Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

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Praeothmin
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Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Just a Fanfic I started writing about mixing Shadowrun (a roleplaying game) with a couple of different universes...
The main character is my creation, based on some characters I've played in the past...

Let me know what you think...

The Long Journey

Chapter 1

March 22nd, 2058
It was rainy that day in Seattle.
It was rainy every day in Seattle at that time of year.
But the rain didn’t bother James Reynolds, as he stood, perched over the edge of a rooftop across from his target.
He welcomed it, as even the best security systems in town would be affected by the rain, whether it was the cameras which would be almost blind, even in infra-red or low-light mode, to the thermal sensors which would become blinded by the cold rain lowering the temperature of everything it hit, including human bodies.
Yes, all this rain was going to be of great help to James when he would be ready to penetrate the highly secured magical laboratory across the street from him.
James took his time in observing the movements of the guards below; making sure the guard that emerged under the light of one lamp was the same one he had seen disappear in the shadows of the building not long before.
He had to take his time, because while the rain was a boon to him, it also hindered his ability to scan his target.
He wasn’t worried about being spotted though, for although he was a mountain of a man, around six and a half feet tall with broad, muscular shoulders, he was standing at the roof’s edge of a six story building, two stories taller than his target, and he wasn’t under any light.
No one walking in the street could hope to see him, and on the off chance someone did, he had taken the precaution of wearing dark blue clothing and a mask, so his face would not be seen.
Only his steel grey eyes were peering through the mask, their thermal and low-light capabilities being used to the max by James.
His costume was woven of ballistic fiber, offering him limited protection from small arms, which he reinforced by wearing a full form-fitting body armor under it.
While both layers offered him good ballistic protection, they would not hamper his movements or stealth abilities.
He was going in light, having only brought his collapsible baton and his silenced Colt Manhunter heavy pistol as weapons.
He didn’t plan on heavy fire being exchanged, and if it did, his mission was hosed anyways.

James wasn’t worried though, for he’d been doing this kind of work in the shadows for many years, and was one of the best of a new generation of Shadowrunners.
James preferred stealthy missions to big fights, but he had the tools to do both.
Like all top Shadowrunners, he had had augmentations done to his body to enable him to compete in the big leagues, where the big money was.
But unlike most Shadowrunners, all of James augmentations had been from Bioware, not Cyberware.
When he had started thinking about his first mod, James had also looked at Cyberware, because Cyber augmentations were usually cheaper and more powerful then their Bioware equivalent.
With Cyberware, you could go faster, become tougher, and hit targets a lot easier than with Bioware.
But you also ended up less human for it.
He’d seen many Street Samurais so disconnected from reality that they could witness a murder, or worse, kill, without even the least bit of remorse, as if what they did wasn’t happening in reality, but only in some remote part of their mind.
James had decided he didn’t want to end up like that.
Another advantage was that for infiltration jobs, he would be better off with the more subtle, less artificial Bioware, which no scanner could detect.
Even astrally ascensing Mages or Shamans, his friend had told him, could not pick up the presence of Bioware in a man, while they had no problems recognizing a heavily Cybered being.
Only advanced medical scans - the type that no security force could do on site - would be able to show the modifications done to his body.
So that’s the way he went.
Every part of his body that could be enhanced was, so that he gradually went from a big, competent man, to a big scary shadow running beast that backed off from no job or backed down from no one.

The building he was planning on infiltrating seemed like a very normal, very regular office building.
It was, according to public records, the property of a small insurance firm.
But thorough research through the Matrix by Carkass, the team’s expert Decker, had revealed otherwise.
In reality, under a load of shell companies, the building was owned by Aztechnology, and was used for magical research, nicely explaining the presence of elementals patrolling the Astral plane at night.
These elementals reported to a Mage named Peter Lorne, who resided in Downtown Seattle.
While Peter was on location during the day, at night, he simply left his three biggest elementals to stand guard, while he went back home.
The SOP for such security was that the elementals stayed to fight, and then the Mage who conjured them would be advised of trouble once they got destroyed or banished.
He could then respond accordingly.
Such a building also had electronic security, Carkass had discovered, and this security was some of the best money could buy.
But it had a weakness, like all security systems.
This site’s weakness was its external Matrix access.
Most Megacorps protected their sites by prohibiting remote work being done by their personnel.
Unfortunately for most of them, most magically active workers were very capricious by nature, as James had discovered working with the team’s Mage.
And since good Mages or even good Shamans were a rarity, companies, even Megacorps, had to agree to some compromises in order to sway these talented people to work for them.
In this case, the compromise was that the main researcher had an external link to the building’s mainframe.
While the security was tough to crack for someone trying to go in the building directly, going through the phone lines was slightly easier, and thus Carkass had succeeded in infiltrating the building’s system through the main researcher’s access, and had taken over the external security features, such as the doors’ electronic locks and silent alarms.
While the cameras seemed to be linked to a completely internal system, they wouldn’t really matter, since once inside, James would clip a modified Blue-Tooth transmitter to the first camera he would see, allowing Carkass to communicate with the system and take it over as well.

Looking at his watch, James noticed it was almost 1 am.
“Time to go to work”, he thought, as he adjusted the grapple gun on his shoulder, and steadied himself, ready to fire right above the roof access door of their target.
He activated his Comm-Link, made sure the Crypto-Circuit was running, and asked:

“Managuy, this is Shadowmaster, do you copy?”

“Managuy here, reading you loud and clear. Ready for action! Copy!”

James couldn’t help but smile every time he used, or heard, his Mage’s street handle.
It sounded like the name a kid playing out an episode of “Joe Shadowrunner” would use.
He remembered the first time he met Managuy, or Daniel Bouchard, so many years ago.
The young Mage, the image of a high-class wage-Mage, wore a Mortimer of London coat for a “meet” in the Barrens, walking with the help of a cane, topped with a golden handle.
James was surprised he had even made through the front door of the bar unmolested.
But as the door closed, he had caught a glimpse of the dozen or so people laying on the ground, apparently unconscious, and the bar’s meanest bouncer looking at the young Mage with fear in his eyes.
That the Orc Bouncer who usually threw any trouble maker out, sometimes through the windows, seemed afraid of the small man – barely above five and half feet tall – made most of the patrons suddenly less interested at the young man’s riches, and a lot more at their drinks.
James had learned during the following years how capable the Mage was.
A high level Initiate, powerful beyond the dreams of most street Mages, Daniel was a force to be reckoned with.
He always went into a mission as prepared as can be, always with at least four powerful elementals bound to him.
He was capable of using his most powerful spells over and over again, and seemed like nothing could ever tax him.
So hearing he was ready for action once more made James as confident as one could ever get on such missions.

He contacted Carkass:

“Shadowmaster to Carkass, ready for move one. Copy!”

“Carkass reading you loud and clear”, came the response. “Ready to rumble. Copy!”

With the acknowledgement of his team, James took aim and fired the grappling hook at the top of the roof access door, his enhanced hearing picking up a satisfying “schtunk”, indicating the hook had sunk in the wall above the door.
Pulling the Nylon-Kevlar rope taught, he made sure it was securely fastened on his side, and then, hooking his rappelling handle over the rope, he uttered:

“Go! Go! Go!”

The signal was given, and now everything was a question of timing.
Calling upon his augmented reflexes and reaction, James jumped up and forward and let gravity take him down at high speeds towards the other roof.
Once over the lip of the other building’s roof, James activated the brakes on his gear, and once sufficiently slowed down, he let go, and landed in a tuck and roll that brought him directly in front of the roof access door as he was getting up.
As his hand went for the handle, he saw the electronic lock LED change from red to green, and he got in.
Once inside the building, he stopped and listened for a sound in the stairwell.
Not hearing one, he immediately searched for a camera, found it, and went to work on it, attaching the Blue-Tooth device as Carkass had shown him.
The Decker sure knew his work.
While physically Carkass was pretty much everything James despised in human beings –he was fat, lazy, never exercised and ate junk food like his life depended on it – he was certainly the best Decker James had ever worked with.
He was as talented a Decker as Daniel was a Mage.
The fact he rarely found the time to bathe, or that he wore his old “Space Jam” t-shirt all the time didn’t diminish his usefulness for the team.
He was also one of the most generous persons James had ever encountered.
James knew for a fact that Carkass gave up half his net earnings to local charities to help improve people’s lives, something James admired greatly.
This had inspired James, and he had started doing the same, although he couldn’t donate as much as Carkass since James still had his parents to provide for.

As Carkass’s device took over the internal security system, James started down the stairs at breakneck speeds.
His augmented muscles and enhanced articulations allowed him to navigate the stairs like a world-class athlete, while his improved heart pumped ever more oxygenated blood down his arteries.
Once he arrived at ground floor, he stopped and looked through the small emergency door window.
Seeing no guards, he called Carkass:

“Shadowmaster to Carkass, the mouse is in the house. See any cats around? Copy!”

“Go ahead, little mousy, no cats around, they are all taking a catnip break. Go straight out 10 meters, then turn right for another 5 meters. The elevators shaft will be free and ready for your descent into hell. Copy!”

James opened the door, and dashed through the lobby, across the hall, and then turned right for the elevators.
And came face to face with a guard.
The guard had been leaning against the wall, sipping his coffee, right under the security camera that should have revealed him.
The guard, although surprised, reacted quickly - too quickly for a normal human, showing he had had some reaction enhancements done on him – and went for the panic button at his belt.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
James’s left hand shot out to deflect the guard’s right hand, while his right hand, fingers straightened, impacted with the guard’s right shoulder, hitting the guard’s shoulder articulation.
After that paralyzing blow, James’s left hand rolled over his right, thumb and index forming a “V” to smash the guard’s larynx, hard enough to silence him, yet not hard enough to kill.
James knew that sometimes, killing was part of his way of life, yet he never killed without cause, and never when he could avoid it.
He had also learned a long time ago that companies invested less time and effort hunting you down if you didn’t cost them and arm and a leg in replacing personnel and material.
Most of the time, in order not to lose face to the public, they wouldn’t even call the police, taking care of the matter internally.
A back-handed fist to the guard’s right temple finished him off.
As he started crumbling to the ground, James caught him, then whispered in the Comm-Link:

“Carkass, I need a cat litter now, I’ve run into a stray. Copy!”

“Cat house coming up to your left. Copy!”

Looking around to make sure no one had seen him or heard the commotion, James picked up the guard and brought him to the open elevator door, where he laid him gently on the floor.
As soon as he exited the elevator, the doors closed behind him, while on the opposite side of the corridor, the doors to another elevator opened on the empty shaft.
Suddenly, in the elevator shaft , the air started shimmering as if it was being heated up.
The air elemental Managuy had conjured was at his post, ready to take James down the shaft to the lower levels of the complex.
James stepped in the shaft, and felt as if his body became lighter than air.
He drifted down quickly, the elemental completely in control of the whole operation.
As he was about to land on top of the elevator car, the elemental started wavering, and let him go.
He landed softly on his feet, the 10 feet drop not fazing him at all.
He immediately knew the elemental was under attack, or it would not have dropped him so.
The top hatch of the elevator car was opened in seconds, and then, letting his head drop slightly in the hole, he peered through the opened elevator doors to see barely lit corridor leading to a double door at the end.
Between him and the doors were two guards at the ready, kneeling in the corridor, keeping close to the walls, weapons at the ready and aiming at the elevator.
James stood up on the car, took his gun out, then dropped through the hole to the floor, leaned right and rolled to the side wall, out of the doorway.
Gunfire erupted as bullets impacted on the back wall of the elevator, one bullet even hitting James left flank.
James felt the impact, noticed no pain and judged by the sound of the impact that his plates and Kevlar clothing had deflected the bullet.
Not wanting to serve as a target for much longer, knowing time was limited, he dove through the doorway, crossing from right to left, and rolled up on one knee and fired 4 times.
The silencer tried its best to muffle the big gun’s report, but in the narrow corridor, the gun still sounded like distant thunder claps.
He hit each guard twice, and almost got hit in return.
One bullet even whistled past his right ear, but he had been moving so fast the guards could not adjust their aim properly.
He quickly made sure the Gel bullets he’d used in his gun had simply knocked the guards out and not killed them, and then went to the doors.
As he got to them, they unlocked, and he opened them slowly, always alert for attacks.
He perceived no immediate threats, so he moved into the room.
There, in the middle of the room, seated on a dais, was the biggest piece of Orichalcum James had ever seen.
The size of a Troll’s fist, weighing at least 20 pounds, it was encased in some sort of field, and strange drawings were scribbled around it.
He was about to call Carkass when he heard a noise behind him.
He immediately plunged and rolled forward, barely escaping the immense rock-like fist that swung right where his head was.
Getting up, he saw a hulking monster, Troll-like in size, yet not fully formed, as if it was made out of solid putty.
The creature’s head turned towards James, and it started to advance, lifting its arms in a boxing-like stance.
James didn’t know where to run, as the creature was wide enough that it covered the room left and right, and James had the dais at his back.
He jumped back on the top of the dais, which seemed to spur the creature on.
From the corner of his eyes, James saw the outline of Managuy appearing, a ghostlike figure in the background of the eerie light coming from the dais.
Managuy made intricate hand movements, and something leaped at the creature, just as it was catching James’s left leg in a vice grip.
The creature howled when Managuy’s spell hit, and it tightened its grip on James’s leg.
The pressure was incredible, and James feared his leg was going to get crushed into paste.
While Managuy started enacting the movements of another spell, James took hold of the Orichalcum piece using both hands, and hefting it over his head, struck the creature’s head as Managuy’s second spell hit home.
There was a deafening explosion, bright flashes of searing multicoloured lights, all of it so powerful they overwhelmed James’s flare compensation and hearing dampeners.
James felt as if a huge Troll was sitting on his stomach, as if his limbs were attached to horses that were trying to pull his body apart, as if all the blood in his body was boiling inside him.
His pain compensators had long ago been overwhelmed, and all his senses were blind.
He kept hearing a high pitched noise in his hears that his dampeners could not stop, and it took some time to realize the noise was him screaming in pain.
The pain was unbearable, and James passed out.
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
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