.

Bobby had just handed off the packet, when Trouble transmitted AM's message.
Time for a strategic withdrawl.
Bobby peeked over the rafter and determined the safest way out - when Trouble began her distraction, Bobby made a beeline for the open window.

When Trouble let's Jawsey know that there is trouble (small 't'), he double checks the garage for any astral traces that they've left. It is doubtful that Urubia herself would come and check, but some of her awakened legion may have decent skills at following astral traces. I really need to learn how to mask my aura so that I could pass as a spirit

In the Matrix, a filthy mechanic appears. It's some sort of IC that looks like a pot-bellied mechanic in overalls who is covered head-to-toe in motor oil or axel grease. It looks like an absolute mess.

In the physical world, the Doberman stays transfixed on the window.

In the back room of the garage - the one that's warded behind a closed door - there's the sound of a small alarm going off, like an alarm clock. This type of noise is usually for waking people up in the morning but it seems logical to conclude this one was triggered by the Host alert.

Bobby can hear a groggy voice that slurs, "what the frag" in response to the alarm.

'We have to go now. Trouble, take the screw driver from my back and throw it in the far corner. Once the drone turns, we get out of here at speed and I don't mind you telekinetically helping me along with the explosives.'
Bobby communicated through the link and got ready to haul raccoon ass for the open window.

Trouble follows with Bobby's suggestion, having planned to do the same thing but he likely does not need to even toss the screwdriver because he has no hands and uses the psychokinesis spell. He'll make some noise away from the drone, and then use that distraction to help Bobby escape and transfer the explosives outside when the drone is distracted.


In the meanwhile, AM counts the milliseconds until she is out of that host, cursing mentally that she has not learned the cyber combat skill for erasing marks.

There are times, after a drink or two, when Jawsey might admit a little bit of envy that AM had reached the level of mastery to create Trouble before Jawsey had been able to reliably summon spirits of any real usefulness.

Here and now, he's incredibly grateful that AM has Trouble taking care of these usual issues, and hence that Jawsey still has all his services on his spirit. He asks it to start erasing Trouble's astral signatures, working half-way through each of them and then moving on, before coming back to finish up. Meanwhile Jawsey starts working on Bobby's, in the same manner, weakening the strongest ones first and cycling through to bring them all down fairly evenly. How good is their mix-world security? What is the latency between being spotted in the matrix and them getting a spirit or mage on site to check things out astrally?

Trouble telekinetically yanks the screwdriver out of the Weasel Pants^TM and throws it. It hits something metal halfway to the ground, making a loud clattering sound.

"What the fraggity frag frag..." Huge's voice continues.

The noise draws the Doberman's attention, which turns away from the open window. Bobby sees his opportunity and makes a break for it! He expertly navigates the rafters and flings himself toward the window. He has a chance to land on something halfway down or to sail straight out the window to the concrete parking lot outside.

Bobby committed: Jumping of the rafter, he aimed for window sill, like a tiny, furry paratrooper and even did the flip to avoid breaking his little bones. After the initial impact, it was another drop to the outside, another roll and finally a sprint across the empty street.

Trouble psycokinetically lifts the explosives and moves them out of the window following Bobby. He is excited by the emotions of the people around him though he does not feel any particular cause of concern being a spirit that can just dematerialize at will. In response to Jawsey's inquiry Trouble astrally says "Perhaps we can learn their response time once we're out." his emotion convoys genuine curiosity.

AM continues with getting rid of the marks, cursing herself for her lack of experience with getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Truth be told she grew overconfident with recent successes and needed a beating praise Iktomi - she would manage their risks better if she survives. Keeping her cool, and trying to not dwell on her failure she thinks Who brings the explosives to the car? She can ask Trouble to do so, but perhaps Bobby and she does not want them to get lost in the fog of war.

Leaping from the rafters, Bobby bounces off a table before jumping out the window. The two-step drop makes the deceleration (negative acceleration to a physicist) must more manageable. It does create a bit of a bang, but luckily the drone is looking the other way.

Trouble moves the satchel toward the open window. It's most of the way there when Huge flings open the door to the back room.

"WHAT THE FRAGGITY FRAG FRAG," he curses as his head swivels around.

It's clear he's looking around for the source of the noise, but it's less certain what he can actually see. The lights are still off, but as a dwarf he has thermographic vision. Does he see the tail-end of Bobby disappear out the window? Can his thermographics spot a satchel floating in midair that's otherwise the same temperature as the room? Is Trouble visible from this new angle? What's next for the friendly Australian?

Bobby kept running, trying to get as much distance as quickly as possible. As useful as his new garments were, now they prevented him from an easy shapechange. 'I have to build the next edition out of a smart wig, so I can modify fur color and texture.'

Jawsey thinks about having his spirit materialize somewhere discrete, and then use confusion or influence on Huge -- but dwarves are known for being stubborn, and people who survive working with explosives are typically fairly clear thinkers, so he's not optimistic about success, and elects to keep the grumbling Hunter Brother working at scrubbing astral signatures. He makes a note that should there be time for such, he should crumble a couple of reagents in the spirits honour before dismissing it.

Remembering the parcel, Bobby picked it up. It was heavy in his current form - no way could he run and carry that in his mouth. So he changed course, heading for the safety of some bushes, to give himself a moment to breath and take of the harness.

Bobby hits the ground running, dragging the satchel across the parking lot. It makes a bit of a scraping noise as the material of the satchel - synthleather from the feel of it - is pulled across the pavement. The safety of the trees and pushes is tantalizingly close, just a couple seconds away.

Inside, the drone rolls over to where the screwdriver was dropped. It locates the screwdriver but doesn't seem to know what to do about it.

Trouble ushers the satchel out the window and gently to the ground.

"WHAT THE FLIPPITY FRAG!" Huge barks. It's still unclear if he noticed the flying satchel but he's clearly noticed the open window, which is not hard because it's February and there's a nasty draft coming through it. But Huge is a dwarf, his legs are short, and he has to walk across the garage - navigating around tables and tools - to the open window. It will take him a couple seconds to get there.

Trouble does not move much, he is a black cat at night, and there is an open window. As far as he is concerned it is plausible that a stray cat would enter the garage, and most cats do not have psychokinetic powers. He'll know if someone exists on the astral to observe him - and in that case, he'll likely run away. Until then, he tries the same trick with Huge as he did with the drone, making some noise elsewhere.
Trouble is moving the screwdriver so that it makes a noise near the drone.

If Huge looks away, the cunning cat moves the second package in the same manner.

Once the satchel is out the window, Trouble moves the screwdriver. The drone notices it immediately and chirps with some noise that indicates a sense of alarm. The Doberman points a weapon of some sort at the screwdriver but Trouble can't tell what.

Huge continues walking toward the window but turns his head to the noise. His eyes narrow and he calls out, "Who's there?" although his tone suggests that he doesn't really expect an answer. Some part of him seems content to delegate the issue to the drone, since he continues to walk toward the open window. Such is his familiarity with his own shop that he can navigate around tables, tools, and car parts without running into anything even without looking ahead of him.

A cool wind blows in and Huge shudders. The Australian seems determined to remove the cold draft, if not the security gap, before addressing any other issue. But the window is a couple meters up on the wall and, as a dwarf, he'll have to climb up onto the table underneath the window in order to close it.

With her elven low-light vision, AM sees the satchel float out the garage window. She has no trouble locking onto it and turning it invisible.

Huge gets up on a table to close the window. Before he can shut it, he notices something outside.

"WHAT THE FLYING FRAG!!!" he bellows out the window, so loudly that AM can hear him across the parking lot. This time he sounds angry and alarmed.

Somewhere, Iktomi laughs.

Bobby had seen and heard enough. This was going sideways fast. 'Sorry Hugh, but you didn't want to pay the werguild when I asked. Now you get to be the collateral damage'

With another concentrated effort, Bobby called on his magic - his one great skill and focused it on Hugh, willing himself to overcome the dwarven resilience and turn him into a mute and not particularly fast mamal.

His head leaning out the window to confirm what his eyes are telling him, Huge starts to curse "SONUVAB-" before his tongue changes shape and he can no longer form words.

The change is fast, the creature is slow. Huge is now a moderately drunk sloth. Never agile to begin with, the suddeness of the change combined with his blood alcohol level cause him to lose his balance. He topples head-first out the window.

The satchel beneath the window cushions some of the blow, but the landing on his head leaves Huge the Sloth dazed.

Jawsey emotes colorfully at the new spell on Hugh. He isn't entirely sure what is going on, but cleaning up astral signatures is still important, so he keeps himself and his spirit hard at work, while noting that there is one more to manage now. Magic being used to steel explosives is already likely to make certain parties suspect them, he really doesn't want to leave evidence. Although if Bobby is silencing Hugh, and they don't blow the place up too quickly, the sort of people who could order astral inspection might not know of what happened until after the astral traces of their magic had faded.

But up against Urubia's organization, Jawsey isn't comfortable with the "ifs" and keeps working on the signatures.

Now that they had won a few seconds to breath, Bobby sent over his mindlink:
'There is nothing to it now, we have to silence Hugh, unless we can get our hands on some Laes to erase his memories of the last hour. None of you has a dealer at hand, do you?'

AM prays quietly when she watches the aftermath Praise the Trickster she is frustrated by the attention of her totem but at the same time acknowledges that it is all for the best and recent prosperity had a risk to turn them weak. Her mind races as to how to deal with the consequences, she does not consume drugs and has no relevant contact for something such as leas at a moment's notice. Did the Trickster intend for them to blow up the building but also to get explosives?

"No drugs, but perhaps blowing up the building does the trick." she thinks at Bobby.

'Yeah, but before we do that, we have to erase all traces of our presence here. First, secure the explosives; second, erase the data traces on the drone or whatever its called; third, we have to clean up the astral, though a large enough explosion will create its own background count, so assensing won't be too easy.
I'll wait for Trouble to take care of the first part. Jawsey can leave a spirit behind in the astral to clean up behind us.'

Bobby thought back.

Alright.

Trouble in the meanwhile materializes near the car and then moves the explosives to the car, carrying both of them with his powers.

Huge struggled in his new form. Maybe it was the bonk on the brain or maybe it's just the unfamiliar form, but he can barely get his arms and feet underneath him. Not that he really has anywhere he could go.

The satchels get moved to the car, courtesy of Trouble. Huge turns his head slowly to watch them go. But sloths don't have great eyesight to begin with, and see poorly in dim light, so he probably can't see much.

AM contacts Fagin and aks >>Faign I need Leäl ASAP and can pay double your normal price if you can get it within the hour.

Bobby took a moment to refocuse and turned into a coyote, a typical scavenger for the urban environment, sauntered over to the sloth and picked it almost gently up by the scruff of its neck, carrying it in the shade of the bushes towards the car.

'Open the door for me. I've got Hugh under control. If nothing else can be done, I can turn him into a rat and we force feed him high percentage alcohol. That should knock him out as well with his diminished body size and also jumble his memories. Still, I'd prefer the Lael stuff.
But we still need to take care of the drone and the logs, before we can bring him to bed again.'

"Its a longshot but I'll try getting it."

Fagin shoots back a response less than a minute later:

<<Oo, aren't you a lucky one! I don't have any on hand at the moment but I'm Downtown and just a dozen blocks away from the elves of South Lake Union. I know a guy who can have some ready with about five minutes' notice.>>

<<Where are you? Redmond? Okay, with light traffic at this hour I'm about half an hour minutes out from your position unless you want to meet me somewhere closer. So between the pickup and the commute I'll be to you in about 40, 45 tops unless I get ambushed on the way. That should qualify for your delivery bonus.>>

Somewhere, Iktomi smiles, although who knows why.

AM shows the message to Boobie and says "We need to determine a meetup, and I need to rehack the host and eliminate traces of our existence. If we're going to keep Huge alive there is a way out."

'Let's do it then, all around less scruntiny if no explosions happen tonight.'
Bobby replied through his mind connection, still carrying the sloth in his jaws

Bobby arrives at the car and drags Huge in.

Huge, dazed and confused, tries to reach for the door handle, but he's about as fast and accurate as you would expect a drunken sloth with a concussion to be.

Jawsey finishes his scrubbing and arrives back in the car about the same time as Bobby and Huge.

AM coordinates with Fagin to meet in the parking lot of a Stuffer Shack that's right on the border of Redmond and Bellevue. It doesn't have the security concerns of Redmond nor the scrutiny of Bellevue so it's a good place to do a dark deal.

Leäl is ingested. Presumably the easiest way to give it to Huge is a spiked drink.

Not that buying beer in a Stuffer Shack ever felt good -- there was always a feeling of spiritual grime -- but buying beer in a Stuffer Shack so that they could spike it with Leäl and give it to a sloth-dwarf-bombmaker was a whole other level of feeling dirty inside.

Still, Jawsey did it. He even grabbed one of those electrolyte restoring exercise drinks for Bobby, because that much spell casting and critter-form work had to have been tiring.

As he walked back to the car he messaged the others <<So I guess we need to knock him out and then dribble the spiked drink into him? Anyone know anything about knocking out small sloths without doing serious damage to them? And then we need to deliver him home before he wakes up. I guess he'll wake up naked, but that shouldn't be too big of a deal if he assumes that he drank enough to pass out. I don't know if we can work around the drone well enough to also pour out some of his beer, so that the count seems about right for having gotten black-out drunk?>>

While Jawsey shops for beer, Bobby keeps an eye on AM while she hacks and on Huge while he struggles to free himself from the bag that Bobby has stuffed him into. From the smell of things, Huge has soiled himself, either due to fear or to a lack of perfect control over his sloth bodily functions.

AM dips into the Matrix and zips off in hot sim. The velocity is thrilling, as usual, although this part of the Matrix is a bit rough. She finds the host for the garage, reapplies her mark, and then slips inside.

Inside, the host's visuals are bright red: it's still on full alert. Furthermore, AM isn't alone! There's someone else there, looking around. Judging by the persona, it's a security spider. Given her familiarity with Matrix Security, AM guesses that the persona is from either Securitech International (a subsidiary of Renraku) or Vector Matrix Services (a subsidiary of Shiawase).

The spider has clearly responded to the alert and is busy reviewing the situation.

Bobby was back in his comfortable, rip-off trousers and t-shirt, driving through the night. Despite the stressful situation, he enjoyed himself. Now that he had a minute to think things through, he realized that they had been too over confident, thinking that the drone wasn't going to be a problem.
Something to remember for the future.

His trode patch also allowed him to drop the mindlink and communicate with the others in a less taxing way:
<<I was thinking forcing him to drink pure vodka and the Leäl will do the trick nicely. Those little critters have a very low alcohol tolerance. The trick will be to administer just enough to get his BAC to around 1,5 promille. That will make him sleepy enough - and give the drug a bit more time to do its work.
AM, how are things on your end?>>

AM cautiously backs off understanding that it is above her equipment and skill level to go toe-to-toe with a cooperate spider and risk being exposed to a powerful syndicate. Especially as they kidnapped Huge and she does not want to aggravate things further. She silently backs off without cleaning up what she intended figuring it is the least of evils.


>> I am leaving it as is - there is already a cooperate spider inside the host so it is too late for me to meddle in his inspection. I'd rather leave a trace of a failed spoofed command than risk getting caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Especially after we kidnapped Huge. I don't want to up-play this event.

<<Well, drek. Seems like we fragged up. All we can hope for now, is Hugh having a bit of a reputation for over-indulging. If no-one questions him sleeping through an alert of his drone, we can still get out of this without getting caught.>>


Bobby replied, while keeping the car on the road towards their destination.

<<What can they pick up from the matrix? Whatever the drone saw, which was probably raccoon Bobby running out the window? Maybe the explosives floating out? And records of the hacking that you were doing, but do those include your matrix identify in some ways, or just that somebody tried to send an illegal command and it was resisted? Like, when you reboot does it wipe the traceability??>

Jawsey realized that he probably should have paid attention to the matrix side of things more at some point. This seems like things that a detective should know.

<<At least they were not too quick on getting astral security on the scene, so I think I got all of the signatures scrubbed. So it is down to a mix of what they can find in the matrix and what they can deduce -- and they aren't bound by and standards of 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. They may put together that we visited Huge earlier, that we have been bothering all the gangs and are upset at our treatment, and an odd animal invasion backed by matrix ability. .... wait, do any of the gangs know about AM's hacking, or have you consistently appeared to them as a mage?>>

>> I messed up, I am sorry I was careless about hacking when there was a safer solution and the Trickster punished me for this stupidity.

They'll know there was a failed hacking attack on the drone's log file, but even if I deleted it before the spider looked at it (and cannot say if the Spider looked at it or not). There would be information tying us into this incident. The place is riddled with cameras that we did not loop. So these may catch the small critters behaving strangely. It is also not impossible to place our car in the vicinity of the scene or to spot the explosive packets moving out of the window. All these are faults in our plan before the failed spoofed command. So I am under the assumption that the syndicate would suspect that we stole explosives if they investigate this incident to the fullest and our best bet is to downplay it as much as we can.

I'd advise against further going because we did not acquire the explosives as quietly as we thought. If they investigate we may have gotten some respect, we did not openly challenge anyone - but we did make a point, and they do not have to respond. We could have easily taken out Huge, or blown his place up, or whatnot.

Bobby sighed:
<<Agreed. It pains me to admit, but we'll have to postpone our revenge. I don't think they'll find the package theft immediately. The drone was distracted and only Huge saw me and the packets - whose memory we are going to wipe. Now we have to go for the blackout drunk option and hope for the best.
At least that gives me some time to study up on explosives for real. But that kind of gives us urgend need to leave Touristville - at least our residence there. Don't drek where you sleep, a lesson that Huge should have thought about as well.
We'll get AM a grade A fake SIN and set our residence up in her name. That should prevent at least the gangers from easily fiding our new place.
We hang on to the explosives until things have calmed down - and then we can go to town again.>>

"Are we crushing Bernt's place? or any other smart ideas for a home office?

"You know, this could work out OK for us, if we play our cards right. We've been thinking about it as a failed attempt to do it all in complete secrecy, but instead think of it as us deliberately 'counting coup'. After all, you three are Sioux, right? And that was one of their things if I remember properly, the idea of touching an enemy in battle without hurting them, to show that you had the skill and ability to do real damage, but chose not to."

"Obviously we COULD have stolen the explosives and left no trace, and we could have blown up the workshop, and we could have killed Huge, and we could have taken those explosives and blown up, well, something. But instead we showed that we could do those things but only gently tapped them instead, and left just enough evidence to let them figure out it was us, without making it too obvious."

"In reality we screwed it all up, but we portray it as leaving just enough clues to let them know who reached out and touched them."

AM laughs So we put an eagle feather in our hair and carry on as if nothing happened?"

"Oh, we still totally prepare to move. But we don't make it look like panic, and we keep a knowing smile ready in case anyone looks our way, and maybe have a few explosion or racoon puns ready. We admit nothing but at the same time we show satisfaction. Think about politicians that everyone knows are on the make but just smugly officially deny doing anything wrong. It is key to look confident like we know we scored a coup, confidence is the key to conning someone."

Bobby shrugged:
<<First of all - keep the conversation to the matrix. Huge can still hear and understand you. I know we want to delete his memory, but just in case - we fragged up enough tonight, wouldn't put it past our favorite Trickster God to frag with us some more.

Seeing it as a counting coup, we still missed the mark. You are supposed to do the touching without getting caught - let's call it 2 out of 3. But yeah, if anyone asks, we just shrug and grin. Better than anything else we can do. We just have to make the best of it. If you want, I can scrounge up some eagle feathers for you too.>>

Huge squirms around and continues to smell bad.

>> Frag me 100 times, you are right. Hard to get used to the shape change spell. You are supposed to let them know you could have killed them but do not kill, which is sort of what we did. An honorable warrior would respect that kind of thing - but criminals? I don't know. They seem to follow ancient eye for an eye morality.

<<right, forgot that a sloth can still be intelligent.>>

<<Just to be paranoid, AM, did you check Huge for an internal commlink? I assume it wouldn't work now, but magic is weird. On the less magical side, again just to be paranoid, the detonators and the rest of the explosives don't have a matrix connection, right?>>