Alexander transmitted over team comms, "Wheels coming down the ramp," he said.  He pulled back a bit toward the tent.  When he heard Lowell call 'Clear', and turned to move into the butchery, waiving for Whisper to move back inside.

"Hasty ambush," he said, motioning toward the entrance he just came into.  He moved to the back, then took a knee, keeping his shotgun lined up with the entrance, but at the low ready, in case Kentucky and Whisper want to jack whoever comes inside.

Despite the anticipation of a jump scare, Kenji's hand makes contact with the carotid artery of the closest form in the Listener's tent.  His finger tips detect a slow and steady pulse under the tattooed skin of what must be a member of the Tiger Claws.  The teenaged gang member doesn't stir at the touch, doesn't react in anyway, and the medic moves on in search of a specific prize.

He moves down the middle path created by the tables, scanning each form, taking in the complete picture.  Each of the victims lies still, connected to thick cable that bridges the gap between the neural jack at the base of their skulls and a featureless central computer station that hums quietly in the center of the room.  Recognizing Daphne isn't as easy as Kenji hoped, but she's there on the left side of the tent, third table back: head shaved, eyes and ears replaced, and motionless save for her breathing.  If she were simply sleeping, Daphne might still be beautiful.  Here, in this place, she looks like the strung out victim of a crime.  Fragile and violated.

At the other end of the tent, Cruz enters with his news that more Listeners approaches and starts to take up an ambush position, doing his level best to avoid unnecessary biocontamination and large pieces of glass.  Through the hanging flap, Lowell can make out four more Listeners coming down the ramp, wheeling a gurney with a black body bag on top of it.  Based on the shape, they've got another volunteer for whatever experiment they're running down here.

The Listeners don't spot him, but they'll be arriving in less than thirty seconds.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:23, Fri 05 Mar 2021.

"I found our girl, but she's jacked in to something, don't know what yet." Kenji reports, briefly studying the rear flap of the tent. He quickly dismisses the idea of hastily unplugging the girl and making a run for it as too risky, for her and for the team. The best chance of getting out the parking garage alive without additional damage to the package is to create some space, and that means zeroing the approaching Listeners.

The combat medic steps away from the gurney, moves towards the front of the tent. Best to ambush the gangoons at a distance from Miss Copeland- less chance of her catching a stray round that way.

Kentucky
Heavy submachine gun [40/40]
Moving towards tent entrance to participate in hasty ambush
Autofire burst at 10m

-
This message was last edited by the player at 20:27, Sat 06 Mar 2021.

"Four tangoes," Martin reports.  He's pretty sure his teammates can do the same math: it's too many for a second round of silent takedowns.  "Hasty ambush is the answer," he agrees with Cruz.  "Volley them down, then you two start working on the girl while I cover.  Stand by to open up."  He shifts position slightly to ensure his teammates can fire past him rather than through him.

It's not heroism that makes him volunteer for rear guard.  It's the knowledge that the two technical specialist have a much better chance of recovering their target without further damage, and that means they all get paid at the end of the night.

Whisper
Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [9/8]
clearing lines of fire, ready to ambush at 10m or when the Listeners detect the team
Combat Awareness: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)
This message was last edited by the player at 02:54, Sat 06 Mar 2021.

Cruz takes his lead from the more experienced shooters.  He adjusts his position so he can fix the maximum number of fuckers in the path of magnesium buckshot.

neuvo-870P loaded with Incendiary rounds [8/8]

soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quBDtJj_fkA


Inside the tent, the three Edgerunners run a Chinese Fire Drill, rearranging themselves with all due haste tempered with the need for adequate stealth.  Cruz and Takanori take up positions near the tent flap, Whisper holding down the fort to the rear.  Outside, the creaking wheels get closer and closer.  Cruz risks a glance through a fold in the flap and measure the distance at about 10 yards.  It's good, but not great for the street howitzer in his hands.  He waits, muscles tensing.  Next to him, Kenji waits ready for the burst of action to come.

Eight yards.

At six yards, Cruz notes a tilt to the head of the lead Listener, can actually see the eyeballs on this guy track in the direction of Cruz's shotgun.  That puts the two Listeners at the front of the gurney into the max practical range of his weapon.

CRACK!

The weapons bucks in the tech/nomad's hands, shoving back deep into his shoulder, and an artificial sun bursts into existence in the shadowed garage.  Magnesium impregnated buckshot spills out of the weapons barrel, the chemical mix igniting on the striking of the firing pin and consuming oxygen at rapid rate on its way through the air.  Those with cybernetically enhanced or smart glass protected eyes are treated to a rapid dimming of their vision.  Those without get to ride a blue and red afterglow from the glare.  When the glare clears, the two lead Listeners are still standing, starting to react along with their friends. (-1 incendiary shell)

Kenji has something to say about that.  With the selector on automatic, he squeezes the trigger releasing a burst towards the Listener on the front left.  The bullets hit hard (critical hit), starting with the Listener's right leg and tearing it off at the hip.  As the man's body tilts and starts to collapse, the weapon's barrel tracks up and to Kenji's right.  The Listener literally comes apart under the hail of bullets, disintegrating into a spray of bone, blood, and tissue that decorates his companions and the poor bastard in the body bag that is now on fire. (-10 rounds)

As the burst finishes, the medic's enhanced reflexes track the ejecting shell from Cruz's shotgun, emblazoned with a cute little dragon, smoke curling from its nostrils and the bubblegum font stating: DragonFire! Light Up Their Life!^tm

With a reasonably clear lane of fire, Whisper fires at the front right Listener, trying to add a little more carnage to the chaos.  The first round strikes the target square in the chest, cracking the armor jacket the man wears and driving him back a step, blood leaking from the wound.  The second round flies wide, buzzing in between Cruz and Takanori drawing at least one raised eyebrow. (-2 shots)

The remaining Listeners start to react.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:49, Sat 06 Mar 2021.

Kenji points his sub-gun at the closest upright Listener, a little surprised at the carnage wrought by the relatively compact weapon. He squeezes off a second burst, hoping for a similar result.

Kentucky
Heavy submachine gun [30/40]
Hasty ambush from tent entrance
Autofire burst at 10m

-

Cruz hadn't been in a firefight in a while, so as the adrenaline crept up, he fought to maintain focus and control, since he lacked the mods that might help his nervous system process, refine, and accelerate combat instincts.  Still, mankind had been killing each other without tech for a long time before speedware and its ilk were invented.

With a fresh shell in the chamber, Cruz lined up the ghostring on next available hostile target and, satisfied that his crew wouldn't be in the line of fire, squeezed the trigger.

870P+ (Might go with that for it's provenance... simple, easy to type, gets the point across)
Incendiary Shells [7/8]
Blasting if I can do so without hitting Kentucky or Whisper (or our package).

The small corner of Martin's brain that isn't occupied with not dying in the so-far-one-sided firefight makes a note to ask Kentucky what sort of ammo he's feeding that subgun to fucking unzip a borderline-cyberpsycho.  The greater part of his attention switches focus to the two Listeners in back, trying to put some pain on them to slow them down.

Whisper
Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [7/8]
sidestepping for better angles, one shot on each rear-rank Listener
Combat Awareness: Initiative Reaction 5* (+5 to initiative roll this round)

* If we're keeping initiative for the whole scene, this stays at Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round).

The one sided ambush continues with an onslaught of violence.  Shifting his aim a few degrees, Kenji puts his sight on the Listener behind the collapsing puddle of goo that was his original target and squeezes the trigger again feeling the reassuring thumpthumpthump against his shoulder as the weapon sends tiny packages of kinetic energy down a rifled barrel and out into the universe seeking flesh to shred (-10 rounds).  The Listener goes down hard, not as spectacularly as the first, but equally dead.

Next to the medic, Lube Job attempts a second incineration, his shotgun bringing forth another blast of bright light, a sonic assault on the eardrums, and burning particles (-1 incendiary round, Cruz can't buy a decent damage roll).  The Listener steps back, left arm rising to protect his eyes out of pure reflex, right arm coming up with a pistol clenched in a cyber arm.

With his one of his primary targets falling, Whisper brings his pistol to bear on the rear rank Listener on the right.  This poor bastard is just starting to react to the ambush when Martin's pistol barks out two shots in quick succession.  To his delight, both of these rounds travel straight into his target's center mass (-2 rounds).  This Listener staggers under the impact, but doesn't fall.

With two of their members in various states of death, the remaining two Listeners engage in sheer aggression.  After being nearly burned to death twice, the pistol wielding Listener gives Cruz something to think about, firing off a round from his massive pistol.  Cruz has the time to identify the weapon as rather cutting edge Militech design before it cracks back at him.  The Nomad does his best to dodge, sliding down slightly.  It's enough.  A massive bullet that he swears he can actually see flies past his head, punching through the rear wall of the tent to imbed itself somewhere in the back of the parking garage.

Whisper's target sports a set of gleaming Wolvers emerging from his cyberlimb and crashes forward, still bleeding, to stab Kenji in the face.  Whether it's from the combined noise and death or slipping on the various yuck that used to be his companion, the attack is a massive failure, leaving the Listener off balance and over exposed.  The medic requires hardly a half step to avoid the attack.

The return fire is not entirely unexpected, but the guy with the fuck-off huge blades sprouting from his arm is the more immediate problem.  Martin takes advantage of the Listener's flailing attack and Kentucky's momentary disengagement from melee range to step forward and pump two more rounds into his target from just outside Wolver reach.

Whisper
Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [5/8]
two more rounds into Wolver guy
Combat Awareness: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)

Kenji bristles at the violation of his personal space. The incoming fire is a concern, but the blade-sprouting Listener now well inside his bubble is the more imminent threat. Kenji backpedals further into the tent to create a little more space and fires a burst at the wannabe Wolverine.

Kentucky
Heavy submachine gun [20/40]
Hasty ambush from tent entrance
Autofire burst at [hopefully] 7-12m

-
This message was last edited by the player at 18:45, Sun 07 Mar 2021.

After recovering from his Matrix-esque dodge, A_dot_Cruz racked another shell into the pump shotty then fired it off at the Listeners.

870P+
Incendiary Shells [6/8]
Blasting again if I can do so without hitting Kentucky or Whisper (or our package).

With discretion, and shot angles, being the better part of valor, Kentucky skips back farther into the tent in a showy vault over the jacked in Tyger Claw lying on a slab.  The Listener tries to make a show of pursuit, but the medic gets to his position first with the assistance of an electronically assisted nervous system.  A super twitchy spin to face his target ensues, the sight comes into alignment, and Kenji squeezes the trigger.  Shell casings fall like rain on to the damp pavement, bullets fly, and the Listener escapes unscathed from the first series of threats headed his way. (-10 rounds)

At distances nearing point blank range, Cruz shoves the barrel of his shotgun forward, bringing the weapon to bear on the seemingly fireproof Listener to his front.  The weapon cracks out, light blasting through the space.  Magnesium enhanced buckshot once again streaks across space, impacting the armored jacket of the Listener.  This time, the tech has better luck.  His target doesn't fall, but for the first time since they've entered the Pagoda, the Edgerunners hear a Listener make a sound:  a glass cracking scream of pain and rage as the magnesium ignites the clothes underneath his jacket. (-1 incendiary round)

Near Kenji, Whisper draws a bead on the claw wielding psychopath pursuing the medic farther into the tent trying to settle this guy down for good.  Training calls for a double tap and the weapon fires twice in quick succession. The first round punches into the runner's armor right under his armpit before bouncing around a bit for good measure in between the plates of armor in the coat and leaving a bloody mess stumbling, already dead, across the tent.  The second round passes through the space the Listener was occupying prior to his untimely demise.  (-2 rounds)

The final Listener, psychotic with the condition of being a walking chemical fire, does his level best to shoot Cruz again, screaming as the pistol comes into alignment.  Lube Job sees the pistol come up, sees the second the alignment looks good, and flings himself sideways.  He barely makes it.  The bullet rips through space, leaves a sparking streak across the top of his armored coat and ricochets up and out of the tent.

It's three on one versus a pissed off, screaming, road flare.  And it's been noisy as fuck.

The burning, screaming, still-moving Listener is making himself an obvious target.  Martin puts his front sight in the approximate middle of the magnesium-enhanced flames (thankful for the automatic polarization of his cybereyes) and presses off two more shots.  One left, he counts with a corner of his awareness as the Consigliere launches the pair of 10.4mm rounds.

Whisper
Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [3/8]
two rounds into last Listener
Combat Awareness: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)

Kenji bricks with his third burst. He makes a mental note to thank Whisper for the put-back when the firefight's over.

The combat medic thumbs his sub-gun's selector switch from full auto to single-shot as moves quickly towards front of the tent. It's not hard to spot the last Listener standing- the gonk's lit up like a road flare. Using his weapon's red dot site is liable to leave Kenji temporarily blinded, so he shoots instinctively, squeezing off single shots at the target until the burning gangoon is lying motionless on the cracked concrete floor.

Kentucky
Heavy submachine gun [10/40]
Hasty ambush from tent entrance
Single shots at [hopefully] 7-12m

-
This message was last edited by the player at 05:04, Tue 09 Mar 2021.

"Burn motherfucker," Cruz said as he shifted his aim to one of the downed heavy metal psychos, and put an anchoring shot into his head.  Cruz was ready to dodge again if needed.

870P+
Incendiary Shells [5/8]
Executing fools in their optics, because fuck these guys.  Also, once the fight stops I'm going to loot some bitches and I don't want any comebacks.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:22, Tue 09 Mar 2021.

Single shot proves much more effective for Kentucky than his prior burst.  Two rounds drill directly into the flaming Listener, twisting him first left, then right.  The amateur human torch refuses to die (-2 rounds).  Until Whisper lines up his pistol and squeezes off one beautiful, perfect round that finds its way right through his target's throat, impacts the spine, and blows the cybnetically enhanced head clean off the Listener's shoulders.  The head arcs through the air, a mostly organic Roman Candle trailing blood and tissue (-1 round).  With the opposition dead in a myriad of terrible ways, the Edgerunners emerge unscathed.

Invoking the "they're not dead until they're headless and dead," policy of horror movie survivors everywhere, Cruz drops incendiary shells directly into the faces of the two Listeners that could, maybe in an alternate universe, be feigning death.  If they were, they are most definitely not feigning now.  Instead they join in the modified pig roast that fills the parking garage with the sick scent of chemical fire, melting plastic, intestines, and barbequed flesh. (-2 incendiary rounds).

With combat ending, the situation stands as follows:  Daphne is plugged into some sort of computer system, apparently unconscious, or at least mentally not currently occupying her body.  Eleven other unfortunate victims are laid out on tables in the tent, also jacked in.  Most of the bodies show the distinct markings of various gangs or residents of lower class boroughs.  Daphne is perhaps the exception to this, though it's hard to be sure.   The Listener's latest acquisition is lying in a burning plastic Black Bag, not making any noise.  It is unknown a this point if that is due to a tragic case of bystander magnesium poisoning or tranquilization.  The savage firefight lasted roughly fifteen seconds.  No sounds come down from above, yet.

Cruz didn't have a pistol, just the taser, so he snagged a nice looking one from a Listner.  Then he turned his attention toward Daphne.  Using his Electronics/Security Tech, he tried to evaluate the computer she was plugged into, looking for the most expedient method to  keep the system from doing anything other than keeping her stable, while they moved her.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:27, Wed 10 Mar 2021.

Kenji tries not to step in the fresh gore as he makes his way back through the tent to Daphne's gurney, reloading along the way.

He shrugs out of his combat medic's pack, sets it down beside the unfortunate Miss Copeland, and removes the expensive Medscanner from its padded compartment. "Don't unplug her 'til I figure out what's going on," he instructs Cruz Control.

Attaching the leads to his new patient, Kenji says, "Talk to me, Daphne," not really expecting a verbal response from the seemingly comatose girl. The Medscanner should give him a pretty good idea of her current condition. He trusts Cruz Control to determine whether or not it's safe to unplug her from the Listener computer she's attached to, and Whisper to keep an eye out for fresh trouble while the two techs work.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 04:36, Wed 10 Mar 2021.

Martin reloads automatically, tucking the mostly-expended magazine into a jacket pocket.  Then he flips up his helmet's visor, tugs away the smog mask, and inhales deeply.  The post-combat stench is stunning but he needs the oxygen.

As he does a 360º scan, the burning Black Bag gets his attention.  His colleagues are already working on the reason the team is here, so he looks around for anything that might help extinguish the flames, or at least knock them down enough to extract the occupant.  With luck, the bag hasn't melted all the way through yet, and burning to death while tranquilized seems a shitty way to go if he can do something about it.

A mental command sets his audio filters to notch down Kentucky and Lube's voiceprints and the sounds of their work so he can keep an ear out for incoming cybercult reinforcements.

After evaluating time and efficiency to be the critical ingredient to continued survival inside the pagoda, the Edgerunners set to work.  Cruz scoops a pistol that his trained eye identifies as a Militech Arms M-5445B Adjudicator VHP.  She's a beautiful high end combat design, if not a little scorched and decorated with biomass.  She's also not commercially available yet in this model.  With a little bit of digging with the point of a boot, near the melting body bag, Whisper can find a twin of the pistol in the remains of the Listener Kenji ripped into kibble.

The computer system sitting on the floor is a modern tower design able to shuffle massive amounts of data at high speeds.  If Cruz had to guess, it's the kind of design generally used to crack protein folding or cryptographic algorithms.  Someone has hooked up twelve brains into a sophisticated piece of hardware into something approximating a local net infrastructure.  Each of the data cables runs from the central octopus to a jack at the base of a victim's skull where a few tiny blinking LEDs twitch in sync with the GB running back and forth.  And while he's not a netrunner, the tech knows far better than to simply disconnect Daphne from the machine.  Not while her brain isn't home.  He's pretty sure, though, that given about a minute, he can force the computer to cycle her psyche home.  Whether he wants to do the same for everyone else here is optional, but will be much harder to manage simultaneously.

Next to the tech, Kenji goes to work evaluating their payday with his Medscanner.  The device beeps reassuringly and gives off a green glow with a few caveats.  Daphne is stable, other than inflammation markers in her blood for recent (and rough) surgery.  She's is also under the influence of a probable tranquilizer or nerve block that is keeping her still and unresponsive.  Brain wave data shows that of a Netrunner deep in the zone, though one that is still and extraordinarily regular.  She's not dreaming.  She's having the same experience over and over, several times a second.

Guard duty is critical, but so is damage control.  Whisper takes a knee and peels back the Black Bag to reveal a scorched but not dead woman in her early 30's with burned black hair.  When the fresh air hits her, she moans slightly but doesn't rise to full consciousness.  A medpatch is fixed on the right side of her neck, directly over her carotid artery.  Martin coughs slightly at the smell of burned hair and evaluates his find one more time.  There is no moment of recognition, but he knows the look.  The designer business suit remains.  The tattoo and LED design.  Bodywork.  She radiates the kind of appearance he'd usually be walking three feet behind and two feet to the right of.  Corporate.

"How do these motherfuckers have access to this kind of hardware," Cruz asks, a bit rhetorically, as he stuffs the state of the art handgun into his pack.  He'd have fun hacking it later and even more fun at the range.

"Well, this is crazy," Alex said, reviewing the system.  "Could be some weird brain-dance thing?  Maybe trying to retrieve some memory or some kind of jacked in torture?  Any reason to think she's a data courier?" he speculated and asked out loud.  Whatever the answer, he was sending her mind back to where it belonged, her brain.

"Could be. Neural activity looks kinda like Braindance on loop, but not quite. Physically, she's a bit banged up but her vitals are good. Can you make it safe to unplug her? Don't want to scramble her brains any more than these assholes have already."

Kenji scans the tent room again, wonders, "What are we gonna do about these rest of these poor gonks?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:09, Sat 13 Mar 2021.

"Same way we do: they stole it from someone who bought it," Martin replies distractedly to Lube Job.  He wipes his freshly-acquired Adjudicator on a surgical towel, then double-checks the weapon's safety before tucking it into his jacket's poacher pocket.  He scavenges the previous owner's beltline for spare ammo just in case things get tight again.

Two-fisting his tech, he brings up his disposable cell and his personal agent and snaps paired photos of the slightly-singed corp woman.  He makes the rounds of the surgical ward, repeating the process for each of the other victims, then tucks away the agent.  The burner stays out a moment longer while he fires off the twelve headshots to Black Jasper's secure drop server.  Then he thumbs out a quick message to the fixer, copying his teammates: Found the album you wanted.  The place has a good selection.  I sent you an inventory.  Let me know if any of their other stuff is wishlisted.

With luck, Jasper can run a quick facial recognition scan to see if any of the other victims are on someone's "missing, please find" list.  With even more luck, the scan will work regardless of the recent mutilation.  A real lottery win will have a recovery fee attached to one or more of them.