Big Game Hunters

## The Meet

The Runners met at the Shadowed Alcove. Grond had to bring his own chair, as Marta wasn't about to allow him to break one of her chairs. They're made for trolls, not metahuman-shaped buildings. The Johnson contacted the Runners through a Trid screen, a black silhouette and distorted voice the only clue to their identity. They told the Runners, as images and videos played on the screen, that 5 genetically modified reptilian attack animals had escaped their facility. One of them, larger and smarter than the others, used magic to escape an observation room. The runners watched in horror as a near-invisible giant crocodile, shrouded with ruthenium hide, ripped apart a group of scientists in seconds. It then ripped apart the armed and armored guards that attempted to subdue it. It made its way to the containment units of its brethren. With the combined strength of 2 of them, they managed to bend the bars and escape. More armed guards attempted to intervene, but they clutched their heads and fell to the floor. The Johnson offered a pittance to the Runners to capture these creatures. 10000 a head, and 20000 for the awakened subject, or half that if they brought them back dead. The team went into comms and discussed who should do the negotiating. Afew minutes of back and forth passed, before Pops got fed up, and told the Johnson straight up that the pay was insulting, for attempting to capture monsters that could tear apart an armored car. Dreamer chimed in, and his pleasant demeanor, combined with Pops' professional hard-ass attitude, won the Johnson over. They doubled the pay, and offered to give the team an armored car with a reinforced containment unit in the back, and some net-guns they could use. The catch was, these things needed to be captured within 24 hours. Every minute they were out on the street, they could be ripping some poor sod to pieces, and making a PR nightmare for the shadow-corp.

## Legwork

Marta offered to grab some non-lethal rounds for the team, though didn't think she could get much more than that given the time constraint. Everyone else went home, geared up, and headed out to the pickup spot for the van in the barrens. Guards were posted there, who let the team into an old dilapidated garage building where the horrid brown GMC Bulldog was kept.

## Run

The team made their way to the Barrens, and drove around looking for signs of the creatures. They heard a few gunshots over the hour or so of patrolling, but eventually they heard something odd. Panic-fire, from multiple guns. Some group of people was just holding down the trigger and spraying. Screams punctuated the shooting, and eventually the shooting died altogether, and only the screams could be heard. Shortly, the screams were silenced. The team kicked into gear, and sped towards the sounds. They saw a panicked man running the opposite direction they were headed, covered in blood. But since the Johnson didn't mention anything about witnesses during the meet, they let him go.

The team arrived at a barricaded area. The streets had all been piled with trash, debris, bricks, old broken down cars. Anything to make a barrier. A big white school bus stood across the street from an old gas station. Fallen lamp-posts meant the only light was from the clouded moon. A trail of blood could be seen on the sidewalk, leading around the makeshift barrier and under the gas station's awning. Grond and Dreamer went to investigate. Grond had cast invisibility and silence on himself previously, meaning that his giant Harley Scorpion looked to be ghost-riding on the way there. Now, he silently stalked forward. He decided to cast levitate on himself. Dreamer also cast invisibility on himself. They saw that the blood trail lead to the derelict gas station. They had Okami project astrally into the gas station. She couldn't see much in the mostly concrete building. However, the fresh, torn apart corpses had a faint shimmer upon them still... Enough to horrify her. But no sign of the beasties inside. She poked her ghostly head through the other side of the gas station and found one crouched, lying in wait there, hidden. She then noticed another hiding in amongst the pumps. It was then that Grond noticed another, creeping up from behind a car to the East. (Gas station west, parking lot east, North-east more buildings, North, the white bus)

Pops had Crawled up on top of the bus, and he had a clear view of the pack leader as it leapt atop a car, and stared straight at Dreamer, who had used a magical potion to mind control one of the creatures. As Dreamer continued to attempt to mind control the lesser beasts, all hell broke loose. Grond used a spell to dominate the mind of the large, awakened crocodile, and compel it to walk to the rear doors of the brown GMC Bulldog. Dreamer was asking the other creatures to do the same, rather forcefully, with mental compulsion. Okami continued to astrally scout, looking for the final creature. She found it... Crawling up the North side of the bus, ready to pounce upon his prone form and rip him apart. She returned to her body, and told Pops "Look out behind you!" Pops, who had been drawing a bead on the largest creature, difficult though it was to see, with its colour-shifting skin. He rapidly rolled to his feet, and charged over to the creature, attempting to place the barrel of his sniper rifle into its mouth and launch stick-n-shock at it. The creature knocked aside the gun with a massive, long-fingered hand, and bit into his leg. If it wasn't for the combat armor, Pops' leg would have been gone. As it was, the sheer pressure badly bruised his flesh, and burst some blood vessels. The pain was intense, but Pops maintained his composure Valkia ran over to assist, but the creature was too nimble, and she was unable to land a blow with her combat axe. As the creature lunged up onto the bus, and attempted to get at Pops' face, he used the creature's moentum, and suplexed it into the bus' roof, badly denting it. On its way down, Pops grabbed its head and brought where he thought the neck was down on his knee. Like Bane, he snapped its spine, killing it. "Sorry guys, I killed one" could be heard over the comms, as Pops grinned sheepishly behind his combat mask. \*too bad about the extra nuyen\* he thought \*but god damn, that was cool. I knew those jiu jitsu classes would pay off\*

Meanwhile, Dreamer mamaged to subdue the creatures with mental commands one at a time. However, he was not fast enough with the last creature, and it attempted to rip his arm off. It nearly succeeded, but a firm mental command caused it to sit like a good boy, and walk over with its pack to the Bulldog. However, the mental binds were not quite as effective on the pack leader. Try as he might, Grond could not control the best for more than a few seconds, its incredible mental fortitude was staggering. What the hell did those scientists do to this thing? As it broke free of one bind, the creature was caught in another. Okami levitated it into the air, and its legs waved uselessly in the air. Frustrated, it tried to lash out with the only weapon it could. Magic. A bright purple lightning bolt was launched at Pops, and as he attempted to dodge out of the way, a series of magical barriers interposed themselves, as all 4 mages attempted to thwart the spell at once. The lightning bolt fizzled upon the magical barriers, and a stick'n'shock round from Pops, as well as a stunbolt from Dreamer, finally knocked it unconscious. The Runners gathered up the crocs, dead and alive, and piled them into the vehicles. To keep the live ones from doing any more harm, Okami turned them all into turtles.

The team did a quick sweep of the gas stations. They decided to leave behind 2 credsticks they found in the pile of mangled corpses the crocs had piled in the middle of the gas station's floor. At the request of Okami, who was maintaining four powerful shapechange spells, the team packed up and left. They returned to the garage, where the guards handed over a platinum credstick with 110K NuYen on it. The team awarded the newest Runner, Valkia, the credstick as a bonus, since they were all filthy stinkin rich anyways. They all split the NuYen.

The guards inquired about any witnesses, or messes they should be aware of to clean up. The team made them aware of the man they saw running away from the scene covered in blood, and the pile of bodies in the gas station. The guards seemed a bit perturbed that the team allowed a witness to escape, but understood that the capture of the animals took priority. That, and, while specifically having the job posted with instructions to keep this PR nightmare quiet, they never actually made it part of the agreement.

As the team left, they dropped the effect of their spells, but didn't stick around to find out what happened after the 6 inch thick steel doors of the garage closed.

## Aftermath

One member of the Rusted Stilletos is now running for his life from the corps who are trying to track him down to silence him. Some very unprepared guards with just 1 reinforced GMC bulldog between them and some pissed of giant crocodiles. Delicious waffles for the team who went to eat together after their job.

## Rewards

* -22K Nuyen
* -4 Karma
* -2 CDP
* -The Comm number of Marta Sirkowsky
* -Notice from a shadowy corp Johnson
* -A platinum credstick for Valkia

## Player After-Action Reports

*In Character* accounts of events, general impressions, or memorable moments