Part 1: Uninvited Guest

"Funny, I saw an elf not too long ago, coming out of a bar. He and his friends had gotten into a disagreement with a few people while they were working, and these people came to talk to him about it. Fortunately, the elf met a couple people willing to play, and they managed to sort out the disagreement, for the moment. They called in a favor, got the trail to go cold for a little while. Unfortunately, he got separated from his friends, and he only had a name and location to conclude business."

Leaning against the side of her van, Motoko watched the ork's reactions while she spoke, trying to tell what side he was on.

--
Judge Intentions (INT+CHA)
9d6.hits(5)=2
--

While she talked, she started going through the collected booty, trying to see if there were any chips in the bunch who knows, maybe she'd get lucky, and find an unused chip of the kind she was going for.

You saw the orc turn and look at you directly as you recounted your tale. As you watch him trying to sense his intentions, his brows furrow as if he's making a difficult decision. It's difficult to get much of a feel for the orc, you get the idea that he is definitely trying to figure out who you are and what your connection to the nights previous events might be, but other than that you don't get any sense of hostility. After a few moments he starts leading you over towards a slightly quieter section of the street before he pulls something out of his pocket and presses a small button on it's side. As he does this an annoying buzz along with a crackle of sound, much like someone trying to tune an antique FM radio, fills your hearing. It was a crude, but you imagine relatively effective white-noise generator; whatever he was about to say to you he clearly doesn't want overheard.

"This goes against my better judgement, but I think I can help you find whom you seek." His tone takes on a slightly weary tone as he goes on, "There is one reason and one reason only that I will do this for you, and that it that I've seen the footage from that bar." He pauses for a moment to watch your reaction to this, "and not the footage that made it to the news either, the un-edited stuff that we weren't meant to see."

Holding up a warning hand he then adds in a serious tone, "If I hadn't seen that I would not have helped you at all. The scene back there," and he indicates the direction with a movement of his head, "would have been all to easy to 'arrange', and would not have garnered you an audience even if you'd had to kill some of them. We have many enemies, some of whom would not think twice about sacrificing some of their own to stop us."

Narrowing his eyes on you he then presses the button on the device once more and the annoying buzz vanishes. In his gravelly voice he then said, "you know, your van looks like it could use a tune up. You should visit Binwin's Repair shop just down the way. Give that guy a busted vehicle and he'll have it fixed up in no time." Then with a nod to disguise the look he give you he says, "Just take it down and put it in the left-most bay. Tell him Billy-O sent ya and he'll be able to sort out what you need."

Then, you see his eyes lose focus for a moment, in the typical way people's do when they receive an AR message or the like, and he says to you, "Look, I've got to go. But don't think we're not watching you." Reaching out and placing one incredibly strong hand on your shoulder he then says, "Place nice and you'll be fine." And without another word he turns and starts to walk purposefully down the street.

Back in the van Molo could tell that the elf too was feeling anxious about what was transpiring outside; he was sitting there with one leg jiggling annoyingly, his hands clasped in his lap. Waiting was always a difficult thing, but it wasn't helped any by knowing something was going on out there and being unable to help. When Molo asked his question of the elf you see him think for a moment before responding. "I don't know him one way or the other. But that being said I know very few members of the group." The elf must have seen something in your expression that suggested he should elaborate because he continues to say, "The group is organised into numerous cells, each separate and independent. Each group's leader receiving their instructions from an organised contact. This keeps the group as a whole safe from being discovered."

His tone changed then as he went on, "I never really understood the importance of this until later, but what we're doing now is breaking most of those rules..." Then an edge of tension creeps into the elfs voice as he adds, "What if these people are still following us and we've just led them straight to the groups leader?" The elf seemed more like he was pondering this as an intellectual problem than anything else, but it was still something to think about.

Molotov considers that question for a little while. "Well they did manage to follow us all the way to the safe house and for a ways afterwards. How, I dont know. We dont seem to have any bugs on us, so maybe some wierd mojo thing? I dont understand much of that stuff though so it beats me if that's possible though I've heard it is. Certainly they do it in the Trids now and then, and they aint all bull either. Course they exagerate a bunch, and cut corners but heh... they got a little bit of truth to em too."

The elf frowns, sharing some of Molo's frustration and confusion. "It's possible that they're managing to trace us magically somehow, but I've been keeping an eye out for that kind of thing and haven't spotting anything." Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment the elf sits himself straight and then exhales slowly. When he opens his eyes again it's not hard to guess that he's seeing more than the physical world around you. You see him make a quick survey of the imediate area, looking for anything obvious or out of the ordinary. Not seeing anything of the sort the elf then starts to look slowly across the crowd, inspecting the aura's of the people nearby.

---
Astral Perception of area
Intuition 2 + Assensing (read aura) 5 = 7d6 = (invisible castle down... again... here we go with the old fashioned way) 6,4,2,5,1,1,5 = 3 hits
---

At first it doesn't look like the elf spots anything unusual, certainly not in the immediate area, but then Molo notices his eyes lock onto something and his brows creasing in an effort to see something clearly. Following the elf's eye-line Molo finds himself staring straight at the Orc to whom Mokoto has been talking.

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Perception test
Intuition 5 + Perception 3 + Enhanced Vision 1 - distracted 2 = 6d6 = 5,1,2,1,4,6 = 2 hits
---

Molo is so busy scrutinising the orc that he almost misses the elf looking down at his own arm, as if seeing something there. Then, in a slightly unsteady voice the elf says, "I think we're okay... I'm pretty sure that orc is a member of the way..." but there's something about his tone of voice that's off... he doesn't sound uncertain exactly, but like his mind is preoccupied.

Motoko nodded her head as the white noise generator hid their conversation. "Didn't do it to make friends. I did it because my face isn't on the trids right now, and my buddies weren't going to sit there and watch." She paused, and waited for the white noise generator to get turned off. "Binwin's huh? Thanks chummer, I'll be sure to check it out."

And with that, she turned, and headed back to the van. She opened the door to dump her booty inside, and looked at the others. "Got us a meet. Do me a favor, and search through that stuff for any chips you might find. But don't load them up, whatever you do." And with that, she took a couple minutes to hook her drones back up to their launchers.

After getting back in the van, she started the engine, and the van began moving towards the repair shop. "Got us a meet with Lyra's people. Maybe even Lyra herself. They've seen the real footage of what happened in the bar, so I guess that earns us some points around here."

As they drove, Motoko took a moment and accessed each of the commlinks and transfered all the nuyen out of the associated accounts into her own, before shutting them off again.

Suddenly, she thought about something, and said, "Oh, if you were worried about them using bugs to trace us, don't bother. Already checked you all. The Star was going off the APB on the van. But there are a lot of vans like mine. I just got a friend of mine to send an anonymous tip to the Star showing you two going into a coffin motel across town. Like I figured, 'confirmed' sighting drew them off our tail. So now let's go see if there's a way we can get clear of this."

When they got to the garage, she pulled into the spot the ork told her about, and rolled down the driver's window when Binwin came up to them, she told him that Billy-O sent them, and waited to see what happened next.

Looking through the commlinks and gear of the bullies, you are pleasantly surprised to see one has a decent amount of funds available. The net take is some 6,450 NuYen. You find a collection of data-chips, but none of them have the distinctive look of trip-chips.

The garage you pull in to is just how you always imagined a garage would look like if it was run by someone who was completely obsessed with all things mechanical; the walls are covered in parts and pieces from all many of different vehicles, devices and drones, each sorted and organised into some kind of system that escapes immediate understanding. The smell is distinctive: the same combination of oil, grease, hot metal and computer boards that all riggers or mechanics are intimately familiar with.

When you enter the garage looking for the dwarf the orc had directed you to find, you are somewhat surprised when an excited grease-stained boy runs up to. He's not much interested in you, but his eyes are wide and hungrily taking in every detail and modification of the van you're driving. In a soft, almost awed voice he starts muttering off the brand and model numbers of all the different parts he can see from the outside, ducking down onto his knees in a flash to get a look at the undercarriage. When he straightens back up he lets out an appreciative whistle, a mannerism you guess he's picked up from someone since it seems so at odds with his young self.

To further confirm that thought he then cocks his head to one side and places both his hands on his hips. "Nice van missy," he says with an rogueish grin. You can tell that you have earned some respect simply by driving the Bulldog. At the mention of Binwin his eyes narrow slightly until you mention that Billy-O sent you, at which point his grin returns. Bringing his dirty fingers to his mouth he makes an ear-piecing whistle.

"What is it you mischievous bag of trouble!" a dry, raspy voice calls from somewhere behind a pile of dented chassis sheets. "If you've managed to break that power-coupling again I'm going to make you change the next one using your teeth!" While the words were harsh the the boy continued to grin. The sound of tools being laid down on the hard concrete floor reaches your ears, along with the grunts and groans of someone getting up from an awkward position.

A short stocky man approaches you. He has bright orange hair tried back in a plait, greying at the temples and the top of his beard, which gloriously cascades over his ample gut. His skin is tanned and leathery, and crinkles around the corners of his eyes as he offers you a wry grin. When you look around you notice that the bay you're in is the only one not easily visible from the street. And you now understand why you told to come here specificity. You notice the dwarf also taps out a series of keystrokes on a nearby panel.

Addressing you now he says, "Well there, what can I do for you?" When you mention Billy he hastily conceals his suprise. Pausing to stroke his beard thoughtfully allows the little boy pipes up with: "They really are, she was just talking to 'im, after she told off some of those H bullies. Made 'em drek their dacks she did. It was awesome! Stopped 'em from messin' with Saylin again too." The boy's speaking so fast that it's difficult to follow exactly what he's saying, but the dwarf seemed to have no trouble understanding the waif.

"Is that so?" the dwarf said, a glint in his eye as he cocked his head a little and put his hands on his hips. "Well it doesn't look like you need much in the way of assistance with that vehicle of yours." The boy bounces up and down and says, "they've even got a Aztech nz-4583 camo rig going. Way cool." With a chuckle the dwarf goes on, "so I guess there's only one other reason he could have sent you to this park," he said indicating where your van is sitting. Even though he wouldn't be able to see too far into your van from his vantage point, he seems purposefully avoiding looking too closely at you or the inside of the van. As if answering that questions he says, "And I've learned to not ask too many questions. So I'll just send you through as I should."

You hear a clanking sound and the door that you came in through grinds down and the light from outside is shut off. The pale glow of the LED bulbs take over the task of lighting this part of the shop and you hear the sound of a generator or something starting up somewhere nearby. "Look, I don't know why Bill's sent you this way. But you watch your step." A strange expression comes over the dwarf's face... one of tenderness and concern. He looks like he's about to say more, but the ground under your vehicle starts to move, lowering it down on a lift into the concrete. Turning to the boy beside him he says, "you need to pop out the back and try and find a chassis about this size. Reckon you can manage that?" With a cocky grin the boy is out the back of the shed before another moment goes by, the words "null sheen Binny-boy," drifting back to your ears.

As the van slowly sinks below the level of garage floor and you are engulfed in darkness with nothing but the sound of the lift you're on ringing in your ears you have a moment to ponder exactly what's going on...

(( ooc, I'll break the post here so you can have a moment to talk if you want... I'll get a chance to post the rest of this in about 24 hours... the elevator takes about a minute to get to where it's going, always straight down... ))

Tucking the shut off commlinks and gear aside, Motoko chuckles as the brat tells the dwarf about her little exploits. "Well, it was looking like things were going to get ugly, and that is just bad business for everyone, yeah?"

As the van began sinking on the lift, Motoko grinned. "This line of work, you always watch your step. Domo arigato."

Once the elevator took them down, below the surface, she looked to the others. "You ready to meet the lady behind all this?"

Molotov muses the use of the way the elf says 'The way' but winds up not paying too much attention to it in the end. He always tried to keep thing in his world simple and straight forward, and getting mixed up in anything that had to do with magic always gave him a bit of a headache. Then again, so did politics. Maybe that was just another reason why he stayed rather contently where he was in the shadows. Things could get tricky in the shadows, there was no doubt of that. But generally, for runners like him, they tended to remain relatively simple. While he was inevitably tied in to the politics, the back room deals and everything else. But for him it usually just boiled down to, go here, do this, get out, get paid, and disappear.

This whole mess was something else entirely, and yet he was inevitably drawn up into it and had to deal with it. "I should have gone into the army." he mutters to himself in a low tone at one point, only realizing a moment later that he'd actually spoken out loud, if not terribly so. But he keeps to himself for the most part durring the rest of the trip. Relaxing as things work out between Moko and the Ork, and no additional foes show up to follow them.

As the van descends into darkness, he reflexively turns on his augmented vision, switching to low-light backed up by the very subtle glow of his eye lights.

"Ready as I ever will be." he offers by way of an almost flippant response to Moko to her question about meeting some of the people behind this whole mess, as he doubts it's just Lyra involved in all of this. Doubly so going by the Elf's comments of cell groups. At least Humanis was solidly pegged as one faction. All that was left was to fully reveal who all the other players in this game were, and then things could be come far more simple again.

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Perception tests
Mokoto: 4 Intuition - 1 Defaulting + 3 Visual Enhancement - 0 Low-light = 6d6 = 2,4,4,2,5,2 = 1 hit
Molo: 5 Intuition + 3 Perception +1 Visual Enhancement - 0 Low-light = 9d6 = 1,6,1,6,2,2,1,6,3 = 3 hits
---

The room that is revealed to you when the lift reaches the bottom is a sparse, functional thing. While certainly not spacious there is a good 20 feet of clearance on all sides of Mokoto's Bulldog. The bare concrete walls and a low, reinforced ceiling give you the impression of a bunker more than a room of a house, and since you're currently several score feet below the surface perhaps 'bunker' is quite fitting. From where the van sits on the lowered lift in the middle of the room the low, inset lighting reveals a large metal door in the centre of the wall directly in front of you, and smaller doors in the middle of each other wall. The door in front of you would be large enough for vehicles to come in and out of, though you have no idea where it might lead, and it also looks like it has not been used for some time. Molo catches sight of what is likely a concealed control panel just to one side of each of the doors, or rather the slightly different textured material that covers them. He also sees the cameras in the corners of the room.

Mokoto is aware that the air in here is eerily free of wireless signals, an uncomfortable sensation for one such as herself, and you guess that the earth between here and the surface along with perhaps some signal inhibiting paint is blocking out the wireless chatter from above. But nothing is blocking her sense of the wireless world since Mokoto can still sense the comforting 'buzz' of her van and drones around her along with an echo of signals coming down the elevator tunnel above.

The elf is fidgeting nervously, his breathing getting a little faster and a slight sheen of sweet forming on his delicate brow. He looks like he's about to say something when the door off to your left opens and light floods out into the dimly lit lift chamber. Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind him stands a lean muscular man of middle age and slightly short stature. His pose is relaxed yet confident and when your eyes adjust you see a serious expression on his face. The man moves to one side of the doorway and simply stands there, apparently completely at ease as he waits patiently.

Motoko edges the van forward, taking it off the lift, before stopping, and turning off the engine. She did not like that there wasn't any wireless traffic here. She did not like that at all. She left her weapons in the vehicle as she got out, but at the same time tried to hook into the satellite link the van had, to see if it got any signal at all through the intervening sediment. This was not the ideal state of affairs, but at least they weren't actively jamming her. Those things gave her a migraine.

Looking to the others, she motions for them to follow, as she heads towards the newly open doorway. "Well, let's get this over with. We don't get back into signal range soon, I'm going to start getting cranky." She nodded to the man flanking the door as she passed by, and headed forward. If they wanted to kill her, there were a million ways they could have done it before she even got out of the car. No, the only thing she had to worry about here was catching the semi-religious crazy that was going around, if the elf was any indication.

Molo considers his options at this point, and just what exactly, it is he wants to do. Or should do. In the end, he goes with his gut instinct and keeps his rifle with him. Though he doesn't keep it directly in hand, but rather slung across the front of his chest, cinched up tight with the tension quick release so that at a moment's notice it could be relaxed out to it's full length and in hand, ready to fire if need be. Not that he particulairly expects that this will be the case, but by this point, the man is feeling it's better to be safe than sory. As well as send abit of a blatant message that, while he's here, he doen't exactly trust this particular... group of people. Who ever they may be.

Not untill he knows more about the whole situation at least.

Before getting out of the van however he looks to the elf with a quizzical eye. "Something wrong omae?"

The elf looks up at Molo, seeming to only then notice that he was reacting oddly... you see him concentrate for a moment, his jaw clenching and his brow creasing, and a moment later he seems much more calm and composed. After taking a few breaths he simply says, "I'm just not a fan of confined spaces." But he nods to you to indicate he's okay and that you should head on out.

When the three of you have exited the vehicle the man beside the door straightens and scrutinises each of you. His eyes have an unusual quality to them as he turns them on each of you, their amber depths seeming to see straight through you. His nose also twitches slightly. Turning to Molo he looks at your rifle for a moment but does not comment. Having run his eyes over each of you he says, "Welcome. My name is Maurice, and I believe I know why you are here." He is surprisingly soft-spoken, with a resonance to his voice that is oddly calming. "Normally I would insist on more rigorous screening before allowing you within these chambers, but I have been instructed to see you through." You get the sense that he is a little tense about this, and also strangely amused. In any case he doesn't quite seem your stereotypical bouncer type in spite of his obvious physical strength and shaved head.

"The Lady has said you are welcome to enter her sanctuary, so if you will follow me." And without a moments hesitation he turns on his heel and walks through the doorway he had been standing beside. From outside the doorway you can see a short narrow hallway with bare walls and a security door at each end.

---
Security Design
Molo: Logic 3 + Security Design 4 = 7d6 = 2 hits
Mokoto: Logic 4 - Defaulting 1 = 3d6 = 2 hits
---

Both of you have seen these kinds of rooms/halls before, and while they look innocuous enough you know that they are often used by security as control points that can be shut off and gassed (or worse). You guide however walks through to the door at the far end and opens the thick security door which slides into the wall beside him to reveal the room beyond.

What you can see of the room beyond is limited, but intriguing. The room seems to be lit by some weak, flickering light source and has a wood panel floor. Around the middle of the room there seems to be a series of transparent screens or curtains separating a central square of the room from the exterior. In the centre of the room you can see a figure sitting on a low set couch with cushions all around on the floor. There is an usual scent in the air and you can also make out a small amount of smoke haze hanging in the air. The figure in the middle of the room is difficult to make out at this distance with the low light, curtains and smoke, but it is slight, sitting straight with arms folded and long hair brushing the couch.

Maurice waits patiently once more by the side of the door, his eyes watching you closely, and his stance more tense than you've seen so far. But he does not rush you, nor command you to enter. Both he and the firgure in the room wait silently for you to enter at your own pace.

Motoko nodded to Maurice. "Under normal circumstances, we'd be taking more precautions coming into a place like this. But then we all know these aren't normal circumstances." She walked through the security corridor with a kind of arrogance that can only come from someone who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from these gaijin.

Walking into the dimly lit room, Motoko activates the various visual cues on her glasses and contacts, mixing magnification, low-light, and thermographic to get a better view of the room. She headed forward, advancing on the woman with the long hair. She just wished she could tell anything about magic. She knew that magicians could check and see awakened types just by looking, but they hadn't yet made any tech that let you do that easily.

Then again, no mage could wind in and out of the Matrix like she could.

She stopped a couple feet from the woman, looking at her. "Lyra, I presume?"

Molo was still uneasy, though the fact that their 'hosts' didn't seem to actually say anything about his rifle actualy happened to put him a whole lot more at ease. Enough so that he shifts it on it's sling so that it's across his back instead. A far less threatening position for it to be, while remaining well at hand should he need it. Better safe than sorry. Beyond that for the most part he seemed content to keep letting Moko take the lead with the whole affair. It's not that Molo was stupid, he just never was much of a people person, and the heavy ammount of augmentation he had some how only made that just a tiny bit worse. At times like this he almost felt as if he were merely an observer in events rather than an actual participant.