Part 14: Trial & Tribulations
Part 14 - Trial & Tribulations
NEW MUSIC:

(Best experienced with headphones. There are no bad Jon Everist tracks in this game, even if Greed Zenith isn't necessarily the most memorable of the bunch.)

We're confronted by a guard roughly seven seconds after arriving at our destination. Maybe getting our name in the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest blown shadowrun in history will be enough to impress Luca's people.


Okay, guess we're in the clear. On a mission like this it's of utmost importance to avoid unnecessary attention to the last, so we need to act as inconspicuously as humanly possible. No one is allowed to suspect a thing.

[A low growl, amplified by the speakers in the guard's helmet, reverberates in your ears.]



[He drops his hand to the handle of his sidearm.]

We could've kept taunting him for no good reason which is funny but a little unprofessional:
quote:
That's your problem, not mine. It's a free city, I'll say what I want.
Yeah? And if I feel like it, I'll toss you in a holding cell and leave you there for a week. Try to resist, and I'll break both your legs while I'm at it. I'm Security here, chuckles. You're just a glorified janitor. Remember that.
I'm quaking in my boots, tough guy.
[His fingers hover over the grip of his sidearm, but only for a moment.]
If I hurt you, I'll have to fill out a lot of paperwork. I hate paperwork.

I hear you, we're not exactly here to shop and to have a cup of soykaf at the local café either. We'll be in and out before anyone even realizes we were there.





We can only hope Luca's people are watching right now, you don't get to see a master of infiltration at work every day.






We come across the person the guard was referring to a little ways into the small park area, standing between a pair of obelisks. In a JRPG this'd 100% be a boss fight spot.




Wow, she's real good at this, it's almost as if she really was just an ordinary woman instead of a scarred professional hired by a powerful organization.


Oh gotcha, workplace humor. "None", that's a, that's a good one. Good joke. Funny.



..."Electrician" isn't secret code for "badass rigger", is it.



So this is what Luca intended to be our real test from the start, huh. Maybe something like this was to be expected, but sending an ordinary civilian to do criminal work which carries a serious risk of real combat just to raise the stakes is kind of fucked up. We accepted this job knowing we can handle ourselves fine even when things don't go as expected, but having to watch over someone else as well makes things more complicated.






Y'know, usually one needs to wait until at least halfway through a shadowrun before everything suddenly turns into a horrible nightmare. We're seriously getting ahead of schedule here.




At the very least the remaining two people appear to have actual combat experience, even if they both seemingly picked "Berserker" at class selection. Poor Jana though, she sure has landed in a messed up situation.


[She gives you a small smile.]





If only this crew's brains and brawn had been divided more evenly amongst its members. Oh well, it looks like we've no choice but to play the hand we've been dealt to the best of our ability, even if the dealer himself has turned out to be crooked.



All things considered Jana is actually pretty good at firing handguns. She's straight up better at it than Glory even, though that maybe says more about the latter than the former.

Not that a piddly self-defense pistol is going to do much of anything against any actual threats. If things do go bad she'll probably be better off using her taser and patching people up with the pair of medkits she has on her person.

The building entrance is a little ways ahead and across the street. But before we follow our overeager friends inside, we'll take a quick look around the surroundings.

The building's west side has a fire escape which we make a mental note of should we have to make a hasty escape. No going in this way though.

Heading over to the east side, we get a confirmation that the whole thing about us being watched wasn't just to sound mysterious and cool. Relax man, we're just doing some reconnaissance.

The isometric view ensures that Firewing herself could have popped out for a smoke on the building's east side with us being none the wiser, but while we're in the neighborhood we stop by at the local café to have a cup of soykaf.





This magic picture is only visible to those with the Street etiquette or 3 Charisma. By the way for clarity's sake, I'll be bolding our approach of choice from here on out.




[She pauses, considering.]



Jolt is pretty much Haste in a bottle, giving the same +3 AP as Cram but divided over three turns and with a weaker secondary effect. This makes it more useful for spellcasters who usually have to work within the confines of cooldowns, but Cram's still king for those who can make full use of its effect. Of course you can always take both for a real good time.
We buy some as a souvenir, and order a ¥2 'kaf to sharpen our mind for the upcoming run.




Another life lesson richer, we cease wandering around and head inside the building in the hopes that we'll still be on time to salvage this mess.

Okay, the alarm isn't blaring and there are no corpses in the immediate vicinity. Promising.


Geez, ever heard of the importance of good first impressions, pal?
[He jerks his thumb at the elf standing beside him.]


That's presumably not lunch that he's lugging around. Judging from how things have been going so far, Luca probably threw in a time bomb for extra motivation and we'll have 5 minutes to finish this job before it goes off or something like that.



[He shakes his head in disgust.]

Boy, this is going to be one exhausting run, isn't it.




[James flashes a hateful glance at the dwarf, then turns his attention back to you.]





Right now I wish we could all just go back and forget that any of this happened, but alas.




Elves have marginally more luck with the foreign man:
quote:
Can you understand me at all, brother?
[The elf's dialect is completely foreign; it's quite unlike the form of Sperethiel spoken by the elves of Tír na nÓg. You only manage to catch a few words.]
You...terrible...insolence of threating! ... see if... at all?
Look, just be calm, my friend.
[Your words don't seem to have much impact. The elf's scowl deepens.]






[She takes a moment to calm herself.]


At least there's one thing we can agree on.


[Jana's brow furrows.]

Well if something works in theory then it's bound to work in practice too. That's how it works, right?


A summary of our objectives, case you couldn't keep up with all the bickering going on.

James is a mage, and that's about all there is to say about him. If dickbaggery could be harnessed as a source of power he might be able to challenge Lofwyr himself, but as it stands he just comes with an assortment of basic spells and a Gold Trauma Kit for revival.

The nameless foreign elf carries an Uzi III and a katana, and is actually pretty damn solid at using both. Like Jana he's also brought a couple of medkits.

Alright, time to get to work. We need to find our way to the utility room, though there's a variety of other things to see here on the first floor as well.

A restless-looking ork is pacing back and forth in the lobby. Going by experience unhappy employees are an infiltrator's best friend, so let's see if we can be of assistance to him.


[James' cheeks flush red. He takes a step forward.]

Goddamnit James be quiet

Charisma 3 and Corporate etiquette are the two available keys to this stress-ridden man's heart.




Yeah, that is pretty rough. But it just might be somebody's lucky day!



[He searches his pockets, growing increasingly frantic.]




What do we look like, criminals? ...We don't, right? Because we're totally not.


It's not exactly the master key, but we'll take it.

There's also a boutique food kiosk in the lobby, advertising a variety of "locally sourced" foodstuffs.


Seems this place was already infested by criminal activity long before we arrived. There's nothing else of interest in the lobby, so we start our tour of the place from a small hallway to the southwest.

At the end of it we find the building's security room. The door's unlocked and the sign above it is in some kind of made-up fantasy language so we help ourselves inside.
[The guard steps forward, interposing himself between you and the terminal.]





We could probably make use of that terminal, but attacking the guard here causes an immediate alarm which leaves violence as the only available approach. We don't have to resort to desperate measures just yet, so let's look around for a quieter way to get rid of the pesky enforcer.



Heading east from the lobby, we come across a store selling various suits. We're probably not in any particular hurry, so we stop by to check their selection.
[The saleswoman's expression brightens at your approach.]





The Ballistic Cloth Suit is expensive but 5 armor is very solid this early on and +2 Charisma lets you pass any Charisma check with just 4 points in the attribute. External sources of Charisma don't provide bonus etiquettes though, sadly.

We don't really need it per se, but it looks a heck of a lot classier than our old outfit and as a mage we have extra spending money due to not needing junk like cyberware or summoning fetishes, so we take it.

Suits are not the only thing of interest in this particular store, there's also this junction box in the corner.

The guard she's referring to is standing outside the window, watching over the utility room we need to get into.


[She looks at the junction box again and nods.]



She's either a really good electrician, or these junction boxes fail to meet quite a few safety standards. But let's at least try the diplomatic approach before getting all zappy.



We circle around to the utility room hallway on the other side of the window. Sure enough, that's a familiar-looking box on the wall there.
[The guard's stance shifts slightly as you approach.]



"Delta", "Theta", what's the difference really. They're all just words and words aren't real maaan


Charisma 3 opens up a lot of paths in this game, including here.


Charisma alone isn't enough in this case however, as the conversation simply ends here instead unless you're also as well-versed in matters of Security as we happen to be.









The final place of interest is the cyberware store in the northwest corner of the floor. Seems they already have a couple of customers doing some browsing here.

[Upon seeing your uniform, her nose wrinkles.]

[Her spray-tanned husband chimes in.]


Four out of five doctors recommend regular dilation of your fluxes. The fifth didn't listen, and we all know what happened to that guy.














Just imagine the flattest possible voice you can for that one.




What a depressing conversation that was. Let's do some browsing ourselves instead, cyberware isn't exactly our thing but it never hurts to check.
[The woman behind the counter smiles at you, her cheeks dimpling.]



[She gestures at the terminal in front of you.]


Leonization is the term used for an extremely expensive combination of extensive gene therapy and cellular repair techniques done to halt and reverse the effects of aging, in effect restoring one's youth and extending one's lifespan. Because if there's one thing everyone wishes for, it's that the ultra-rich and powerful don't even die off properly.






Like buying dollar-tier game bundles, we don't really need it but the cost is low enough that we might as well grab it for our collection.

[She swipes your credstick and punches a few buttons on her PDA. A flimsy slip of paper spills out of the terminal you're standing at and into your hand.]


Man, we're really bad with money.



No more fooling around, we do have some actual work to do. We'll start by returning to the security room, now equipped with some insider knowledge.




The guard runs off, leaving behind an unprotected little security terminal.


Simple enough not to require any special skill checks. Maybe this'll give us some extra breathing room.


Making our way back, both guards are now conveniently located in the hallway with the killer junction box. If you have Jana overload it too early, you obviously miss out on this juicy opportunity. Of course without the Security etiquette you can't reach the security console without violence anyway, so you have to either go loud or skip that part.
It probably goes without saying that approaching the guards now is an unwise move and makes combat inevitable:
quote:
You there! Maintenance lady! Stop right where you are.
Is there a problem?
You're damn straight there is. You lied to me - nobody called a Code Indigo, and when Dispatch took a closer look at your work orders, they found that they were fakes. You're all coming with us.
[James' hands ignite with arcane energy. His mouth curls into an ugly smile.]
This is the end of the line for you, boys. Bad luck.
Hold on, everybody... we can still talk this out...
[Jana begins to stammer out an agreement, her eyes wide]
Yeah! W-we don't want any troub--
[The guards jerk their weapons out of their holsters and turn to fire.]
Take 'em out!

We opt for the less blatantly idiotic path this time. No guarantees for this pattern to hold in the future though.



Eh, they're probably just unconscious. Despite Jana mentioning a "loud bang", this approach is seemingly completely silent as everyone else on the floor goes about their business completely unperturbed. Or maybe sudden hallway electrocutions are just considered one of the everyday risks of corporate life.


Either way, this shocking turn of events has earned us higher clearance and thus access to the almighty utility room. But hold on, didn't we already have Theta clearance and it was Delta that we supposedly needed? So they really were just words after all!

Nothing to loot here, so let's just get to it already.







If only we could just give this guy the boot... but sadly we didn't have the presence of mind to pick up the "hide cameras" spell from Aljernon ourselves.

Here's the elevator. Against all odds, we've somehow managed to get this far unscathed despite the group of adult kindergarteners we've been forced to herd around. If we can just keep things together for a little while longer, we might actually be able to pull this off without everything crumbling around us like a piece of dry streuselkuchen.
Let's cross our fingers and head on up.