The camera starts zoomed right out, encompassing the entire earth. At this distance the toxic blights, war zones and human created pustules of plasticrete are invisible. Selecting South America it swoops in, flashing over the dense, concealing canopy of jungle that covers almost all of Amazonia, zooming towards the festering pile of humanity that is Metropaul, the most dangerous and most densely populated Z-zone in the world. At 5am there is already a major skub vs anti skub riot and one district is on fire.

In the wan light of the false dawn six metas in combat armour, clutching a variety of assault rifles and machine guns rapidly board a chopper, its engine idling. A ghostly spirit hanging behind the chopper, preparing to blow it on its way

"The job's simple, find this tribe. ID the Shaman. Grab her. Give her the box. Bring her back to the metropaul. The chopper will probably be inspected for contraband when it comes back, so we'll land you a few klicks out and you'll have to infiltrate the city. Don't worry, the local administration is run by dragons, who don't know shit about perimeter security – the place leaks like a sieve. "

The view cuts to a briefing room, 6 soldiers in BDUs slumped around a table listening to a grizzled master Sergeant briefing them about some extra curricular activity. Their AR overlays are all Combat Inc branded.

"The complicated factor is that the tribe is semi nomadic and out in the jungle somewhere. We got a confirmed fix of their current semi permanent village and their typical roaming zone from a government
database, some inspectors and anthropologists out there a few months ago. They don't know shit about matrix security either. But that trail is a bit cold, you'll need to search. Remember to keep low, below radar."

The camera cuts back to the jungle, a mottled green chopper zooms low over the treetops of Amazonia's dense rainforest, moving slowly so the men sitting on the door sills can sweep their scopes over the lush jungle with their feet virtually brushing the canopy, yet whipping past a puzzled baboon observing at an extremely high velocity. The Combat Inc logo is visible on the tail, green paint hastily slapped over some still partly visible Ares co-branding. The soldiers are grinning and joking, looking for any signs of human life in the jungle while trading barbs over comms.

This place really is a shit hole Ruggeri. I hear they have snakes down there with venom that will kill you before you can take three steps

"You better fucking believe it man. Some of the spiders make webs to trap the souls of men. Scary shit

In the briefing room "The jungle itself is arguably the third most dangerous awakened zone on the plant. The natives have an unusually high number of shamans, and the local wild life is extremely lethal,
encompassing swarms of vicious flesh eating awakened piranhas, to the most dangerous spiders and scorpions outside the Australian outback. Ruggeri?"

A huge troll sitting up the back has his hand in the air

"What's the most dangerous?"

"If you just consider natural threats, it's the Australian outback. If you factor in the swarms of locals, aztechnology grunts, mutants, awakened mutants, pools of neurotoxins, intelligent land mines and chemical weapons that are all trying to kill you, the Yucatan is the worst place I've ever been."

I've got them

The camera cuts back to the chopper as sweeps over a clearing, several of the native inhabitants staring up at the rare sight of a helicopter, normally banned from flying this far in. Some of them start to grab primitive weaponry, but the helicopter whips past and is soon out of sight, the pilot chattering of the radio

Looks like that's it. Nice spot. Nearest LZ is about three klicks out. I'll stay in the air to provide fire support is required.

I could totally bag one of big cats from up here

One of the troopers lines up a Jaguar in the jungle below through the scope of his high powered rifle

Hey, Ruggeri, check out this shit. The kitty is wearing, like, a collar

Yeah right, its a fucking Jaguar, what the hell is it doing with a collar? Been talking to much kamikaze again?

Nah, I've been macking with ya mum, but look, I'm telling ya man, its...

Can it you two, and stop fucking pointing your rifle at things Patton, remember, keep frosty. ETA 30 seconds to LZ

The camera cuts back to the briefing room "Remember, don't shoot anyone unless you absolutely have to, just keep frosty if the natives get stroppy. Most of these guys won't have seen a gun before unless
they are on a black market trade route. Also, we need the target" AR photos of the mark, a young elven girl, are brought to the forefront of everyone's vision overlays "alive. Remember, instructions
are to give her the box at the first opportunity."

Hovering over a clearing the helicopter drops its zip lines, and the troops rappel down in near silence. Chalk away.

After a brief check of their weapons, chem seals, and matrix satcomm unlink the mercenaries fan out with practised precision, and slip into the dim half light under the jungle canopy, the helicopter swooping back towards the village, zooming the slight elven girl from the very brief photo cut before.

B'olay sits a top a thick branch at the top of a half-crumble ancient tree, leaning her back against the outer shell of it's trunk - hollowed out long ago.

She takes a short pull of warm water from a waterskin hanging across her shoulder by a long thong as she watches a bright green and red caterpillar - ten centimeters long - inch it's way across a wine hanging between the taller folliage. Off in the distance, from the direction of her village she hears the sounds of a few of her people talking. As they come closer she begins to make out the voices - three men's - joking and insulting each other as they went out in search of fresh meat.

Deciding to join them she slips over and into the hollow of the trunk and slides down a wine rope - the metal of her left arm rasping against the fiber - and lands in her lodge. She is surrounded by a deliberate but chaotic arrangement of various animal trophies, crude paintings, bones, beads and precious metals all woven together from designs glimpsed in her dreams. She grabs her onyx knife from a flat stone slab on the floor and hangs it by the leather strap woven into its hilt around her neck.

She sits in the center of her lodge, legs folded back underneath her as she concentrates to peer across the veil into the astral world and call out to a Spirit of the Air to serve her will. As she works her magic, B'olay's solid chrome eyes appear to shift into a jaguar's yellow slitted eyes, her frame seems to be outlined by another frame, much more massive and muscular, almost hulking compared to her normal height. As the focus of her magic becomes stronger her hands seem to twist with her fingers turning into crooked claws.

Unlike other shaman's a shaman of the Jaguar tradition does not bargain for the service of Spirits. But instead she focus her will and cows the spirits into obedience like a jaguar cows lesser predators. After the deed is done there is an unmistakable impression of what was done left on the astral plane, almost as if she is marking her territory, and telling other awakened beings to be aware.



Having retained her spirit ally should the hunting party run afoul of something dangerous or ill fortune she tells him to await her orders on the astral plane.

She squats under a small opening in the side of the her lodge and stretches her arms wide and leans back till she hears her back cracking. Then with a leap she transforms into a large jaguar - her woven fiber and orichalcum necklace stretching out around her massive neck - and stumbles for a moment from the startling backlash from the spell before she leaps into the trees after the hunting party.



It doesn't take long for her to catch up. She begins to follow them slowly, keeping watch and ready to ferry them quickly back home after the hunt, but preferring not to interfere for now. Her plans are quickly shattered as she hears a sound she has dreaded hearing in the jungle since long ago.

Her primal instincts nurtured by her Jaguar mentor almost immediately take over. Intruders are flying over her jungle and only trouble can come from that. Choosing to leave the hunting party to their own devices, she commands the Spirit of Air to quicken her pace as she begins to leap through the jungle trying to keep up with at least the sound of the helicopter till she can be sure it isn't landing within her domain.

The camera follows the Combat Inc team as they trek through the forest, having found a worn trail created by the villages they are now walking in single file, watching the jungle warily. The two huge trogs on the team in heavy assault armour are cradling their machineguns in strapped one gyro harnesses, belts of ammo swinging with their footsteps. Another has a huge leather bound book dangling from a chain on his waist. The point man, his tabs identify him as Ruggeri, is stalking quietly through the jungle some 20 meters ahead of the rest

"Wait up." The patrol freezes as the squad comms crackle into life, then crouches down, bringing their rifles up "Patton's got a fucking huge scorpion on him."

Patton doesn't move, but yelps over the comm "What the fuck man? Get it off me"

The man with the book slides his pistol out of his holster, levels it and takes two rapid shots, the black scorpions carapace exploding as the gunfire disturbs the local birds.

The sergent growls over the comms "What'da do that for? Locals won't stick around"

The man with the book snaps back "Awakened Sergent. Don't think we've got the anti venom for that."

"Shit. Okay, lets get it going a bit faster. Keep your eyes peeled."

After losing the sound of the helicopter shortly after beginning chasing after it, B’olay continues to travel in the same direction, hoping to catch a sign of where they may have landed. The thought of a helicopter carrying soldiers – was there any other kind? – landing in her jungle and bringing the death they inevitably brought, brings back a flood of terrible memories.

She shakes her head to free herself from the distraction and enjoys the feeling of her left paw – claws half extended – scratching at the bark beneath her. She didn’t have to feel the abomination that replaced the majority of her left arm when she took the form of an animal and that fact consoled her.

Suddenly, B’olay freezes half a step into launching herself onto another high branch, as the sound of two gunshots crack through the jungle followed by the crash of a hundred birds taking to the air.

Her ears lift up and fan out trying to localize the sound. They could be from the government… though that thought didn’t really bring any comfort to her. She ties off the strings of mana maintaining her shapechanged form into the foci stretches around her neck and heads stealthily through the lower canopy of the jungle, her senses searching for any unnatural sound.

Sergeant, we should be getting close now, 500 meters out.

The squad is taking it easy, sweeping their guns over the bushland, walking slowly down one of the more well worn trails as they get closer to the village. The natural wildlife is still subdued from the earlier gunshots, but monkeys and birds can still be heard in the distance, partly drowned out as the helicopter sweeps over the team for another fly by of the village.

Okay. Team, fan out. Ruggeri, you and Patton circle around the back, look for runners. If they arn't our girl, let them go. The rest of you, come with me. Remember guys, we just want the girl, and she's one of the shamans. If you meet resistance, just keep cool, and back off. If you come under lethal attack, use stick and shock. We think these guys speak spanish, so hopefully we can communicate. We'll wait for you guys to get into position. Move out.

One of the big trolls and the pointman peel off from the main part of the team, splitting off into the jungle at a half jog, the rest of the team fans out into a spaced line and crouch down, guns held loosely in their hands.

It doesn't take long before B'olay picks up the sound of the mercanaries walking through the woods, heading in the direction of her village. It's almost as if they want to be heard.

It's not long before she catches sight of movement through the foliage and she settles low onto a thick branch to hide from sight. As they approach closer - a mere twenty yards away - she begins to make out their voices, a foreign languages she is unfamiliar with. She remains still and watches from her vantage point as they walk through the narrow path worn into the ground by her village's hunters, assensing them in turn.

Her heart sinks into her stomache as she catches her first full look at them - armed to the teeth and completely covered in armor - and these didn't look like your average conscripts. The way they walk and handle their weapons - like the ones who enslaved her in Tenochtitlán - made it plain as day that these were professional killers.

She feels the fur between her shoulderblades bristle as her mind is washed over with panic, not again... and I can't stop this... they look too strong for me. They even have a shaman with them.

B'olay almost loses the fight to control her flight instinct, but her Jaguar mentor keeps her strong. I can't fight them and win, but I can't let them kill any of my people. I'd rather die than that. I'll confront them, see if I can make them think it'll cost them lives to fight us, or maybe bargain with them. It takes a lot of will to force herself out of her hiding spot, safely in the trees, but she steels her will and drops her spell. No sense in startling them... it's not like they couldn't just kill me otherwise.

She slips down the branch trying to not make much noise, but her foot slips on a patch of moss, and she recovers in a crouch her heart pounding nearly in her throat.

The sergeant hears the snapping of twigs and a light crush of leaves, just enough to trigger hard won survival instincts - and his audio subsystems. He starts to swing and bring his rifle up as implanted audio sensors resolve and directionalize the noise, then start to estimate body weight of the target, feeding symbioticially from the teams systems.

His wired reflexes snap his rifle up to his shoulder, just catching sight of the figure through the dense undergrowth. His smartgun systems paint his vision with an estimated target profile for the obscured sections, while physical recognition software matches starts trying to match it against his search profile. Finding a possible match, the software directly injects into his brain that the figure is a woman and the right height, and just as quickly the sergeant uncoils, lowering the gun and shouting in terribly accented spanish.

"You! You B'olay?"

As he speaks the rest of his squad start to cover the rest of the jungle, fearing an ambush, but the 4th team member keeps his eyes on B'olay, flicking VirtuallyThere™ mechanical tendrils through his AR overlay, firing up his illegally bootlegged IRS investigative program and running an attack.

B'olay recoils visibly when she hears her name, how does he know my name?!

Green gibberrish scrolls through a small opaque box in the lower quadrant of her vision and red color pulses around it's periphery in response to the attack. She stiffles the sense of panic rising in her guts, draws herself to full height and growls back in Spanish, "you aren't wanted here! You must leave now!"

As she speaks, B'olay bids her Spirit of Air to manifest before her to add some teeth to her words.

Sarge, she's wired. Not getting shit.

Pretty sure she's the one anyway

The Sergent flicks up his face mask, the seals snapping slightly and holding up a slim, grayly metallic container "Yeah, but I just need to give something to B'olay. Are you her?"

She stands there in her aggressive posture, stunned in surprise. As she stands there the gibberish in her vision fades away only to be replaced by a small red circle with a white "1" printed in the middle blinks away shortly after.

This is not what I expected... it has to be a trap, but what other choice do I have?

Praying that this wasn't a ruse to get her to lower her guard she asks, still her fiercest voice, "What is it? Why do you need to give it to her?"

The sergeant watches B'olay closely, noting the surprise.

"I get paid not to open the box. I'm assured its not immediately dangerous, explosive, or anything else. I am willing to stand either close or further away from you to demonstrate good faith while you open the box."

He hasn't closed the range, but the rest of the team are shifting positions slowly, cautiously, the big trog has the Air spirit covered with his LMG.

Sergeant, we're moving into position behind the girl in case she decides to do a runner. Starting 100m out then closing the range.

The sergeant mentally conjurers up a tactical map position, showing the blue team slowly closing in on the grey dot at the center of the position.

Take it easy guys, don't want to spook her here.

B'olay focuses on the box - her chrome eyes moving almost imperceptibly - and then back on the Sergeants face. She notes his squad mates beginning to take an advantageous position around her and eyes the big troll wearily.

What do I have to lose anyway...

"Okay," she says, "put it down and back away and I'll take it."

"Sure"

The Sergent gently puts the box down, pushes it towards you with his boot.

"I'm not supposed to let you leave with it until you read the contents."

Then he takes a half a dozen steps backward, slowly, using a team mates optics feed to make sure he doesn't trip over a root in the ground cover.

The big trog keeps the air spirit covered, his machinegun up and braced in the harness, while mage is watching you and the hacker has his weapon ready, but not pointed at the ground.

B'olay waits till he is fully backed up before reaching gingerly with her good hand at first, but then pulling back and using her cyberarm. I'd rather risk that then my god arm.

She grabs the box and quickly pulls back and carefully holds it away from her, as if it's contaminated. After seeing that it's safe she opens slowly tries to open the box and see what's in there that they want her to read.

Fucking hell she's weird. Why do they want with her?

The lead box contains a carefully folded Orchiculum necklace, not dissimilar to B'olays. Its a ritual item of a Jaguar cultist,



a microchip, the tiny English lettering on the plastic backed silicon baldly stating product of the SK Corporation. All Rights Reserved. S/N: 0402410117



and a worn scrap of paper that looks like its been water damaged, but the writing is a beautiful copperplate, unusual in the modern era.



As B'olay glances down to examine the rest of the box, the second team start to close in further.

B’olay opens the box gingerly and tilts the box around to get a good look at all the objects inside. She almost smiles when she sees the Jaguar cultist’s necklace and reaches inside and picks it up with her good hand.

She shudders the moment she holds the necklace in her hand jumping back a step and drops it in the dirt. She looks between the Sergeant’s face – trying to judge his intentions – and the necklace on the ground.

He doesn’t seem to be trying anything… maybe he is telling the truth. But why would he be out here looking for me?

Having decided that she was at least relatively safe she squats down next to the necklace and picks it up with a short stick, holding it up in front of her face to properly assense it.



She can’t get a very good read on it all – a sign of her unorthodox training – but the sense of wrongness is obvious and it’s clear from the design that it was made for another follower of the Jaguar. How could this be?

B’olay puts the foci back in the box, ignores the chip - not really sure what to make of it -and picks up the worn paper and slowly reads the message. She tilts her head as she reads - as if it would make the contents easier to understand - as she reads and then looks back at the Sergeant.

“Who gave you this?�

She awaits a response with no real hope of noticing the other two mercenaries circling around her back.

Seeing that B'olay is in no hurry to run off and starting to talk, the sergeant shoulders his rifle, and shrugs expressively. The thick armoured carapace of his suit makes him look like some sort of insectoid warrior when he does so.

"I've got no idea."

Boys, hold up, looks like she might come the easy way.

"Box was delivered by courier and the orders were issued via the 'trix. Our pay for the job is in escrow in Zurich orbital, as is a significant goodwill assurance. Given that, I'm not asking any questions. I'm supposed to give you the box and take you and any kit you want back to Metropaul. I've got an ID package if you don't have your own."

The rest of the team is starting to relax slightly as well, the 2nd team squatting down in the scrub, and everyone else - except the troll still covering the air sprit who's nervously flexing his trigger finger - starting to pay less attention to the conversation and instead scanning the jungle.

B’olay’s expression goes blank as he rattles off his job details which mean little more than gibberish to her. When he gets to the part about taking her to Metropol she narrows her eyes and her muscles tense and she leans away as if she is ready to bolt.

“I’m not going back to any city!� she spits out, “and I don’t even know who you are, and for all I know this is a trap.�

The sergeant grins, then laughs, slapping his thigh with a plasticity crash of gauntlet on cuisse that echos off the trees. "Lady, lady if this was a trap or I wanted to kill you, I would have cut straight to the shooting rather than all the jibber jabber. But rest assured, thats still an option. So is this going to go down the easy way, or the hard way?"

B'olay leans further away and takes a step back slowly, maybe I can get away... but what would they do if they can't find me? They'd go after my people to try to get to me.

She takes another half step back before stopping and slowly asks, "if... if I come with you, will you leave my people be?"

The sergeant gives B'olay a big grin, then laughs, slapping his gauntlet against his thigh cuisse with a clatter of plastisteel. "I don't care about them one iota either way. Chasing people around the jungle is to much like hard work. All I'm here to do is take you to Metropaul and give you resources to hook up with the backer. They said you'll know where to go."

B'olay gets angrier the more he laughs. Her eyes flicker between his weapon, and the others with machine guns. I don't stand a chance and the bastard knows it. Her shoulders sag as B'olay resigns to her fate. Surely this is a test, to prove my strength.

She lifts her shoulders back up and looks the Sergeant in the eyes and tells him as if she is making this decision on her own terms, "I'll come then. I need to grab a few things first if I have to leave."

"Sure thing."

You two, stick close to her, Ruggeri, keep that spirit covered, the rest of you, keep your eyes peeled, could be an ambush. The squads AR overlays update as their tactical maps are updated and everyone starts to move into position as a co-ordinated team.

He unshoulders his rifle and says simply "Lead on?"

She brings an image of her village Elder to her mind and turns to the Spirit of Air and commands it in Mayan to find him and to tell him, "that I must urgently leave and that I will return as soon as I can manage. Tell him I'm sorry. After that you are released."

B'olay watches the spirit leave and then begins walking towards her lodge. Once there she slips into the lodge, glad that the larger men would not likely fit inside so they wouldn't be able to desecrate her sanctuary. She moves aside some large rocks and brushes aside some dirt and pulls a waterproof backpack out of the dirt.

I'd hoped I would never need to use this.

She pushes the backpack out of the tree and follows after it. She then throws the backpack over her shoulders - already hating the sensation of synthetic materials on her skin - and follows the mercenaries back to their chopper. She reacts to the chopper like a sensible person reacts to a large predator and the Sergeant has to use a few nudges to get her to climb on board the machine.

Once on board it takes a bit of patience and a lot of effort on her part to sit still and allow them to strap her into her seat. While waiting to take off she confesses to the Sergeant, "I do not really know where to go after we get to Metropaul, I have never been there before." That's when one of the other men reaches into the box under the seats and takes out the chip she previously ignored. He slowly picks up her arm cyberarm, turns it about a few times and then finds the spot along underside of her forearm and plugs it in.

She flinches away her hand when the chip plugs in and scrolling data flashes across a small box in her vision indicating a sucessful instal.

Moments later the rotors are at full spin and the chopper takes off into the air.

The camera sweeps along behind the chopper zooming across the canopy, as the pilot in the chopper absent minded connects up B'olay to a combat hook up to the choppers systems and a full matrix feed routed via Satellite.

Unprepared for the onslaught this dumps a huge amount of information, access and options directly B'olay's cortex. Unobtrusive Combat Inc branding proffers a huge variety of services, removal of helicopter for clear LOS via interpolation from sensors, current travel information, online VR access to combat simulations, recreational information, portals for information about a baffling variety of topics focused on Metropaul and Amazonia for just a moment until your AR filters push all that infomation out of your mind, leaving on the awareness of options.

The tactical hookup automatically connects you into the teams tactical comms hub, linking you into the tactical vox network, and offering to inject all sorts of information about the groups current load outs, status, bio-monitor hookups and offering POV feeds.

Shortly after takeoff another air elemental appears and engulfs the chopper, pushing it with a powerful surge towards its destination. At that point the Sergeant initiates a closed channel comms connection and barks "We're going to have to land outside of metropaul" he initaties a separate data connection, offering to transfer an ID package and access codes to an offshore bank account "and have to infiltrate through the suburbs. The jungle is literally growing into the city so its not too hard, but can get hairy. We'll need your full co-operation for this phase of the mission otherwise we'll all get arrested."

At the same time a rapid succession of emails, media mails and simsense recordings arrive for a long disconnect commcode returns to the matrix. Your filters temporarily bog down as they deal with the huge volume of spam, and cut the list down to a series of three mails, two offering audio, video, combined, or full simsense modes, while the last is a simple audio vox recording.

First two simsense recordings:

Voice only, sent 12 seconds ago

It takes her a few moments to recover from the shock of reconnecting to the matrix. After that, B'olay doesn't respond to the Sergeant until she is finished with the recordings. It's been so long since she had last used her commlink, but while she was never any good at it, it was impossible to forget how to use the basic functions.

When the voice recording finishes she pushes the lead box back further under the seat and nods at the Sergeant, "I will do what you need me to do. I must meet with this man in the message."

If he can give me a chance to get back at those Azzie devils this whole thing not be so bad as I'd first thought.

She can't help but smile a bit, baring her teeth, as the helicopter flies towards Metropaul.

"ETA to dropsite, 5 minutes"

The chopper pilots voice with added electronic crackle resonates over the radio net. There is a flurry of activity as the team grabs their packs, guns and other illegal equipment of out the chopper, one of the trolls disassembling a huge door mounted minigun and heaving it over his back. The chopper descends further, squeezing into a gully as the titanic ferrocrete and plastisteel expanse of Metropaul sweeps into sight, glowing with electric lighting in the falling dusk, and even from his distance huge traffic jams, patches of gloom from power outages and major fires can be seen. All of this under a delightful haze of pollution and smoke.

The sergant comments over the radio net "I think the barrens and the Chicago containtment zone are actually prettier than that." which draws a few wry laughs from the magician, cut short as he snatches a grab bar, jerked sideways as the chopper abruptly jinks then drops sharply for a landing in a clearing about 6 kms out of Metropaul with a heavy thud

"Okay guys they just fingered me via radar. You've got about one minute to be out of line of sight before the feds turn up. Move!" A timer and AR markings of incoming customs patrol vehicles is offered via the choppers subscription automatically.

The troopers need no second order, jumping out of the chopper and sprinting for the tree line - amazingly quickly in the case of the heavily loaded trolls. The sergeant shouts "If you need me to carry something, give it to me now" jumping down from the chopper and offering his hand back up to you.

She shudders as the sight of the manmade behemoth festering in the heart of the jungle pans into her view. B’olay grips tightly onto a grab-bar as the chopper descends steeply and hesitates to make sure the machine is fully settled before struggling to unstrap herself from her seat.

B’olay can’t make much sense of most of the chatter over the net but the warning about having one minute left makes plenty of sense, and it’s properly emphasized by the HUD showing a rapidly approaching group of pulsing red marks converging on a steady green mark and the large countdown timer.

She pulls back instinctively when offered a hand, but she takes his offer to carry her bag and tosses her backpack with the lead box safely tucked inside down to him, and jumps down after it and sprints after the rest of them for the tree line.

The difference between her escorts - dressed in full battle armor and bristling with modern weaponry - and herself - dressed in a leather loin cloth and soft leather shoes, covered with tattoos and tribal jewelery and only carrying a primitive onyx blade - is palpable. The absurdity of the situation would make her laugh if it wasn't for the image of Metropaul so recently burned into her mind.

The troops pound across the clearing and spread out into the jungle, the jet turbine engine of the helicopter roaring into full throttle as it takes off moving as far as possible from the clearing towards Metropaul.

The troopers seem relatively unconcerned about federal imposition, the two guys bringing up the rear watch the jungle closely, but this close to Metropaul there is no large wildlife around to clutter up their sensors.

"Looks all clear team"

The trip into Metropaul itself is uneventful, but the jungle itself is surreal. The floor of the jungle starts to give way to giant slabs of plastisteel overgrown with moss and vines, guttered cars have ants nests built into the engine bays, and decaying housing is being gradually being cracked and torn apart by vines growing so unnaturally fast that prolonged observation reveals movement. As some point the houses start to have fringe dwellers living in them, sort of bizarre shanty towns, but the desperately poor locals disappear off the streets at the first sight of the mercenaries. Even the local street gangs are revealed as swaggering bravadoes when they evaporate at first sight of a gun.

Even as the team penetrates further into the city and the jungle fades away into worn plasticrete prefabs, smash street lighting and burnt out cars they continue to carry their rifles openly. They stop at a large - and now completely empty street intersection - in the distance is visible a much cleaner part of the city complete with lone star police manning a barricade is visible.

"Okay guys, this is the extraction point. Little lady, can we offer you a ride into the city? Our barracks are here" A mental impression accompanies the message and automatically engages with the mapsoft, the facility - a corporate off site function resort and golf club - they are staying at is pretty close to the small teahouse you've been asked to meet at in the Bairro da Liberdade - Metropaul's old chinatown.



"Team, this looks like the extracto"

B'olay grips at the nearest arm and shakes her head to dispel the annoying voice of the tourist announcement that started playing the moment she concentrated on the map dominating her vision. A few seconds later the voice is gone and the map is somehow a fraction of the size in a discreet corner of her vision, which immediately pops into a more prominant position the moment she thinks about examining it more closely.

She looks back at the wrecked outskirts of the city and the burnt out husks of vehicles laying on the road behind her and towards the clearer, but no less threatening interior of the city guarded by security forces. "I'll have to-" she cuts herself off in hesitation, "yes, you can take me into the city. Past them." She points to the Lonsetar manning the barricades.

The seargent grins, then says "Okay, gotta couple of trucks coming in." the squad fans out, leaning up against walls, sitting on the bumpers of rusted out cars and squatting on oil barrels. You can tell their pretty relaxed about being here.

"This your first time in Metropaul?" the seargent says conversationally as the mog trucks arrive. Big, aged ex military vehicle in green paint mottled with age, the seargent gesturing that you're with him as he jumps in a single hop into the truck over the tailgate, the suspension sagging slightly as his boots hit the floor with a clang.

"This is really a beater isn't it."