[Kontact]

[OOC: Surprise surprise, 12d6.hits(5) → [1,1,6,3,1,2,2,1,3,2,2,6] = (2)  buying hits would have made it...  anyway..]

"Another one.  For Ghost's sake.  What is with these trid-happy retards putting a street brawl on the net like it's their damned business.  You want to hack this one Koello?  You know what might be more effective than playing trideo whack-a-mole is if we go chat these people up.  In fact, yeah, this could be a good thing."  A crooked smile crossed B.B.'s face as he hit on how to handle this.  "You know what's the best signal defense a person can have Koel?  A TIe grid.  I bet I could get some Telematics Infrastructure software off a friend and Sheldon could send the troops around to put it on the locals' comms along with a warning about how spreading potentially damaging information about the Crushers is bad for everyone's safety.  Future troubles are avoided on both fronts.  Mostly with the TIe grid.  You get one of those running, and nobody will ever be able to creep up on you.  Some sneak-ass cyberninja tries to hop a wall and his gear will tell you where he is in no time at all.  Cops come in force, and you've got advanced warning.  Flying drones, got them pegged too.  Complete master of your wireless domain... and it's cheap too, so long as you get it cracked."

[Walks Through Walls]

During the two days after I do the vampire research stuff.

"I have been looking at the vampire and infected angle, and it just doesn't look right. My totem is warning of impending doom, and if this infected has been here for a while I don't see how this would cause impending doom now. Could this be something the Crushers are running? I would hate to get shown in and escorted around only to find out it is one of Sheldon's operations that we are having to hit."

"B.B. you are leaving some of your bag of tricks out of your training so if we do have to slip in or something in the future we won't be smeared by our own training right?"

[FastJack]

Mercedes leaves the Street Doc, smiling for the first time in days since it no longer hurts to do so. She dials up Woofer on her 'link, "Hello Marcus! How are we doing for tonight? I was able to secure the gear we needed, and am ready to go."

[Kontact]

<<No worries walks.  If the Crush was in on this scheme, then they wouldn't need me to teach the kid.  Wherever we're headed, there's someone sitting at the end of the rainbow with a whole lot of digital man-dangles.  Besides, whatever benefit they've gotten from me upping their digital security has come at the cost of me becoming intimate with their physical security.>>

[OOC: I'm a little confused about the current setup.  Did Koello stay with me for the full 2 days, and is he with us at the motel?  Or did I drop him off at the end of each day and spend a little face-to-face time with Sheldon?]

[Sludig]

Woofer, looking just as rough as three days ago, "Sounds good mercedes, I'll meet everyone at the hotel." *rubs face*

[inca1980]

The incessant rain of Seattle let up for about a day but then decided to come down again in full force on Saturday.  Woofer is the first to show up in the dimly lit lobby of the dank coffin motel.  The checkin counter is just an automated terminal which must be more than 20 years old but still not as old as the rest of the establishment.  Little green block letters scroll across the welcome screen asking you to slot a credstick.  Locks work on a finger print scan on a little black glass tab near the terminal screen.  Woofer is given room 211 and he texts that to the rest of the team.  Going up one flight of stairs he passes his thumb over a similar black glass tab and a light near the nob turns from red to green and he enters.  Nothing fancy, a neatly made queen-sized bed, a bathroom and a little trid box. 
Eventually everyone arrives, the last one to come in is B.B. who's soaking wet but still sporting his usual swagger.  When you see his young but well-built pupil come in behind him you try stifle a laugh because it's obvious some of that trade-marked swagger has rubbed off on the young ork.  You also notice the kid is proudly sporting a nice new comm which are connected by wire to a set of trodes which are partially hidden under a red bandana. 
After laying all the new gear on the bed and taking an inventory you guys all pack-up and check-out.  Everyone rides with Woofer except for Mercedes on her bike again and you cruise back out to the Crusher turf, but this time in the middle of the day.  The difference between night and day is quite obvious.  First of all, there are a lot more human's running around, primarily children who are barely bundled up despite the cold, some of them even with flip-flops on and soaking wet, playing in the rain.  When you make it to the wall of the neighborhood you see a similar configuration of Crushers, except you don't recognize any of them.  As you pull up in your vehicles, Woofer rolls down the window and Koello sticks out his head, "Let us in you dumb fucking trogs!" and laughs.  The Crushers chuckle back at him and the shaman of the group says something into an ear-clipped comm mic and waves one of the soldiers off and he hops on a near-by graffitti'ed scooter and pulls up along side the car.  Koello falls back into the backseat and says to Woofer, "Follow that guy". 

The difference between the Crusher turf inside the wall and outside the wall is quite obvious.  The buildings are packed closer together and many of the gaps between the buildings are covered with blue tarp creating an interesting feeling of being inside a tent when going in-between several alleys.  Some of the tarps even have their underside painted with child-like depictions of ork children planting trees or wearing Crusher tags and looking very happy next to rainbows.  Every once in a while a group of alleys all run into a small plaza where large groups of ork children with a few human's among them are playing stick-ball and scatter as vehicles zip through. 

Upon reaching another one of these plaza's you see  3 adult orks playing with the gang of kids, 2 of the orks have submachine guns slung around their shoulders and hold a stick with their free hand.  The shortest of the 3 orks is wearing a tank-top with an under-arm holster strapped over it and an Ares Predator snuggly sticking out.  He's laughing as little kids try to use their small size to get around him and at the ball...."Not so fast!" he calls out laughing some more. 

The Crusher on the scooter pulls up next to the ork in the tank-top and says something to him, and he passes his stick over to one of the kids and they keep on playing.  He looks over to your vehicles and motions for you to walk over.  You all leave your vehicles and start walking toward him and he meets you half way, grabbing Koello and giving him a hug.  As he comes closer you see he looks to be in his late 20's which for an ork looks middle-aged.  His ethnicity looks like a mix of native-american, black and white.  His shoulder length hair is full, black with a few white strands and his tusks have a tiny little ring of totem drawings in black ink around them.

The familiar smooth voice you heard on the comm call greets you, "I'm Sheldon, and I want to thank you for helping me out.  Before we talk about other things, let me see if this stupid kid learned anything.  Koello, crack this for me so I can copy it."  He pulls out a little chip from his pocket which looks like a BTL.

[OOC: Roll for Koello and write it out, Hacking 2 + Software 3 (3) to crack it.]

[Walks Through Walls]

I'll hang back at the back of our group and watch. I'm going to try and use my security procedures knowledge skills to try and determine what other security is in the area. I'll casually look around the plaza and try to figure out a bolt direction in case things go bad for some reason. I'll also try and figure out what building around here is most likely Sheldon's base of operations.

[Kontact]

"Digital death, hunh?  That's a tough market to get into.  But I guess the syndicates are all moved on to streaming distribution.  Which..  ah!  That's what this is about!  Chips are all hardware-encoded to play once and self-delete, so it takes hours of poking around to figure out where that is on the chip and bypass it, but you want him to grab it while it streams so you can dupe syndicate BTL streams!"

[OOC: rolling stealth 5 +6 hacking +3 nanites +1 PuSHeD = 15d6.hits(5) → [2,1,6,5,3,6,2,2,3,3,2,3,3,6,3] = (4)]

<<Yo, Koel, this is insane.  World-class talent could only pull this off like half the time.  I'll ride shotgun if you want.  Maybe we'll get lucky.>>

"That's... basically the equivalent of catching a bullet in your teeth, and not in the way where the bullet kills you.  A guy has to identify the kill command in the data stream as it moves past and cut that code in such a way that the whole thing doesn't crash."

[OOC: Teamwork test capped at 1 hit.. 11d6.hits(5) → [1,1,4,5,6,4,2,4,4,1,6] = (3)]

<<Right there Koel!  That's the kill command!>>

[OOC: Koel's test w/teamwork.  6d6.hits(5) → [3,1,4,1,5,3] = (1)  Yep.. pretty much..]

"And because the code is hot, a dude can't do it in VR, or he'll get exposed to Ghost knows what and addicted to the burn.  Hell, for new users, they like to stack their BTL streams with extra-addictive signals to make it pretty much impossible not to get hooked into that death dream."

<<Well, it was a matter of luck anyway.  Like I said, this is bananas.>>

"I'm kinda flattered that you think I could make your boy into a world-class hacker in two days, but if that's what you're looking for, he'd be better off with a surgeon than with a mentor..."

[FastJack]

Mercedes follows along as B.B. talks with Sheldon. She switches her perception to the Astral to take in what's going on around the neighborhood and also to get a detailed read on Sheldon as he works with Koello and B.B.

Assensing Sheldon in detail (7d6.hits(5)=3)

[Sludig]

Woofer just watches as things unfold.

[inca1980]

@B.B.:
You see that Koello doesn't stop even once you've realized that he's just not quick enough to grab a data packet out of the stream.  A smile left over on Sheldon's face from playing with the local kids starts to fade and turn into a completely expressionless stare.  As you try to cover for the kid, and probably your own ass as well, you see Sheldon turn towards you and you feel instantly that you should have kept your mouth shut....

[OOC: Koello's gonna use edge to reroll that DP: Koello's Edge re-roll: (5d6.hits(5)=3) whew!]

All of a sudden you notice the kid flip his raw ASIST controls up into hotsim levels while manually overiding the safety feature coma inducers.  His hands fall to his side still clutching the chip and his eyes roll up into his head.  You pop open an AR window viewing onto the matrix and you see an icon of a green-caped rogue shooting silver arrows at data-packets.  Then you see it, the kid freakin did it....he flipped the ASIST trigger for his analyze threshold from his left pectoral to a "burning desire in his heart"....just like you showed him....and sure enough he grabbed a packet.  Once he had it that was all he needed to climb on board the data-stream and crack the copy protection.

Koello wakes up all of a sudden and hands the chip back over to Sheldon, "How many copies do you want Sheldon?"  The gang boss smile comes back to his face as he checks his commlink.  "Alright little man, what can I do for you?"

[OOC: Everyone can add Sheldon as a Loyalty 2/ Connection 5 contact]

@Mercedes:

You see that his aura is extremely strong yet incredibly complex...a man of very conflicting emotions which he's been able to tame into a working whole...he's completely mundane yet the colors of his aura are so bright it's as if he were an astral beacon.  You notice a few cybernetic enhancements.  A data jack, along with cyber-eyes. 

[Kontact]

"Just playing connect the dots.  Next dot is in the Pearl.  Probably be in and out in 5 minutes.  On the off chance that isn't the case, then it means there's something hells of unnatural going down in your area.  You think the Yaks, or the corps they front for, would try and hide something major in your territory?  Like, has their traffic been unusual?"

[inca1980]

Sheldon seems to flinch a little when you mention the Yakuzas as if the word annoyed him.  Then you see a growing idea on his face.  "The Pearl Tongue?  Finally the Great Ghost has sent us someone to help us with that thorn in our side.  La'Khaghada!"  The Crushers around him repeat, "La'Khaghada!" and raise their assault rifles in the air.

[OOC: translates to "praise the spirit"]

"I'll provide an escort for you through my neighborhood and you go over and find out whatever you can about what the hell is going on over there.  Kanaga-gumi and I had a deal that I would let them keep their establishment and we would guarantee safe passage of their clientele as long as they paid their dues.  It was pretty lucrative for a while...but then they stopped paying up.  Every time I'd send someone down there to collect, they'd go AWOL and wouldn't ever come back.  Wasn't worthit for me anymore to try and collect.  I just cut off their clientele....well of course except the ones who could pay out the ass....but they're operational and aparently doing just fine.  I need to find out how and I want my damn money."

[Kontact]

"Well, shit.  I thought 100 yen was steep for parking... you mind if I talk with you privately for a moment, mind to mind?"

<<@Sheldon:  Whatever is going on down there has something to do with mind control, and whatever it is, I aim to frag it up really, really badly.  Can you set up a perimeter to stop anyone getting out?  The Telematics Infrastructure software I hooked you up with, you can use that to find any stray wireless signals from someone trying to escape the place.  Do not let them go, even if it's me.  Koello spent a couple of days with me, if they manage to crack my brain, maybe he'll know.  Ask me some questions.  Have the Shaman (who, I'm sorry I shot, by the way,) look me over.  He knows my aura.  Anything fails, I've got a mess of flashbang grenades in this satchel here.  Poor man's stunball.  <Attach> Here's the det keys.  Things are looking fishy, take cover and set them off.  Everyone in 30 feet will be on their ass with a shock-wave concussion.  That's assuming I don't use them inside, but..  Point is, I'd appreciate restraints and questions to summary execution, but no one leaves.  Okay?>>

Brian paused for a moment.  Why was he confiding in this drug-lord/slum-lord?  He wasn't a good person, but it seemed like he wanted to be.  Maybe that was it.  He was still trying in a world that had given up.  Whatever the reason, Brian changed topics and continued out loud.

"I... feel something waking up in me.  Something terrible.  I hadn't fired my gun outside of the range in nearly a year before the other night.  Don't really go to the range much anyway, this particular weapon being highly illegal and all, but I feel it now.  The way it connects to my shoulder..  Like it was back then.  Maybe it's you guys, or this place, but it feels like Oakland during the war.  Orkland, if you prefer."
He paused for a moment before returning to his earlier point. 
"Whatever happens in that place, it's going to be bad.  If everything goes wrong, and we're out of contact for two days or more,  just burn it to the ground and blame it on me.  Name's Brian Crenshaw.  Used to go by the nickname "Little Boy" just to piss off the Nips.  Go ahead and snap my mug.  I'm in their records.  I blew up the Haenuki airfields north of San Fran in '65.  Broke the back of the Japanese occupation airforce.  Regardless of any horrible shit that happens to, or in, that place, the Yaks will believe you if you say I did it.  I was their personal fucking nightmare for two years after the war's end, and I aim to be again."

[Sludig]

Woofer looks over at BB wondering what the hell he's talking about.