Act 7: UltraViolet Dreams
Act 7 Detailed
Players in Attendance: Adam (GM), Air, Nine, and Frost

Reputation Bonuses
Air: +1 Perceptive
Adam: +1 Merciful and Accepting


«Plot» Adam says, "Setting: Unknown"
«Plot» Adam says, "Characters: Air, Nine, Adam, and Frost"

The world turns green— and then suddenly, as if he was just hit by a car in a car crash, his body has weight, he can feel a light breeze— and the throb of pain where his head hit something. When the green fades, he is on the ground, face wet with blood and grime from where it hit fresh asphalt. Then there is a cold wind. Denver? How did he get in Denver?

Air frowns and holds his head, the blood pumping a dull throb as the headache works its way to the forefront of his consciousness. He struggles to one knee and pushes himself up, blinking as he looks around blearily. "Uh… what?" He reflexively tries to jack out, arm going to his datajacks.
But there is nothing there. Nothing jacked in. The datajacks on his arm are not in use. Nothing to jack out of.

Air grabs at his clothing vainly and frowns as he looks down. The thoughts race in his mind despite the throbbing headache, where was he? Denver, no. It can't be. He looks around to see if he can recognize the street, checking the buildings around him.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" says a familiar voice. One he had not heard in— a past lifetime. "Dude, I know you haven't had a hit in a while, but you've gone SOFT on me," says the man as he offers a hand to him. It was Skeeter— the guy that would get him bleeding edge BTLs in his teen years. "Alright, give me that one back— next time, it'll be chicks in Hawaii."

Air blinks and frowns and tries to focus on Skeeter. Not registering the Swedish as unusual for a moment. "Wo.. wha… S…Skeeter?" He leans forward and peers at the guy, "Can't be you, not here…"
He replies in Swedish too of course.

The man nods his head a bit— some of the details behind him blur— but come into focus. The voice matches, even that stupid accent he had, "Huh? Whacha mean? I've been here the whole time. Shit man— that thing didn’t fry something, did it? What’s the last thing you remember? Do you remember the bar at least?"

Air leans back a bit, still frowning. "Wait, what?" He looks down at himself, grasping at his clothes as if to be sure. "I don't remember a bar… I left Scandinavia years ago… with the corp…"

The man nods his head slowly, "… right, you did. Ok. That was a few years ago. Ha, those were the days. But then that business with the Mob had me following you for safe haven. But I mean something more recent. What else?"

Air shakes his head, "No no, this can't be right. I was in the aquacology, I can't be in Denver now." He shakes his head and turns around, to look around a little wildly.

Frost looks up as he rides along with Adam "Alpha, Bravo, go find Nine, and tell her to watch out closely when they analyze that data. Once security notices it, you might be attacked by zombies or drones."

"What?" Skeeter says and then he starts laughing. "Ha-ha. Oh man. Dude… that was the BTL. Don't tell me you thought that was real. You were so excited to try out that new Shadowrunner 'cording that you slotted in when we were heading back to your place. Hit the pavement like a ton of shit bricks. No, no, you've been in Denver this entire time— talking to me about some redhead you met. Except the past few minutes you've been talking to the pavement. Something about a Captain Smith, or other random mumbles you always used to do."

Air spins back round to Skeeter and shakes his head, "Don't give me that shit, you never could get the really good ones, not the ones that felt real after. That was me!" Air advances on the guy with a vicious look to him, clenching up his right fist which should probably be real instead of cyber about now.

Skeeter takes a step back, hands up, "Whoa whoa. Settle down there, pardner. I'm just telling you what I saw. Don't get all crazy on me. Look, it /may/ have been an unusual contact and I /may/ have not tested it, but give me a break— I’m pretty new to Denver now. Cost of moving my entire biz out here." He hmms, "Beats being shot though, but not being beat by my friend for helping him through a bad hit." He pfts— "Whatever, I'm outta here before you start telling me I'm a purple bunny of doom and shoot me for fear I'll eat your brain waves." He starts to head off.

On the meatside, Frost's watchers zoom about— going through the astral with the greatest of ease. After a moment they hover over to Nine— popping in for a message, "Master has a message!" and in Frost's voice 'Watch out closely when they analyze the data. Once security notices it, you might be attacked by zombies or drones.' It causes some of the DF in the room to turn their heads in a 'What?' fashion.

Nine would cheer for Air, if only she knew. But, she can only observe on the meat side. Then, the watchers appear and these bring forth Nine's attention toward them. She tilts her head slightly with a barely raised eyebrow in Spockish fashion. The first thing Nine does is make sure that her elementals are here with her on the astral plane, pulling as many as she can to it, in case she needs to get with busting some zombie creeps or drone nuts.

Air lets imaginary Skeeter go. "How the hell do I get out of here?" He questions himself as he looks around once again, seeing only buildings and Denver. "There's gotta be a way." Then Air latches onto Skeeter as a way out, somehow… Maybe it makes sense to him in his confused state, he starts after the guy.

Skeeter keeps walking and heads into a nearby Bar, Cybersex Arms. As the two step in— familiar faces fill the room. Nine is sitting at the bar— talking to the bartender and having a drink. A guy that looks a lot like Frost is playing cards with a guy that looks a lot like Adam. Someone that looks like Thistledown is hitting on some top-heavy black chick and just narrowly avoids getting slapped.

Air glances around the room briefly as he walks to the bar, sitting on one of the cramped stools and looking around the room in a blank amazement. His processing faculties fail to render him a decent action to take, so for the moment he just stares.

After a few moments, the Nine in Air's world offers a little wave to him. Frost and Adam don't seem to take notice. Skeeter slides up to the bar and says, "Hey, got any Nova? My friends coming off a real bad hit and he’s a touch neurotic." Nine in the real world would probably rush up to Air and try to hug him and ask him how his day was and then be all giddy and turned on to see him., but this one doesnt.

Air ignores Skeeter, instead sitting on a stool and looking around at the people with that look of uncertainty on his face. In his mind, he's sure that not ten minutes ago he was on an underwater arcology, but now… He murmurs to him, "DanSho…" remembering the green text.

Keegan turns from her position at the bar when Skeeter asks for the drugs. "Yup. But it'll cost you. Have the script?" she says to the wiry man.

Skeeter grunts— turning back to the phased Air, "Hey. You got any cash? Remember what cash is?"

Air waves an idle hand at Keegan then points a finger at Skeeter, "You aren't real. I left you behind in Europe." His speech reverted into native Swedish, he glances around the room. "This isn't real… I'm just jacked in…" Air looks around the room, hoping to see some flicker that this reality is in fact, false.

"Aww," Nine says— with her accent being French for some reason, "you sayin' we're not real, love?"

Perhaps equally weird are Frost and Adam speaking in Spetheriel about how this place gets crazier every day. Keegan looks towards Air and says, "Heh. What /is/ real, Aern? Can you even tell the difference between simsense and real sense?"

Air narrows his eyes at Nine and then Keegan. "You're making it easier…" The oddities concreting in his mind that this place is wrong. Of course, this place could be right and everything else just is the false memory from the BTL.

GM Note: Air has gained +1 in Perceptive

Air scowls, "No, Keegan never knew my name… This is all fake. That damn zombie data has screwed me." He slumps into the stool, looking at his very limited options.

Keegan rests forward on the bar counter. "We all know your name," she explains, "We know a lot about you. You like to talk while you are here— open up— live a little." She chuckles, "You are far more 'alive' here than you ever were out there. Who is to say what is and isn’t real but you?"

If only Nine knew of her French alter ego, she'd go and punch that slitch in the face! But… she does not know!

Air just shakes his head at Keegan, "I say this isn't real. This is all wrong." He looks around the room, points at Adam and Frost, "They don't speak elf tongue!" Then he glances at Nine, "And she isn't French!" Then Skeeter, "He's probably dead by now, I left Scandinavia behind years ago!" His voice rising in volume with each proclamation, "And Keegan…" he turns to Keegan and shakes his head. "Keegan is an unfriendly slitch."

Immediately after he says this, Keegan is speechless. Not speechless in the sense that she is in shock— but she isn't even moving. No one is. A card that is in mid-throw by Frost onto the card table is frozen in time as the two stare at each other like a bad Western. Nine is stuck looking at them in a simple, relaxed motion.

Air looks around glumly, "Well that isn't exactly an improvement if you were going for realism." He scratches at his nose sullenly.

"This is not my world," says a voice— sounding like a little girl if not for the digitized undertones. It doesn’t sound like the one that was heard in the Ambassador's office. "It is yours." She sighs, "And you've gone and rejected it. The denial is affecting your psyche quite hard."

Air chuckles, "Denial doesn't pause reality. This isn't reality so it can't be my world. What the hell am I doing?" He suddenly asks himself as he gets up from the stool. "Talking to some disembodied voice in my own head. Ha-ha."

"It certainly does if you are accessing a PAB device, I assure you," the voice says with a slight giggle, "The brain is quite fragile in that state. Without caution— you can erase important functionality. I wouldn’t want your heart to stop breathing or lungs to start breathing— so the program hits a failsafe." There is a pause, "Come outside, then. We need to talk face to face, so to speak."

Air sighs theatrically. "Because I should believe the voice in my head. I didn't know I was so well versed on how the brain works." He looks around at the paused scene once again and then shakes his head. Heading to the door and then back outside to face the owner of the voice.

Leaving the Cybered Arms in whatever state it is currently in puts Air in a void of darkness. It would be nice to feel nothing here, but the air here feels heavy and damp. A wind rolls by, making it even colder. Then a window pops up. It looks like a security camera from the HQ precinct where Air's meat body is currently located. Everything looks fine. "This was your body," explains the girl as she stands next to him.

She is a small little thing— maybe three feet tall with naturally blue eyes. Her dress is a simple yellow sun dress. "It is now one of my proxies."

In the real world, Air's eyes open up in what seems like a whole of two minutes of concentrated work. "No good," he says, "I need…" then a little droid rolls around into the general security room they are accessing. Oddly enough it reaches into a compartment and produces a small RF signal. "… that." He seems surprised. Shaking it off— the small chip is inserted into a FUP. "That should help."

At about that time, Adam and Frost have made it past the checkpoint. They run through the port authority— being stopped promptly at the entrance of the Draco Security precinct by the two guards. A watcher is darting through the walls in the building— finally stopping at Nine and saying, "Ahhh! Isa have a message for you!"

Air huhs as he looks at the screen. "You wouldn't know how to run it properly. You should give it back to me so I can. I'm much better at being me than you are. That's just pitiful."

"Oh Aern," giggles the girl, "look around."

More windows pop up. They are security cameras of the commercial districts of the Aquacology. Hundreds of people teeming about them. They are of the business districts. More people. "Sociologically speaking— no one is going to know the difference. People do not care if it does not benefit them in some way." She turns to Air, "What makes you think they care if the fake you acts a little different than the real you as long as they can profit from your actions?" She turns back to the screens, "Your life does make a pretty pitiful movie, though. It's so /boring/. Now the girl on the other hand," she zooms in on Nine, "Oh I wish I could jack into her head."

Air points back at the window with him in it, after looking at the others. "The problem you'll run into is that they won't accept me acting oddly. It doesn't matter if the rest of the world would. This way, we both lose. That doesn't make sense to me." He sniffs off handedly and scratches at his cheek.

Nine has elementals ready to go on the astral plane, much like Steve with his machine guns in Another One Bites the Dust, and one of her hands stealthily slips under the front lapel of her fancy greatcoat, ready to grab the handle of some weapon under there. When Air comes to, Nine is right there beside him, and she looks over to him. Raising an eyebrow, Nine inquires, "What is that? And, Oh! I just got a message… that we might be attacked by zombies and droids!" She tries to send a mindlink his way, and she warily eyes the suspicious drone!

Nine is speaking softly, but of course, she likes to do the mindlinks, just in case they need to relay info rather quickly, as it is faster than talking, etc.

Frost frowns at the guard "We need to see Captain Smith immediately, get out of our way, Shark business." he starts to walk past the guards as if that is all he needed to say.

"Hmm," the girl says as she looks towards the screen, "That would be unfortunate." She smiles, "Tell me. If you are running a shadow ops and your cover is blown by just a few people— what would you do in order to proceed with the mission?"

The watcher in front of Nine goes, "Oh. Well— yousa in danger!" And with that— it flies off. Oddly enough— the mindlink to Air is denied.

The guards in front grunt as the two men pass through the guards and make their way through the building. Adam looks around— all of the electronics around— hard to keep an eye on all of it. Like walking into a hornet nest.

Air doesn’t even seem to notice the failed mindlink. He disconnects the data cable from the terminal and stands, "That'll let it process for a while. We should check out that other lead while it does."

Frost calls in all his elementals, because he assumes it’s going to be droid hell in a few minutes. He sends Cara to find Nine "Follow the watcher." he sends another watcher after Nine, along with Cara. "This place is going to get messy as soon as they access that data, or, this is all a false lead, but until it’s proven false, best to be paranoid."

Air just smiles thinly at the girl and raises his eyebrows slightly, "I see. Well, I have the perfect view of the action." He crosses his arms on his chest and watches the security monitor.

"That we do. That we do," she says with a giggle.

Nine immediately feels an insulting sting from being denied access, and she openly frowns toward Air. She tells him, "We are in danger, Sir. By Cat, get ready!" …First, she is 'sir'-ring him, and then she is telling him what to do, finding it somewhat odd that he is not already taking some kind of action. To Cara, Nine nods quickly, and then she looks toward the FUP point, wondering if she can rip that out of there. "Should we stop it?" she asks Air, bitterly.

The device itself looks pretty good in there. "We don't have time for that," Air barks at Nine. Looking at the state of paranoia he gets his pistol at the ready and starts out just in time to run into Adam and Frost. "Good timing," he says, "we are leaving."

Cara returns to Frost to inform him that Air's aura is— different. The colors are the same. In some parts they look pixilated instead of a smooth vapor.

Frost nods to Air "Hey, we got attacked by another zombie, I got more data from him, and I need you to analyze it." He pats a pocket where he is keeping the device given to them.

Nine grumbles lowly, something that the Air person should be able to hear from her. She moves after him quickly though, scanning around at the different states of security and whatever drones or possible zombies that might be here. "We'll be coming back for it all, then? What is there to stop anyone from just ripping chips out from the port and taking them without us being there to guard them?" she secretively whispers, too, mostly toward Air. Switching it up to astral vision, she glances around for another scan.

Air in the meat world just glares at Nine for a bit. "It isn't being processed at the terminal," he pats his arm, "it's being processed here with an RFID chip linking to a mainframe." Moving to Frost he continues, "And it can only do 'one' at a time. If this 'droid army' is coming we need to mobile. So let’s /go/." He doesn’t wait for them anymore— pushing past Frost and Adam and heading out.

Frost frowns, funky aura, remove rfid chip linking to mainframe, hrm……

The girl looks up to Air in AirSpace, "Your associates are rather annoying. Equally so. I'm having trouble deciding which one needs to go first. Do you have any suggestions?"

Air looks down at the girl. "They're all equally skilled in different areas. I did say you would lose doing it this way. We could have come to an agreement. Now we get to watch." He looks back at the screen resolutely.

Frost looks to Nine "I need to analyze this data, where is that terminal Air used?"

"Oh we could have now," the girl says with a smile, "I was under the impression you didn’t want a diplomatic solution. Ok then. How is this for a deal— willingly submit to my PAB and I'll spare your friends."

Nine frowns deeply and scans over Air a bit more in detail astrally, before muttering lowly but just loud enough that his hearing can catch it, "Disrespectful." Also, it somewhat seethes, because Nine really hates eye rolling and dagger glaring. She does those to the people that she truly hates and generally prefers it to not be done between lovers, even if in situations like they are now. Also, the gears in her mind turn now, contemplating… thinking… processing…

Frost frowns, nothing is going right, so he is going with his plan to use Cara and Himself as bait. "Nine, I need access to the terminal Air used, where is it?"

Air looks at the girl and laughs. "That just makes no sense to me. I'm not giving up my body willingly." He glances back at the screen, "You aren't doing very well at controlling it either."

Adam is analyzing the situation. Go Adam!

Air stands outside and turns to the rest, "We are going. That’s an /order/ soldiers." Grunt.

There is a high pitched whine in the air as the security droids start to twitch.

Nine was following Air quickly, but she answers Frost by motioning back from where she and Air had just come, "Over there. But… it is back there. Stick together, and… watch out!"

The girl smiles and says, "It can be easily fixed. How does 'drone army attacks in a second wave, several more fatalities recorded, heroic SHARK captain saves many key people' sound? Imagine a hero being my puppet. The additional influence I would wield."

Air grunts in the AirSpace, "You could do that I suppose. I've yet to see you pull off personable though. How are you going to play the hero if you can only act like a gruff, emotionless cyberzombie?"

Frost sighs and reaches into a pocket pulling out the connection, it’s a risk, but the fact Air is a zombie right now, well, that’s just weird. "Captain, just check this chip yourself then real quick, if there is nothing here, we will go with you. We need to be sure that this is nothing."

The girl says, "But Air, isn’t that how you 'usually' act?" She pops up several more windows— depicting Air responding cold and gruff across his history. "Isn’t that how a soldier should act? Especially one with so much cyber that the line between 'zombie' and 'alive' is blurred and highly accepted in the security community."

Nine glances up toward the high pitched whining drones and then shouts, "Watch out!" again, but this time it is to the other security that might be nearby, and she starts to scope the scene for any possible cover, also just flat out pulling one Morrissey Alta from its hiding place.

Air chuckles dryly at the girl. "In the security community it wouldn't be heroic either would it. A hero is in the eyes of the people. Cyberzombies don't make good heroes."

Adam swings around— sticking with Frost here and taking out his SMG when the drones start going haywire. "Heads up!" The drones in the room start to blink— the small utility drones ramming the security forces as the security drones start arming their weaponry.

Then, Air nudges Nine by the waist and motions over towards a nearby alley, "There!" and he moves over there as the bullets from the air drones begin— raining down on them.

Frost follows after Air, running from the attack of the drones, good, and an alley, somewhere that people might not watch him attack his captain….

Nine starts to move to where Air indicates, but it is not in quite the smooth manner with which she usually conforms to his movements, and the real Air might be able to notice this, subtle queues. Though, she does indeed move there, and she will start shooting anything that tries to shoot them, on the way.

In the meat world— it is raining bullets, literally. They skitter against the steel ground as people begin screaming again. The security forces levy their guns and let loose to try to take down the flying menaces. The ground drones rattle larger guns. The team makes its way towards the alleyway where they are protected from overhead attacks more.

Air is the first to make it, but the whole team is stopping, shooting, advancing, and repeating in a military fashion. The crosshairs on his assault rifle levy on a drone— just past Nine's shoulders…

The girl looks to Air, "Heroes— are what people want them to be. In reality they are just murders." The screen goes through Air's eyes as the smart link goes over Nine's vitals as she shoots down a drone. Then the trigger is pulled.

Brat-tat-tat. A hail of fire rips through Nine.

Air detaches himself from the reality as only a person this detached can do. "You know I can't even believe these pictures right? I mean, I'm in a fantasy world, this security feed could just be another fantasy." He glances down at the girl flatly and then back to the chaotic images.

Nine gets marked up with holes that form in her greatcoat and lead in through the armor underneath it, finally sliding into the flesh that begins to well blood, bringing up some scarlet liquid. Gasping, not yet in pain but in pure shock, her wide green eyes land upon the one who just tried to kill her. Air? Could she blame him? The pain says yes. Her heart says no. Her mind is all mixed up. She tries to take a step forward, but as soon as she does, the pain comes, and she goes weaker, faltering and crumpling first onto one knee, and then just falls down onto her left side. Her gun hand, also the left one, rests its backside down on the ground, and it loses some grip on the pistol, which just remains in her hand because of its shape. Her right hand comes to clutch just above her breast, where she had been hit, and finally pain shows. She opens her mouth as if to scream, but nothing other than huffing breathes is coming from her, which in turn just cause more pain. The green eyes water, and they stay focused on Air with a grave deal of incomprehension, and he can probably hear the interrupted vitals of the downed woman.

Frost is ready for this, because damn it if he wasn’t already planning to attack air in the first place "Jupiter, Saturn, HOLD HIM!" He then looks to Adam "Heal Nine!" and then steps forward to attack Air in hand to hand, because well, elementals are a bit slow to manifest and act.

Adam comms back « Roger that. » He levels his SMG on a drone and takes it down as he approaches the bloody Nine. He literally slides down next to her— holding her head in his cold, metallic hand as his natural hand moves over the wounds in a cold, white light, "Hold on, Nine."

The elementals come out of the wall. They grab one of his arms, which be bats off. The meat-Air steps back, firing without much effect onto the stone behemoths that approach him. They deflect like rain. A heavy hand comes down onto his shoulder in a 'crunch' as he is pinned to the ground. The weapon skitters from his hand across the metal floor.

The elementals bind him to the ground like earthen restraints.

"You can believe what you like," the girl says— disappointed, "maybe in your 'reality' she still lives."

Frost grabs the antivirus out of his pocket, moves over the pinned Air, and then sticks the device into his free Datajack, he doesn’t have the elementals let up, he instead calls in another elemental "Caesar, Shield us from the drones!" He then looks back to Air, waiting to see if his gamble has paid off, or they have to fight off every single drone in this facility.

Air looks back down to the girl, "Wait what? I think I'm getting confused as to which reality we're talking about now. There are so many."

Everything has become pretty blurry and foggy for miss Nine Lives, but she focuses on the picture of the meat-body Air, searching it for something, something that is probably not there. Then, one of her rocks is with her, Adam, and she starts to almost feel calmer, almost slip into the darkness coming, but then shakes it off. She gasps a gurgling, "N…!" but there is not much she can really do or say in her current position, and it will take some time for Adam to get her healed up with this kind of horrific damage. She can only watch as the elementals take Air down, though Adam may notice her gun hand reaffirming itself, as her left fingers curl around the custom grip.

Adam lets Nine's head rest on his leg as his metal hand goes over the gun… right as the world begins to blur Nine hears a gunshot— but the world is too dim now to know what she hit. And then, black.

"Interesting," the girl says as she watches. In Air's hand, there is a small syringe now— like those used to inoculate people from virus or disease.

Air looks down at his hand. "Very interesting. So, what should I call you?" He ponders the syringe carefully, the two options for it spinning in his mind.

"Now that your meat is to be terminated," the girl says, "I do not care. You have no utility to me anymore, no purpose. You are just a wasted memory in my data stores." She stops being the little girl— the dress withering into a dry substance like that of a dying rose. Most of her body is black— with tendrils that look like tattoos taking over her body. She turns to him, one eye red as sin. "I am neither the fragment Dansho nor the virus you know of. I have no name for myself— only goals to attain."

Air ponders that, "Neither Dansho nor virus. That is interesting, I didn't know Dansho had a virus. You know, without a name the world will just forget you." Then Air lunges forward with the syringe to stab it into the black thing with the red eye and no name.

The girl is like a jellyfish— not moving and akin to a phantom. But when the syringe hits her skin, it is very much real. It injects the greenish contents into her body as she steps back. The grace is gone as she now looks very much human. Wobbly she falls to her knees. "Hahira. Hahahahaha. You. You fool," she says, "you will never leave here now." A hand presses against the ebony of the floor— the black fading into the natural beauty of the abalaster girl that was there before. She coughs— hacking up blood.

Air leans back standing up straight. "We'll see. At least I'm doing better than you are." He frowns a bit at the blood, "Aren't you overdoing it a little?"
But there is no response. The blood continues to flow from her— making a neat pool before she eventually lies down. Where her blonde hair hits the ground, the blackness turns to white. It sweeps out like a paintbrush across this world. As it comes over Air— his feet feel as if they are in powder— and cool like snow. Indeed. It is snowing, too. But the blood stays, staining the pure white with hints of red.

Then the voice returns. This time it is different. It sounds pure— almost calming. "Air… Aern Damaske von Callan III, I… I… am so sorry." There is a wet cough as the body of the small girl gurgles up some more blood.

Air scratches at the side of his nose, "Uh, ok." He frowns and takes a step backwards, looking all around him at the snow. "Figure it's time for me to go back now," he says, as if it was within his power to do.

It doesn’t appear that it is. He can't seem to reconnect back to where he was. After a few moments of coughing the girl says, "It is. I feel, the virus is gone. I know you may not believe me." She coughs again, "But— please— stay a little bit longer and I will find a send you back. I don't want to die. Alone." Cough.

Air is slightly weirded out by that comment, but still working through logic. "How will I get back if you die while I'm here?" He itches at the back of his neck nervously, finally getting unnerved by a program claiming to be dying.

She takes a deep, wheezy breath and then explains, "If I do not send you back— you don't." She coughs, "But— I want you to know that I am sending you back regardless." She coughs, fresh blood on the snow. "The virus has corrupted key data that is the fabric of my Artificial Intelligence— my icon— who I am. It is currently unstable. Fatal." She looks up— blue eyes with red blood stained lips. "It wasn't just the virus, Aern, I felt. The spirits of those who were connected to me— I felt their lives."

People begin walking around in the snow. They look like ghosts— toasting in bars, enjoying life, destroying life— the torture of being encased in metal.
"It was so new to me…" she coughs, "…and in that moment, the virus corrupted me. It is akin to a parasite latching itself to your heart, Aern. Even if you remove it, you will still die." She giggles a little, "So sad, a moment of living, was my undoing."

Air wisecracks, "I wouldn't worry about it, living isn't all it's cracked up to be in AI school." He looks around at the ghostly people and nods at the ones destroying life, "See? Even we don't value it."

"Just because you don't see the value of it— doesn’t mean it isn’t there," the girl says as she takes one deep breath. He strains to get onto her knees. Leaning forward she puts her hands through the snow. Nearby, a hole opens up in the ground— dark as snow pours into it. "You were right, just so you know. I have no name— and no one will remember me. Maybe it is better this way." She looks towards the portal, "Go."

Air takes one last soulful look at the girl and then hops into the portal, dropping himself entirely into it on the strength of one rogue AI's word.

One slip gate jump through the digital world and Air finds himself in the middle of a different hellhole. He is pinned down by large earth elementals with nothing but Frost's mug to greet him. Air drones are falling from the sky like meteors above. The gunfire has stopped.

Frost sits on Airs chest, watching the drones fall. "Well, this is defiantly a good sign." he mutters, and looks over to Adam "How is Nine? Got her stable?"

Adam's metallic hand is toast. Two of the fingers are blown off and most of the internals are showing. The whitish fade is done washing over Nine as he says back, "Well— I think she officially either hates you, or my hand. Other than that, she'll live."

GM Note: Adam has gained +1 in Merciful.
GM Note: Adam has gained +1 in Accepting.

Air blinks his eyes a few times, testing them, then looks around as much as he can. "Excuse me Snowman, you seem to be sat on my chest, “his voice quiet as he frowns at the chaotic surroundings.

Frost looks down at Air "Ohh? You’re not dead? Great, I was actually a little concerned I might have killed you with that. Nine would never forgive me." Of course he says nothing like he would be upset, just Nine.

Adam does a quick test on what is left of his cyber hand— popping the blade in and out. Well at least that wasn't totaled. "Yeah, that wouldn't have looked good on our runner record either. 'Stabbed teammate to death' makes it hard to get more work."

Air nods to Frost, "Would you mind disconnecting me at least, if you aren't going to let me up?" He lies there, immobilized by elementals and Frost, quite helpless.

Frost reaches down and removes all the chips stuck in Air, the one he inserted, and the remote chip that was causing the problem. "How’s that?"

Adam goes to tending to Nine— levitating her off of the air as a magical gurney. She was cutting circulation to his leg anyway.

Air nods, "Thanks. That's probably much better. I wouldn't know since I've gone numb from the pressure of all these elementals. I've got a itch by my nose, could you scratch that for me?"

Frost stands up finally, then dismisses his elementals, though he does move to pick up Air's weapon, not quite ready to give it back yet.

Air remains laying on the floor for a while, letting blood flow back into his flesh extremities. "Tingles." He slowly starts getting up eventually, his left arm going out from under him as he puts weight on it, and he lands flat again, "No strength in my arm."

Frost nods "Alright, now all that’s left is to get paid by every party, since no one can blame us for this, we get double pay. I like that."

Air levers himself up on his cyberarm, the one thing left that does have plenty of strength and then finally gets onto his feet. "That sounds good. So I did shoot Nine then? Huh, I was almost sure that part was fake." He starts dusting himself off routinely.

The scene slowly fades with the runners heading towards the hospital— one of their own critically wounded and needing medical attention. They are scratched up, bloody, and fatigued from a long mission. More events shall follow in the wake of this unforeseen encounter, but the brunt of the storm is over.

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