[IP] Panzerknacker Options

[Gilga]

Anna shrugged "There is something wrong with THAT box" she pointed and explained "it eminent negative emotions that can shred my magic to pieces. Whatever I levitate needs to be as far from that box as possible or I cannot do it."

Still, there was that an uneasy feeling, "What could cause such a terrible disturbance though..." she thought.

[ Spoiler ]

Magical Threats: 5d6t5 3

[SquirrelDude]

Slobber was concerned about the box, but they didn't have time for that. He pulled out his monosaw and got to work on the lock-boxes.

[Gilga]

Anna had to admit to herself that there was something very calming about that stoic orc and his practicality. Time was of the essence and she helped to pile and organize their loot. The strongboxes as far away as she could from that terrible box. It was difficult to ignore that terrible sensation whatever was inside that strong box caused her and so they needed to finish quickly to GTFO. Though, how far could they really get from that central box? They needed a different kind of solution... A spirit rather than a spell perhaps?

[Volker]

"Boss, do we need that crate? It might be something, uhm, private, which might cause some kind of special attention.
Krestov: Would you be able to carry slash drag that thing?"

[Jack_Spade]

Schmidt replied: <<What you describe sounds like a very powerful artifact - and one that is likely of Aztec origin. I'm willing to bet that Lowfyr would grand us all kinds of favors for taking that out of the Azzies hands. Keep working, I'll make a quick call.>>

Krestov replied: <<Dragging possible but not good. Can't get through raised vault door very well. Better you come to vault, open box and let me take thing away. Don't like the sound of it.>>

[Gilga]

Anna seemed suddenly worried "I think that the box stops some of the effects from getting outside. If you remove the artifact there is no saying how strong the effect is going to be. I may not be able to cast any spells... Right now I think that it is still within my powers to levitate the stuff - it may drain me like crazy but would not put me at risk of losing consciousness... I may not be at the top of my game afterward but I can levitate the loot.

Perhaps we only risk the artifact once we removed the other treasures? As a thief, I'd never steal such a special snowflake kind of artifact as I would not know how to handle or sell it... but if Mr. Schmitt has the connections to handle it - then it is already here, and we are already robbing the place. How about I give mojo a try before it may get even worse? "

[SquirrelDude]

Wolf was barking rather madly at Slobbertooth. He couldn't ignore it anymore. He took a break from cutting open boxes.

"Doc, last I remember the terms of this job are you get your data stick, and our payment is the rest of this.

"Frag Lof-whatever. He can come take that black-mojo box from here himself if he wants it."

[Volker]

"Schmitt's always been true to his word. If this is special, I say, we give him time to upgrade his offer. In the meanwhile, let's do as Anna says and bring the rest of the stuff out of here."

[Gilga]

Anna continues to work and order and pile up their loot in a manner that she could levitate it out of that terrible vault. She really does not want anything to do with that artifact but would not speak up with the 'big boys'. Greed is a weakness, same as ego risks yes but a discipline that artifact is just too difficult to move around without consequences - where would they possibly store it without being detected? Who would ward it? She'll let the others have their negotiations or argument and decide what they want but she would not slow down in packing the vault. She desperately wants to get over there in is a bit fearful of the terrible pain she might inflict upon herself.


****

When the looting is over and everything is neatly placed she begins her magic, channeling as much mana as she can possibly store for relatively modest results. A sharp pain in her lungs and a taste of acid in her mouth is the price she pays for attempting to witchcraft in that place. She somehow contained most of the pain... She watches with pride as their package lifts off the ground and signals the rest to secure the transfer. Soon... they'll be out of that place.

[Jack_Spade]

Slobber worked with speed and precision, while Schmitt stood silent and with an absent look on his face in the corner, conducting his call."
Half the boxes had been opened and their content put on the tarp when Schmitt returned to the conversation:
"Alright, I got put through to Essen directly. The boss wants that artifact and badly. I was granted immediate access to 3 million Euros to distribute between you on certified credsticks. An armored limo is on standby to fetch the item once we leave the Island. He referred to the artifact as a Horror beacon. If we can't get it we are supposed to destroy it with high explosives."

[SquirrelDude]

Slobber continued cutting, but his work was getting sloppy

"Oh, a Horror Beacon, how comforting

"You all know my vote on what to do with it. Frag it to smithereens."

[ Spoiler ]

I edited out a poem. I'll reserve it until I see what the vote is.

[Gilga]

Anna was confused, a lucrative suggestion made it harder to focus on the job that was almost over and that Horror Beacon made her feel more volatile than usual. She spoke without stopping to work. "My vote is NO! We only have a few minutes according to the annoying plan that somehow worked...Greed will get us killed. "

[Volker]

I never understood why Aladdin had to take the wonderlamp. He was rich anyway, why bother with that one single item that was dangerous, when he had more than he could ever spend? I'd never act that foolish. Or so I thought until now.

"What's that? Are shadowrunners people power democrats now? We've got a Johnson, and Johnson's pouring half a million bucks into everyone's pockets just for taking a thing we already got, and this Johnson said get it. I don't want to get the rep of being a runner who chickens out as soon as something unexpected happens. What kind of thief are you, Anna, to leave the heist of your life just before your eyes? Kite, increase surveillance radius, we have to be alarmed when reinforcements arrived early enough. Boys, get that the fuck outta her, c'mon, carajo!"

[Gilga]

Anna laughed fully a healthy laugh "You are just as reckless as me when you are greedy..." Pausing she said sarcastically, clearly amused that the thing is even considered seriously. "You really, with all your genius intellect do not see the flaws in this 'plan'?

Sure why not just take a beacon powerful enough to tear down reality itself and place it among the rest of our stolen illegal stuff...

I mean, sure we can hide away an Artifact like that... we'll put it in a box or something nobody will ever notice the dark black rift that envelops the BUILDING we store that box in... I mean seriously it would be visible from kilometers and sensed intuitively by every awakened person in the same neighborhood. The blood mages from Aztlan will never find us...

Or better yet, after we successfully hide this giant beacon of doom, we trade it with an actual Great dragon! He'll pay us 3,000,000 euros! No less, 3 million! We'll be rich! Let's buy a Pony! or better yet a unicorn!

I mean, you taunt me again and again for being silly and not following the plan... For forgetting things, losing focus and not writing everything down. I improvise in mundane situations and get stuck waiting for bnc to rescue me... Now you guys tell me that we can improvise selling an artifact like that to a dragon? Without preparation, without a plan? and things just magically work for us?

...and the funny thing is that you guys actually sound serious. I mean perhaps this thing is messing with your head somehow, because you seem so enchanted with the bloody thing and you speak as if you only have unicorns and rainbows in your world...

[Jack_Spade]

Schmitt interjected:
"Anna, please. This is important. Lofwyr does not want to possess this artifact, he wants it destroyed. Also, we wouldn't have to keep it longer than it will take us to bring it to the boat house. As I mentioned, transport is ready to bring it away from here as quickly as possible.
I understand your reluctance, but this is not about greed. This is about a doomsday artifact in the hands of very dangerous and unstable people. If it was just about a valuable trinket I wouldn't bother to risk derailing this plan over it. But we stumbled about a kind of spiritual doomsday device. If the Azzies decide to hold a blood ritual with this thing in five years time, it will be partially our fault when Horrors from another dimension ravage the earth.

Now, I won't force or coerce you to do my boss' bidding. We have a deal and if you are not willing to alter that deal around this complication then I can't hold that against you. All I can do is ask you to rethink your position.
I said I leave the operational command to Slobbertooth, so the final decision lies with you."

[SquirrelDude]

"Right, so who brought the necessary explosives?

"All I've got is a bag of grenades and some thermite bars."

[Jack_Spade]

Schmitt shrugged: "A bunch of grenades would probably work if we stash them inside the box and lock it back up again to maximize the pressure.
bnc can you come down and open the lock for us?"

[Gilga]

Anna looked at Schmidt, not showing much due to her helmet. She was angry and blushed and a bit confused.
"You know way too much about this artifact for me to believe that we just randomly encountered it. There is nothing random about it, either you played us or your Dragon played you. We broke into this vault to handle this Artifact not to get your research project. I... feel so frustrated that someone is pulling my strings so bluntly. I mean you knew what it was without even opening the fucking box!"

Frustrated she took a deep breath, tried to relax, her cheeks were red under the helmet and she felt her emotions being played and manipulated and the darn Artifact - it made it all worse... She wanted to get out of there! Go and cry, or dance or fuck someone. Just escape from the thoughts of how the darn dragon was 10 steps ahead of them the entire time. The augmented intuition spell just made her feel worse - smart enough to determine that she was played - not smart enough and not convincing enough to convince her friends that the only way to be free is to be unpredictable and chaotic. Sure saving the world sounded nice - but why not just ignore it and stick it to a great dragon?

Frustrated she said with acceptance in her voice. Go ahead... Blow it up... Hack it, carry it to the limo... Just let's get the ordinary loot out of the way before we play with forces we do not understand."

She did not wait for a reply, Slobber's willingness to go with that madness meant that that battle was lost already. Instead she angrily piled up the boxes and that conversation wasted valuable time... Now they were in a hurry, and perhaps not taking everything they wanted.

[Volker]

"On the way, doc. Someone open the case so that I can access the 'lock."
bnc sweared under her breath, softly and not on the team channel. She's probably right and I haven't seen it. This is the one black day in my life when I got outsmarted by a worn-out barbie doll. I probably have to kill her just to make sure no one will ever know...

She continued speaking without pausing to move.

"Guess you're right, sweet meat. Big L would have this prepared all along, provided resources that don't stand for a simple research project. Which also means, he will have prepared everything to get the shit outta here. This is no longer about bucks. Carajo, you bunch of guys can't tell me that you're only 'runners for greed. Flatline who holds that poor people aid shadow clinic just out of mercy, Slob is hunting intolerant racists. I myself stumbled into that crap trying to do just something right, running factcheck. Krestov, say something. You're our beacon in the dark, the one true heart, the truest cop I've ever known. If we can..."
bnc stops suddenly, obviously unsure about how to continue. Instead, she nods to Slobbertooth as she enters the vault and kneels down in front of the hopefully accessible maglock, thoughts spinning wildly. This is too soon. I'm not prepared for that load of responsibility. I can't- why now?
Focus, slitch, focus.
Then bnc does what she knows best. Not hacking. Not organizing. Pushing back thoughts, ignoring the voices in her head, and just following other people's orders.

[SquirrelDude]

Slobber kept cutting. "How many we got left, and what's our time?"

He paused before putting out his grenades for the Horror beacon.

"Anna, in your mojo-expert opinion; is it safer for us to destroy the horrifying magical artifact or to try and steal it have it sitting next to us for a few hours while it's transported.

"I just realized that putting explosives next to a magic death box while with it in an enclosed space might be dumb, even for me."

[Gilga]

Anna said "Unlike Schmidt... I need to actually see the device to form an opinion. Though I doubt it is like anything I've seen before so don't hold your breath for an educated opinion. I am a practitioner rather than a theoretician, so my knowledge in the arcana is limited.

We should review our assumptions: First, we do not know what this thing is and we do not know what it is used for. So tell yourself that you are saving the world all you want, we can be the good guys and we can be the terrorists killing thousands by blowing up a magical artifact. We do not know if we are the good guys or the bad guys, we are pawns manipulated for a job we do not understand. Blowing the thing was offered by Schmidt - meaning this is an acceptable path for the dragon.

How much do you trust that specific dragon not to make it a suicide mission... I mean perhaps the goal is to damage some rivals and save yourself the 3 million euros by having the silly pawns blowing themselves out in the middle of a bank. Problem solved itself no evidence, no survivors - poor mr. Schmidt for trusting such an amoral and pragmatic beast. Not that I say that this is the plan, the problem is this COULD be the plan and none of us would know about it. We are dealing with an employer which is superior to us in any given way. Someone that does not share our sense of right and wrong and whose motivations we cannot begin to understand.

What is crystal clear to me is that we do not do something that was offered by the dragon. We do not blow it up and we do not carry the thing and protect it We cannot afford to follow through with the plan and see if we were planned to survive. There is a reason that people say "never to deal with a dragon", it always sounds too good to be true. 3 million euros in 10 minutes, saving the world... Both very powerful motivations for us. I mean, you guys are all softies and I am really broke.

It never turns out as lucrative as you expect. These critters have many millennia of experience manipulating people like us. They do not feel a need to be fair to us and they are certainly not our equals. So if I follow my own advice, both bringing this artifact to the Jhonson and blowing it up have a thing in common. They both involve taking the Artifact out of its box. Do you think that it is possible to not to take the Artifact out of the box? Can we somehow steal the box itself? Including the maglock and everything? Perhaps put the entire box in a submarine, park it at the bottom of the lake and when the Jhonson come to pick it up, we give him a mark?

I know that I am being silly - but seriously brilliant people - can we? I mean, as far as I know, the thing may kill us all as soon as we take it out of the box. In that case, does it really matter what we planned to do? We were given a powerful motivation to open the box... It was almost guaranteed that we would do so. "

[SquirrelDude]

"Anna, I don't care about saving the world or the 3 million nuyen.

"I just want to know if I am more likely to be able to fake my own death as planned if we blow it up or if we take it with us"

[Gilga]

"Beats me... As far as I know we may not even need to fake it if we even open the box. Exciting isn't it? "

[Jack_Spade]

Schmitt had waited patiently while the team discussed their course of action, finally he said:
"I can't speak for the big boss, but I did not know that we would find this artifact here. I can't say if Lofwyr knew about this and that that's the reason I was allowed to carry out this mission. But I know that my boss does not throw away useful tools on a whim. I asked for clarification about the danger and all I could find out was that this thing is not itself explosive. A mundane placing the explosives should not experience anything untoward and opening the box probably isn't going to hurt us either."

He looked at bnc who was already working on the lock an nodded.
"If it helps you, I'll be the one to place the explosives. You can leave the vault before we actually open the box. Get the loot out, I'll stay with bnc until the thing is open."

bnc meanwhile found out three things: The lock was sophisticated, but did not contain an anti-tamper device and was also completely separate from the matrix. Finally, the box itself looked very stable - maybe even stable enough to withstand the blast of three grenades inside. The universal port was clearly accessible and the system behind it was a Rating 6 Burghley&Johnson security device. Not impossible to hack, but challenging nonetheless.

[Gilga]

"If we know it is not explosive... let's open it and certainly when explosives are dealt with... I'd be as far away from the actual Boom... Makes sense as not getting injured is the most I can contribute to blowing stuff up. I am just chaos speaking it makes for some interesting insights but a lot of nonsense. We have no time to waste on idle discussions."