GURPS Shadowrun [IC] Under the Dragon's Tooth

After a moment of awkward silence, Juno raised an eyebrow and looked from runner to runner.

"Let me guess...no one's got a car?"

She cracked a grin. It was something a lot of 'shadowrunners' seemed to neglect in her experience. They spent all their nuyen getting and staying chromed, and braved the subways and trams.

"C'mon, guys. We can use mine this time. Start drawing straws for who gets to sit on his lap." With a nod at the troll to indicate who's lap she meant, Juno turned and started back to where she'd parked her car, the next pier over.

~ Quickly on Juno's heels, Jaeger was sharp to call out, " Vodersitz!" and then had his tongue scramble for the English he knew he needed.

What was the phrase, it was a specific word. Not co-pilot, not ... Rifle? Shot-

" Shotgun!" he stated triumphantly. Fredrick was not sure his frame would survive being crushed in the back seat of a tiny vehicle.

" And nein, Juno; I've found the public transit here to be acceptable. At least yours works," he lamented, remembering the rather dilapidated state of many of Former Germany's subways. Although, he couldn't really call it "public" transit: that would mean that Seattle's government provided it, and Fredrick wasn't sure Seattle provided anything that didn't have some Corp or another attached.

" Do you have a Safehouse or something in the area where we can drop our equipment? If not, we could always use mine," Jaeger offered cheerfully, despite the dreary weather. ~

The team heads out of the dock areas and piles into Juno's comet. It appears Master-Blaster will have to sit in the troll's lap as he is the smallest. He grumbles about it but otherwise accepts his lot, thinking he should have purchased that bike he was thinking about getting instead of installing the newest booster to his deck... ah well.

The team first heads over to the Redmond Barrens and Woodinville to check out the flat the Johnson had rented for them and stow any gear they might want to keep here.

The place was called the Royal Meadows and when you get there you un-surprised by the fact that there are indeed no meadows and there is nothing 'royal' about the soot-covered building towering over you. Set on the edge of the Barrens, the building could easily pass for a slum tenements. It is 18 stories of steel framework and concrete cinderblock polished up with plastic windows, rusted iron sculptures and at least three decades of pollution and grime. A steady stream of low-end wage-slaves and street people pour in and out of the main doors.

The lobby area is everything you expected and less. A wide hallway leads to a nexus of elevators. Moving down the hall you see a sign reading "MANAGER" over a window set into the wall. Behind the heavy plastic window you see a Dwarf reading a PDA. Security amounts to an Ork fast asleep at his station down by the elevators.

Not trusting the elevators, you trudge up the eight flights of stairs, disturbing various forms of vermin, insect and otherwise, as you go.

You slot the keycard into the maglock on the door of apartment 812. The lock buzzes noisily and you hear a heavy bolt slide. As the door opens, you expect the worst and you're right. Whatever corp runs this place sure knows how to cut corners. The four-room flat has a living area, two bedrooms and a bathroom. The bathroom is the size of a coffin and Tharg is pretty sure he would get stuck if he tried to squeeze into the shower stall. The bedrooms each have two doubles pushed so close they could be one mattress. The living room boasts out-of-date furniture made of low-grade plastic. Just off the living area is a closet sized kitchenette with a couple of cupboards, a microwave, a sink and a refrigerator. The air in the apartment is stale and thick. The insects in residence seem to eye you speculatively as through trying to decide whether to fight for their turf. They don't. Yet.

~ Jaeger stared.

He stared long and hard at where the team was supposed to keep a Pop Star worth literally trillions of Nuyen. How this place was more rundown than his own place in the Barrens (and thank god for that).

He took in a deep breath of roach droppings and stale stains of soykaf, and clapped his hands together in what amounted to acceptance.

" Trautes Heim, Glück allein."

But there was nothing cozy nor happy about this place. This was where happiness went to die.

" I'm so glad Mister Johnson spared no expense on keeping the woman whom 'we are all a big fan of' in such a luxurious abode," he commented wryly, taking a walk about the place. Hundgeist, for his part, was having absolutely none of this. His hackles were raised, feeling like they had been tricked.

Easy, my Friend; We have survived through worse, and we will do so again. We will help our new Companions to make this ... ehrm, livable. Hopefully.

Dog settled down in acquiescence, though he was not entirely calmed.

" You don't suppose there's anything else to this place, hm?" Jaeger asked allowed to his coworkers, " Secret compartments, better Grid access ... anything?" ~

Master-Blaster says "Well it has Matrix access... from a booster hub-host over in Bellevue but I can make due..."

Juno was shaking her head from the moment they walked into the building.

When they got into the apartment she closed the door behind the last straggler and said, "Alright this...I don't know if they want us to screw it up or just have no idea what they're doing, but we're not keeping her here. It's an apartment building. Thin walls. Constant flood of witnesses piled up on the doorstep. Yeah most of them won't care, but it only takes one to blow this thing wide open."

"We're going to need a different place, and make damn sure we keep the receipts because we are sure as hell getting our expenses back at the end of this."

~ Fredrick folded his arms and couldn't help stifle a laugh.

" I don't think Herr Johnson is exactly going to pay us back just because we didn't use this drekhole. But ... it's not a bad idea."

A thought occurred. Maybe not a good thought, but a thought all the same.

" We ... could use this as a decoy location, though. Make it seem as though we have Euphoria here, be less subtle about it, while we actually stash her somewhere else. Might buy us an extra day if someone catches on to us."

He regarded Juno with a tilt of his head.

" Do you have another place in mind to keep our musician?" ~

Juno frowns at that, and shakes her head slowly.

"Mmm...doesn't sound like a good idea. The way I see things, the more complicated a plan is, the more likely it is to frak itself up. If we want to run some kind of psy-op diversion like that, it'd be better to try it after they know it's a kidnapping. There's other reasons someone might go off the radar. Especially rich, famous kids who don't have much sense of personal responsibility."

She sighed.

"As for where...not offhand. Somewhere isolated, but not so isolated that it's obviously a place you could hide someone. Small enough we can secure it with our numbers. Big enough we're not overcrowded. Out of the patrol zones, and ideally not somewhere there's gangs actively fighting over."

~ " Null sheen, I know just the guy."

He had misjudged Juno - She wasn't just another emotionless razorgirl to point at security guards and forget about, she was thinking through this issue like ... well, like a soldier, almost. Someone who knew what happened when plans made contact with the enemy.

Curious.

Fredrick pulled out his communicator, pulling up a contact list and tapping the frequency for one of the Fixers he had met early on in Seattle. He set it to speaker so the group could hear the conversation. After a few rings, it answered.

" Guten Morgen, meine freund," Jaeger greeted his contact the second he heard the line open, " I'm in a bit of a bind and was hoping you could lend a hand. House Hunting, you see: I need a place. Decent sized apartment ought to do. Quiet, but without the Sheriffs knocking on the door, somewhere that blends in. Just for three days. Think you can help an Elf out?" ~

[sblock=Fixer Contact]
Contact (Fixer in Seattle; Effective Skill 15-; Somewhat Reliable) [2][/sblock]