A symphony plays in Nyx’s mind as she goes about her work, the percussion of the drums acting as a counter beat to the deep bass of the pistol in her hand reverberating up her forearm.  The smartgun link sings its own treble voice, adding the aria.  Draw bead, squeeze, boom.  Repeat.  At twenty meters, the shot isn’t easy.  But it’s not a viola solo either. (-2 rounds)  The first round goes wide, the second finds a home.  Cypher throws in her own bass accent, the Adjudicator in her hand going off like a cannon. (-1 round) The detective get a solid hit for her efforts, the Listener taking a step back from the impact and twisting slightly.

—

The basement fight continues like starving rats in a sock.  Hyped up on Solo abilities and speed ware, Whisper moves through his teammates.  His previous target continues to be his current, the pistol a reassuring weight in his hand, his path forward and out of this mess. Two shots reverberate through the stairwell.  Both land almost without effort and the Listener is sent off to meet whatever machine god he listens to.

Next to Whisper, Kenji squeezes the trigger of his SMG, holds it momentarily and enjoys the reassuring sporadic pressure of the weapon cycling, punching him in the shoulder.  Bullets rake over the two remaining Listeners in the stairs, punching through the light kevlar of the goon.  The front runner though, that guy, wades through the bullets as they bounce off his armor like drops of water. (-10 rounds).

Back in the rear, Lube takes issue with the lack of damage Kenji inflicted on the lead and drops another slug downrange, the massive shell pulling a vacuum along with it.  It’s a beautiful shot, it really is.  Unfortunately, the Leader pulls an even more beautiful dodge, turning neatly to the side as he angles to intercept Martin with a set of Wolvers that sprout from his right wrist.

Two slashes come down, one from above, one across the middle.   There isn’t a lot of room to maneuver in the well.  Whisper does the best he can, turning to profile then ducking and rolling forward.  The good news: he’s managed to avoid both slashes.  The bad news: he’s now in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.  For the goons part, he doesn’t appreciate being shot at with automatic weapons.  He returns the favor with a three round burst to Kenji’s front with his own SMG.  Where Whisper managed to turn away, Kenji calls it wrong and turns in to the blast.  The medic’s armor jack holds the first two rounds, the last punching through. (-1 SP, -3 HP)

—
Coming to her feet in the Kannerack apartment, Ringo gets with the shooting.  There’s a Listener to her left that she pops a cross body shot at as she dives behind a redwood cabinet of curiosities.  She takes a second shot at a guard that helpfully reduces the antique to matchsticks with his assault rifle, once valuable ceramic odds and ends raining down on the Solo from above.  From the kitchen, Pandora can be heard blasting the door locks with a series of pistol shots before following the barrage through with her own body.

On the floor below, Karma takes another pot shot at the guy that just hit her with his shotgun.  The round pushes him back just far enough for the NetRunner reinforcement to get a fatal shot in to the Listener’s throat.  As the asshole drown in his own blood, MDR and Caldwell survey the entrance to the apartment and see a whole lot of blinking dots looking back at them.  Looks like the computer system might be down here.  Despite the gunfire erupting above, the duo make for the network.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:42, Sat 09 Apr 2022.

The Kerenzikov and a lifetime of bar fights twist Martin out of the path of the Wolvers.  A dim back corner of his brain winces as he sees Kenji catch a burst from the Listener's subgun.  The greater part of his attention notes that said Listener is slashing with his peripheral vision but shooting with most of his focus, which means he's not set up for a reciprocal dodge.  So Martin steps just outside the reach of the blades and pumps two rounds into the guy's armpit, where armored clothing and implants alike have always struggled to provide coverage.

Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [5/8]
Maneuvering to avoid melee, two shots on Listener lieutenant
Combat Awareness 5: Initiative Reaction 5 (+5 to Initiative rolls)

Cipher keeps up the pressure, taking a step forward and using the beat to carefully aim a follow up shot at the staggered Listener.

-

Kenji grunts, rocks back, almost loses his footing. In a sad commentary on modern society (and his chosen profession), the combat medtech has been shot enough times to know that this one isn't that bad. That doesn't stop the pain, though.

KT resets his feet, takes aim at the unengaged goon, and fires a long burst.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 02:04, Tue 12 Apr 2022.

The performance is reached its crescendo, a symphony of violence played out to a backdrop of neon. The Siberian Solo stands, sword in one hand, the gun held in the one other adding its own staccato rhythm as she seeks to silence the goons that are still firing at them.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:33, Tue 12 Apr 2022.

"Keep dancing homes!" Cruz said as he blasted off another round at the guy who'd just dodged his last shot.  Sooner or later this guys luck would run out.

The first symphony of death reaches for its crescendo.

Practiced movements come easy to Nyx, reflexes honed, muscles trained.  Her pistol barks once, twice, as she closes the distance between herself and her prey.  The pattern grouping is obscene, one bullet following the other into the same entrance wound.  The Listener staggers once, drops to his knees then discovers if his Machine God is real.  There is no pause in Nyx’s motion, she simply redirects with an impressive, if gratuitous, pirouette towards Cipher’s target. (-2 rounds)

Not to be outdone, upstaged, or unimpressive, the PI draws a bead and fires the hand cannon she’s come to appreciate.  Instead of effective grace,, Sam’s shot lifts the Listener’s head from his shoulders in a spray of yuck that leaves a spinal stump at the top of a rapidly tilting torso.  Big bullets, big wounds. (-1 round)

———

Pandora doesn’t dance.  Who has time for that nonsense?  Everywhere she goes is rage.  Especially now with all the noise and urges running through her head.  So she rages into the space the Listeners occupy.  For every bit that the Listeners are silent, Pandora screams.  Ringo can make out her wordless howl above the gunfire ripping through the shitty apartment.  It’s even money on whether or not MDR and her ‘runner can hear the Solo on the floor below.

Ringo drops to the floor to avoid the spray of bullets Pandora unleashes, then lunges forward  and throws her own shots into the mix.  One of the LIsteners gets a lucky shot, hitting Ringo in the shoulder as she rolls, but she’s not out.  She takes the impact, lets the force carry her through a door way where she’s suddenly confronted with the body of a middle aged woman in a hospital bed hooked up to a slew of machines.  There would be time for more if the Listener “nurse” attending the mirror eyed patient was coming at her with a scalpel and a set of Rippers.

Below that maelstrom, Caldwell is drawn to the stack of servers like a moth to a flame.  He doesn’t waste time.  He jacks in immediately and attacks the network.  Monica moves to cover, massaging her wound with one hand, positive that there’s no possible way she is alone down here.

She’s proved right when the bedroom door opens and a Listener emerges.  Small and wiry, the guy races across the floor, bounding like a monkey on meth or a greyhound on steroids.  Her last impression before the fists and feet start flying is of sharpened metal teeth below shining reflective eyes.

———

Whisper doesn’t dance to the same music that Orlova finds such delicious movement in.  There is way less legato and way more staccato in his motions.  Anything else is wasted movement.

Maybe it’s having Wolvers waved in his face, but the Solo’s first shot goes into the ceiling.  The second shot goes right where Whisper wants it.  Right into the armpit of his adversary.  Finding the line right where kevlar meets fabric, the Beretta’s bullet punches into unarmored flesh and tracks a path right through both lungs before deflecting off a scapula and doing some internal ping pong that really gets the job done.  It’s over before the body hits the floor. (-2 rounds)

Above Whisper, Kenji lines up his shot on the remaining shithead and lets another burst fly.  At point blank range (and using the correct rules) the blast chews the Listener to pieces.  The first nine rounds find a home in their target, the collapsing body falling into the line of fire and pieces and chunks fly into the air.  Martin is forced to raise a hand and still manages to get decorated with kinetically accelerated bits of person.  Only the tenth round misses.  Mainly because there isn’t anything left to hit. (-10 rounds)

For all his swagger, Lube is left with nothing to shoot at.  He would have if the others hadn’t been so effective.

At the bottom of the stairs, Martin takes the opportunity and momentary calm to scout his surroundings.  Towards the server room the hallway goes to black, fading out towards a reinforced door that the solo’s eyes pick out of the gloom.  The other direction runs down a hall before opening to double doors.  Rapidly flickering light comes out of that room.  Several gurneys are stacked against the wall outside the door.

And a familiar sense of dread comes ripping through the crew.  The same fear from the other Listener enclave, only this time its ramped up to 11.  The Demon God of the Machines is watching and coming to claim souls.  Martin and Alex are positive, absolutely positive, that they are going to die.  Now.  And receive judgement for their sins of flesh.  Viceroy curls into a ball and sobs.  Only Kenji manages to shake off the effects and even he’s scared.  There’s a presence in this place.  One that shouldn’t exist in this world.

(OOC effects of fear:  Lube, Whisper, and Viceroy are at -5 to all rolls and can only move at half speed.  A second Resist Torture roll at DV15 can be attempted in 5 rounds)

Alex's amygdala hijack took a different form than Viceroy, in that he started blasting rather wildly with his shotgun, while backing away and yelling repeatedly in Spanish..

"¡Vete a la mierda!"

"¡Vete a la mierda!"

"¡Vete a la mierda el diablo!"

OOC: Retreating while blasting, even with the -5.  Sorry if I shoot anyone in the back!
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 17:10, Thu 21 Apr 2022.

Fear snatches at Kenji's guts, but doesn't quite get a grip. He's more startled by Lube Job's response to what the medic is quickly concluding must be some sort of psychic attack. Kenji side-steps out of the panicking tech's shotgun attacks, reloads, shouts,

"Chill, people! We're good! The Listeners are fuckin' with our heads! We're good!"

-

Sam's buzzing with adrenaline, an all natural high. She makes brief eye contact with Nyx, raises an eyebrow to say, "Hey, we're not a bad team." Returning her undivided attention to the perimeter, she transmits,

"Pulpo, any more Listeners outside the building?"

-

Nyx turns her eye away from the dead and the dying around her long enough to catch the look that her team mate throws in her direction, offers a brief nod of her head, an equally mute response to the silent raising of eyebrow. Though she’s accustomed to working alone - there are reasons why those in her profession are called Solos - she’s not against teaming up from time to time, when the circumstances warrant it. Perhaps this is the start of beautiful friendship. Perhaps.

While her new found team mate calls in for further targets Nyx goes through a routine that oozes symmetry, the katana in her hand twirling as it finds its way back into the sheath on her back, her movements oozing practiced precision, no need to look for the sheath, she simply knows where it is, guides tip of blade into back into its cocoon, releases her grip, lets the sword slide into its home.

At the same time the thumb on her other hand presses down on the release for the Makabet’s magazine, the partly spent one popping out just in time to be caught by hand that had held the katana until a moment ago, that hand carrying out a deft switchover, exchanging spent magazine for fresh one as Nyx turns to Cipher, hisses. ”They have anything for us?”

“Perimeter is clear, chica,” Pulpo intones.  There’s a pregnant pause, and Sam’s knows the word that coming next. “Buuuut one of my little birds is following that van that peeled out and it’s headed back.  Quick math on that is about five minutes.”

The bodies around the women all bear the common mark of the Listener conversion.  Mirrored cyber eyes and a general lack of vocal activity.  Being dead might be affecting the second bit of evidence a smidge.

There, at the very edge of their perception is the feeling that the world is watching them.  That they aren’t alone. It’s an uneasy feeling, but one that, at this distance, doesn’t provoke more than the thought that someone has walked over their graves.

——

Inside this Listener compound, Kenji struggles to get his crew back under control.  The appeals to reason and logic don’t seem to be having much effect.  Lube drops several shotgun rounds into random space, shattered acoustic tiles and feather bits of what is hopefully not asbestos descend from the ceiling.  Pieces of concrete peel off the walls. (-3 rounds)

The shotgun doesn’t have an immediate effect.  No ghosts materialize out of the ether.  No stealthed solo emergent with a soul steeling blade.  At the base of the stairs, Martin’s cyberears take the pummeling in stride, each blast causing the system to override any aural signal heading for his cortex.  In between the blasts panic reigns.  Within the blasts, there is a split second of clarity.  The last remaining logic of a panicked mind switches off all aural input, rendering Whisper temporarily deaf.

It’s worth it.  The dread falls away leaving an oily biochemical residue of adrenalin and bile.

Infrasonic. The word peels across his awareness like distant page of an encyclopedia.

Now just to block the signal from getting to Lube and Viceroy.

The flickering light at the end of the hall changes shape, shadows occluding the light source.  Someone is coming.

———

Pandora crashes into the Listener closest to her, enhanced musculature blasting the bastard across the room.  The solo follows, gunfire following her from the remaining guard, each round chewing a hole in water stained drywall.  Black mold suddenly finding itself airborne colonizes multiple respiratory system causing problems for another day.  As her prey rises, Pandora grabs the back of his head with a fist of righteous anger and begins searching for wall studs with the poor bastard’s face.

Across the apartment, Ringo takes one step back and drops, feet coming up for a judo toss of the scalpel wielding psycho coming at her.  It’s a deft move, and one that works well.  She’s able to fling her attacker back into the living room, bouncing the Listener off a couch and fucking up the aim of the remaining gunman.  Rising to her feet, she blows her bangs out of her eyes with a puff of breath and rolls back into the furball.

Downstairs, Karma is dealing with the universe settling some debts.  Needle Teeth McBiterson gets a mouth full off Monica’s gauntlet, the sharpened maw cutting through the Armorjack MDR wears for protection and gets a mouthful of blood and Kevlar fibers for his trouble.  He finishes off with a rabbit punch to her kidneys that feels 100% not amazing.  With his head attached to her arm, Monica eschews fancy shit, grabs the back of collar and starts ramming her knee into his jaw repeatedly, each strike jamming his teeth farther into her arm.

“Fucking worth it!” she screams in his eyes, just catching her distorted face in the curved surface of his eyes.

Something does not feel right but Tri doesn’t know what. That in itself is as disconcerting as the sense of unease that pricks at the back of her neck, makes the fine hairs on her arms stand up in alarm.

”You see anyone else? Hear anyone?” she asks her team mate, her own artificially augmented eyes darting from left to right, a booted foot stepping in the detritus of brain matter that was slowly oozing out of one of the corpses at her feet, his unseeing eyes staring up at her. ”If not let’s get back inside.”

"Listener van is about 5 minutes out," Cipher reports, passing along Pulpo's aerial surveillance report. She tries not to look at the fallen gangoons as she reloads the big Militech.

Being closer to the door, she re-enters the building first, well aware that the entry team hadn't cleared the whole floor before heading down to the sub-levels.

-

With the shotgun ineffective and almost out of rounds, Cruz, still in full fuckin' panic mode, lifted it up over his head and back, then flung it as hard as he could toward anything hostile downrange.  Then he started to run.  Like cops on your ass running.  Back the way he came.

Kenji's startled to see a shotgun whip overhead from out of frame. He turns his head enough to see Lube Job in full retreat. Whisper, however, appears to be in control of his faculties. It's decision time.

"You still with me?" Kentucky asks.

[Assuming the affirmative; if not, I will edit]

The hallway is a chokepoint, a funnel. The vet takes a knee, behind the doorjamb, takes aim down the passageway. As soon as the Listener point goon appears, Kenji fills the corridor with supersonic projectiles. If he manages to take down #1, he'll adjust, repeat until the last Listener is down or the mag runs dry (and he has to reload).

Kentucky
One knee, behind partial cover
Full-auto fire at each Listener that appears in front of him

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:48, Sat 14 May 2022.

Lube runs for his life.  Shotgun discarded, he moves at an impressive clip.  The steps vanish two at a time and he explodes into the lobby.  Conveniently, there’s an exit directly across from the steps and the tech goes screaming towards the door at full tilt.  His progress is called into question when a pair of women enter that his evolved brain recognizes even as the lizard brain continues screaming that he’s going to die.

At this distance the screaming is manageable.  Fear decreases, at Lube is able to react closer to his baseline, though no one could ever make the mistake of describing his actions as normal.

Cipher and Nyx arrive to the fear sweating Lube trying to barrel through them.  There at the edge of their consciousnesses they can feel the same promise of death awaiting them below.

———

At the base of the stairs, Kenji readies his ambush, Whisper scrambling for cover next to him in his own world of silence.  The duo waits.  They don’t have to wait long.

A robed Listener emerges and draws immediate fire, Kentucky holding the trigger down on his SMG.  Bullets hammer down the hallway, the first catching the Listener right in the chest.  The bullet skips right off the armored vest covering the blood and ichor coated robe.  The next six or seven rounds disappear behind the Listener.  The final two slam into the emerging form of Mesa. (-10 rounds)

Mesa fills the doorway, rough full borg conversion leaking rage into the hall and fluids onto the floor.  Mesa snarls with one half of his jaw, the other side held together with a bandage.  The grenade launcher in his hand is bad fucking business for all involved.
Kenji’s final bullet tears a bit of flesh off what little flesh is left on the freak.

For his part, Whisper knows who to shoot.  Fuck the tech priest.  That dude is picking debris off his chest with ripper enhanced hands.  Mesa is the threat.  Underneath the shockwaves of submachine gun rounds going off overhead, Martin overclocks his reflexes, gives a little shout out to the gods of technology, and fires a pair of rounds at Mesa’s forehead.  Not wanting to die, the solo pushes all the luck he can find in the world down range with his bullets.  (-2 rounds, -3 luck points)

Both rounds strike.  Mesa’s head snaps back as the Berreta’s bullets rip chrome from his right cheek and scalp.  The psycho goes down to a knee, maw widening in shock and pain.  The launcher comes up.  And fires.

A single canister thumps out, accelerates down the hall under it’s own power, and detonates in a smash of metal flechettes.  The three Edgerunners in the stairs dive in various directions (or curl up tighter into a ball) in an attempt to avoid the spray.  Metal shards meet ceramic plates and woven fibers.  And somehow each of the trio manages to avoid major injury.

The tech priest comes in howling soundlessly, angry and those that would thwart their diving mission.  He falls upon Kentucky with his Rippers, slashing this way and that.  Dodging the first slash proves to be effortless.  The metal shards covering the floor prove to ruin the footing necessary to dodge the second.  Reinforced metal scrape across Kentucky’s already hammered ArmorJack but fail to penetrate.

At the far end of the hall, Mesa’s eyes clear as pain inhibitors come online.  He’s not out yet.

The last shotgun blast attenuates the fear like a DJ flicking a volume slider.  Somewhere in the soup of fear neurotransmitters, it's enough of a clue for Martin to overdrive his audio dampers.  The crawling dread cuts off abruptly.  "Infrasonics," he sends.  It's all the warning he has bandwidth to provide.

The greater part of his awareness is consumed by the problem of the cyberpsycho with a fucking grenade launcher.  Getting within arm's reach of Mesa is potentially terminal, but so is giving him a chance to reload and drop another HE round into the stairwell.  So Martin moves, sprinting toward Mesa before the Listener can regain his feet.  He swaps the Consigliere to his left hand,  draws the heavier weapon that Mesa's chrome calls for, and lines up on the bridge of the gleaming metal nose...

Militech Adjudicator (very heavy pistol) [9/8 AP ammo]
Moving to just outside of arm's reach of Mesa, one face shot
Combat Awareness 5: Initiative Reaction 5 (+5 to Initiative rolls)
Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [3/8] in off hand

"Tampons!  I need tampons!" Cruz said to Cipher and Nyx, as he shuttered to a stop, still trembling a bit from the surge of adrenaline coursing through his system.  "A couple or three should do," he added, not bothering to address any quizzical looks or surprised expressions.

Cruz held out an outstretched hand - his meat hand - as his tool hand came up, various finger instruments ready to slice and dice the cotton internals of any offerings into pairs of ersatz earplugs.

Too close for guns. Switching to fists.

Kenji's not a brawler, but he can throw down when the need arises. The need has arisen. He rebounds from the impact of the technopriest's wolvers- every action has an equal and opposite reaction- and throws a looping hook aimed at the side of the Listener's bald dome. If he can connect, create some space, he'll try a quick draw, put some more rounds into the cultist cleric at point blank range. If he can't get the gonk off of him, he'll continue to pummel away with whatever he can- fists, elbows, knees- even a headbutt, if there's no other option.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 15:25, Wed 01 June 2022.

Sam's momentarily taken aback by Lube's request. It's not every day- or ever, really- that a man she's just met (a co-worker, no less) asks for tampons. But she remembers reading once about tampons being used, in a pinch, to plug gunshot wounds way back in the day. If it's come to that- with a professional medtech on the team- then the mission is clearly fucked.

Lube's lucky it's almost that time of the month.

She reaches into a jacket pocket, produces a She-Rahgé ^(TM) regular, places it in the tech's outstretched meat hand.

-

Nyx can feel the fear. It’s like a tangible thing that crawls - no, slithers - up her spine like a serpent, causing her to shiver as it teases a trickle of cold sweat from her skin, the Krasnoyarsk killer feeling those rivulets as they journey slowly downwards. Something malevolent lurks here and it is fucking with her head.

”Where are others?” she snaps as Lube demands tampons - tampons? - and Cipher hands them over. She can hear the familiar sounds of havoc and mayhem erupting from the stairs, the cacophony of presumed violence serving as answer of sorts. So presumably the others were not dead. Yet. Again, the fear taunts her, its tendrils seeming to reach into her soul, to peel away the layers of mental armour that she has tried to protect herself with, to lay her inner mind bare.

”Ot’yebis" Gutter street Russian spills from her lips, the expletive hissed, directed not at either of her comrades but the unseen menace that whispers of impending doom. A fraction of a heartbeat later there’s the sound of katana sliding from sheath. The sidearm might be the wiser choice but the katana is part of her, an extension of her body. The feel of the hilt in her hand is comforting as she moves rapidly towards the stairs without waiting for an answer, every step taking her deeper into the maelstrom that is messing with her head, her desire to chop the head from the serpent.

Preferably literally.

Combat under infrasonic assault continues to be hell.

Kenji rolls back on the balls of his feet, his SMG hanging loosely against his chest.  The medic may not posses cyberupgrades with blades, but he’s got fists.  The haymaker goes forward in what looks like absurdly slow motion, Kentucky’s gloved hand growing in the reflection of the priest’s eyes.  There is a moment of disbelief where Kenji realizes this guy isn’t even going to bother dodging and the fist connects with a crack.

Pain blasts up Kenji’s arm as the dermal plates under halt his fist cold.  Bruises will forming in the coming hours for sure.  Bare knuckle boxing may not be the best of all possible options.  Pivoting hard both physically and mentally, Kenji releases the clasp on his sling, grabs the barrel of his SMG, and proceeds to treat the Listener like a baby seal.  The short barreled weapon comes down in a vicious arc ending on the priest’s body.  He gets some give on that one, a twist of pain on his target’s face.

The Priest slumps back a split second before renewing his own assault, two quick slashes from his Rippers, the scalpel blades gleaming in the light.  If his luck with his fist was bad, Kenji’s luck with his feet holds and he’s able to twist away without furthers scuffs or scratches.

Next to his partner, Whisper continues his face to face fight with a cyber psycho.  He’s faster than the freak, that’s for sure, Solo talent counting for something here.  The huge barrel of the Adjudicator comes around and Whisper squeezes the trigger, fully aware that it’s the best shot he’s going to get at putting this beast down.  It’s beautiful lineup.  So is Mesa’s attempt to not have his brains fully exit his skull.  The shot goes wide. (-1 round)

Mesa might be smiling, it’s hard to tell under the ichor on his face and the metal monstrosity of a jaw.  There’s a clank as the dude discards his launcher.  Two massive fists come up as Mesa dives forward, settling for body shots.  Whisper must have a golden horse shoe jammed into his armor somewhere because both shots come up with nothing but air.  This isn’t over yet.

Upstairs, Nyx strides forward like a spirit of divine vengeance, quick steps eating up the distance to the stairs.  Fear crawls through her, but fear is nothing new, nothing that can’t be handled.  The assassin passes Viceroy trying to crawl up the steps, snot and tears running down her face as sobs wrack her body.   At the base of the stairs, Whisper and Kenji fight for their lives.  She considers joining in the fight, but the door cracks open at the other end of the hall to reveal another Listener.  He wears robes like the guy Kenji is beating with his SMG, but his are emblazoned with some sort of religious bullshit.  Two posts rise from his back, 18” over his head, an inch wide.  Flags flutter from them, waving in an invisible breeze that moves in time with the beat of fear in her heart.    His strides match the assassin’s beat for beat, violence for violence.  Only this guy is pulling a monofilament whip out of his hand.

For Nyx, this is about to get fun.

Tampons safely pushed deep into his ears, Lube trudges forward next to Cipher.  The fear starts cranking up almost instantly, like his body remembers that it’s supposed to be terrified right now.  For Cipher, she’s gripped with ice pouring down her spine and surrounding her very soul, torments promised, death in the downstairs.  Each step they take gets them closer to certain death.  They can see Viceroy four eternal steps away as she cries for them to pull her out of the underworld.  They’re not sure they’ll make it.

Lube gets ready to gut through it all when the corner of his eye catches movement.  The nice thing about being scared shitless is you’re already primed to hit the ground.  The tech sags, pulling Cipher down with him just as a drone shrieks down the hall and sprays the two of them with a burst of gunfire that chews the wall away right over their heads.

Looks like there’s plenty of death promised upstairs too.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:44, Sat 04 June 2022.

Lube's gonna want that, a corner of Martin's brain notes as the grenade launcher hits the floor.  The rest of his attention is on not getting pulped by whatever strength enhancements Mesa is packing.  He backpedals toward Kenji's knife fight to get a couple of steps out of gun fu range and fires again over a flash sight picture.

Militech Adjudicator (very heavy pistol) [8/8 AP ammo]
Moving out of arm's reach of Mesa, one shot to center of mass
Combat Awareness 5: Initiative Reaction 5 (+5 to Initiative rolls)
(Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [3/8] in off hand)

This message was last edited by the player at 20:31, Sat 04 June 2022.

Kenji drops to one knee and, doing his best Night City Slammers imitation, swings his subgun through the technopriest's patela...

If this manages to drop the goon, Kenji'll hop to his feet and try to put two through its chrome-plated dome.

-