So it turns out even laying low in a safe house eating beans out the can burns a hole in your pocket, so I took this offer for some freelance work, figured it would keep me sharp if nothing else. I get to the meet-up and it's some throwback diner with a bunch of weirdos hangin outside. Of course, thanks to the cruelties of fate, these marks turned out to be my co-workers.
First guy was actually a guy had heard of back in my days on the force, 'Crazy Otto' of precinct 17. He seems a bit naive for the shadows, and I don't get the whole courier thing, but he sure knows his way around a SAW. The next was some former cubanisto witch doctor. Bit of an attitude on him, but he knows his magic, and he saved my ass, so I guess I owe him one. The last guy was harder to read, my guess is another ex-cop, but he wasn't too forthcoming, and his taste in cyber is… weird. Knew his way around a deck, though, and truth be told his information retrieval skills carried my sorry ass through most of this case.
Yeah I said case, turns out I still have to bring in killers even when I'm a fugitive, new day, same shit. Oscar Gold, some suit with the OU hires us to track down the whack job who's been killing Knight Errant high-flyers and making off with their kids. Not that I'm ever sad to see former competition getting picked off, but if you start slaughtering families and kidnapping small boys in the night, you need dealt with, cash incentive or not.
I drive over to crime scene one and blag my and the mage's way past the KE gorilla on door duty with some bullshit, while the dwarf checks the matrix. Doesn't take long for us to figure out this guy is awakened and was friendly with the victims before he redecorated their homes Myers style. A little more digging found our man, some vamp with grudge against KE had been posing as kid's tutor before killing the happy family and claiming the boy as his own as payback for his dead wife, textbook grief case.
Murder house two was vulture central when we got there, so we'd hit a dead end with leads. I should have read the pattern, I should have thought about his next move, I was a goddamned idiot, tried to bate him into a sting, which of course he had no interest in. It was only once we'd traced his link to the woods, and seen him start to move after sundown, did I have the bright idea to scope out the home of our likely next victim.
Even when we got to the house, I wasn't thinking straight, didn't play my defender's advantage, didn't get vamp-killing gear, nothing. Thank christ the mage thought to make a stake at a home wear store while we waited. At least I was right to watch the house, cus soon enough our man was strolling down the street.
Blood suckers are fucking hard to kill. we musta hit him with enough lead, fire and fists to drop an ornary troll, and the bastard just turned to mist and came back fine. The magic, too, was bad. Punk tried mindfucking me first, before throwing acid around, including onto my car! He just soaked hit after hit, until I got the 12-gauge and knocked him to the sidewalk. You wouldn't think getting stuck with a pointy stick would do much, but not long after fuego got him, that sucker was melting down to bones, just like in the trids.
We left the killer and enough evidence to convict, and split before the 'real' cops showed up. The pay was good, and we even got an in with the OU, but this job was a mess, I'm gonna have to get it together if I want to keep playing freelancer much longer. Maybe I'm gonna need more help than I thought.
Quote of the Run: 'My fucking car!'