Bootstrapped Bootleggers

## Background

Both Vitki and Epitaph are contacted on a Tuesday early evening. A certain someone, a Nathan turned rogue from *Donum D\*i*, has both an incredibly secure Matrix host, and a couple of documents that the *Church of the Adamant Theophany* supposedly want back. Figuring the job to need both Matrix support, and physical infiltration, the two runners were reached out by respective fixers to meet at the Noir Nook, a week in the future.

## The Meet

The Noir Nook was a Shadowrunner themed tourist attraction, a restaurant with insufferable staff and humorous decoration. Giving the waiter the code word for the meet, both Vitki (dressed in a children's Shadowrunner Halloween costume) and Epitaph (rather blending in with the tourist crowd in a pink sweater) get corralled into a party room and meet their Johnson, Fez.
Now, Fez could be considered somewhat of a 'cool cat', spewing '50's like slang to the point where Vitki had to fashion a somewhat auto-translator for the two of them to parse just what he was saying. The lowdown was this - Adamant Theophany would like a file back from this rogue Nate, titled 'Patient Zero'. The catch being that this Nate, otherwise known as Master 8 (Vitki was already scheming, at this point) had stored such a file in a host that was miraculously powered by physical servers scattered around Seattle, and by destroying these servers currently powering the host, this would make infiltrating into the Matrix easier, and thus claim their pay-data, with the option of either erasing this 'Patient Zero' file, or handing it back to Fez. Stealing is most definitely encouraged.
With the job outlined, thus came pay discussion. Fez posited a small, yet humble, ¥10k to which both Vitki and Epitaph had gotten the vague conclusion that this wasn't enough. Vitki, taking the initiative (Epitaph only knew of how to nod meekly and accept the price, so thus the gnome had to take the reins) had stuttered out the start of negotiations, fumbling with realising he did not know what negotiations really consisted of, to which the two runners were swiftly embarrassed by a Johnson who unironically said 'boogie' and fumbled with passing over the upfront payment to which Fez swiftly left. Humbled, Epitaph and Vitki figured to just go on and get the job done, instead.

## Legwork

Most of the information was already given to the pair, the location of ten servers and where to which Nate had his secret super-villain-esque host and hideout. With a rating 20 host, and each dismantling of a server causing the rating to half, both of the runners had decided to hit at least two servers, and at maximum three. The locations were as follows;
A warehouse, and food-truck in close proximity to each other. An apartment block, tent in a park, and the MIT&T campus, also grouped together. Thirdly, a boat anchored in the middle of Puget Sound, an abandoned rail-yard, abandoned license plate manufacturing plant, and a ripper-doc establishment, to which was confirmed as Nate's hideout, close together off by the docks. Vitki and Epitaph both agreed that the beast course of action was to hit this boat, then the rail-yard, and then the manufacturing plant. Only if their hands were forced would they consider the ripper-doc, since Epitaph insisted on limiting the amount of interaction they had to do with this Master 8.

## Run

And thusly, they set off. The plan was to be fast and quiet, as realising one's rating 20 host had halved in value, and one precious server is completely out, is cause for immediate concern. The plan was to hit the boat first, seeing as they could time it for a second hit, ensuring that the hit would be co-ordinated too quick to retaliate to. The docks were rather scenic, and Vitki had the good idea of setting two boats to ram into the one anchored in the sound, ensuring its demolition. Epitaph spent some money on viewfinders, skipped rocks into the water, and followed along Vitki trying to scope out the best boats that would work as rams. Finding a speedboat behind a gate, lock-picking it was as easy as breathing for Epitaph, and Vitki could easily hot-wire the boat into setting off to the direction of the one server. Figuring the best ram would be a rich person's speedboat, the two had wandered around before finding their first roadblock. An elf woman. Debilitating, as none of the two had any social skills to bypass this metahuman guard, the two of them slinked off to the side and figured for distractions. Then, Vitki found the best possible one... a boat, submersible, and topped with a helicopter from a Steve Zissou fever dream, whoever was bourgeois enough to own this had made the mistake of ever docking here, as the gnome had hacked it into spectacular failure, sparks flying everywhere, the surrounding electricity flickering as the salt water conducted everything, the helicopter tipping and tottering. The elf lady, understandably more concerned with losing her job, quickly abandoned her post to go freak out over such. This made hacking and hot-wiring a second time easy enough, and the boat demolition was easily timed for near in the future.
Next stop, rolling up in Epitaph's Camino, was the abandoned railyard, which was more of a junkyard with the selection of different chains, dumpsters, abandoned railcars, and raccoons. In this arrival, they had met a curious Teddy Halts, an eclectic (to Epitaph's assessing) raccoon shaman who lived in the rail-junk-yard. This, to Epitaph, was cause for execution, to which they had quickly slinked off to go and cleanse the world of another mage. Meanwhile, Vitki had decided to go and scheme over how this server would be demolished, hidden in this railcar pile, and soon started to pull up chains and skin-link trains to see which ones would be the Jenga piece to topple and crush. Meanwhile, Teddy wasn't quite impressed, evading Epitaph's wrath by quickly diving into the trash and then popping up in front of Vitki to interrogate the gnome on what he was doing here, revealing that he was paid two bottles of rainwater by the elusive Nate to keep the server safe, about to go into comedic monologuing, which was quickly cut off to a shock glove to his neck and his eventual mutilation. All for God, of course, in Epitaph's eyes, to which Vitki was oblivious to, setting off the destruction of the junk pile and cleanly making Teddy's death look like an unfortunate railyard accident.
With the first of the servers destroyed, and the boats soon on their way to destroy the second, the two of them sped off to the license plate factory to do their third hit. A bit more secluded, more grassy as being on the edge of the city, to which the factory was guarded by a punk-ish sort of gang, all of them greaser-types that were just really, really into smoking. Eight of them guarding the front entrance. Unenthused, Epitaph easily slinked off to an alley, had Vitki squash the alarmed side-door, and soon slinked into the office, unbeknownst to all of these gangers who also were just, really, really into welding things together. The satyr soon slinked to the big server, and set a crowbar to wrench open the computer parts, stealing motherboard parts for the sake of it, and for the technomancer's projects. With two hits done successfully, and the boat hit also timed soon after, all there was to do was to hack into the elusive host to take the file.
Making a clean break, and now dealing with a rating two host, Vitki soon went into the host to go and find the file. The host's sculpting... was rather humorous, with Nate's head overlooking thousands of little functions and lab equipment as files and such, to which also had set the gnome's scheming into overdrive. Finding the file was easy, although pretty tough in its encryption. to which the runners were blessed with Nate's horrid voice, Skeletor-esque as he had tried to grab at Vitki, who in the time for copying and taking the file, had also manifested an illusion to change all instances of 'Master 8' into 'Masterb8', with 'LOSER' written over Nate's forehead, and with thousands of instances of Vitkis meddling and messing with all of his things, planting the insecure seed within Nathan, before the gnome had gotten away.

## Aftermath

Now, the file that Vitki and Epitaph had managed to pilfer was wordy and difficult to parse, pulling into a café to pore over it. Patient Zero seemed to be a piece of Donum D\*i's property, so not as Fez had outlined at the start, but to which the two runners couldn't really care less. It talked of this sort of transcending the flesh, a clear piece of theological writing that Epitaph could easily identify. Both of the runners had thought of *Ulster*, a mutual colleague and friend that seemed to talk of the same sort of augmentation and things, to which they would ask him about it later. Vitki copied the file for safekeeping, handing one over to Fez. The Church of Adamant Theophany now hold an archaic and seemingly important file from Donum D\*i's records, for better or for worse.

## Rewards

* ¥10, 000 NuYen
* 6 Karma
* 2 CDP

## Player After-Action Reports

**...epitaph**: to be candid, i do think this was one of my more favourable jobs! :pray: vitki is a fount of entertaining jokes and pranks, and well diligent with many rhythm games :) we did have so much fun wreaking havoc, if i am to be a little roguish. this 'nate' was really laughable, although i did not care much for any further joking vitki pulled later... anyway, i was payed to be quiet, so i must keep my promise!