OOC-Okay this is a mini campaign for mr Emo Samurai, it's a solo gig, so at the mo no one else to play. I may add extra people if the plot goes that way. For Emo, do rolls on this thread in spoilers please, any OOC questions to me in PMs.

Okay Emo, you have your basic brief from Phoenix, and an address. The ball is in your court now.

Shen crosses the Salish border without incident; he is, after all, a citizen. He doesn't drive; instead, he tells the car to park somewhere near the border, slots the parking fee for a week, and with a flash and a glimmer conjures a misty spirit of air to conceal and fly him to the apartment in the alley behind a nearby bar. He also physically masks himself to look like a kindly old black man so that no one recognizes him. He shrugs off the drain, accesses the grid, and guides the spirit to the apartment invisible.

The apartment seems normal enough on the outside, no signs of any special defences, just a substandard wooden door and cheap ass masonry walls. Shen can have a look around the area there's no unusual activity here except what could be a couple of drones loitering high above the block.

His body goes limp in the spirit's grasp as his mind leaves it to explore the premises, to check if the setup is, indeed, what they say it is.

As Shen's spirit touches the wall of the building he senses something ahead of him blocking his passage. Seems the place is warded.

He sits and watches people come and go to see if everything's clear, assensing the people entering and leaving to see if they're the people they say they are.

Shen can sit and watch people for a while, though no one is going into the building. After about an hour, a food delivery will arrive, the door wiill be opened by and man in his mid twenties, with native features and long blond hair. He chats to the delivery man for a few moments, takes the box of deliveries from him and as he does so winks at Shen.

The man answering the door, is completely mundane, he seems fairly bored but is otherwise healthy. He seems aware of your presence but is not astrally active.

Holding up the physical mask spell, I decide to touch down in the alley behind the building and knock on the door.

The door is answered after about a minute, not by the man you just saw but by an attractive human in her late twenties. Her hair is long and worn loose, black streaked with red. She's unarmed but wears a black catsuit that seems to be armoured.
"Hi, who the hell are you?" she asks, her expression is serious and hard. Behind her you can spot the man shifting about in the room keeping an eye on your converstaion.

Shen, realizing that Phoenix has already seen his true form, decides to drop the spell and tells her, "My name is Shen, and I am here to see Phoenix about a task he has asked me to do."

She grins, "Come on in then, I'm Cheerleader, my feral friend is Wildside."

Once you inside she hands you a odd looking commlink marked with a simple handprint. "Can I get you something to drink? We have tea as well as beer."

The apartment pretty much looks as you expected , though someone has installed some sensor pods on the window frames. The guy at closer look has a fairly bestial cast to his features, not orc, just somewhat feline and not in a cute bishi way.

"Tea would be nice." Shen nods a silent greeting to Wildside.

"So what is it exactly that you do? And why would you need my skills if you already have at least some degree of in-home magical support? I'd assume that it's not subcontracted work; most groups short of mid-level corporations wouldn't pay 100 an hour for the erecting of a ward."

"We need your skills, in helping people sort their lives out." says Cheerleader, "We both do the security side of things on this operation, Phoenix wants you to cover the counselling side."

*Sips his tea* "I would be pleased to help. I remember Phoenix mentioning two young girls who have been through a lot."

"Three actually but he has another expert working on the worst case." Cheerleader states, a little too matter of factly, "The other two are in there rooms at the moment Hannah, and Wing are their names. They seem to be able to function but have no real idea about where to go next. Phoenix said you have experience helping people find their way in life."

Shen looks a little sad as he gazes into his tea. "Yes... Yes I do."

"Cool, I'll let you get settled for a moment while I go and check the girls are okay for you to meet them, they're a little nervous around men at the moment. Unless you want a bit of a run down of the situation they where rescued from."

"I would like to know more about them."

"Well up until about a week ago, they lived in a glass fronted room in a very posh house in Bellvue. They were the 'possessions' of a fairly well connected arms dealer, we're talking connections with Chimera, maybe even Winternight, basically a bastard's gun runner. He had tastes that ran into domination, he liked his lovers to act as slaves to him so much he kept them as slaves. Both of the two your dealing with were street kids, runaways one from an restrictive family and one after a bad time at High School. They got grabbed by people and sold into slavery. They've been slaves to the guy in question for about 3 years, we think that they've witnessed him causing the deaths of other slaves." Cheerleader keeps the deadpan tone throughout her speech. Even with out being astral you can sense the emotion she's repressing.

The little light there is in the room fails to fall across Shen's face for a moment. "Has he been dealt with?"

"Not as yet, Phoenix is unsure about the guy's strength. He has a viable team or two for take down, but isn't sending anyone in unprepared."

"Anything else about the girls?"

ooc- have a good time.

ooc- I will, thank you.

ooc- I have a connection here. We can start again.

"The big surprise is that they're clean, no signs of chip or drug abuse. Just low grade torture and sexual abuse."

"Okay... I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be to talk to them."

Cheerleader nods and signals for you to follow her, she leads you into a back room, she stops at the door, in Mandarin she says "Wing, this is Shen, he's the man Phoenix sent to help you. Is it okay for him to come and see you?"

As she waits for a reply Wildside steps up to you handing you a commlink of odd design, marked with a stylised hand and attaches offers you a hair band. "Comm and Trodes from Phoenix, he'll be able to send you useful info down it."

Shen dons the equipment and waits alongside Cheerleader and Wildside.

As you don the equipment an AR hud springs up in front of you, with a mere thought you have access to a number of files both on the girls and on their captor.

I access it.

You get a fair list of details. Wing grew up in Soeul, Korea, parents were middle management for a Wuxing subsidary. She went to a good school, notes show good marks until she was about 15 then they drop and she seems to be involved in several incidents at school, looks like she was being bullied. Parents frowned on her doing badly, she ran away from home at 16 and Phoenix suggests she was picked up by slavers from the Black Chrysanthenum within a week or two, then sold to Kratos in early 2068.

I read up on the incidents.

General being in fights, having other peoples belongings found in her bag (when she denied having took them), nothing major, just quite a few of them.

Any notes from previous psychologists? School counselors count.

Nothing useful, she didn't tell the School Counsellor a thing.

Anything on her parents? If not, then we can continue.

Nothing huge, both middle management in Wuxing, still are, daughter officially listed dead.

You scan the info for a few seconds, the database interface in surprisingly easy to use, it's like looking into you own memory. Wing looks up at Cheerleader and says, "I suppose, but he's not allowed to touch me." Her voice is harsh with an underlying sense of fear.

Shen waits for somebody to explicitly to tell him to go inside before doing so, either Cheerleader or Wing herself.

"Okay, I'll leave you two too it," says Cheerleader quietly signalling you into the room, "Wing I'll be just out here if you need anything."

With that she steps out of the room, time to get on with the work.

He quietly steps in and introduces himself. "Hello, my name is Shen, and Phoenix asked me to help you. You may tell me anything you wish, and you are under no obligation to listen to anything I say."

"how can you help me?" her question comes out sounding almost rhetorical, her voice spiced with a mix of desperation and anger.

"You can begin by telling me what you feel you need help with, whether or not you have any hope it can be helped. When you don't know what to do, it's best to know as much as possible."

"How am I going to escape him?" she say panic filling her eyes, "he can get me where ever I go. He doesn't let his possessions go for long."

"He doesn't know about this place, and right now, Phoenix and his teams are finding ways to kill him. I may even help out myself, time permitting. Even if we don't manage to kill him, which I highly doubt, I have a contact in Wuxing that has hidden me from my family for the past few months, and they're a rich and powerful noble family in China with an army of mages and hackers. I have so far been safe, and I'm sure they could hide you from someone with 1/10th their resources."

"I'm safe here but I can't live in here all my life."

"As I said, if you leave, Wuxing can protect you easily. And even if the raid on his place fails and he manages to evade them with his escape pod, he'll be too busy for a long time to find you. Even astral tracking probably won't work, because myself or Wuxing would gladly set up a ward to protect you from that."