SRM03-00 - Everyone's Your Friend IC

Each day brings something new in the five boroughs; today brings a job. As you get out of bed, your commlink is showing a message left from a few hours ago. The Access-ID information reads Peace Man and shows a picture of a young male ork in a hand-spun shirt. "Peace, man. I heard you needed a job, and some folks from outta town were looking for help. Can you meet me in the morning at the Apple Press. Nine-ish should be good. Oh, and it’s on the corner of 17th and Broadway. Thanks..."

Jinx woke up around 7 am due to the flashing on his night-stand. His 'link was flashing a message, but what he needed first was a cup of soy café. This was way too early to be dealing with such things. He stumbled groggily from his bed and into the living room hardly noticing the half naked ork girl lying next to him.

Uhg he thought as he awkwardly walked into the living room, How much did I have to drink last night?

Walking over to the food processor in the kitchen, he punched the button for a coffee. As the machine fired up, he looked into his cupboard to find a mug, but it was empty. He looked into the sink and eventually found one that seemed relatively clean. That's when the coffee started pouring! He quickly shoved the mug under the stream before too much hit the floor.

I'll clean that up later. Walking back into the living room, Jinx moved to sit on the couch. It had seen better days, and was currently occupied by some elf-poser wannabe rocker who was twitching like he'd just slotted a beetle. Kicking the kid's legs off one of the cushions, Jinx gingerly lowered himself and breathed the aroma of the soy café in deeply. Letting out a long sigh of pleasure, Jinx finally put the mug to his lips.

That's good stuff, he thought as the warm liquid rolled across his tongue and down into his core. He started to feel a little better after a few more long, slow pulls. Good enough to finally take a look at his 'link. That's when he noticed it was his hidden link that was blinking! Not a lot of people knew of this account. So, who could it be?

Ah, it was his fixer, Peace Man. Must be a job. It's about time, I'm almost busted. Jinx quickly scanned the message for hidden programs and threw in a decryption just for good measure. Everything seemed on the up-and-up, so he opened the message and had a gander at what Peace Man had to say.

Quote :

Peace, man. I heard you needed a job,

That's an understatement!

Quote :

and some folks from outta town were looking for help. Can you meet me in the morning at the Apple Press. Nine-ish should be good.

That gives me plenty of time to take a nap and get these free-loaders outta hear before I need to make my way over.

Quote :

Oh, and it’s on the corner of 17th and Broadway. Thanks..."

Jinx looked over at the kid on the couch. Might as well leave him be a bit, I'd just have to drag him outside anyway.

Walking back into his room, the ork-gril stirred and looked over at him. She was saying something in Or'zet, but he wasn't really paying attention. All he really heard was, "Again?" Jinx tilted his head and took a closer look at her. She was actually pretty cute for an ork. If only I had time to kill. He replied in his broken Or'zet, "Sorry, but I work now, you have to leave."

She didn't get as pissed as he'd thought she would. Maybe it was finally his lucky day? He stepped into the sonic shower to freshen up before heading out. This is exactly what I need right now. A nice scrub and I'll be right as rain. By the time he was done dressing, the ork-girl was dressed and trying to wake up the kid. Great! They know each other, this is making my day so much easier!

Jinx stepped over to the kitchen and grabbed another mug of soy café for the kid. He looked like he would need a few sips just to make it out the door. The girl had gotten him sitting up-right and muttering a bit by the time Jinx returned. Putting the mug into the kid's hand, Jinx walked back into his room, reached behind the headboard of his bed and pulled his Pred IV out. Slipping it into the holster in his jacket, Jinx strolled back out into the living room. He had maybe 30 minutes to get the meeting, but luckily he only lived a few blocks away and could walk it.

The kid was actually standing! This girl had the right stuff. Maybe he should try and remember her name? She threw him a big smile as he helped her get the kid to the elevator doors. He smiled back thinking, Well, at least I'll be on time for a change. Once they got to the ground floor, Jinx left the girl and kid to make their own way and he started walking over to E 17th & Broadway. He'd get there with at least 10 minutes to spare.

Firing up the AR on his tosser-link, Jinx did a quick browse through the news feeds to see anything might delay his arrival. So far, everything was looking clear. This really was his lucky day!

Hasty was not use to waking up early "shut uu..uup!" she mumbled to her com, somewhere under her bedding… Beeep! Beeep! Beeep! "Ok ok ok!" she reached around the sheets, looking for it with one arm lazily…

Finally she found it opened one Eye and then her head popped up “peace man? who the how’d they get this com code…? Must have been Grump, gave it too them.” She blew the hair out of her face… “Still… Nice sweater” she thought to herself… “17th, and Broadway, huh?” She sighed. That would take her at least twenty to thirty minutes flight time assuming winds were not a problem…

She hurried into the shower, which was not far from her bedroom. Hasty’s apartment was small and had been leased by Grump, as a proxy for Agatha Crumb. Whom till this day no one in the building had ever seen. Everyone knew nothing about her, and she liked it like that… The apartment was in the good part of town, but was overpriced for how small it really was this meant little to a pixie though... It was big and comfortable enough a hide away hole as any…

She flapped her gossamer wings, when she was done, feeling truly as though she had shaken the party grim from her body, and from her hair. She quickly picked up her form fitting body armor, and grabbed her bow… The message had said “Some people from out of town needed help” in what was from what she could tell china town the apple press. That she never herd of… “Best to scout out the area ahead of time look for ambush and stuff like that…” she reasoned with herself “Can never be to careful…” Grabbing her prize position the bladed bow on a wrack, and some arrows… “Should do, I doubt there will be any beefs, but you never can tell” She zipped out her window and engaged her stealth suit with the words "cloak... up…" then closed her window…

Watching her neighbors greet each other going to their normal wage slave jobs… It seemed nice to know someone it had been quite a bit of time since she left her school and assumed an alias. She’d gotten to the point where she knew no one really, well except for Grump… And there were a few bouncers at clubs, but she hardly knew them… Between jobs she would push people for money… Pushing someone was painless, and they never remembered who she was… They just felt like they had done a good deed for someone, and that made them feel good when they thought of it, moreover they would forget again… To put it short it was what she was taught to call “Influence” pushing someone was a contest of will and how much energy she could muster to overwhelm the will of others. Without alarming the person your pushing… (More on that later)

It was a miserably lonely existence for a pixie and she longed for fun and contact she wished something crazy would happen, and she would find herself an adventure worthy of song like on the trid for her shadowrunning had been more like mail carrying and small time theft… "Yeesh!” she thought as she flew off to the meeting…

Taurus had been sitting at home watching the Trid in his AR when the call had come, was still sitting there several hours later as the message beeped constantly in the corner of his AR before he'd even noticed it. He blinked his eyes, glancing about his appartment with it's cheap furniture, lack of any real entertainment and it's higher tech security system and noticed that once again the roof was leaking over in the south east corner of the room. Some how he couldn't bring himself to really care, nor do anything about it. What he did do however was spit out the betel gum he'd been chewing on the whole time, chewed on so long that the flavour had long left and the gum itself had actually started to disintegrate in his mouth, leaving a rather nasty taste behind. He washed the taste away with cheap beer that barely tasted better and had gone luke warm in his hand so long ago the condensation had even left the bottle.

He listened to the message at long last, paying partial attention to the show that was still on in the background while the message muted out the other sound so he could hear the voice message clearly. He grunted at what it said, didn't know who this 'Peace Man' was, didn't care. Job was a job and he was low on money, and worse yet bored out of his mind. Anything was better than sitting around at home simply zoning out. He briefly pulled up the driving directions to the place in his AR, set an alarm to wake him up 2 hours before the meet was supposed to take place and then finally peeled himself out of the chair he had been sitting in so long his legs had long gone numb and left him with needle pin pricks all over as he stood up. With the sleep regulator he didn't need much sleep in a day any more, but that only meant more often he had even more time to be bored out of his skull, and he'd driven away many of his friends several years ago.

The first thing he did as he made his way over to a metal trunk that held most of his gear, was to look up what the dress code for the meeting place was. Always paid to be attentive to such details, especially in a city as picky as Manhattan. As he began laying out his weapons and gear on his bed he called up his regular cabbie "Hey, need you at the door in order to get to <address Link> before 9am tomorrow morning. Pay you the usual rate, may need you to stay on station a bit so I can leave some stuff in your trunk during a meet and greet."

Taurus: A quick search on the Apple Press shows you the kind of clothing the patrons tend to wear: Handspun ponchos, synthetic hemp fabric vests, multicolored beanie hats, synthleather sandals, and tie-dye t-shirts.

When he saw what sort of clothing most patrons of the place wore, Taurus just grunted. Well, at least it made his choice of what to wear easy and so he just put aside his FFBA and armoured jacket. He wasn't going to get caught dead wearing that sissy tiedye and 'natural fiber' bull crap. Still, it wouldn't do to show up in something that would stand out tooo much so by keeping it 'casual' he'd at least look out of place, without looking horrifically so, such as if he'd shown up in a business suit or the like. Made the whole gear thing an easy sell too as he set aside his heavy, modified revolver and a Flash-Pak, along with a few speed loaders of gel rounds and loading the pistol itself with 4 gels, 3 EX-EX and 1 tracker.

That done he went back to his shows for a while to kill time before eventually taking a 'nap', since that's all he could really call the 4 hours of sleep a day he actually needed.

When she arrived at the meet area, Hasty was surprised at how colorful the cloths were on the patrons, and workers alike. Like club lights. it was interesting to watch. But she had work to do time for what grump referred to as recon... Always a good idea. Shadowrunners were known to have attitude you needed to be ready when meeting a new team. But she was sure she could at least win some of them over... The Johnson at the very least... She decided not to show herself unless neccery or when relevant...

Jinx walked right up to the corner of E 17th & Broadway. He looked quizzically around with a small furrow in this brow. His mapsoft was blinking that he had arrived, but he didn't see the place. He quickly scanned the store fronts on the other corners before thinking to turn around. After a few more minutes of looking like a lost tourist his eyes finally focused on the Apple Press. He'd walked right past it without a second thought!

Dreck, Peace Man's an alright guy... but does he always have to meet in these dirty hippie communes? I'm going to have to take this suit to the dry cleaners after this!

Steeling his face into a friendly smile, and secretly hoping the petulie stench would come out, Jinx slowly made his way into the Apple Press. His entrance was like a scene in a comedy trideo where the music stops and all the patrons turn to stare at the obviously out of place antagonist as he enters the seedy bar. But, instead of cold hard eyes, Jinx received a small smattering of nervous glances in a sea of confused stares and indignant blanches.

Well, Jinx thought to himself as he searched the crowed for Peace Man, at least most of them aren't corp wage-slaves.