Old World Charm, Its not Amsterdam, but its close. Options

[quentra]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2000 hours

The Lijnbaan is the premier shopping district in the 'Port, unique for its anti-car ban in the area. Its an example of the port, a glass and steel commercial mecca. Everything can be found in it, for a price. Including services of deniable freelance contract assets, otherwise known as Shadowrunners.

On the surface, in the light, everything is as happy as the lastest advertisement of NERPS would have you believe, but the shadows, the 'true' Sixth World, hide the undesirables from those who live in the light, pretending everything's alright.

Nothing is ever like it seems.

[Aaron]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2000 hours
Hidden (Passive)

The man called Resterend reclined in a shadowy corner of the open-air restaurant. It was a bit cool for the season, but he liked it that way; it made his layers of armor more comfortable. He felt safe, and so he felt relaxed. He sat back, letting his meal digest and watching the people and the data go by. Same thing, when you think about it, he thought to himself.

A squeak entered his consciousness, and what could only be described as a ball of cute with arms and legs wandered into his vision. It was a sprite, come to tell him that the restaurant node was now under the impression that his meal had never been served and the food in it had never existed. That, he thought to the little crack sprite, who sat in its virtual space and attended the technomancer intently, is why metahuman beings should never have restaurants that are staffed entirely by drones. Now, off you go. Thanks for the help. The sprite spun vertically and disappeared with a virtual "BINK!"

The man called Resterend sat back and sipped at his free drink. He breathed deeply the sea air, tinged with grease and diesel. It was shaping up to be a nice night.

[Abschalten]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2002 hours
Implanted Comm: Hidden mode - No SIN
(Public Comm: Passive mode - broadcasting SIN as Patricia Swan, England)

Void wandered through the Lijnbaan District, deftly maneuvering in between the throngs of people braving even this rainy, cold night. Bright street lamps, large crowds, and annoying AR adverts casted a disorienting spell on those who lacked focus. Her implanted comm was set to Hidden, bypassing all but the most egregiously tenacious spam. Her public comm, however, was another story.

God damn it, she muttered inwardly. She mentally fiddled with the spam blocker settings, and mused upgrading the already impotent firmware with some newer filtering protocols, though she doubted it would do much good. After a few moments of adjusting the comm's blocking algorithms, adverts for new-and-improved NERPS and erectile dysfunction tonics faded from her view, and she once again regained her concentration.

She was dressed in a cheap but decently presentable suit, something an aspiring middle-manager or used drone salesman might wear in hopes of impressing higher income ranges. More than likely it came off as dismissively gauche, but to Void, that was entirely the point. Her hair was concealed within a short, black wig with a touch of grey, and she was wearing some spectacles that she had entirely no need for. Some judicious use of make-up to alter her complexion, and a slight hunch to her gait, and she was masquerading as another person.

Now, where is he? she asked herself. She fired a few neurons and mentally brought up her Europort mapsoft. A few more commands, and she was zooming in on the Lijnbaan Shopping District. A flashing red X blipped on De Blauwe Hollander, a restaurant her contact had instructed her to meet in front of in his last message to her. It was right up the street, on the left.

She decreased the window size on the mapsoft and moved it to the lower left of her vision, still active, but less obtrusive. She stopped by a vendor's kiosk, making a pretense at looking over his knock-off merchandise to give her purpose here some credibility. Meanwhile, her DNI was flashing, recalling a digital image stored in her cybereyes' memory. An image of her contact from the chest up flashed into the center of her sight, complete with his police uniform and quaint-looking hat. Using this image as a baseline for recognition, she activated her vision enhancement and attempted to single him out of the crowd.

"This is all very nice. But no, thank you." She kindly fended off the vendor's aggressive invitations to buy his wares, and then walked off up the street, in the direction of the restaurant.

[Tabula Rasa]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 1950 hours
Commlink: Passive - Katja Janssen, United Netherlands

Holda sits at a small table at a trendy cafe, her jean covered legs crossed, nursing a small cup of cappuccino. She holds the cup gently, feeling the warmth seeping into her well manicured fingers. She stares out into the light rain and inhales the steam from her cup, savoring the smell of real coffee, steamed milk and cinnamon.

What a beautiful day...

It goes on for minutes, she continues to gaze out the window, her expression distant and faded, her cybereyes unfocused. At last she lets out a long sigh and shivers from the goosebumps crawl over her skin as the last remnants of the chemicals fade from her system. It takes her a few minutes to recover. She turned her eyes from the dreary weathrt and takes a sip of her drink. This tastes like drek. She puts the drink down hard on the table and spills a bit over her hand and on the table.

God dammit, I need to pull myself together. I can't afford to attract attention to myself.

She looks around nervously and wipes her hand clean, hoping no one is staring. She slowly relaxes and manages to finish what was left of her drink. It still tastes like drek.

2000 hours

Trying to brighten the suddenly gray world she subscribes to her list of favorite stores in the Plaza. She pushes aside the onslaught of sales and special offers. I really need to remember to unsubscribe from those lists. She jumps into the list of most recent arrivals and scrolls through till a few items catch her eyes. After marking the items, she requests direction pointers to guide her and makes sure she has all her things. She puts on her tweed crop jacket and grabs her purse and heads outside.

She authorizes the ¥10.50 for the cappuccino as she steps out. What a waste of nuyen, I need to stop throwing away money. She hardly notices the irony in that statement as she follows the pulsing yellow arrow to the first item on her shopping list.

[Cthulhudreams]

Piet Hein Donner Apartment Complex, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 0850 hours
Commlink: Off

Dagda sits stripped to the waist on the tiny balcony of his equally tiny apartment in an exclusive surface complex. Named after a former justice minister in what Dagda supposes was some tongue in cheek humor on the part of the yakuza front that did the development, the complex offers extremely discreet security and minimal checks on any residents coming in, and harsh and invasive checks on any visitors, other than those personally escorted by a resident.

Ideal for keeping the riff raff out, or more importantly people with guns coming to kill the senior mafia figures, drug smugglers and arms dealers that make up the majority of the residents.

Smog. Again.

Dadga sits with his back facing the weak sunlight, his lichen feeding red smoggy glow. Scattered across the table in front of him is a half disassembled Ingram, cleaning fluid, and a bottle of vodka beside an empty glass. He pours himself another glass, then gets back to work. He has a meeting with some prospective clients later today down in Lijnbaan. Above board security work, but the clients are not above the board people.

I'll need the gun.


Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 1955 hours
Commlink: Passive - David Kievlianin Zorynich

Dagda wanders though the shopping district looking for the 'Kafé België' - some research reveals that there is also a 'Café België' in the area. Same Same but different. It reminds me of Vietnam. He's got a meeting with the clients there in about an hour.


Some time to kill. Hopefully the bar will be a bit quieter than the hustle and bustle of people.

[Professeur]

EDIT : Meh. Hit the post button too quickly. Gonna post later sorry.

[kookyjeld]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2000 hours
Commlink: Passive – Ingri Alexander, United Netherlands

Petra moved languidly through Lijnbaan - judging by her vacant expression and slow shuffle, she was in no rush to reach any particular destination. Occasionally, she checked the status of her mascara by glancing at her reflection in the glass of the district’s various storefronts. She usually didn't paint herself with much makeup, nor did she attempt to tame her platinum curls, but tonight was an exception to the rule.

What’s taking so long? He usually isn’t late, referring to that bastard, Foster, who should have contacted her well over half an hour ago. Their intended meeting would have been innocent enough – dinner, probably, since the stooge was a tad old-fashioned – and Petra had matters of financial significance to discuss. The only outward sign of her frustration was the occasional twitch of one of her eyelids, but otherwise she put forward the front of a perfect lady. A perfect lady who had just been stood up.

Bastard.

[quentra]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2016 hours

Rainy and depressing. It's almost like a certain sprawl, but Europort has sun at time when the industrial smog clears up.
Which really, is never.

People shuffle about, meta and not, with more changelings than one would assume, going by the various shops, megamalls, and corp halls scattered throughout the district. No one seems to be doing much of anything, and everyone seems to have slightly depressed expression on their face, as if the knowledge that they're simply cogs in an enormous capitalist machine, replaceable ones at that, is constantly battering at them. Of course, you can never get far from the effects of the Black Tide in this sprawl, which seems to add to the general obsolete attitude of most of the wageslaves.

An advertisement of NERPS suddenly bombard the crowd, breaking through almost everyone's spam filters. It disorients the shoppers, but not enough to hide a sudden tremor, followed by the sound of an enormous boom, coming from approximately northwest. Most people are knocked to the ground, then two, slightly weaker blasts rock the district again, knocking down the rest.

Almost immediately, the sounds of police sirens wail through the area, and uniformed, Drachen Garde officers, Saeder-Krupp's private police force, seem to almost magically spread through the area. They seem to have forgotten 'restraint of force' as they begin to use shock baton and tasers almost liberally through the crowd, while enormous steel gates begin dropping throughout the district.

Five such gates raise around the approximate area of the restaurant minidistrict Holda, Dagda, Void, Petra, and Resterend currently occupy, effectively cutting them off from the greater district. Five uniformed
Drachen Garde officers begin to approach their location, stunning and shocking all the unfortunate shoppers who might be in their way.

[kookyjeld]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2017 hours
Commlink: Passive – Ingri Alexander, United Netherlands

Okay, he definitely isn’t coming.

At the first sign of danger, Petra pauses and assumes a pensive look as she consults herself on what course of action should be taken. She silently and roboticly mouths a string of words, as though they were pulled directly from a book:

Condition: You are outnumbered and outmatched by people who have surprised you. People with no restraint - she swivels her head to get a better look at a collapsed man drooling and convulsing on the ground - People with tasers.

“Don’t be an idiot,“ she mumbles as she launches herself into the disarray of the ground, weaving deftly through the swell of moving bodies. “Hide.� Her destination is a narrow alleyway wedged between a café and a bakery within the now caged district, the overfilled dumpster within acting as a disgusting, yet shining beacon of hope.

[Aaron]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2017 hours
Commlink: Hidden (Passive)

Resterend freezes for a moment, and then curls into a ball on the floor. Come back, little pal, he calls to the Resonance, I need you.

[Tabula Rasa]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2017 hours
Commlink: Passive - Katja Janssen, United Netherlands

Oh my god! They found me! Drek! She immediately ducks behind a corner just to get out of view and scans the area for a better place to hide in. They can't have found me, I was being so careful. How the frag am I going to get out of this?!

She ducks low and crawls on her hands and knees, trying to head to a more secure spot while staying out of sight. Don't panic, they can't be here for me. This is just bad luck. She presses herself low to the ground in her hiding spot, cursing herself for wearing a good outfit out today. Just my drek luck.

[Abschalten]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2013 hours
Implanted Comm: Hidden mode - No SIN
(Public Comm: Passive mode - broadcasting SIN as Patricia Swan, England)

Void sat at a table in the front of De Blauwe Hollander. It was outdoors, but conveniently located on a sheltered patio. This alleviated some of her misery, somewhat. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small pouch of tobacco and the papers for it. Inwardly, she heaved a sigh. Void didn't really smoke. Patricia Swan, however, did. Void-as-Patricia made the motions of pulling out some of the dried leaf, spreading it out into the rolling paper, and then twisting it with a practiced perfection. She lit the cigarette, puffed, and tried to ignore the tickle in the back of her throat urging her to cough and gag.

Where IS he? she mused, her inner voice brimming with annoyance. Her search had been fruitless. Her contact had not shown up. Nearly ten minutes she'd been sitting here, waiting where she was instructed to meet him, only to be stood up. Normally he's so much better about letting me know when plans have changed...

Paranoia began to seep in. Void hated it when plans changed unexpectedly. They usually resulted in a hasty relocation and a change of identity. Occasionally, they were the harbingers of severe beatings and retalliation. The fear instinct was healthy for her, though. It, combined with her occasionally uncanny luck, saw her through all of those obstacles and brought her to where she was now: sheltering from the rain in a foreign country, stood up, and pretending to be a woman who died in a car crash two years ago. If only...

It took a moment for her to regain her bearings. One second she had been smoking a cigarette. The next, a tremor and a small shockwave sent her rolling out of her seat, slamming against the fence at the edge of the restaurant's patio. Her cyberears briefly registered a loud boom a few milliseconds before her sound dampener kicked in and muted the roar, keeping her from being quite as disoriented. Hastily, she clambered up onto her knees to look at the scene before her. Alas, she had finally found some police, but they were currently busy beating and tasing their way through the civilians.

Void deftly snatched up her mock spectacles, the right lens now slightly cracked. She placed them on her face anyway, then got up onto her feet. The woman staggered to her feet, then hopped over the small fence. She scanned around, seeing the perimeter cut off by security gates, then spotted an alleyway right beside the restaurant. Right as she was evaluating whether or not it would be a good place to hide, she saw another person dart in before her. She watched the mass of pale blonde ringlets disappear around the corner, then thought to herself, This is as good a sign as any.

Quickly, she followed the woman around the corner. Void affected as best she could the demeanor of your typical, scared civilian, a display for the woman and any police currently coming in their direction.

[kookyjeld]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2017 hours
Commlink: Passive – Ingri Alexander, United Netherlands

Glancing over her shoulder as she makes way for the dumpster, Petra's blue eyes temporarily come to rest on the woman darting into the alleyway behind her. Suit-clad and visibly panicked, Petra figured that this person probably wasn't a threat - not that she was necessarily the helpless bystander type of 'gal, either - but doubted this random individual would be one to ram a shock baton into the meat of her buttocks. For the moment, that was all she cared about.

Petra said nothing to the woman, accepting her presence but making sure to stay several steps ahead. Alleyway real estate was certainly at a premium.

[Cthulhudreams]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2017 hours
Commlink: Passive - David Kievlianin Zorynich, Permanent resident

Dagda takes his glasses off as a random burst of spam and static floods his glasses, cursing the chinese workers behind its construction with a flood of highly racist epithets.

His outburst is cut short by the explosion and his instinctive combat reflexes kick in, sending him diving for cover behind one of the fake plastic potted plants, jamming the glasses into a pocket and reaching for his gun.

That would be a mistake.

Dagda's fingers unclench from around the pistol grip, and he instead focuses for just a moment, feeling a surge of power invigorate him after a moment, transfering the twisted knot of mana to the astral 'anchor' pressed against his skin.

With his new enhanced reflexes Dagda switches his perception to the astral and crouches behind the potted plants.

[Shit. This doesn't look good. Need a hidey hole to make a real hidey hidey hole. Hrm.

Dagda catches sight of an awakened figure deftly weave through the crowd and positively fly down an alley way ahead of the cops.

Awakened. High speed movement. Combat trained. Probably knows what shes doing. Okay lets do this

Lacking a better plan Dagda leaps over the table and uses his physical mass, enhanced reflexes and higher than human strength to plow through the crowd towards the alley, following the magic runner, smashing at least one unfortunate woman physically aside.

[Aaron]

Resterend slowly peeks over the table, takes a quick look around, and then ducks back down.

[quentra]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2019 hours

The cops pause for a moment, and then three of the cops head into the alleyway. The other two stand in the center of the closed off minidistrict, waving their stun batons around but not actively shocking people.

The officers in the alleyway seem to have different ideas, however. They wave their batons menacingly, and one of them call out in Dutch, "David Zorynich and Ingri Alexander! Please step out for a summary questioning. There seemed to be a problem with your SIN scans."

Not waiting for a reply, they advance on the group in the alley.

[Aaron]

I must be crazy, thinks Resterend to himself, shortly before having a rapid whispered conversation with his virtual friend. No, I am crazy.

[Abschalten]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2019 hours
Implanted Comm: Hidden mode - No SIN
(Public Comm: Passive mode - broadcasting SIN as Patricia Swan, England)

"Shit!" she hissed, in English.

It's all she could say in light of her current predicament. The alley dead-ended, with no place to hide except in the tentative cover of shadows. The woman she had followed was before her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see another person, a big male, storming in behind. Just beyond him, she caught sight of police officers.

Well, this couldn't possibly get any worse. The spectre of her latent pessimism was trying to surface in this dire moment, and yet she did her best to quash it, even if only to nurture the tiniest ray of hope.

She found that hope when her cybereyes' vision enhancement highlighted a sewer grate on the ground, the bolts appearing slightly loosened. It looked like she could possibly get through it if she tried hard enough...

And yet she recalled previous experiences with sewers, and she was loathe to recall how the smell of shit was nearly impossible to get out of good, expensive clothes. The overpowering stench did little to help her tailored pheremones, too.

In a fleeting moment of altruism, she pointed the grate out to her aggregate companions. In British-accented Dutch, she whispered urgently, "There's a way out!" She hoped that would be enough for them to understand what she meant. Meanwhile, she cowered into a corner behind the dumpster, in the shadows, and waited for the police to arrive.

[Cthulhudreams]

Lijnbaan Shopping District, Europort, United Netherlands - October 20, 2070, 2019 hours

Dagda quickly dumps all the 'fake' cover information for his SIN into his mind via his DNI, having it up on his glasses, and tasks his agent to present relevant infomation in optical and audio formats as officers as him questions. Then he half steps out of the shadows, but well back from the shock batons, responding in Dutch"I'm David. What can I do for you officers in this emergency situation?"