Now, I'm not a superstitious type, but even I should have known that this was going to be a bad day. One of the dudes showed up with a cat, which I'm cool with- I like cats. But while the rest of us were sitting there eating soydogs and talking to Mr. J, this dude starts EATING the cat. He didn't even kill it first, because he apparently liked the way it screamed, or something.
I threw up. I've heard that soy tastes equally bad coming back up, but that's just not the truth, chummer. It tastes even worse.
So this guy is eating his cat, and he finally snaps the neck, and everyone is grossed out. I don't know if Mr. J was planning this or something, but we all take the job without haggling, jsut to get away from the meet. I avoid the guy who just ate a cat, pile one of the other dudes I know into my van, and we high-tail it out of there. While we're getting to my place, I check the details of the job. I didn't really have time with the ork dude eating garfield, but it turns out that some runners stole some very valuable property, killed a bunch of sec guards, and are holed up (play on words- they were actually pretty banged up) at a vet's office in Redmond, just outside the Barrens. I'm not a big fan of running against other runners, and I was more than happy to avoid the job with the cat-eater guy, so I took off and did some talking with the other people from the run- at least, the two I had managed to get numbers for before everyone split.
The elf from the team goes to check out the place we're going to hit on his own. Not a bad idea, but he pulls up in front of the place and starts poking around. I guess he forgot they might be paranoid about it, but he does have enough foresight to try and hide his bike. So he takes his brand new suzuki aurora and drives it through the abandoned lot across the street, narrowly avoiding the rusted car shell, but bending the front rim on a huge piece of plascrete. He lays the bike down, gets some cover (I'm not sure why at this point) and calls in another runner, an elf chicka with similar skills. Now, the elf dude was a new runner, but now there's the two of them there together, and they're scoping out this warehouse, but they realize that these chummers might be watching them (finally!) and so they bail and head toward a warehouse closeby. They intend to break into the warehouse and survey the pet hospital from across the way.
This seems like a moderately good idea.
The rest of the team, not so much. I'm summoning some mojo for the coming fight, and the chummer with me is getting restless. I live by the beach, so he's walking up and down the beach, kicking sand in people's faces and trying to take thier girlfriends-- you know, that kind of thing. He's a real jerk, but I'm concentrating anyway, so all of this is going on without me.
While the two elves are breaking into the warehouse all covertly, the rest of the group shows up (they had to go home and stock up on guns and stupid) and waits outside the pet hospital for something to happen. Unluckily for me, I was just that something. When I rolled up, I was looking for our group doing 'recon' on the top of the warehouse, so I was actually facing the other way when the jerk in my car got out, walked up to the front door of the place, and kicked it in.
I heard the door get kicked in, so I put the petal to the floor and got out of there, pulling around to grab the two elves before heading back to the vetrinary clinic. There was some sort of firefight going on inside the place, and as near as I can tell (from what I saw- there weren't really many survivors), this is what happened.
The jerk kicked in the front door, and found a bloodtrail. Apparently someone injured was dragged back to where the surgery tools and drugs are. He followed the trail with the cat-eater and one other unlucky fragger, where it stopped at one door. With a mighty kick, he attempted to open the door, only to be frustrated. With a second kick, he busted the handle and the door flew open, exposing the runners inside, armed with LMGs and waiting for him.
The jerk was torn apart. The fragger wasn't even new to the game, and this was the dumb drek he pulled- he deserved to get shot. His spleen was missing, his entrails were all over the place, and when I showed up, the cat-eater was licking his fingers and eyeing the not-yet dead corpse of the jerk. So I grabbed the dumb fragger and dragged him outside, where I threw a spell to keep him stabalized and alive long enough for DocWagon to get there and pick him up. DocWagon finally showed up, and took him without too much fuss. So I went to go back inside.
Right as I go through the front door, the two elves figure out which van is this runner team's, so they pull open the doors, and it explodes. Apparently it was wired to explode in case anyone did something stupid like that, so they two of them are cooked, but still breathing. They both follow me inside.
When I get inside, the unlucky schmuck who had gone with Cat-Eater and Jerk into the hospital was trying to lift some huge heavy tank covered with biohazard stickers. It was like one of those huge helium tanks, but three times bigger, and looking for all the world like lethal death was inside it. There's a fourth chummer there now, who apparently sat out the firefight, but is all sorts of happy to help mopping up the rest of this runner team.
So I'm standing there watching, and all of the sudden they drop it. Not gently or anything, all three of the strongest ones (the elf girl, the unlucky one, and the cat-eater) lose thier grip and drop it. They started picking up a second time and they drop it again... and that was the point that I went out to my car and drove home.
From what I heard from the elven chicka later, apparently one of the runners was still in there, and he killed the non-combatant. He killed the unlucky fragger (allowing him to live up to his namesake), and then the elf chicka, the elf dude, and the cat-eater tore him apart.
They tried one last time to pick up the tank, and when they dropped it again, there was a clang and a hiss, and they got the frag out of there. I don't even know what it was, but I doubt it was anything good. Luckily FireWatch teams showed up and firebombed the place later that night.
