From: friedman@news.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark  Friedman, Crimson)
Subject: 21st Century Schizoid Man [part 09/19]
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 16:54:42 GMT

	Larry had gone to the bar and returned with a pack of
Xigarettes.  "Here ya go..."  He threw them to Freddy.

	"Thanks, 'mano."  He snagged the pack out of the air while
fishing a lighter out of his pocket.  "I just lovvvve waiting..."  He
lit up and puffed away with a little difficulty.  He coughed a bit,
"New set of lungs, eh?  Gotta break em in..."  He pocketed the lighter
again.

	Larry wafted the smoke away from him.  "Clean slate and you
gotta go muss it up..."

	"Yeah.  Hot rails to hell, eh?"  He turned at the sound of a
knock on the wall.

	The door to the back room opened and Howler walked in,
followed by the woman he was with in Sybrespace (this time he could
see the name label on her jacket: "Slick").  Howler looked at Freddy
and Larry, blurting out, "Who the hell are you?"  The woman dropped to
a defensive stance and drew a rather large pistol.

	Freddy's cigarette dropped out of his mouth.  "Cryminee,
Howler, I thought we had leash laws in Seattle..."  He stubbed out the
butt with his toe.

	Howler smiled, anticipating Slick's response.  She holstered
her pistol and advanced on Freddy, ending up throwing a kick at his
face.  He ducked his head to the side and caught her leg in the air.
He then lifted up on it, toppling her onto her back.  He turned to
Larry, "Hey, I guess the reflexes *are* coming back."

	Slick was not to take this "lying down", though: she twisted
around on the ground, sweeping Freddy's legs.  He fell onto his back
and in a flash she was sitting on his chest with her gun in his face.
"Care to rephrase that, chummer?"  Her grin was positively evil.

	Larry grumbled and then moved faster than anybody in the room
thought an ork could.  He reached down a grabbed Slick's gun arm,
twisting it behind her back so that the barrel was sticking in her
ribs.  He then picked her up off of Freddy and walked her slowly over
to Howler, where he let go of her and went back to get Freddy to his
feet.

	Freddy rubbed the back of his head and muttered to Larry,
"Thanks again, 'mano..."  He then addressed Slick, "Cryminee, let's
just go shooting anyone we don't know!  Hell, that's a page out of
Xavier's book...speaking of which, where is he?"

	"Errrr, he was apprehended by Lonestar Security..." Howler
grumbled.

	"What?"  Why Lonestar and not Fuchi, he thought...

	There was not enough time for more of a response, as at that
precise moment Mortis walked in, followed by another man he hadn't
seen before ("Where do they get these people from?").  The dwarf
looked a little surprised, "Where the fuck is Crimson?"

	Freddy smirked and shook his head.  "Hail, hail, the gang's
all here...well, besides Rawhide and Grace..."  He sighed.  "Okay, I'm
gonna say this once and once only: thanks to modern technology, *I'm*
Crimson..."  Larry chuckled loudly, wondering what would follow...

	Mortis, understanding the feasibility of this premise via the
aid of modern technology, took it in stride and looked Freddy in the
eyes and said, "Uhhh, yeah, whatever."  He turned to leave the room,
but then stopped and looked back.  "If you're the real Crimson, this
is something you should know. I tagged your cash. Someone from Fuchi
found the trace I put on it and, well, frankly... you're broke. And
we're both in trouble."

	Freddy watched as Mortis "subtly" moved his hand closer to his
sidearm as he replied to the dwarf.  "No, I doubt if Fuchi found *all*
the money.  I knew they'd snag part of it, but I *know* they can't
possibly get it *all*..."

	He continued before anyone could muster a word, "And if you
don't believe my story, then just go under the assumption that
Freddy's dead."  He looked around at the confused faces.  "That's what
I said.  Just consider me a friend of his.  I have his interests in
mind, such as finding a particular acquaintance of his, who happens to
be in the same place as Ariel...

	"Yeah, I know where she is.  And seeing how Xavier isn't here
at the moment, I suppose we'll do the favour of recovering her for
him.  Humm, not like X to miss out on this particular party..."

	He made for the door, passing by Mortis.  "I'll show you how
to get there.  But first, there's a particular van I want to get
before we go.  You can follow me in it once you drive me there..."

	He stepped out of the door to the 'back room', calling back to
the dumbstruck 'runners, "Come on people!  He who hesitates is
lost..."  He waved back to Larry, who saluted in return, and then
exited the room.

	Mortis shrugged a walked after him.  "Sure, whatever.  Where
are we going...?"

	Howler chaught up with Freddy and muttered conspiritorially,
"I hope for your sake you are Crimson reincarnate, because if you
aren't you're gonna wish you had never thought of this scheme.  For
the time being though, I'm gonna trust ya..."

	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

	"Okay folks, here's the plan."  Freddy spoke into a small
portable comm-unit so that Mortis, as well as the people in his Fed-Bo
van, could hear him.  "We're going to go visit the mansion of our good
friend 'Feeby'.  Most of you know her from your little trip to Yarrow
Point Arcology, or from the picture I slipped off the trid Zerpso
commercial.

	"The interesting part of it is that she's really Jessica
Sirriani, the head of Federated Boeing's Aircraft Weapons Division.
'Feeby' is just her street name as leader of the Trog Crushers.  Kinda
kooky, huh?"  He slowly turned the corner, grumbling about the
handling of the jury-rigged van.

	"Anyway, the dweebs at the mansion know my face, so I should
be able to get us through the front gate and up to the front door.
However, I'm proposing that you guys jump out somewhere between those
two points and sorta blend into the shadows.  I figure you guys could
pull it off, but then again that ninja crap isn't my biz...

	"After that, you cats should scale a wall to a second story
window.  That should get you around a lot of security: I saw a few
professional security men prowling the first floor earlier.  Our
objective is on the second or third floor, I'm not sure which..."

	He stopped the van at a light.  "Only a few more blocks," he
thought.  He exhaled deeply and continued on when the light changed.

	"Our objective, of course, is Xavier's lovely lady in waiting,
the almost-too-good-too-be-believed, Miss Ariel 'I-must've-come-
out-of-a-storybook' Saleen.  Too bad X himself had to play the hero
and get himself nabbed, though."  Good guys *do* finish last, he
mused.

	He sighed and triggered the comm-mic once again.  "There's one
other objective, too: an acquaintance of mine named Kelly.  She was in
the same boat as Ariel last time I saw her.  Bring her back with you.
Oh yeah, you'll know her when you see her: she's got green hair."  He
clicked off and sighed again.  Three more blocks.

	"Here's the rest of the story: I'll be entering through the
front door and will try to keep as much security downstairs as I can,
somehow.  So if you try to leave that way *please* don't shoot me in
the process, okay?  If all goes well, you'll probably be able to slip
away the way you came, though you'll have to blow out the electric
fence to do it.  If you exit via the east lawn then you'll be that
much closer to the bikes..."

	Silence.  "Well, I guess everyone's in agreement.  Let's
rock-n-roll, dudes..."  They stopped the van, rolled the bikes out,
and engaged the security systems.  Afterwards, Howler, Slick, and
Kamai jumped back into the Fed-Bo van and Crimson drove it up to the
front gate of the mansion.

	Freddy couldn't help feeling that the whole plan was
incredibly rushed.  But there was a bit of pressure to get this thing
done *here* and *now*: it had dragged on long enough.  If he got Kelly
back then he would quit Shadowrunning for good (though whether she'd
stay with him was still up for debate, and whether he'd care in the
end was still up for grabs).  He'd hit the motherlode and was set for
life even if only one third of the credit found its way back to him.
All he had to do was make it through the night.  Just tonight.

	"It's gonna be a long night...", he mumbled.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Comprehensive scripting and color commentary here is Copyright by Mark
Friedman 1991, all rights reserved.  Basic story plot  and Matrix help
was by Jerry Weiler, but he won't mind: I'm giving him all the profits
from the venture. Let's  see,  what's 100% of  $0.00?  :-) Also, basic
Shadowrun backdrops are in extensive use, so them FASA dudes might get
a small cut as well...

Any questions, comments, requests, criticisms, and Chapman Sticks will
be accepted and appreciated at the address in the sig.

					- Mark "Crimson" Friedman

Mark "Klone Crimson" Friedman is friedman@cis.ohio-state.edu .................
"There is nothing former   "Beat poets,    "If you put a hungry ferret in your
 about King Crimson."       not children."  trousers, he'll run around..."
 - Robert Fripp, 5/11/90    - anonymous     - Nigel Tufnel (Spinal Tap)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo