Around Wraith, the blowing of the wind seemed to intensify: After a few seconds, a howling, twirling, shaping whirl of air, mist and snowflakes seemed to form in front of him, slowly getting more and more concrete.
The rite took a few seconds to fully unfold a creature floating in front of Wraith: A vaguely humanoid body seemingly composed of whirling gusts of wind and grey mist, with large, white wings wings spreading from its back giving it an angel-like appeareance. It had no distinct facial features except for two bright eyes, blue as a cold winter's sky. It radiated a proud, majestic and peaceful aura and showd no signs of hostility, nodding its head slightly in Wraith's direction.
Wraith looked at the spirit awestricken and nodded back - deeper, almost like a bow.

Should anyone get tense at the spirit's appeareance and show signs of taking this spirit for the attacker, Wraith will immediatly make a calming gesture to make sure nobody aims a weapon at his spirit.

The blinking light doesn't seem to be attached to anything. And as both Nova and Anna are getting closer, the light vanishes, only to appear about 50 m to the East, blinking even quicker the morse code for SOS. It stopped and a few seconds later began to blink 50 to the West.
Eliza's voice found their way to the team's comms:
<<Could someone tell me what is going on there? The van's sensors can't pick up what you are looking at.>>

Anna texted >> No idea what it is... Seems like a flashlight - but does not behave like a human. No point in going close, but perhaps we can morse back to it? Does anyone know morse code?...

... and be vigilant, the spirit may still be here.

"It is clearly just messing with us. Can you see if there is any magic going on? If not ..."

Nova stopped moving and readied her rifle, aiming at the light.

Sharkboy lowered his guard, and crossed his arms in confusion. This wasn't exactly what he was expecting when Anna came back worried."If Eliza can't see it, then it's probably magical, right? So would the mages please explain what it is or what it is trying to do? It certainly doesn't look threatening. Is it warning us? Telling us to go away?"

Eliza replied: <<Be careful. There have been rumors of critter attacks. Don't get separated.>>

Meanwhile the "Angel" floated gently above the ground, staring in the direction of the light - not threatening, but vigilant.

She said, "I never met a spirit that was fluent in Morse code..." She activated her laser sight and repeated the pattern.

"We can't all go scout and leave bnc alone in the van, while she's jacked-in. ", Wraith's voice echoed through the team's comlink.

Someone is calling for help - or luring us into a trap. I can't ignore it nonetheless. Lord, help me distinguish between the two.
Find the source of that light and tell me about it.

He followd the rest of the team, but continuosly listened for sounds and looked around and over his shoulder (with his astral sight as well) and made sure not to walk to far away from the van and the team's decker. If they've already gone too far ahead to join them and still be in proximity of the van, he'll fall slightly back so he can still keep an eye and on the van.

The mage's body language shows that he's exhausted, but other than that, he seems to be all right.
In his hand he raises the cross-wraistband.

Cursing loudly, bnc moved the drone back to offer a minimum of protection for herself. A protection that won't do against a spirit, even if it's not a powerful one. They not only defied me openly, but also left me back to die. Awesome ... Where are Krestov and Slob? I want them back...
No, you couldn't trust them anymore than these morons.
Could you?

As precaution, she starts the van's engine. If the shit hits the fan and she's left alone, she'd at least give those fuckers a hell of a show.

"What the frag is so incomprehensible 'bout the words "Stay where you are"? Get your asses right fucking back NOW. I can morsecode N O W if that's what lures you but will you morons not split the fragging group in a danger zone and leave your god-damn rigger behind? The one who's job it is to scout and who told you that she's gonna fragging scout? Has anyone of you ever even done that frigging kind of job before? Who the frag pays 200,000 euros to undisciplineed show-offs??"

Suddenly, a thought strikes her, sending a chill through her spine.

Anna texted bnc separately >>bnc, get out of VR. I raced to my body the first sign of a possibly hostile spirit.
Spirits go through nonliving objects and bullets do not. Also, calm down... Stress is very visible, and some spirits even feed on it. You may be doing the analog of showing fear to an angry dog. We are professionals and within eyesight of each other.

She felt alive... it was scary, but somehow she liked the danger, the fog, and the cemetery. It was perfect!

and for everyone to hear...
>> bnc, turning wireless laser sight and giving you marks... Ask it what it wants... We are not far. Basically, where we started.

bnc responded on Anna's private channel. "No, I won't. I can pop up the doors any second and shoot the spirit wherever it is. But offline, I'm defenseless. It's your fragging duty to deal with the spirit and mine to scout, not the other way round. We agreed on that. Can you please for once act as a shadowrunner and not as a headless impulsive child? Deal with the fragging spirit so I can do my work. And keep an eye on the others. I'm not sure whose side they are on."

"Ms. Black, do you still see the spirit that got you so worked up? If not, I'm going to head back to the Van and get some water before I need to run back out before chasing ghosts again." Although his emotions couldn't really care over subvocals, it was plain as day in his body language if Nova was still around. His next bit of venom would be for the decker.

"Skinny bitch. Sorry we went out to aid your employee when she cried big evil spirit in a graveyard. Next time we'll just let her die and then have it come attack us without any warning because none of us can see it. Stop complaining and giving orders and bring up online translator for morse code or whatever the stupid lamp is flashing in."

The angel replied to Raph:
"It is a blighted demon spirit, that lures travelers astray. Once upon a time it lured them into marshes to drain them of their life and soul. On your command I shall destroy it."

She replied subvocally "The Angel sees it... but I would still like to talk to it before turning to violence..
She peered into the astral trying to locate the spirit if she does she asks: "What do you want?"

"I don't have employees, and what you followed is a random light unknown to us. We're not here to play hero, but to complete a task.
If you can't stick to plans, you're dangerous to us. As a muscle, your task is to protect the group, not run off chasing ghosts. If you get a professional's pay, act like one! Same for Anna and Nova. I don't care whether I give the commands or someone else does, but you can't just run off as it suits your prehistoric instincts, fishbone.
Now, either you take command and responsibility or you let me do my job as rigger, decker and the only one with brains around and return to the fucking van alongside Anna who has no reason whatsoever to follow any unknown flashlights, dark monster spirits or whining orphans. Can you do that?"

>> Please, turn off sarcasm for a moment... There seems to be a sapient entity living close to the hideout,
it may have seen Kerstain. It may have useful information, so it is worth to give communication a chance. It would only take a few moments."

"Child, there is a potential threat in close vincinity to our area of operation. We have to make sure, that it won't be a problem. Besides, we are just a few steps away from the van, in case you cannot see us," Nova replied to the little outrage of their decker.

"So, put your mighty brain to work and do your scouting, there is no reason to interrupt that. In the meantime, we will figure out what this thing is and how to deal with it. Maybe it is harmless, maybe it is not. Either way, it is not smart to do nothing about it."

"bnc, calm the frag down! I'll do rearguard and watch the van." His pace slowed down.
"It is not harmless.", Wraith replied at Nova's loud thinking. "That vile spirit has been using this trick for ages: luring people away and then feeding on them."
He seemed to strongly oppose the idea of communicating with it. "Had it met Kerstin, one of them would likely be dead now. There's no use in reasoning with this demon. I say it has to be destroyed, then we can move on."
I won't have a demon defile this holy place!

“By now it's roughly a hundred meters from us. If a spirit manifests here and you're out there, I'm dead before you're halfway back. I didn't say ignore it but "stick together". As it's a magical threat, I'd have the mages decide but if they want to go there in meatspace, don't leave anyone behind.
So, Wraith, Doll, shall we geek that evil sucker - and how? - or do you wanna talk to the vile demon? Do you want me to scout out accompany you?"

"It is good to be on your guard. But this is borderline paranoid," Nova said.

"I can still see the van. Surely, I won't let myself get lured away by that sucker. So, yes, we are 'sticking together'. Don't you worry."

"Anyways, until it shows up in meatspace, it is for you to deal with it," she added, obviously refering to Anna and Wraith in that last part. "Can you say, what it is actually doing right now? Is it just lurking there? Can't you figure out how strong this spirit is? Is this just a nuisance or a real danger?"

"I know a big deal about paranoia and not wanting to be left alone unable to move while there's a huge and terrible dark spirit about does not fall under the category. Wanting my chummers to operate in an organized manner, doesn't either. For scouting, you need one or two. You can't just all go about and run off into the storm because you saw a light flashing, seriously. Maybe you fail to realize the danger I put myself in when I leave my body to provide you with airborne fire support and the freaking ability to scout better than any of you can. At least we need to properly communicate and divide our forces reasonably, not everyone on his own."

"Agree about coordinating our approach a little better. Either way, I cannot do anything here, it seems, so I will just head back to the van now."

Nova moved closer to their vehicle, so she is no more than 10m out, gun still at the ready and watching the surrounding area.

As Anna looked into the Astral she could make out the flashing point of light - and the groteque form of the 20 armed cephalopod sharing space. As the flashing lights stopped she could see that the thing was now wholly astral again - and just like that it moved with astral speeds past her and vanished inside the van.

>>It is dashing for the van! bnc get out NOW!
She summoned a spirit of her own, and instructed it to fight the dark spirit.

Whether it was pure luck, whether he had seen the shadow spirit move through astral space or whether his "guardian angel" had alerted him was unclear - but Wraith reacted instantly, the very moment Anna's warning had left her lips:
He charged towards the van, shouting, apparently at nobody directly: "Destroy it!".

Meanwhile, the air around the "angel" seemed to crackle, as if an electric energy had been discharged, and it dematerialized with a hateful gleam in it's eyes.

Aeraziel! Protect bnc, keep her safe!

No time for meatspace!
At least, bnc is not unprepared. This is exactly the scenario she had told the others of, and for which she is perfectly ready.
"protect body maxsec; leave", she sends a message to James, ordering him to protect her with his own body if need be, and get her out of the van super-fast. Which is exactly what he was built for.
Then she sends another command, this time to the van. "open doors and windows"

bnc was explicitly waiting for the elemental at the very point he did. I don't know how this is a surprise. If anything, the spirit should be surprised as there's no way he could see my drone waiting for it. Please reconsider.

Anyway, at the current state, the initiative goes as follows (not yet including the bound spirit whose initiative hasn't been rolled):

bnc (surprised) 24 escape, attack 14
Anna's spirit 24 (I assume that it's down to 14 as Anna can't command it earlier)
spirit of air 24
dark spirit 23 manifest 13
Anna 20 astral combat 10
James 19
Wraith 15 command spirits 5
Nova (surprised) 4

So now we should deal the spirit attacks, then it's again bnc's go to shoot the thing. James just runs for the moment.

Things started to happen very quickly.

Inside the van nothing seemed to happen. From bnc' flying drone she couldn't see any change on visual or infrared.


Her anthrodrone awakened to life and - according to the sensor feed, passed something that had appeared on the ultrasound sensors. With surprising agility, it began to open the side door of the van.

Anna felt the pain of the sudden summoning rocking her body, still she staid conscious to give the spirit a command.
She couldn't see what was happening on the astral due to the van blocking her sight, but the emphatic connection to her spirit made it clear that the cephalopod had indeed begun to materialize inside the car and was in the process of stretching it's tentacles for bnc.

Her spirit unleashed a furious strike against the dual natured creature, which almost vanquished it, as if in desperation the creature extended one of it's pseudopods at bnc.
A second spirit appeared in the astral and tried to hit the



Meanwhile, bnc tried to vaguely guess where her attacker was and fired with her drone at the van. The high powered rifle hit, but couldn't penetrate the armored vehicle.
Eliza's voice came online again: <<The van is under attack, starting evasive maneuvers.>>
The motor awakened to life and the van started to roll away.

The pain of the summoning was overwhelming, but the spirit was dispatched. She texted >> Spirit in van- open doors, windows. Need line of sight! If Eliza complied, she hoped for a line of sight to the evil spirit. Perhaps her or Wraith could snipe it somehow.

Yet another spirit materialized: The close to the cephalopd seemed to be filled with electrical energy, as an angelic figure with eyes like a purple dawn's sky appeared between the demon and bnc.
Slowly taking shape, it seemed to get ready to wrap it's wings around the cephalopod.

In the meanwhile, Wraith was standing only a few metres from the van with the shadow spirit in his sight. He raised his hand with the crucifix, shouting "Vade retro, satana!"
From his hand, a glowing arc of lightning emanated and dashed towards the shadowy spirit.

When the action started, Nova saw the drone opening the side door to the van. Great, so she didn't have to do it. She moved the few meters over and hopped inside, cursing slightly at Eliza, who just started the van, which was about the worst idea ever at that point.

<< James already opened the side door. >>

Seeing the strange form of what could only be the dark spirit everyone was talking about, Nova aimed carefully, as to not hit bnc or anything important inside the van for that matter, then fired her rifle at the spirit.

When the blinding glare of the lightning bolt stopped burning in everone's eyes and the overloaded sensors could see again, there was nothing left of the invisible spirit on the mundane or on the astral. The interior of the van was singed and a pervasive stench of ozon hung in the air for a second before the howling wind carried it away. The smooth finish of the van now had some pretty ugly dents as well and Anna felt a heavy nosebleed trickle down her face.

bnc's body still lay there and Eliza had stopped the car again. After the deafening sound of the shots, the ringing in everyone's ears also subsided.
The relative silence was broken by Eliza:
<<Please don't do that again. bnc, next time you might consider switching to AR to get out of harms way. Shooting at your own position was very dangerous. Not to mention you dented my baby.
And you others: I wasn't kidding when I said "don't get separated". This is a place where over a million people have been buried through the last 300 years. There is bound to be some kind of influence here.>>

If no further dangers can be seen either in meat or matrix space:

"Sorry I got a dent in your car when I tried to save my life. Won't happen again. And no, switching to AR would have cost me more time than commanding my drone which is, by the way, a lot faster and sturdier than I am.

Okay, Nova, Sharkboy, tell me again that it was paranoid that I wanted one or two of you to stay behind with me in the van in case the spirit would appear in the van and try to kill me. I may be a young drug addict with emotional issues but next time, please listen to me in tactical situations. Same goes for Anna, second time this day.

In our former party, as a decker and the one responsible for intelligence, I did the coordination while it was Anna's call to decide in case of any magical regards and our fighter's in military ones. I would strongly ask you to handle it similarly in this group. If you act like this in a more dangerous situation, reckless running off might just get all of us killed."

She inhales deeply and does something which is quite difficult for her. She says: "Please"

Then she sends James back inside, has him seat bnc back into her cushion and take up stance next to her again. Next she orders the drone back into the van to refill the spent ammunition, goes AR and manually refills it.

"Hey, I was right there, wasn't I?" Nova said winking.

Anna wiped her nose and said... >>bnc.... I am glad that you are safe, this is the most important thing.

Before we continue talking, get yourself to AR. This entire combat was unnecessary, I was alone with this thing and it did not attack me, it attacked you. It attacked you out of all of us because you were in VR, It dashed for your limb body - like a dog would run toward a piece of steak.

It is a big cemetery, there may be more spirits like this, and this combat has completely drained me. I cannot risk summoning or casting more spells as I might go unconscious. Spirit summoning, that you suggest so lightly is dangerous, usually, it goes well but sometimes we pay direly for it. So next time, nobody projects, nobody goes in AR and all of us go to the safehouse as a single group.

Despite her promise not to use magic, she used the pain relief spell on herself, then an improved willpower, followed by an attempt to improve the pain relief. She was happy with the results as they moved her from barely standing to uncomfortable. The pain relief spells were so high force that her entire body visibly glowed with faint white healing energy as she applied it.




She pulled out a paper towel to wipe the blood from her nose and limped toward Wraith. "Some impressive mojo, and dramatic. Christian magic I presume... If you want I can use the pain relief spell on you as well."

"I understand that we're on a time table here, but can someone have a look at Anna and Wraith before they fall unconscious when trying to levitate a cup off a table?"

Anna replied "I am fine, the spirit summoning took nearly all I had, but I am tougher than I look, and can suppress most of the pain, and push my body a lot... and I am not a combat mage anyhow. I fight with pistols."

bnc grins despite herself but doesn't answer to Nova, before she switches the interface mode, then stirs. She stands and stretches as best as she can and sighs. She still keeps talking on the team channel - a somewhat awkward experience, as her lips don't move while she talks.

"What are you talking about? Do you believe the spirit could have guessed that I was in VR? What do you learn in college? If it can feel my state of activity, it would have sensed I'm wide awake. If it could sense my essence, that wouldn't have been different in AR mode either. Astrally, it can't have perceived me, as I was inside the van's shell. How should it have gotten aware of my limp body? It just made a good guess to check whether someone was left inside the van, and got lucky. And what the frag makes you all assume that I'd be faster in meat-space? I threw tons of nuyens and time at this drone to do a better job at moving than my actual body. Going AR would have crippled me, no more.

Anyway, are you saying that you're too exhausted to proceed? In that case, we must leave and return tomorrow. What about you, Wraith? Can and do you want to go on?"

Anna said on the team channel "I don't understand it but I think it sensed that you were in VR, I'll explain. When I first encountered it. I was projecting, and the thing started racing in the direction I came from. I felt like it went for my body and quickly returned, not before I slow it down with my magic. Then, I was in my body, along with it, and it completely ignored me and chose you.
I think that it is the kind that drains essence or consume metahumans in a similar manner - because I do not know why it would risk so much to murder you, it behaved a bit like a hungry animal. I may not remember this thing from magical threats course, but I am observant. If you want a riddle: I have one... How did the spirit even know that you were in the car? The car blocks astral sight. "

Sharkboy ran his hands over his ballistic mask in frustration. He'd seen what happens when exhausted people try to put on a match. They get reckless, can't pull their weight, and the person they're working with gets hurt.

"Ms. Black. I wasn't really suggesting that you and Wraith get checked out. I'm telling you that we can't keep searching until we ensure our mages aren't going to be incapacitated by a stray gel round hitting you in the shoulder.

"bnc, do you have any alternative theories as to why a spirit would go straight for you rather than one of the two with the least essence or the two mages?

She asked "What are you suggesting Mr. Shark?"

Sharkboy stopped using comms and instead yelled over the cemetery at the obtuse mage, "Bakayarou! Are your comm's fried or are you fucking deaf? For the third damn time. Go have get yourself checked out by Nova or whoever else has the doc box and knows how to use it.

"And don't say drek about feeling okay. Injured people don't know how badly they're hurt."

Anna shrugged "Drain is tricky, the only cure is rest." She went to the van, cursing quietly.

Wraith didn't say much. He was obviously quite exhausted, but apart from that, he seemed fine.
"Pain relief? I don't know how taxing that is, but I think we should conserve our strength.
I'm... Well, not fine, but I can go on. Just... Got a bit too greedy. As long as I don't have to do anything too hard, I'm good to go. I just need some rest when we're done here. ", he replied to the question of his well-being.
[coor="FF0000"] " Nova, I take it you got some proper medications in that bag of yours? I'll take any help I can get." [/color]

Towards Anna: "Yeah, sometimes it all seems fruitless, but then on other occasions, it seems like a miracle.
Wait...", he seems surprised as she heads for the van.
"where are you going? We still have to search the hideout!"