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L'avion un suborbe, pas un semi-balliste parce que ceux-ci étaient effrayants pour l'Éveillé, mais assez rapide; quatre heures et demie dans un jetliner supersonique à l'étroit, avec une cabine si étroite qu'il avait deux sièges de chaque côté de l'allée seulement.
Un scan rapide des autres passagers a confirmé les types de sararaiman pour la plupart, et il s'était habillé d'un casual col roulé et costume qui était à la mode et l'a fait se fondre directement dans les 'locals' qui étaient absorbés dans leurs interfaces de réalité augmentée pour la plupart. Et un mec qui aurait dû avoir un implant micro subvocal alors qu'il parlait affaires, mais à peu près tout le monde avait les moyens de l'arranger bien, sauf les stewards.
Les baguettes dans une routine régulée de relaxation des battements de cœur-muscles ont réussi à faire passer le temps par très bien. Un contrôle rapide de l'astral a montré un plus grand nombre d'éveils que d'habitude, mais cela devait être attendu. Pourtant, pour autant qu'il puisse le dire, corp des types de mage hermétique ou similaire. Le caprice des moteurs s'éteignit dans l'astral, où les lueurs montèrent. Il n'y avait pas beaucoup d'activité spirituelle dans une cabine d'avion, mais il y avait une vue ci-dessous, par la brume et l'énergie, du paysage au décollage et pendant l'approche pour l'atterrissage.
L'Islande avait un look et une sensation très différents, une ambiance nouvelle et inconnue. Il était sensible aux rythmes de la terre, même s'il n'était pas chaman, et le premier pas se sentait lourd. Le voyage à Reykjavik de Cheyenne a été un coup droit; du Conseil Sioux à la Nation d'aléoute polaire trans. Mais alors que Reykjavik faisait partie du NAN, l'Islande était sa propre entité culturelle, et extrêmement extraterrestre. Le passeport Sioux l'a fait passer avec un examen plus léger qu'à l'extérieur du NAN, mais ce n'était pas comme s'ils s'étaient donné des signes de main ou n'importe quelle merde que les victimes ont dépeint comme. L'agent des douanes n'était pas blonde, mais elle était aux yeux bleus et certainement nordique, ainsi que beaucoup d'autres.
- Oui.
Les trois derniers jours ont été passés dans une petite ville de villégiature s'imprégnant de choses sur l'Islande comme les bains chauds; boue jusqu'au cou et un peu d'alcool, la boisson du diable a été socialement désapprouvée de Cheyenne et le reste des terres Sioux. Ce n'était pas seulement un exercice de détente, mais une bonne excuse pour avoir une idée des habitants, de la terre et du cycle de jour-nuit vraiment merdique. C'était cool de voir le ciel étoilé de la piscine refroidie par géothermie et d'obtenir autrement des roulements. Il a été traité comme un étranger, mais ce n'était pas si mal -- Frisco, quand Saito a couru l'endroit, et même avant, grandissant, était putain hostile, jusqu'à la nuit de l'enfer le jour de la libération, quand les gangs chinois ont braqué sur le personnel de Japanacorp et le corps a envoyé des agents de sécurité pour recueillir des oreilles métahumaines.
L'endroit avait l'air nautique, ce qui lui rappelait Frisco. Les types d'universités, le groupe nordique habituel. Mais il ne s'en est pas vraiment sorti -- pas de plumes dans les cheveux, pas de peinture de guerre, et il est allé avec une paire de jeans et un bon manteau chaud pour garder le gel hors. Il pouvait passer pour quelqu'un qui faisait son diplôme ici, un peu plus âgé que certains des autres étudiants, mais plausible. Barre du collège, selon la recherche tiré de la grille, pas un joint de coureur durci. Chopsticks ne se plaignait pas d'une réunion de jour dans une partie assez inoffensive de la ville avec certains types d'universités.
Il n'était jamais parti, même si ses deux parents l'avaient fait. Il ressemblait un peu à la Silicon Valley que sa mère habitait quand elle était en vie, un endroit plein de garage-hackers frapper le logiciel pour le corps sous contrat, des trucs dangereux de bord de saignement. Ils ont fait la fête, mais pas sauvagement et dangereusement, parce que beaucoup de types d'universités locales étaient sur le chemin de l'emploi... probablement avec S-K, le grand par ici.
Au fil des ans, il avait appris que les réflexes câblés pouvaient être installés avec un interrupteur pour les prendre hors ligne, et le sam de rue qui avait ce commutateur juré par elle, parce que l'alternative était de vivre constamment câblé, un esclave de vos réflexes. Jetant les gens sur les choses avant même que vous vous rendiez compte que vous avez réagi, en gardant le dos au mur pour éviter d'être surpris par l'action du genou. Ce qu'il avait n'était pas de la même façon, mais il avait tous appris à apprécier l'équivalent magique d'apprendre à faire ça, à laisser tomber tout ça. Il s'en est donc emparé, plutôt que de rouler avec une sorte de grâce éthérée et de rester comme un pouce douloureux; les coureurs dangereux et les barreaux d'université étaient incongrues.
Un tas de coureurs se réunissaient ici, bien sûr, mais ça ne voulait pas dire qu'ils devaient s'en tenir à plus qu'ils ne l'ont déjà fait.
Donc il a commandé la pisse locale et a eu un siège près de la rue Sam avec un clin d'œil. Ils avaient tous des dossiers l'un sur l'autre, mais ça n'a pas raconté toute l'histoire. L'affliction brutale de l'humanité l'a laissé froid au niveau instinctif. L'information du dossier était basique, mais le premier contact visuel était instructif, alors même qu'il a forcé un clin d'œil semi-friendly. Il était très peu armé, parce que c'était censé être une belle réunion civilisée, mais il se demandait s'il était sous-armé. Avec des types de cadavres qui gardent un œil sur l'endroit et les flics locaux montrant des signes forts d'influence S-K, il ne voulait pas pousser l'enveloppe.
C H A R A C T E R S H E E T 

Gordon Chen Good-Crow | 33 | Human (Amerind/Chinese)
"No artificial additives, omae!"
Alias:
Chopsticks
Appearance:
Average height, average build, indeterminate ethnic-mix of a few different things. He blends in well enough in Seattle and can pass for Asian or Amerindian pretty easily either way. His clothing tends toward jeans and brown leather work boots, and a fringed brown leather jacket. As Amerindian chic is a look that draws little comment in Seattle, he manages to pass off as a Salish-Shidhe native among those that aren't astute enough to tell the difference, and those who are tend to be other natives who aren't going to tell others the difference. He wears his head in a messy shag that can easily be combed down into corporate respectability, and that's the thing with Chen Good-Crow; he likes to blend in.
Background:
A mixed-race physical adept born to a pair of Berkeley grad students who were both in the engineering and computer programming field, George was raised primarily by his mother in the Free State, who worked for Ares, one of the few non-Japanese Corps in the region. During his teenage years, his mother was fried by Black IC (it was wired matrix back then) and he moved in with his uncle Jiang. During this time, he managed to get into trouble, as a teenager, with the JIS occupation forces, spraypainting grafitti or something of that nature, and he was duly shipped off to his father, a Sioux government-employed programming and security expert in Cheyenne.
Despite being surrounded by very techy parents all his life, he was identified in Sioux nation as having awakened capabilities and he was raised in the ways of the Sioux, which embraced magic to a much greater degree than Japanese-Occupied Frisco ever would. As he grew older, as was the case with any Sioux citizen upon turning 18, he was inducted into the Sioux Defense Force. As a physical adept, once his capabilities were assessed and tested, he volunteered to serve in the Wildcats, the Sioux Nation's special operations unit and border patrol, a unit highly different from its peers in that it integrated shamanistic magic into its arsenal and concentrated on asymmetric warfare methods, particularly as the Native American Nations, which the Sioux were a part of, was surrounded by larger, dangerous neighbors with more developed economies. Platoons of Wildcats operated in a variety of places doing a variety of jobs, particularly during the events surrounding Crash 2.0 in 2064. He doesn't discuss this. It's not common knowledge in the runner community. Braggers tend to be floaters.
Years later, Chen Good-Crow returned to Frisco, after serving his stint, and became involved in the runner world when he hooked up with some of his old buddies from Chinatown. He went SINless and he was part of a team, working for, largely, the Triads. Their last run was a setup; they were being paid to extract a specific person by another corp, but that specific person turned out to be a plant that Mitsuhama was trying to put into Telestrian Industries, whom the team was employed by. While the run was successful, the Mitsuhama agent made things very uncomfortable for Chopsticks' team as they were suspected as complicit in the plot that was primarily the doing of the Johnson, whose family was held by Mitsuhama, and the Telestrian exec that the Johnson conned, who was trying to tie up the loose ends. The team was put into a position of having to bring down JIS heat on them while clearing themselves of the setup; the upshot of it was that they were a little too high-profile to keep working in the Bay Area as they were on the radar.
As General Saito's regime, the California Protectorate, was collapsing, he got involved in work outside of Frisco itself that still required good 'community' connections with both ends of the pipeline. He spent much of 2068-69 doing runs on behalf of elements in the NAN moving weapons and tech from Pueblo territory into Triad hands in Cali, though he avoided the city directly. He suspected an Ares connection, but never dug too deeply -- the pay was good -- and he never asked the Triads what they were going to do with the weapons, even though he damn well knew there was a war between the Triads and the Yakuza in Frisco and LA. Occasionally, some more direct action type operations happened, as well as snatch and grabs. The pay was right and he took it, using his ratlines into the Free States to ship people out -- they were either looking to get out of the Free State or another corp was looking to take advantage of the chaos to take talent from the Japan Corps. Out of a sense of national pride, he didn't feel comfortable working with the Japanese, despite approaches.
When the dust settled, with the heat on a little too heavy for him in Cali, he decided it was time to disappear into Salish-Shidhe lands for a quiet year, letting the heat die down while taking small jobs. All the same, he was contacted there by a Johnson that wanted him to work in Seattle, and is working to put together a team of runners that can carry out this sort of work.
Skills:
As a physical adept, Chopsticks isn't easy to see coming. His reflexes aren't cybered, but he can react in the too-fast ways of some adepts. He doesn't have augments for spurs or something like a street sam, he's able to hit hard, and he is particularly good at counterattacks. His hand to hand is 'elevated' and he is a believer in the element of surprise. He can see in the Astral and engage threats there physically, but is perfectly adept with a firearm. A Street Sam with the right mods is going to be faster and stronger, but not nearly so discreet as Chopsticks can be. As he likes to put it, "No artificial additives, omae!" Unlike a samurai, people don't see him coming. He's not tottering around scanning things and singing "If I only had a heart!"
He speaks Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin and Lakota in addition to English. Native Japanese tend to get a snotty attitude about his accent though. Too Bay-Area. Most of his experience as a runner is in courier work and extractions of corporate personnel, a sort of forced career move of researchers and other useful personnel assets.
Beyond that, not that he advertises, he was a Wildcat, he's run with some of the toughest hombres in the North American special operations community and holds his own. They're rough, they're tumble, they're not Red Samurai -- chrome out the yingyang is not the Sioux way. Push comes to shove, he's a warrior to the bone and a damn fine shot that doesn't -need- to rely on a smartlink.
Also, he is a really good snowboarder. You never know when that might come up.

Equipment:
- Ares/Colt M1911A1 reproduction with custom work done to it. It's a popular gun out West, so Ares still makes them, albeit with modern materials and modern-velocity loads.
- PDA
- Earpiece for the phone.
- Display for the PDA in his glasses.
- Pretty nondescript street wear, some very discreet body armor.
- Custom fighting knife, made to spec. Weight, grip, blade length and shape all custom.
- Shock gloves.
- Basic fake SIN for "Michael Clear-Skies" of the Salish that gets him around in the most basic fashion. It won't hold up to a deep check.
- Sig M230 (SiG License version of the M23 Colt). Includes a SOPMOD kit, along with Daniel Defense (Ares Subsidiary) RIS and modified adjustable stock. Shadowland may claim M23's are cheap ganger stuff, but what do a bunch of deckers really know about firepower? For when the shit hits the fan.
- Similarly, a multicam plate carrier with various attachments for a SHTF scenario, because it's kind of obvious tactical gear, and even if runners make it chic he avoids. Even in a high intensity situation, he still generally wears a t-shirt and jeans with the web gear.
General Nonsense:
Chen is new to New Reykjavik but has a basically good reputation in the shadows. His biography is not just out there for the reading. He doesn't take jobs with the Japan corps and stays away from wetwork and anything that smells too funny. Wildcats, current and former, tend to shut the hell up about their unit by tradition.
Notable event: While snowboarding and smoking weed near Mt. Shasta, Chopsticks and a Frisco buddy ran into Hestaby, who was very taken with the homemade snowboards. She wasn't wearing a nametag or anything in human form, but it's still a cool story. Few are the people who have snowboarded with a Great Dragon. Or at least, that's what he claims.