Six's blog, Scavenger hunt.

By N.Barnes

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Entry 29: 28.09.70>
From the sublime to the ridiculous – I can’t believe what Glyph and I just put ourselves through for the good of Brutal Deluxe. I’m whacked!

So yeah, Brutal Deluxe - long story. This time the call came in from a man called Milan offering 250k for a brief sally on to the streets of San Fran.
I was interested but Glyph was the only one of the team free to join me and we soon found out we were outnumbered. Two other Shadowrunning teams were at the meet and it quickly became obvious that this was far from run of the mill. Each team had to register itself with Milan, which is where Glyph decided to christen us Brutal Deluxe, and was then given a shopping list.
Each item on the list had a points value and each team had three and a half hours to collect as many items from the shopping list as possible. At the end of the night, the team with the most points would win the 250k.

The teams blazed and I got vehicles on to the road via remote as we began calling down favours. Our strategy was to go for the biggest points first and then pick up what else we could incidentally. I blazed to the San Fran Giants stadium and we spotted a grid guide camera en route which we liberated to notch up our first point! At the Giants, Glyph diverted off to pick up some cats for a later item while I laid it on thick that I needed the First Base for a charity fundraiser. The manager swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I got the base, signed by the entire first team, a pair of box seat tickets for the match against the Padre’s and a cheque for 100k. The blag had been good but it was getting out of my control and I needed an out from this hairy situation fast. Feeling slightly guilty, I contacted the legitimate charity to collect the 100k and then, explaining that my charity treasure hunt was against the clock, I got the funk out of Dodge with the First Base and five guaranteed points.

I paid honest money for 50 gallons of AvGas and remoted one of the vehicles down to the airfield so it could be loaded up and that was our seventh point in the bag. I thought Papa could source a pre-grid guide car and called in a favour there, though that one never came off, and then begged Nunz to ‘liberate’ a Yakuza finger for me. I figured that with his Mafia connections there would be some coup to count against the Orientals but Nunz wasn’t playing ball. I could cough up ten large to pay for a hit or get the damn finger myself. I figured I had to speculate to accumulate and put my hand in my wallet again to secure two more points.

Snow proved willing to lend Glyph and I a Panther Assault Cannon for a test firing and we met there. Glyph had the transit full of half-feral rescue cats and it didn’t look as though she’d had a pleasant journey. The whole debacle was lunacy but Snow was able to shed some light on Milan’s bizarre game. Seems the treasure hunt is Corp-financed and allows Milan to put fledgling Shadowrunning teams through a dry run and test their resourcefulness. With our Rep and possible future contracts on the line, we redoubled our efforts for the sake of the whole team.

We took the Panther Assault Cannon out to the Barrens. We needed a spent shell casing to earn our tenth point and there were bonus points available if the shell had been fired at us. We had no intention of risking anyone else shooting at us so we set it all up. Glyph fired and recorded a POV film of the shot while I concentrated on jumping aside just before the shell hit.
It took us a couple of tries but we pulled it off and headed back to Snow in high spirits.

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En route, I realised that an RFID tag in the grid guide camera we had first pinched had attracted Lone Star’s attention. I called in another favour, this time from Bumfluff and between the two of us we managed to get away from the cops long enough to burn the tag. Seeing Lone Star reminded us that we might get some joy from Croner and sure enough he was game. We were going to have to put our hands in our pockets again but he could help us out with a couple of items on our shopping list.

From Snow, we went to the Municipal Waterworks and cut free the door for another point before loading Glyph’s rescue cats into the helicopter and heading for our next target. There were five points riding on rearranging the letters on a corporate building to say something rude, with bonus points for targeting an A, AA or AAA firm. We wanted to combine this with an item demanding we leave a dozen cats in a CEO’s office and that made this at least a seven pointer, plus bonuses. I’d realised that Mitsuhama was a perfect anagram of u_shit_Mama and we identified a small depot that would fit the bill.

Landing on the rooftop, we bailed out the cats and Glyph rappelled over the side of the building and got to work. She soon attracted the attention of the Rentacops so I bought the vehicle mounted weaponry into play to cover her ass and drop the opposition. Needless to say, that only attracted more attention and though Glyph was working like a Trojan, we soon had a Citymaster full of CorpSec en route. With Mitsuhama rechristened u_shit_Mama we moved to phase two, located the CEO’s office and started lobbing mangy feral cats in through the window. CorpSec appeared and the vehicle weaponry was called into use again while Glyph and I finished up and hightailed it in the chopper.

Time was running short so we headed to Lone Star and coughed up the cash for a set of Lone Star rims and a uniform shoulder patch. We struck lucky and spotted a ganger in the holding cells who sold us his jacket which took our tally for that encounter to four plus any bonuses we picked up for the rank of the shoulder patch.

Glyph wanted to stop for at least one more item but I was twitchy. By now I had four vehicles on remote, each carrying valuable points-paying cargo and I knew that if just one of them didn’t get to the meet by 11pm we would forfeit the whole game. I called it, took the gamble that we had done enough and we blazed. Fortunately, I was proven right. We dragged our haul into the meet to find we had been beaten back by both of the other teams. It didn’t matter though, we were back before Milan and that meant our points would all count. He did the totting up and announced the Brutal Deluxe total of 27 points as the winning score and by some margin! Result!

We’d coughed up the best part of 30 large between us but still earned 110k a piece, to say nothing of the boost to our Rep and the potential contracts Milan might now poke in our direction. It’s clearly time for a well-earned break though so Kitty and I are off to Paris for a romantic week away – our first visit to Europe. Back soon!

Mood: High as a kite!


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