[OOC: Going to move things along for now, Chip can ask additional questions later if he wants.]
Wetwork, Inc. adjourns their little board meeting and leaves The Smoking Mug behind. Fenris and Kynos head straight to the target. KE, understandably, gives them no trouble whatsoever as they exit Touristville and enter the Barrens proper. Meanwhile, Chip, Robin and Hawkeye return to their respective domiciles to pick up some necessary equipment. Not everybody can travel as light as their more eager comrades, after all.
Robin and Chip
Your trip home is uneventful. With no clear deadline provided by the Johnson, you know you have all the time you want to check over, clean and pack your gear. [OOC: Feel free to bring whatever gear you want to the mission site. Post a loadout either in the IC thread as a spoiler or in the OOC thread.]
Hawkeye
As above, but on the drive home you receive a message from your Vory handler. You bring it up as a small ARO in the corner of your eye as you the navigate the streets on your bike, weaving through traffic and reading the message in snatches at red lights. <<Red Wormz? They're still around? I commission work one time from a kid, smart trog... net smart troll kid. He said he was with the Red Wormz, I figured it was just some neighborhood street gang pushing BTLs on a street corner or two. That was the first I ever heard of these Red Wormz... and you asking is the second.>> . Here your handler inserted a small .GIF of pop sensation Erwina Stout shrugging. <<Brain Eaters are occasional business associates, please don't kill too many Brain Eaters. But these Red Wormz, I don't know about them or any meat, beef or otherwise, they might have with the BEs. Do what thou wilt, though, орлиный глаз. This drek is frankly below your pay-grade, in my opinion.>>
Kynos and Fenris
Kynos and Fenris roar through the streets of Redmond on their twin Yamaha Growlers. As they hit the rubble field near their target, it's hard not to be a bit cowed by the desolation. The ruins certainly don't seem fresh; it looks something terrible happened here years ago, and nobody bothered to rebuild. The off-road bikes handle the rugged terrain handily, though.
Eventually they arrive at what GridGuide claims is "897 Echo Market Lane," whatever that is. What you see is mostly empty rubble fields and overgrown, vacant and bulldozed lots for about three square blocks. Rising above the rubble are a few lone surviving buildings. One is the crumbling former department store you immediately recognize from the Johnson's photographs. It's small and squat and teeming with squatters. You can see the the beat-up Toyota Gopher from the Johnson's data file, too, parked along the western wall. On the lower floor, the southern and eastern walls slouch into the neighboring lot on the east and the badly damaged street to the south. On the other side of the street stands another survivor, a black sliver of char stretching toward the sun. A burned out tenement building, three stories tall, and potentially offering an excellent line of sight to the rubble-strewn department store across the street.
Kynos keeps watch on the corner of "Echo Market Lane" and some other formerly residential street while Fenris buzzes the two buildings on his Growler. He keeps a safe distance, and none of the roughly three dozen metahumans milling about the lower floor of the bombed out department store react to him. Most of them seem to be troll and ork squatter families, and about half of them are all busy toiling at... something. His cursory surveillance confirms the Johnson's info. Second story is largely intact, has a damaged-looking fire escape on the west side, a large panel window on the south side facing the street and the opposite building, and two smaller windows (about two feet by two feet) on the west side, both with access to the fire escape. From this vantage, Fenris could only assume the roof matched the pictures: flat with some ancient-looking air conditioners and heaps of garbage on top.
Across the street, the tenement had clearly seen heavy fire damage at some point in the past. There were no lights inside or other obvious signs of habitation, though the presence of crude blockades constructed of concrete blocks, shopping carts, and metal debris blocking some entrances suggested the presence of squatters. Some doors were intact, and had either old-style mechanical locks or rigid plastic maglock covers. The building itself is largely scorched concrete (not plasticrete) with badly melted plastic paneling on its exterior in patches. In the few portions intact enough to detect the pattern, the original plastic coating was apparently designed to look like wood.
Possible means of ingress into the burned-out tenement: a blockaded entrance on the west and east, a maglock-equipped entrance on the south, and three separate double-doors into what's obviously a foyer-type area from the north (facing the street). The three front doors are old school mechanical locks, using the Locksmith skill. Maglock requires hardware to remove the outer casing, followed by Locksmith, or some type of gadget or gizmo to get you through.The surface is weathered enough that simply scaling it would be possible if you just wanted roof access, but it would be a difficult Threshold.
Those of you that went to pick up gear, feel free to write yourselves as arriving at the mission site. You don't encounter any trouble unless you try to bring a live nuke or something ridiculous.
