[I]OOC is in italics

"You're the boss, sister."
he deftly undoes his seatbelt and swings out of the car and then into the back seat. he buckles himself in snugly, then says.
"watch my meat, I got a couple things I gotta take care of in the other plane. If I'm not back in 90 seconds, we have problems, drive off anyways."
Firmpoint then drops the invis spells and heads astral and instructs one of his watchers to stick to the roof of the car in case he needs to find it later. floating first over to the residue from the barrier.

TN 5, all dice I can to the test
10 02 02 10 04 07 11 01 09 03 05 02 05 05 = 8 successes, easily done

then the watcher auras:
5 dice TN 5 each
02 04 02 05 04 = 1 success
02 01 02 01 04 = 0 successes
10 05 08 04 08 = 4 successes (gone)
02 10 05 15 01 = 3 successes (gone)

trying to reduce the first two again (TN7)
04 07 05 11 03 = 2 successes (gone)
02 02 03 04 11 = 1 success

Trauma damper took all the drain
The last signature had one hour knocked off (down to 2 hours) and it's probably been about an hour since I summoned them so I'd guess it has an hour left.

6 attempts at force 3 things means 18 combat turns. +1 to project and +1 to come back.[/I]

Firmpoint's body comes back to life in just under a minute.
"We're good. let's roll"
In astral perception, Firmpoint orders his watchers to stay in the car, and then proceeds to remove his signature from Kim.

TN 7, full dice (minus 1 for illusion):
04 04 03 10 04 02 01 01 01 04 03 04 03 = 1 success.
Try again:
03 02 03 04 03 05 01 02 02 03 02 13 14 = 2 successes.
that spell has 2 hours left, minus whatever time was taken since he cast invis.

Settling back, and glad to be done with most of the work for a while, he waits for the ringing in his ears to go away... He wants to be in full shape for any possible problem that may come when they get to the safe house.
Over Radio:
"Ok, I'll ask again now, does anyone have a safe house? If not, plan B is to drive by a liquer store, pick up a bundle of cheap booze, then find a low class place with some drunks who will let us stay in exchange for the synthahol. They drink til they pass out, and come morning, they won't even remember we existed. I've done it before, it don't smell too pretty, but it works."

edit: just forgot some modifiers on one of my rolls. it's all good now.

Mirage unplugs her pocket secretary from it's datajack and connects herself to her car's controls. The Westwind's virtual-dashboard appears, and the car's engine roars into life.

She contacts Jim via her TacComm, "Ready when you are, take it easy though, remember I'm not a rigger."

Then to Firmpoint, "I've got a place we could use, it's safe because I've never used it, but it's pretty small."

"As long as I can get out of this car, I think it's big enough. Lead on, young lady."

As everybody gets over towards the car Ghost pulls forward and opens the door and boot via his VCR so that the other barrel can be put in and anyone (if they want to) can get in his car.

On hearing Mirage through the the computer, he takes lead... not speeding away from the scene to draw attention to themselves but neither hanging around either. Setting the car to autopilot he quickly goes into captains chair mode with the Condor overhead and checks to make sure there arnt any "suprise" road blocks! all being well, he goes back to the controls of his Lonestar modified GM-220 Turbo.

"Thank you." Kim takes the seat and checks herself in the mirror when she becomes visible again. She looks troubled. It all went easy as planned and it never was like that in the stories she had heard. The Johnson lied so that was normal, but why? The obvious reason she'd thought of before was evidently wrong.... unless it just isn't what Todd found out. It would have to be someone from Bicson to change the content. They hired people like Mirage and Firmpoint, so they really didn't want to leave anything to chance either. It would make sense if someone tried to move something to a less secure site and steal it from there. They said we could take more than just the canisters and that didn't make sense for the reason they gave, but it would be less suspicious and avoid any investigation in what is in them. Everything was falling into place for Kim now, but the question was if she should say something about it. Of course everyone could just think she was being paranoid, or worse that she wanted to see something big as corporate espionage into just a trifling job. That last part was probably true too. Kim softly bites her lower lip and sighs.

"So I guess we should call and make the delivery right?"

"Not quite yet, I wanna get Todd here plugged into the matrix and monitoring Star comunications, I want to know when they report the break in and what they report. they're bound to find the fence hole soon, lets plug him in and give it an hour. That is, if you're up to it, never hacked the Star before, don't know what kind of wards they've got.... I mean Ice, not wards... whatever."

While this intel will help, his real motivation is to buy some time to heal, he pushed himself too far on those spells, and wants to get back to baseline. he knows from experience that casting with drain only leads to bad casting and worse drain, and that's a cycle he'd like to avoid if possible.
He monitors the reactions of the two in the car with him, still in astral perception, trying to guage emotional status as well as read posture (In the back seat, I can't see facial expressions well)

Perception tests for astral perception:
03 01 04 04 01 05 04 =4 successes (on Kim)
I can probably tell that you're nervous and a bit shy about something, but not what it is. Do you have any spells on you, or initiate levels, diseases, or anything like that I should know of?

02 05 01 02 01 05 03 =2 successes (on Ghost)
I can tell that you're probably not a spellcaster (as if the VCR didn't give that away) and that you've got some cyberware.

To Kim trying to sound comforting, but probably not getting the tone of voice quite right, "Is there something on your mind?"

Slowly shaking her head, Kim mutters "It's not important." In her normal confident voice she continues "I'll be relieved as soon as we get rid of these canisters. Although it would be nice to hear what they have to say about the break-in, I fail to see it's significance. After all, they are not worth enough to warrant a full-scale investigation, are they?"

"well security there is provided by Lone Star, so that means that if a break in occured on their watch, Star is either legally obliged to look into it, or it's REALLY bad PR if they don't. Now, they could do a half assed job just to look like they care, or they could really come after us. and it would be nice to know if they found anything we should know about, a fingerprint of one of our infiltrators, or security cameras that noticed this car... oppinions?

The voice of ghost comes out over the car speakers..."Well it wouldnt be a bad idea to lay low, see how the situation is with Lonestar and maybe even our employer as well. Or even at a longer shot we could try and see whats really inside the canisters?"

"Ok follow me Ghost."

Mirage's Westwind pulls out and leads the way towards her safehouse.

It takes the two vehicles fifteen minutes to cross out of Tacoma's industrial/commercial heart and into the residential section where Mirage's safehouse is located.

Getting out of the car and setting the security systems, Jim looks around at the silent group... "So who fancys giving this contact a ring then?"

Stepping out of the car after Kim does (I'm assuming this is a 2 door).

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. lets get in and make sure we're safe and then we'll talk about how best to contact them. Sorry if I seem a little paranoid or controlling, but I believe in doing things by the numbers every step of the way. It'll only slow us down a maximum of 2 minutes to make sure we're safe in there."
Realizing to himself that he's probably seemed overly critical so far here
"But you're right, Jim, that is the next big problem that confronts us. So who is going to make the call?"

"I know I may seem keen, and I do realise that that security procedures need to be followed, but I just wanna keep things going. Because I have a feeling that one way or another this is far from over!"

Todd gets out of the car and glances around. "Lets just get inside and make the call. Kim seemed to like doing the talking, shes got my vote."

Assuming we're walking as we're talking,

"Agreed, in we go."

Unless something happens to make this irrelevant, I have some things I'd like to do on the way up.
First I'm going to look at the building in astral, do I see anything odd?
second I want to erase some of my astral signature from Mirage, and will do that while walking from the car (takes 12 seconds).

When they get close to the door, he gestures to stop and says quietly
"Give me a second at the door, if you wouldn't mind..."
He then requests his watchers to run in and check the apartment to see if anyone's in there.
"Give them a second to search around, and if they say it's clear, we'll head in."

The building is a collection of single story efficiency apartments, and does not appear to have any suspicious astral presences. Your watchers report much the same, noting that the area on the whole feels a little run down and desperate, as if too many dreams of better lives had breathed their last breath here.

After a couple seconds of gazing intently through the wall as if he could see through it he replies
"There's no one's in there, let's go, I have one more check I want to do when we get in there, and then I'll be game to listen to anything we care to discus."

When he does get in, Firmpoint pulls out a pocket secretary and casts a Catalog spell. he begins typing furiously as he inventories the area, entering all of what he "sees". After a minute of this strange behavior, he stops, takes a breath, and clicks a few more buttons, but not in the same possessed sort of way. and then looks up.

"Sorry about that, I'm done now. let's talk about contacting our Johnson."

He's pretty sure they're in the clear, but he looks down again to see what the program found to be sure. (BTW, I'm looking for occurences in excess of what I know I have on me, of course.)

Once Firmpoint has finished, Mirage draws her pistol and walks into the safehouse. Once she's sure that it's all clear she reholsters the Manhunter and calls everybody in, "It's pretty bare, but it should do for what we need, and we should be safe because I've never used this place before."

"Todd, there's a matrix connection point over there if you need it," Mirage points to the corner of the living area.

"If you guys want, I can check back with the place to see if they even noticed yet."

"I would like that very much."

Todd shrugs and takes a seat net to the matrix connection. He takes out a datacord, plugs it into the wall, then leans back, plugs it into his temple and goes limp.

Back out in the matrix, Todd logs onto the host using the backdoor and scans the system to see what has been going on there since the team left.

Kim's quiet the whole ride, wondering about Jim's question to open the canisters. If it really just contains the prolaxene then it would be no use nor fun opening it, but it might be dangerous otherwise. The idea that it could be something else is enough for Kim, but it would make a better story to know for sure. The big problem will be that her employers will know how to find her, should they have strong feelings about keeping the real content a secret. It's not like she wouldn't have accepted this job either, nor would she have demanded a better pay.

She gets out of the Honda and follows the others into the building. To the question about contacting the Johnson she shrugs and asks: "With what purpose?"

"I'm against opening the canisters for several reasons. First and foremost, our employers said they're in these canisters to keep the stuff under a special atmosphere. we don't know what air will do to it, and I doubt we could repackage it the way we found it. [Firmpoint thinks for a second if any of his bag of tricks could fix that, but even a barrier spell "lid" isn't airtight] Second reason is exactly what kim said. What do you expect to find? I mean it might be Amelia Erhart's left hand, but more than likely, it'll be a dozen glass bottles filled with a clear liquid. Unless Mirage here has a chemlab and a DNA sequencer stashed in the kitchen, we wouldn't know any more about it than we do now.
If you want, I'd be happy to astral project in there and take a look. If it's just chemicals, I won't know squat, but if there's some kind of microbes in there, I can see if there's living things. I could also try to cast invisibility on just the canister, but not it's contents, giving us a window in... not sure if that will work though."

While we're still talking, I'll try castinging invis on just the canisters.

Entering Bicson's depot host, Todd can tell immediately that an active alarm is in progress. Half a dozen IC constructs are floating about, peering into the recesses of the virtual lab.

Meanwhile, in the safehouse, as Kim and Firmpoint talk, the two canisters waver and disappear.

Dropping the spell as soon as I see it didn't work (probably during the same action).

"Bah, knew it wouldn't be that simple. oh well..."

OOC: did my catalog spell tell me anything about the canisters?

Todd's eyes open up, "Well, they know. Alarms going off all over the place. Lets just call the fixer and finish this up, alright?"

With a grin Mirage walks into the apartment's small kitchen unit and switches on the coffee machine, "No chem-lab I'm afraid, just coffee."

Sinking back into the small sofa Jim says cheerily "well thats good enough for me!! strong black please!"

"Music to my ears. I want mine not just strong, but mean too."

"Speaking, of dark, strong, things that'll keep you up at night, I second the motion to phone the Johnson. Todd, can you get some kinda haze on our end of the phone call in case they try to trace it back to here?"

holding my hands in front of me, palms up, I ask two of my watchers to manifest in physical plane (it looks like a comet with eyes one sitting in each palm)
"Go look inside the canisters for a few seconds. tell me if you see something interresting."
I send one into each canister, when they come out, I'll listen to what they say, but I highly doubt it'll be anything worthwhile, I'm mostly just checking to make sure there's not FAB, or something else in there that would eat me if I went in.

"If you want me to, later, I can try to put a ward up around this place. I don't really have time to do a big one, but even a small one will let me know if someone's coming in to check on us astrally, and provide a bit of a buffer against any kind of ritual casting."

Kim walks towards the kitchen to help Mirage with the coffee by searching the cupboards for some mugs and maybe do some necessary cleaning. Trying to make some small talk she says "That was really impressive..."

The watchers vanish for a moment before reappearing. Each one reports the same: the canisters hold some sort of mundane fluid.

Todd shrugs, "I can't do anything that a phone encryption module can't do. The effort I'd have to go through to do that isn't worth the time, lets just make the call and bail. I wanna get this drek over with."

Smiling at Kim for being noticed (Always was a bit of a show off). "Nah, my stuff just looks flashy. Todd here's the real wizard, we just don't get to see it." to Todd "You'd know better than I would." And back to Kim, "Ok, Kim, lets make this call. You've been nominated."

Feeling better at not being the nominated team leader like earlier... Jim sits back with his coffee and takes it all in. He always was better at following orders then giving them out. Must be a side effect of his army days.

"Sure, I'll arrange to meet somewhere." After getting the number from Jim, Kim makes the call.

Reign's voice is calm and urbane on the other end of the line.

"You've completed the task? Excellent. Eight p.m. tonight at the parking garage, we can make the exchange. I look forward to seeing you again."

Kim doesn't feel too happy about Reign needing so much time to meet. It sounds too much like she needs time to organize something for it, which can't be good. Especially not if that something involves keeping everything secret.

"Why not in .. let's say ... half an hour, since we're awake anyway? It's gonna be tough to suppress our curiosity for long, so we want to get this over with. Besides I thought you wanted it as soon as possible, so why wait almost a whole day?"

"Security, mostly. I'd prefer to wait a little while and see if you've stirred up any unwanted consequences. But sooner is probably better than later. Meet me in the parking garage in one hour."

"Sure, we'll meet in an hour then. Goodbye."

"Nicely done. now, a whole hour before the meet. I say we take a minute to relax and enjoy that we're not dead yet." He takes a deep breath and is quiet for a few seconds, takes another deep breath and says, "Ok, back the fun. anyone need to do anything to get ready? If not, I'm kinda hungry, but other than that, I'm good to go."

Pretty soon, all the drain should be gone, when I feel up to it, I'm going to re-summon my watchers.

"I'm hungery too, I'll see what I've got in here. Nothing fresh here though, hope you all like soy."

Mirage heads back into the kitchen unit.

Kim looks around to see if she's the only one who got really nervous about that call. She can't believe some even got hungry, when Reign's reaction suggests this isn't over yet. She wanted to wait a day to see if someone could trace the canisters, but changed her mind quickly after hearing how curious we are.

"Did we check those things for bugs?"

"Kind of. My spell didn't detect any bugs or tracers, but if it's some wierd kind that I wouldn't recognize, then the spell wouldn't notice it either. Either way, I suggest not staying in one place too long. I'm anxious to get to Reign and find out what the real job is."

Firmpoint's answer reassures Kim enough to drop the subject. As the minutes pass she realizes noone will find them there. This would be a good time to find out if someone could find her at her home though. Should she try to hire Todd or would there be something else she could offer him? "Hey Todd, where do you live?"

"Unless anyone has anything they need to do in prep here, I suggest we get going."

Unless someone voices an objection, he stands up, and heads towards the door.

While in the car when they're drawing near, he'll cast an armor spell on himself.
Firmpoint is suddenly surrounded by a soft blue glow

Todd gets his things together and heads out with the group.

"I got a shithole down in Redmond, why?"

"Never mind, we're leaving already."

The parking garage appears much the same as it did during the first meeting with Reign. In fact, apart from the time of day, nothing appears to have changed. The third floor is relatively devoid of parked vehicles, leaving you plenty of options about where to park.

Five minutes before the scheduled meet time, the sleek black Westwind idles to a stop in the parking spot adjacent to the stairway in the northwest corner. Trance steps out of the driver's side, scanning the near empty garage for a moment before opening up the passenger door for Reign.