the world. Could be a good sign. He, however, kept making those ecstatic little screams as he organised things. Bad sign. She somewhat timidly called for his attention and he reacted before she had to repeat herself. Good sign. Then he planted his eyes straight into hers and exclaimed : “We were wrong!”

Bad sign?

“We have been looking at this all wrong!”

“Roberts, calm down, you look completely crazy, you should have gotten some rest.”

“Yes, but no matter, I finally understand why nothing made sense!”

“Because we were still sane thanks to our eight hours of sleep?”

“Because we thought Kain was the major player in this whole affair!”

“I don't see how that is wrong. The guy practically stared down most crazy terrorist factions of the world and told them to get out of his turf or else. And they complied.”

“No he did not.”

“Roberts...”

“Okay then, tell me, did Kain attack an asylum full of madmen, thoroughly destroyed it and killed the leaders of the bunch just because they had pissed him off by attacking his girl's bar?”

“We both know he did.”

“No! Kain, with his dwarf magician partner who may or may not have been Marx, mounted an assault on the run down asylum which had been used for some unethical operations on the mad patients, an assault which he dominated thanks to his grenade launcher as they went through the gardens and zeroed in on the asylum proper. Then he hurled a vehicle rigged with explosives at the front entrance, after which his magus partner levitated the both of them, then he destroyed the veranda, sending lethal glass shards down on the madmen's heads, then the magus tried to drop him down, but fumbled because of the smoke, so he ended up landing in the middle of the main hall, with a giant of a man who would not have lost to a Chrome Lord as far as augmentations go, looking down at him from the first floor. Kain was faster than him though, and before the gigantic man could do anything, some very lethal military grade grenades turned him into very thin paste. Then some madmen with chemical tanks on their backs tried to suicide attack him, but he burst them down with white phosphorus grenades before they could reach him. At that point, the rest of the madmen were running away, and his partner also came down. Unable to agree on which direction to take, they split up. Kain ended up confronting a madman rigged to a medical drone nest, and the magus fought a mad shamanic kinsman.”

“Yes, and Kain slaughtered his guy without taking a hit, while the dwarf had to retreat to Kain's car. I don't get what you're getting at.”

“Why did Kain choose not to finish the enemy magus?”

“Because he is crazy as drek.”

“No! He retreated! He retreated because his support had pulled out, because he had an opportunity to, and because he was all out of ammo!”

“So what, Kain is actually sane and way more timid that we thought?”

“No, you don't understand. We were wrong about Kain, we were caught up in the smoke and lightings, and were not seeing the threads. Kain is not an invincible crazy one man army who could raid an entire place by himself. He is just a lucky and daring runner who is simply way out of his comfort zone.”

“The guy beats Shedim Masters, duels with force five insect spirits with a sword, all the while saving his team-mate with a few well placed bursts from his gun IN HIS OFF-HAND, mind you, and ends up without the slightest wound. He also routinely burns buildings to the ground, all the while laughing maniacally, taunting world class terrorist organizations and spouting some random drek like he doesn't have a care in the world, and you're telling me he is just some scared runner?! Roberts get a hold of yourself for God's sake! Kain is the only person to have been in every key situation while this whole war was waged. He is the link, the red thread, our lead! We can't just dismiss him as some random buffoon!”

“He is the red thread. He was where things went down, but the guy is not crazy. That's where we went wrong, he was never there ALONE! Think about it, he always retreated when his fellow runner was out of commission and had a chance. Think about that time with the asylum, with the insect spirits, with...”

“...It's about the assault on the Illuminates, is it not?”

“Precisely! If Marx had betrayed Kain, he would have fallen back, taken some distance, used the superior range of his main weapon, instead of pressing on. Marx did not betray Kain that night. After everything went wrong with their plan to infiltrate the place, Marx turned invisible and provided Kain with support. This is how Kain could continue to press on despite the desperate situation. Also, I re-read the reports on the state of the T-Bird Kain allegedly shot down. His grenade only did marginal damage. I suppose the wind interfered with the grenade's trajectory. It's Marx who shot down the T-Bird! He must have used a lightning based magic to momentarily disable the electrical equipments, causing the fall of the T-Bird. In other words, Marx saved Kain's sorry arse on that occasion. If we only look at Kain, we miss the big picture.”

“Well, Marx DID betray Kain and DID disappear right afterwards, no?”

“Yes, but it also means we need to collect more information on Kain's subsequent partner, Gilles.”

“I am with you there. Luckily, the guy left a number of traces. Former hitman for the mafia, stealthy and allegedly a very good marksman, proficient with most weapons, and particularly deadly with a handgun. The specifics on how he was recruited are not known. The diary seems to imply -but Kain was strangely silent about the whole affair- that EOZ blackmailed him into it. Also, the Diary... It's getting less and less precise. Kain seems to have started to hold more and more information from her. The crucial kind. Does your theory explain why we have so little information about the days following the assault on the manor? And how, in the name of all that is holy, did you get in your head that Kain is out of his comfort zone, and how is that relevant?”

“Kain probably spent the next days looking for Marx. The guy always makes a point to try to help his allies. He prides himself in that. Remember how he specified to Amy that he buckled a passed-out Marx after the guy tried to abandon him? Kain seems allergic to the mere thought of abandoning his partners. He is obsessive about it, even. Kain being out of his comfort zone gives a whole new spin on his actions. He was not cruising from battle to battle, raising hell, he was frantically trying to stay alive. Meaning that he was pressed by time. Meaning that the two months during which he remained inactive? He did not remain inactive, we just missed him. If he did not tell Amy anything, then whatever he did in that time lapse is going to be very, very important. That's where we need to look, this is where our lead takes us.”

“...And for the comfort zone?”

“His background check. We only have information about him as a runner starting from one year back. He worked with a small team in Le Mans. Guess what he did?”

“Demolition expert?”

“Nah, that was Elena, a roguish elven woman. The gunner? Erika, also an elf, also a woman. The magus? Aiyana. Shamanic. Elven. Woman. She was also the Face of the group.”

Roberts let the tension build up, and then added: “Kain was the driver. The dedicated driver. His zone of expertise started and ended with tires on the road. His unmitigated love for grenade launchers and his sweet talking skills excepted, he picked everything up from them. He almost didn't know how to shoot a gun, had never held a sword in his hand, never handled explosives, could not avoid a baseball pitch to save his life, and knew how to do almost none of the things we know him for.”

Sonia was taken aback. Skills, decent skills, are not something you pick up overnight. They are the crystallization of a lot of hard work. And time. In one year Kain could have gotten down a number of things. His social skills, his marksmanship, his skill with blades, or his crazy dodging skills. But not all of them. Hell, just learning how to be a competent social character was going to be a challenge with so little time. He could NOT have become proficient in all of that time span. Even factoring in activesofts. Which, to have the desired effect, should have been so complete that they would have been way too expensive. Leaving only one possibility.

“He is a lucky, daring bastard who bluffed his way through this whole mess?!”

“The real kicker? Back with his old team, his catchphrase was “I made a graph”. It was practically the “Once upon a time” of his good stories.”

Sonia fell on her chair more than she sat, her palm pressed against her forehead. She could tell Roberts felt elated. He, from the start, had wanted to understand Kain as much as unravelling the truth about this whole affair. But her... The more she learnt the less she knew.

“So he is not an intuitive madman with some mad skills and bulletproof ego, but a logical conman who managed, against all expectations, to deliver on the few bluffs he's been called on? But it does not explain his crazy schemes, his bursts of destruction, or even his eccentric attire.”

Roberts silently nodded, rubbing his chin.

“Well, one of his former team-mates, Elena, went on record speaking about that, actually. Erika had cybered audio enhancement, and it seems a hacker caught onto that. Here.”

Roberts started the audio file, and a pleasant voice echoed in the room.

“I just don't understand, you know? The new guy spends his time making some random stuff explode and nobody bats an eyelash. I rig a car with explosives to create a diversion and suddenly everybody loses their minds! I haven't seen the Stars getting that fired up since the annual Donut Day was cancelled thanks to some crack team hitting the delivering convoy!”

“Don't complain to me, Omae! What did New Guy say about it?”

“Like always : “I made a graph”. He claims, and I call BS, that he records every nuyen of damage he causes and to whom. His theory is that Horizon does not mind us dealing 10 000 nuyen of damage to their infrastructures as long as Ares loses the same amount. Or that they can expect Ares to lose the same amount. Likewise, Ares won't send a strike team on our asses as long as their business rivals get hit for about the same amount of destruction in nuyen. As long as you even out the damage between the competitors, you can actually raise the fee pretty high before anyone tries to do anything about it. If one corporation, however, has the feeling some highly destructive runners are out for its assets, then it won't shy away from spending tens of thousands to get rid of us.”

“Like that one time we messed up pretty badly and hit a corporation whom had just been bought by Aztechnology, with whom we had a few scuffles in the last few months?”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn't it New Guy's idea that got us out of trouble that one time? Maybe he IS onto something.”

“We are just lucky he is a competent driver. His plan was nothing special.”

“Yeah, but he had a funny way to put it, no? 'I made a graph. These guys cost them this much per day per person. So as long as we dodge them for four days, killing us will not be cost effective anymore and they will call their dogs back. If it does not work, plan B.' You know? I was surprised by how calm he was. We never got to learn what plan B was, though.”

“Massive destruction.”

“What.”

“In the event Aztechnology did not call their team back, we were to fight back on Aztechnology territory, creating as much chaos and collateral damage as possible. Enough for whichever wage-slave that put the bounty on our heads to get fired and for his successor to get the message.”

“That's crazy.”

“Don't say that. It can't go wrong, he made a graph after all.”

They both laughed and the conversation ended. Sonia raised a doubtful eye to Roberts, half-smiling.

“You know, that's surprisingly insightful as far as corporate politics are concerned. They think in term of profits and losses. Their rivals' losses being profits. So as long as they kept the equilibrium, they could get away with some pretty crazy things.”

Once more, Roberts nodded.

“Our situation is clearly his plan B, however.”

Sonia shook her head.

“It looks like it but no. Plan B is a way to clean out irregularities. If the attacks continue after they stopped being cost effective, then it meant some middle manager is out to get them, out of sheer incompetence, bad choices, or because he behaves irrationally. Plan B is a way to stop that. The high destruction of corporate facilities are a threat. 'Keep going at us and it will get worse.' Either the guy gets the message, or one of his superiors catches on and fires him. The new manager, upon finding why his predecessor was fired, will most likely leave them alone. Kain's behaviour in Paris is nothing like that. It's a threat, in a sense, but it's not directed at anyone... It's almost an order... Or a supplication. 'Stop this drek NOW!'. He artificially raises the stakes with collateral damage in the hopes of making the other groups back off. It's defending one's territory.”

“It seems all the same to me, but I'll believe your stance on the matter. But still. I seriously believe he knew how outmatched he was. So why did he so clearly take on such a visible stance towards the groups? With his massive destructions he made himself into a figurehead. The prime enemy of all those groups. The common enemy of all those groups, not with even a single ally. Why? Also, while dangerous, all this fighting was very lucrative for him, why did he want to stop it? We're getting closer, I can feel it, but we're still lacking some crucial information. Sonia, we need to concentrate on anything that could guide us towards what Kain and Gilles did during those two months.”

Sonia nodded, but there was something she did not voice. Something she knew. Some discrepancy Roberts could not have caught on, as he had studied the diary way less than she did. Something crazy, something that only she had understood.

Kain not being a SINner was impossible.