Part 6: What Kind of Name is "Rust Stiletto" Anyway?
I'm giving you the SHITTIEST review on ratemds.com
"Well that was quick, your datajack fixed now?"
"The jack's fixed, but so is the bomb that's apparently in my skull. Also THERE'S A BOMB IN MY SKULL." "Is it bad that I kind of expected that? Maybe not a bomb, but something was going to happen." "...Honestly? No. I should have seen it coming too."
At this point, all three areas are unlocked, and we could have went Downtown earlier, but it's best to get the datajack subplot over with quick so you can jack into the Matrix yourself.
Also we have 30 hours to stop the bomb, this is shockingly generous, and translates to 30 minutes of real life time. If you know where to go, you can get it disabled in less than two minutes, but what's the fun in that?
"So uh, what exactly is the plan?" "Well we'll head Downtown, wander around for a while, probably get ambushed..."
"Yep, there we go. I'm hoping we can find some locals who don't immediately open fire, and see if they know where the local street doc is." "Hamfist never actually been Downtown, although it's already reminiscent of Tenth street." "You seriously have problems with first person pronouns, but you use words like 'remniscent'?" "English is a silly language."
Downtown by the way! Downtown's theme is pretty great. It has that feeling of "now we're getting somewhere!"
After we kill this one, he has some dying exposition to give us.
"Drek, you've bought into more trouble than you know. The Rust Stilletos always finish a job! Aaarrggh, bye sucker!" "I have to say, these people have the WORST battle cries and last words." "Censorship is a bitch."
In this picture you'll note that I took the money off the corpse, but left a very obvious item. In my defense I was playing this while watching that recording of the Retsupurae RTX panel
Also doggie!
"Yeah yeah, I know, get off my back" "Did that dog just ta--" "Later, we have shit to do."
Pup runs off after giving us another annoyingly cryptic instruction. In any case, we have business to attend to.
"Downtown hitmen are stepping up their game a bit." "I should hope so, I was one-shotting everyone in old town."
On the ground here is a grenade, almost everyone who plays will want to grab the obvious item on the ground, but if you examine it...
The second you pick it up, the handle pops off and the grenade explodes. It also only does like three damage, but I'm still not giving them the satisfaction.
"Bomb in my head, Hamfist is a loser who doesn't want to go to a club, and don't pick up the grenade. Got it."
Inside the Wastelands club, some guy shoots at us, he dies. Next.
Hey wait a sec, Wastelands, we've got a matchbook from this place! It doesn't mean a great deal plotwise, but at elast we know we were downtown before things got crazy.
"Been a crazy day, chum. Woke up in a morgue, escaped from the caryards, and now I got a bomb in my head."
"Say what? Man, what a bummer! Want an iced tea? I'll have to hold the ice." "No ice? Brutal. At this point I'd settle for iced tea without even complaining." "Sorry, no ice. The freezer's on the fritz. We're waiting on a delivery..." "Hope the delivery guy doesn't get cold feet. Anyway, it was ice to see you, stay frosty." "Please stop" "Don't give me the cold shoulder, it's not very cool. Just chill out 
" "By the way, you ran up quite a tab when you were here last" "Whoops, gotta go."
As we know, where there's a club, there are shadowrunners! Let's talk to the two near the bar.
"Me too, for a few minutes anyway, then I got dumped in a junkyard."
"I see you have a datajack... is that just for show, or do you put it to use?" "I actually can't tell if you're serious, or if you're coming on to me."Jetboy is a decker, like Hamfist. He has the exact same computer skill, but his firearms skill is a little better. He makes up for this by having a beretta while Hamfist has a shotgun, Making Hamfist actually better than him.
He's also costs 500 nuyen more than Hamfist, and manages to be a whiny bitch before he's even hired. There's almost no reason to hire Jetboy, except for one thing we're going to do in a minute.
My point is Jetboy fucking sucks, and also Hamfist is great for how early you can hire him, and how cheap he is.
"
"On the opposite end of the bar is a much better guy. Meet Anders.
"I already like you."
"Talk is cheap. Hiring me isn't. You get what you pay for!" "I've been saying that all day. Let's get down to business. What's your price?"
So not only does Anders have a better firearms skill, more health, a better set of armour, and a god damn uzi, but he's the same price as Jetboy. Anders is a pretty great mid-game runner. There are way better runners of course, but not for three digits.
Outside of the club and to the right, we find...
"Oh I'm going to enjoy this."
There are a TON of Rust Stilettos around, but their biggest problem is that they love to spread out the damage, never focusing their fire on a single person. With four people, it makes it pretty easy to not take a lot of damage.
A lot of people play solo just because they feel it's more pure, I say screw that. Dan's rule number two is "Keep it legal, but never fight fair."
With all the Rust Stilettos out here dead, we can... er...
"...er... hm... this is..." "What's wrong, boss?" "Let me check my inventory here, I thought I..." "Can we get going? My feet hurt..." "Okay I don't have a key, how do I not have the key to this door?" "Oh hey, I remember seeing a key" "Where?"
Back to the subway. This is a neat image because I managed to catch one of the middle frames of the dying animation. Sometimes it doesn't seem to happen, I've walked through other animations frame by frame trying to catch this particular one, and then just gave up.
I also caught a random little encounter. The mage looking guy near the bottom talks with another dude, then starts shooting at him. The other dude understandably cheeses it, and the mage runs after him. Unfortunately I happened to trigger this while entering from the ONLY entrance where you can't see the scene happen.
Also 26 hours left.
"Polite of them to take the corpse but leave the key." "I'll never understand how the coroners of this city operate."
"This is the wrong way." "No it isn't, I need a nap. All this key stuff is making me tired." "Aren't you on a time limit?" "Ehhhh."
"Loud bunch, eh?"
"Who would build a 24/7 club next to a hotel?! The Jagged Nails is the bane of my existance!" "Right, cool, anyway I want a room."
So here's the catch. In tenth street, we had Jake's apartment, in Oldtown, we had the bed in the caryards, in Downtown, we have to pay 50 bucks every time we want to heal or save. That's like one, maybe two hitmen to kill and loot. It's not worth it to be cheap and take the subway to Oldtown.
By the way, even though your runners don't come to bed with you, since that would be too close to fanfiction material, they heal as well.
Also if you're curious, no time passes while we sleep. Maybe the bomb timer is only active while we're concious.
"Alright, back to business." "We could have been done already..." "If you say another word, I'm going to shoot you in eleven screenshots." "what?" "Exactly. Anyway, let's get in there and..."
"...um" "...um" "...mu" "Not sure what I expected, but whatever."The Rust Stilettos HQ is actually less daunting than it looks. The enemies are tough, but the layout lets you take them on one by one.
This way, the enemies can't really do any significantly serious damage, while you and your runners can tear into them. It looks way worse than it actually is.
These guys here hurl molotovs, which can be bad because places like these generally make your runners bunch up together. I tried to get him to hurl them at me alone instead, but he didn't take the bait.
Once everyone's dead in here, these two wander out. They're nothing special, but...
YOU NEED THIS CROWBAR.
Also 24 minutes left before Jake explodes.
This back room area is dangerous. There's a ton of guys, and the Gang Leader is not someone to be trifled with. He's like the dude in the arena, except stationary. If you lose any runners, it'll probably be here.
Once you kill the leader, he has some words for you.
"Pffhahaha "The Drake", he sounds like a frat boy"
This is the ONLY reason to hire Jetboy. For some reason, he's the only one who can find two thousand bucks on the Gang Leader's corpse. Also I like how even the game doesn't like him enough to call him by name. At the very least, we made a 1200 profit from dragging him along.
We also find a password on the gang leader's corpse.
"Well that's the Rust Stilettos all dead. We now have a crowbar, a password, and two thousand bucks." "Wait, that money's mine." "Excuse me?" "It's mine, I found it." "So just to be sure, you're claiming that because you found a bunch of money on a corpse, it belongs to you, is that right?" "Yeah."
"And there we go, now it belongs to me in accordance to Jetboy's rules." "You know usually I'd be upset about team killing, but man that guy had it coming." "Jake has killed for WAY less than two thousand bucks."
"So just out of curiosity, how exactly did that help us with the bomb situation?" "...Oh yeah."Well uh, at least we exterminated an entire gang for shooting at us that one time, next time maybe we'll make some actual progress on the bomb thing.
