ALL THE BRICKS - Prologue: What Rough Beast

It's hard for Lum to aim when he's been shot to pieces. He's seeing two Lunchmeats so he picks one and opens fire.

BAM!

There's a fresh hole between her eyes. She exhales a plume of red smoke and crumples dead. Her body falls through the fire spirit and explodes into flame.

[sblock=OOC]Rolling 7 dice against Lunchmeat = 4 successes ^link
Scored 3 net successes
Ares Predator V Damage Value 8P + 3 net successes = 11 modified Damage Value
Damage meets or exceeds target's armor (-1 for AP), dealing Physical Damage
Target rolls 3 successes on Body + Armor, reducing damage to 8P
Target dealt 8 Physical Damage[/sblock]

---

There's a loud crunching noise over the din of gunfire in the runners' car and the train shudders. It's hard to notice, but the third car is suddenly a couple inches further away from cars two and four. The car has been uncoupled from both the front and rear halves of the train.


[sblock=OOC]13 dice = 9 successes ^link, reduced to 8 by Mental Limit
Beats target's resist roll[/sblock]

---

Lum's Roto-Drone fires along with its master, taking a slow and controlled shot. The bullet explodes a pane of plastic over balaclava's head. The drone leans back into cover after its shot.

[sblock=OOC]The drone is taking a Semi Auto simple action followed by a Take Cover simple action.

1 bullet fired. Monsoon's Recoil is +2. Recoil Compensation 4, for total Recoil of 0.

Pilot 3 + Autosoft 6 + Take Aim 1 (from previous pass) = 10 dice

Rolled 3 successes ^link
Scored no net successes
Attack misses[/sblock]Initiative: Round Two, Pass Two
Crack Sprite - 16 ^link
Faust - 14 ^link
FUTBOL - 14 ^link
Death Otter - 13 ^link
Lum's MCT-Nissan Roto-Drone - 12 ^link
Patrol IC - 10
Lunchmeat - 08
Lum the Mad - 03 ^link
Herald - 03 ^link
Balaclava - 03
Fire Spirit - 01 ^link

---

[MENTION=40413]GlassEye[/MENTION], it's Lum the Mad's turn.

Lum spends a few moments just breathing. The energy expended to get up and make that shot was much more than he expected. But there is still work to do and he has the feeling that he is on a severe time limit. He commands a few windows in his image link to enlarge: a local map and the controls of the van that was still parked a few blocks away from where their extraction was supposed to be. Lum verifies the group's location and direction of travel, notes the next station upcoming, and turns his attention to the van.

Issuing a command he gets the engine started and begins plotting a route to intersect with the train.

[sblock=OOC]I'm not sure what actions these are and I've been at an event since yesterday evening so I don't have my book to look it up at the moment. Lum's goal is to pinpoint location and direction of the group and start the van on an intersect course with the train. I'm guessing he might need to jump in the van at some point.[/sblock]

The Getaway Van - New York, Newark, Alleyway

Newark's East Ward is busier than anywhere else in the borough and there are two levels of streets in most places here: The ground-level and the upstreet about 10 meters above. The busiest corners have parking garages above them - entire five or six story parking facilities built straight over the tops of the intersections themselves. Lum's GMC Bulldog is idling in one of these garages, bathed in the neon glow from the rooftop ELIZABETH GALLERIA sign across the street.

The van's engine roars and the transmission shifts gears. The license plate's numbers spin, almost like on an ancient alarm clock, before coming to a stop in some random sequence. The van reverses out of its spot and tears away down the ramp to the street, evening shoppers dodging out of its way and shouting after it as it goes.

Outside the city is dizzying. Two levels of busy streets and sidewalks, highways wrapping around the skyscrapers overhead, the sky abuzz with delivery drones carrying packages, and every surface packed tight as possible with glowing, flashing, blinking, shining advertisements. Most of the cars on the streets are controlled by New York's GridGuide but the van weaves between them with ease. It passes beneath a dazzling advertisement-covered archway on its route to an on-ramp. Moments later it's roaring down a highway, the runners' subway train speeding out ahead of it underground.

[sblock=OOC]There's no way for the Bulldog to stay neck and neck with the subway train. Not only is the train capable of a higher top speed but it's not slowed at all by traffic. But Lum can still try his best to ensure they won't have to wait too long at whichever station they stop at. His only real impediment is noise: The distance and interference from a city packed with wireless electronics creates a delay that can make operation difficult.

Between 101-1,000 meters away (+1), 5 meters of metal-laced earth (+1), sprawl downtown (+2) = Noise: 4

Datajack (-1) = Modified Noise: 3

Agility 5 + Pilot Ground Craft 4 + Wheeled spec 2 - Noise 3 = 3 successes ^link

This is for me to have an idea how good a job Lum is doing at keeping pace with the train with the van. Answer: Pretty damn good.[/sblock]

---

[MENTION=6776381]Mosier[/MENTION], it's Herald's turn.

Balaclava has reloaded his weapon but Herald guesses that he's going to be quite distracted by the fire spirit that's preparing to burn his face off.

Herald senses the cars separating, and comes to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that the best course of action would be to hunker down and let the decker do her thing, taking them all far away from the danger. But that might leave Balaclava alive, which was absolutely unacceptable. Sure, the fire demon might kill Balaclava, but it couldn't hurt to give his demon a bit of help. You know, just to be sure.

Herald, still struggling the shock and pain of his injury, carefully lines up his shot and pulls the trigger on his hold-out pistol.

[sblock=attack]Herald is using two simple actions to take aim and fire his pistol. [/sblock]

Herald tries to aim through the pain of his injuries. When he fires the bullet buries itself into a plastic seat behind balaclava's head.

[sblock=OOC]Agility 5 + Pistols 3 + Holdout spec 2 + Take Aim 1 - Wound Penalty 3 = 1 success ^link
No net successes
Attack missed[/sblock]

---

Balaclava shrinks into his cover as best he can as he finishes the reloading process. When the weapon is finally ready he brings it to bear on the vortex of fire forming around him. POPOPOPOP. His shots are expertly aimed but the bullets simply pass through the fire and shatter the windows on the other side.

[sblock=OOC]Spirit of Fire rolling Intuition 5 + Reaction 7 - Full Auto 5 = 3 successes ^link
Attacker scored no net successes
Attack missed[/sblock]

---

The spirit at the center of the wheel of fire locks its flickering eyes on balaclava. When he shoots it surges toward him. Balaclava tries to roll away to run but the spirit opens its arms and splashes against him. He's dragged out of his cover and lifted struggling into the air by the flame. It compresses around him, his armor and clothing burning away to cinders in moments until finally the spirit drops him and his blackened corpse explodes to ash against the floor.

The fire spirit roars and shakes its horns. It's all charred and cracked skin barely held together over a bursting core. It turns its baleful glare on Herald - it still owes its master one last service and it will wait by his side until it's been given an order.

Car four is on fire. Its occupants have fled into cars five and six.

[sblock=OOC]Spirit of Fire using its Engulf power
Spirit of Fire rolling Agility 6 + Unarmed Attack 4 = 4 successes ^link
Scored 1 net success
Base Damage Value 8 + 1 net success + 4 energy aura = 13 modified Damage Value, target trapped
Target Rolling Armor - Fire AP (4) = No successes = On fire, initial Damage Value 3
Target rolling Body + Armor - AP 4 = 1 success, taking 12 damage + trapped + on fire[/sblock]

---

Initiative: Round Two, Pass Three
Crack Sprite - 06 ^link
FUTBOL - 04 ^link
Death Otter - 03 ^link
Patrol IC - 00

Combat in the physical world has ended and time will be treated more abstractly for characters not in the Matrix. You can all post out of order for now, but try to keep pace with Death Otter. You shouldn't be acting more frequently than she does.

---

[MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION], it's Death Otter's turn.

Death Otter laughs in spite of herself at the spectacle in the cameras of the others. Dear god, this run was so frakked up right now! It was cosmic, and would make a hell of a story if any of them survived. She didn't thiiiiiink fire would spread between cars, but there wasn't really time to work out those details.

The flick of her cyberpaws brought up the speed controls again and she cloaked her MatrixID with the aegis of the host once again, instructing the cars behind the runners to start slowing down.

It was a little tricky. She wanted them to be an obstacle for the pursuer, but didn't want there to be a giant trainwreck in the tunnels. If a train left the station traveling at roughtly EIGHTY KAJILLION miles per hour, and hit another train that had STOPPED and was full of COMMUTERS, how much salsa would you get? Lots. Lots and lots.

She'd always hated word problems.

Well...it wasn't rocket science. Best guess it.

(Complex Action to Spoof Command to reduce last cars' speed by about halfish. Dice pool is 13.)

Faust, Herald, and Lum - New York, Newark, Subway Train 213

There's a squeal of brakes and the runners watch as the tail half of the train recedes away. The fire spirit, getting smaller as it pulls into the distance, POPs and explodes. The concussive force from the blast extinguishes the flames spreading through the car. The spirit seems gone, but Herald knows it's following him in astral space.

[sblock=Death Otter's hack attempt]13 dice = 3 successes ^link
Beats target's resist roll[/sblock]
With the doors to car two closed the runners have a small amount of temporary privacy. There aren't any wageslaves in the car. Well - except for Woodley.

"Jesus! Jesus!" Woodley is under the seats of a bench in the fetal position with her arms over her head. She's not handling the excitement well and is sounding somewhat hysterical. "This isn't how it was supposed to go!" She's a dark-skinned woman looking to be in her mid-30s - but she's also an elf so there's no telling how old she really is. She's in a black pantsuit and she's missing a shoe. Her black hair has come undone from its bun and it's in a sweaty mess all over her face.

---

Matrix Initiative - Round Three, Pass One
FUTBOL - 25 ^link
Death Otter - 23 ^link
Crack Sprite - 23 ^link

[MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION], it's Death Otter's turn.

Faust watches as the cars separate and the last of the persuers is engulfed and burned alive. He can't help but shudder for a second as he lowers his weapons, placing them in their holsters.

At the sound of Woodley's hectic and scared voice he approaches her location, grabbing hold and pulling her from underneath, standing her up.

"Need to see if you're hit."

He doesn't do so very gracefully and lacks any sense of personal space as he spins her around.

"All in one piece."

He sits her back down on one of the nearby seats. He turns his attention to his wounded allies, probably going to need to go see Doc Sweet.

Man...ticktockticktock...she glanced at the display she'd created that showed the system response rate. She was doing pretty well, all told. Ahead of schedule. That made her nervous.

So, just three major bits left to do. Jam the sensors, turn the car, and slow it down to arrive at a station. And jack out, of course. She had roughly enough time to do it all twice over. And so far, no spider to interfere with things. It was seriously messing with her paranoia. What had she missed? Sure, it hadn't been all ponies and rainbows...that botched hack that let the system finger her early had really forced things along.

Gift horse. Mouth. Looking. Get the job done.

The train car had its own little dedicated sensor array and controlling processor. It handled everything from the little contact sensors in the couplers that told it when it was or wasn't connected to a car, to the SIN monitors in the doors...to the GPS uplinks that let the Big Momma host way over in central control know where each car was at any given moment. And those suckers had to go, or else Knight Errant's response time would be considerably shortened when they stopped. Without that feed, they'd have to check each station's feeds individually to see if it had come through. They could narrow the search based on where they were when they went black, but...every second counted when making a getaway.

Quick doublecheck. Crack sprite hidden and crudding up the system, delaying the IC response. FUTBOL huffing and glaring around, waiting to eat some spider stew. GOD on His throne, and all well with the world.

System diagnostics required, the 'host' informed the sensor processors through the vessel of Death Otter, shut down all feeds and begin self-tests.

(And...going to try to Spoof the sensors before turning, so it's that much harder to figure out where we're stopping. Dice pool is 13. Remind me to buy more Edge sometime. )

Now that the group isn't being actively shot at Lum relaxes just a little. He continues to monitor direction and speed of the train, drive the car, and plot out potential intercept points. He sends Death Otter a brief message: 'Destination?'