[Psikerlord]

Umberto takes a squiz at Vanian's card: House of Antiques?

"I am not so much an antique fellow," Jink says, "but who knows what valuable stuff might be laying around a shop like that, eh? I'd be happy to check it out. As for the brother's place, yeah, okay, maybe we go their first - keep chicka happy, like Switch says. You a smart one, Switchback. I like you, eh."

Watching Hiro going into AR searches and Ghost slumping out to the astral, Umberto cocks his head to one side and says, "No downtime for these two, eh, okay then!"

Flicking the antique card back onto the desk, Jink wags his metal finger back and forth for a moment. "But I not so sure we should split up just yet. Yes, quicker, but its like Boss always says - you want to do this quick, or right? We maybe need Hiro at both places, or Marlene's heat, or Ghost's juju protection. I say we keep it tight for now. I say Gibson Hall first. Antiques second. Then see what colour is the crystals, neh?"

Umberto sits back down on his stool and stretches back, giving everyone a big grin. "I got my gear in the wagon already. And just so everybody 'members, Jinky is for shooting, driving, droning and maybe little bit exploding things. OK, wizza..Hiro, I got your ride covered, huh. You know it true." <winks>

[Cato]

"I like how you think Jink, you never know what might be laying around..."

Switchback looks at Ghost, slumped out against the wall.  "Looks that way.  But I agree, there's a good shot with a rifle out there somewhere...  I'm willing to go to Gibson Hall, but I'd like someone to watch my back while I'm there."

"The wagon, eh?" Switchback glances at the logo on Jink's armor and winks.  "You still keep up with Team Soza?"

[Paeniteo Azrael]

By now the Zen had worn off, and Marlene was a little less out of it.

Marlene's blonde curls showed up on everyone's commlinks, with slightly less antagonism in her face.
"This Rat fellow looks like he could use a new smile. I'm more than willing to go wherever needed, and I happen to have  a fairly good carry license. If that antique store is guarded or has no one in it, I could sneak in, sneak out, and no one would be the wiser. Otherwise I could back you all up if you don't split up.

Marlene  shut off the voice message. She looked down at the pistol in her hand, a bit of blood stained the grip where she had missed a spot cleaning.
"Well Eris, looks like its going to be a long night for me... Don't blow up the house.

Marlene leaves the building, looking as fashionable as one can in a set of flats made to cover your body. She moves with an unnatural augmented grace, but rather than being beautiful it seems.... industrial, as if it were utilitarian; as she deftly avoids the cracks in the sidewalk without so much as a look.

Marlene leans against her bike, turning on her smartlink system and checking all the frequencies of vision she has. She tries to listen to the sounds and smell the smells of the night, testing her ability to tell where people are without vision.

"This job might be fast and sweet, if there's such little security at both of these places. But fast and sweet and profitable.... choose two."

[Kontact]

Ghost's presence left his body and sped across the astral in the general direction he understood Rat's store to be.  Using the obvious landmarks, he narrowed it down to a block or two.  If Vanian's hadn't had an old raised-letter sign, though, he would have never found it.  The shadows of the astral plane don't lend themselves well to detailed inspections.  Inside, there were no astral wards or security, but there was a feeling of sickness crawling around.  It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling for Ghost in his new line of work.  He knew it as the temporary astral disturbance that always seemed to accompany a recent murder scene.  The energy was blocked and tangled enough that he knew a little Watcher spirit wouldn't be able to survive in these warped currents. [Background count of 1]  Investigating the place, he found five main rooms, including the toilet.  There were two bodies on the floor, one by a cot in the office, and one by a workbench in the back area.

[funkytim]

Well it looks like there's no urgency to get here (Vaniian's).  I'll try to find Gibson hall next.  Approach slowly with assensing area.  (Already rolled assensing for Gibson hall in last post)

[Kontact]

[By the way, you could probably talk one of the first aid guys into patching up that stun damage, tim.]

Gibson Hall was slightly easier to find.  It's silhouette on the astral could be matched to the picture Hiro had pulled up earlier.  Moving through the place showed no astral security and minimal physical security.  At this time of night the building was basically abandoned.  Zipping through a floor at a time, yielded 5 sets of auras, none of which were magically active.

[funkytim]

Ghost actively assenses the five people in the gibson building.

assensing 3 + intuition 4 - stun damage 1 + actively looking +3 (8d6.hits(5)=2, 8d6.hits(5)=4, 8d6.hits(5)=2, 8d6.hits(5)=3, 8d6.hits(5)=3)

He also stick around to see if he can pick up any clues as to what they are doing there.  [OOC:  I'll watch their movements for a bit to see if I can tell if they security, working, sleeping, searching.  If they're all pretty
much stationary I'll head right back to my body]

Ghost feels anxious to get back to his body to report to the rest of the team.

[Kontact]

Most of the guys are clean, but one guy has dark spots running through his body like thin little noodles and a few more in his head.  There were a couple at the front door, three in a room down the hall and two sets of two moving around on the floors, staying to the hallways.  All of them seemed rather bored.

[Psikerlord]

"The wagon, eh?" Switchback glances at the logo on Jink's armor and winks.  "You still keep up with Team Soza?"

Umberto's eyes light up at the mention of Team Soza and he leans in to offer Switchback the traditional Combat Biker fist punch/handshake combo - "You follow the leagues, Switchback? Shiny! Ahhh sadly I don't see much of Soza no more, many are dead now, true. Some others gone elsewhere, maybe couple wifes nag them sensible, hehe, you know. But maybe you remember the winger name Bosspug - Boss Rodrigo? He's still around - right here in the 'plex, in fact - I see him plenty times. Hahahaha, oh yeah, Boss, he good value."

Looking back around the room Umberto notices that Ghost has broken out in a bit of a sweat [OOC: 3 stun damage he took]. "He allright?"

[benhatt]

Johhny couldn't help but smile at the banter of his new partners.  His father had forbidden most sports, with the exception of baseball and soccer, growing up but as he had gotten older he had enjoyed sneaking out to watch a good Urban Brawl or Combat Racing event.  He didn't remember Team Soza or Jink at their prime but he had seen the replays of the pile up that ended Umberto Keppa's career.   #73 on the official Top 100 Combat Racing X-Treme Crash List.  Considering that most of the Top 100 ended in fatalities, that said something about the severity of the accident.

At Jink's statement about Ghost, Johnny kneels down to look at the mage.  The husk was definitely showing signs of distress.  Johnny kicks himself,  should have brought his MedKit.

"Could be anything out there in Astral World.  We'll just have to wait and see what he brings back."

[Cato]

Switchback grins at Jink.  "Of course I follow the leagues!  Few things are like it.  Bosspug?  You know if you still have an inside contact I know a few ways we could make some extra nuyen..."

He glances down at Ghost, frowning slightly.

[Xarin]

Vanessa is reclined on the comfy sofa, sifting through all the business news feeds of the day when her comm chimes with a message.  A flick of the wrist and it pops up in a window on her AR.

Huh, didn't expect Crank to be bagging a job from another fixer.  Short notice, too.  Guess this Van guy needs some better talent if the yokel's not even showing for the meet.  Lucky he got me then.

She drops a quick note back to Crank and this Van Isherwood character.  She'll take the job.

While she waits for a response and details on the meet location, Vanessa waves off the AR and starts getting dressed for business.  Second skin, mostly transparent, followed by a snug form-fitting half-suit. Plopping down in front of the vanity she starts her makeup, colorful hair extensions, and finer details to throw off her real look.

4 Disguise (Cosmetic) + 5 Intuition = 9 (9d6.hits(5)=3)

She just finishes pulling on the skin-tight fake fingerprint gloves when the comm chimes again with the meeting location.

A deadhouse?  Hope that's not a sign of things to come.  By this timestamp the meeting's probably already underway, maybe done already.  Guess I'll check out the security feeds then.

'Yuri' sits back in the plush chair and jumps into full VR.  A quick hop over through the nearby access point, crank up the Stealth program and her cartoonish avatar speeds off to the deadhouse's matrix address.

*sigh* Well I suppose I better be quick about this.

A quick look over the node and her avatar whips an oversized swiss army knife and sets about proding the Firewall.

Hacking on the Fly (security account, Firewall+3 extended test) 6 Hacking + 6 Exploit + 1 Encephalon = 13d6 (13d6.hits(5)=0, 13d6.hits(5)=4, 13d6.hits(5)=4)
[OOC if you need more, let me know.  That's one turn's worth of hacking]

[funkytim]

Ghost's body wakes from his stint on the astral plane and anxiously gives his report to Johnny, Jink and Switchback.  Here's what I found on those two locations fellas.  First off, there were two dead bodies at Vanian's place.  I couldn't tell who they were from the astral plane but we might be to late to actually talk to Vanian.  Gibson Hall has five people in it right now.  One of them has been chromed as far as I can tell.  Those five might be watching the place, they seemed pretty bored but I can't be sure of that and there was nobody on Neil's floor.  Anyway, my opinion now is to go to Gibson Hall first.  It probably won't be to hard to stealth past those guys to get to Neil's room.  Specially if we can find a hacker who could check the electronic security first.  Looks like we already missed the action at Vanian's.

[benhatt]

Johnny holds his hand out to help the shaky mage up. 

"Two dead bodies?  I'm going to have to disagree with you on where we head, Ghost. First off, dead bodies can tell us a lot of things.  We also don't know who's attention the killing might attract.  The longer we wait on Vanian's the better the chance that Knights will charge in and gum up everything. However, I will go with the flow on this one.  I'm assuming everyone still wants to stay together as opposed to split up? 

[Cato]

"It depends on what those thugs are doing at Gibson Hall.  Either they're looking for something or waiting for someone to show up.  I'd like to know either way.  But you've got a point.  We should check out Vanian's before anyone goes in and frags it up.  I'm ok with splitting up if we need to."