He jumps at Syd cramping his leg, but he slowly reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Psec, sure to let you watch him movements so he doesn't get himself killed. He plugs a datacord into it and closes his eyes to concentrate...

"No need to rush...we have plenty of time." Darien said, suspicious of the little wonders known as phones and transducers.

Sydney gestures to her partner to pull the cord out of the pad.

"Jacks, boy, you can do it by hand. Slow and steady you'll win the race, go too fast and it will be anti-climactic."

Jaws

Your phone start to ring. Caller ID shows Leo Gettz.

His face turns red with stress and beads of sweat are starting to show on his brow. "Uh, yeah, sure."

He puts the pad away, "Come on guys, what kind of pro keeps records of their jobs?"

He sighs, "When was the number deleted, maybe it'll ring a bell."

"Eight days ago. Yes...pros normally don't keep records. They normally don't get traced either."

He quickly wipes the glare off his face. "Alright, yeah, I remember that one. A friend called me up and asked me to take care of it."

"And the name of that friend, and where we might contact him or her?"

Sahara glances over to Syd and motions to heads towards the bar. A rather unfriendly looking Ork is watching you. Once he realizes he's been spotted he gets up and begins to make his way over towards your table. You guess it'll take him at least a minute or two though.

"Forget about that man. You don't wanna mess with him and he'll have my ass for mentioning his name. Frag that."

"Alright Jacks, playtime is over. Give me the name and your P-sec, now or you will be dead before the ork can get another five steps. And trust me, it would hurt."

Sydney stretches her jaw open as if practicing a bite to clearly show the fangs. At the same time she leans forward, removing her foot but extending her clawed hand across the table palm up for the P-sec.

He was too busy to even notice the ork, but gives a big start at his life being threatened. "Frag this!", he yelps and hands over the PSec. "Suade. But don't tell him it was me, alright, please?"

"Give us his number and we'll go."

He grabs the Psec back, punches a button and a number flashs on the screen.

Sweeping the P-sec up in one clawed hand, Sydney gestures to the others that they should get going. With a last look back at Jacks, she blows him a kiss and they exit the club with all due haste.

The Orc stops you as you get up from the table. "You leavin'?"

"Yeah we are. Party has gotten a little wet, thought we'd find something a little livelier."

Sydney steps forward to give her companions space to move behind her and away from the orc.

"Don't plan on comin' back, that nice and clear?"

Jacks gets some of his spike back and speaks up, "Hank, kick their asses for me and I got a grand for ya right now!"

"Crystal. How about the two of you head out, I'll be right behind you."

Sydney begins backing onto the dance floor, her body limbering up to the beat in case this behemoth goes for her but trying to avoid that possibility.

"Alright...don't be too rough with him." Darien said, taking the pocket secretary from Sydney for safe keeping, and moved to head out with 'Crystal'.

Jaws was dialing Gun's phone number on his cell when it starts ringing. "Frag.."

"Hey Leo, what's up?"

Jaws

"Hey! What the frag are you guys doing!? Have you seen the evening news today? Plug into SatNet and catch the highlights yourself! You guys better pull your drek together!"

*click*

"Let's check this out quickly at the nearest public matrix box", Jaws says to Grizzly.

As soon as he walks by one, Jaws slots in a credstick and looks for the news Leo was talking about.

You scroll through a few headlines and then see a shot of Gun. Clicking on it, a video plays. Its looks to be from a street camera. The film starts with Gun talking to a Lone Star Officer outside of a taxi cab. Then he takes off into a run, his coat blowing in the wind, showing the SecArmor under it. As he runs, he pulls out an AK-97, but quickly gets put down by an shot to the head (the shot is blurred).

"Frag, this is not real !", says Jaws with emotion, and tears slowly filling his eyes.

Jaws gets out of the boot.

"Grizzly, the biggest drek has happened. Gun ....
"Gun....", sniff.
"Gun is .. dead."

As an answer to an obvious question, he says with a low voice: "Lonestar."

Grizzly begins to formulate plans in his mind's eye, contemplating possible scenarios for an underground encounter with something that just won't die. Almost thoughtlessly he steps off the roof, spending his time falling with thoughts of ways to kill a bloodsucker, landing very lightly on the ground. He's still lost in thought as Jaws receives the call from Leo, and is obviously distracted when told the news about Gun. Gun.... isn't he the new guy we haven't had much experience with? Who brought him into the team again? Anyhows, Lonestar you say, eh? Can't feel sorry for him, I tell you from LoneStar experience, he'd haev to have done something dumb and highly illegal to get wasted by the Star. Anyhows, not needed this trip, I think we'll be underground in close-quarters, not a place for someone specialized in big guns., Grizzly says over the MindLink

"I can't help but feel responsible somehow. He was on my team... so it's kind of my fault, too. You're right he did something stupid, by the way, or so it seems from the images I saw. Even so, I can't bear to lose someone who's on my team like that... "

"You remember that my family got killed because of my inability to save them, huh ? Losing Gun reminds me of that. The images on the trideo... I.. I .. poor Gun."

Jaws seems affected by this far more than it should. After all, it's quite common to lose new teammates to Lonestar in the shadows. But at this point, he seems to be thinking more about other events than the ones actually occuring...

'Crystal' takes a few steps into the crowd then turns around.

"Darien, stay close, whoever this ork is he may not be alone."

Hank smirks a bit at Sydney, "Sorry babe, just biz."

He moves in with a right hook, but Syd's skill with the dancing martial art serves her well. Even surprised she is able to sidestep most of the attack, though she does take a grazing on the chin.

Sydney's spin kick catchs Hank in the back of the knees. His legs are swept out from under him and he falls flat on his back.

"Stay down Hank, I don't want to have to hurt you." Sydney emphasizes her manicured claws as they glow eerily under the blacklights on the dance floor. Backing away from the bouncer, she moves towards the door keeping her eyes on the orc.

Sahara smiles as the girl puts the orc down.

"Nice one," she whispers to her lithe companion as they make there way to the door.

"Where to?"

The Orc stays down, glancing back to Jacks with a look of, "It ain't worth that much."

Exiting the club, Sydney waits till she's outside to rub her jaw a little.

"Okay, we're running a little late at the moment. Darien where's your car? Let's get it moved away from the club just in case someone tries to starts something later. Take it a few blocks away, we'll follow you in OUR car. Sahara, I'm thinking we should get to the meet with the rest of the team as soon as possible. While we're driving, Darien will take a look at the p-sec and see what he can find."

The cold air seems to crystalize each word and breath.

"Ah. So you two finally broke down and got a car. Good for you. I'm parked just around the corner. It's red today, but think it's gotten a bit chilled..." Darien said, planning to shift the color to blue when he got out of sight of the club. "See you in a bit." he added, heading to move his car.

A couple blocks later, he left the now blue car with full security engaged, and switched over to the girls' car. "Not bad. Nice being the passenger for a change." he commented as he took a seat in the back, and after copying Shark's number to his own p-sec, he set to seeing just what information on their target was contained on Jacks' p-sec.

Jaws walks down the snowy sidewalk with Grizzly, the man who seems to be able to choose at all time wether he's invisible or visible, levitating or walking, talking or using telepathy. Jaws doesn't usually bother with things like that. And on top of that he's worried about his capabilities as a team leader right now.

I should have prevented what happened to Gun. How could I have saved him though? Grizz is right.. Gun did something stupid. But, as the leader, isn't somehow partly my fault if I let this happen?

Jaws picks up his phone and dials Darien's number.

I hshould really stop worrying about things like this... After all, it wasn't really my fault if he died... I guess...
just like it wasn't my fault that mommy died ... I guess

"Hey Darien, what's happening? I got your message but I was wondering if you were doing ok.. "

"Yeah, we're fine. Heading your way, even. Met up with this Jacks fellow, and got contact info for someone called Suede. Also a list of Jacks' jobs, that may or may not turn something up. Of course we didn't leave on the best of terms, so he may very well warn Shark."

"Ok, meet us at the corner of [enter street names]. We'll discuss what we do next in the car. Gun ... won't be coming tonight. I'll tell you more when we're all together."

"Alright. See you then." hanging up, he told the driver of the meeting spot.

"Heading there now." Sydney pulled out into the light evening traffic and turned the car in the direction of the meet. Enjoying the smooth ride of their new SUV, she scarcely felt the bruise which would start to blossom on her chin if she didn't put some coverup on it.

The night gets colder. The bums gather around fires to warm their bones. Other darker elements come out to play.

The group meets up some time later to discuss their findings...

On the way there Sahara slips into her shoulder holster for the Five-seveN. For a moment she holds the pistol in her hand. She thumbs the manual magazine release and drops it into her lap. Out of her pocket she pulls out a red striped magazine.

"You think incendiary rounds will work on Vamps?"

She slaps the magazine into the pistol and slides it into its leather holster.

"I hope so, I certainly don't want to dance with them."

Parking, Sydney climbs out of the SUV and crosses the street to Jaws and Grizzly. She shivers slightly in the cold, dark night air.

"What's the scoop?"

Jaws waits for everyone to come closer. Then he says in a low voice that dies out in the freezing air. "I think we might be on the right track about our target's location. Also, you should know that Gun is dead. He got arrested by LoneStar and he did something stupid so he got shot. You can find out more on your trideo. For now, I think we should get out of the area and find some warm place since it's getting cold and dark, and we don't want to be surprised in this area just like this. Hey, nice car by the way."

Sahara frowned at the news. "Dead? Damn. Poor Gun. We should see if he has any family and do what we can to help them out. As for the getting indoors, I agree. Whatever where up against , it certainly has the advantage at night."

The little dwarf, Grizzly guffaws at the comment by Sahara, "Family? What the frag do we look like, Hallmark? If I go pulling out an assault rifle when Lonestar is chasing me, feel free to ignore I ever existed. And I'm sure as frag not gonna go up to family and give my condolenscense for someone going psycho. Anyhows, I don't think we're going to be seeing combat tonight, we need detailed blueprints of the sewers/drainage or any other underground development from the past. We know his entry points, but only a guy like Gun would go through the front door and attempt to battle someone more powerful on their own homeground without having some knowledge of the layout. Tell you what I wish, wish we had one of those little bitty drones on Discovery that could give us a layout first-hand. ", Grizzly goes quiet as he starts trying to remember any old Rigger buddies he might have once had.

Sydney goes quiet at hearing the news of the dead hunter. She had dealt with death and loss before, but each time there was that tenuous period where the people around her weren't quite the same. In a hushed whisper she turns to Darien.

"What do you think? Can you get the layouts we need?"

"Likely all he would have gotten was a hefty fine if he had just stayed...oh well. Shoulda woulda coulda. Gotta keep our eyes on the present." Darien said, trying to get past the topic before it managed to sink in. "Hmm...sewer layouts? Ask me something difficult. While I'm looking up that, someone want to give this Suede person a call?"