Aim to Impress

## Background

A higher-ranking member of the Merlyns wizgang had an Imp spirit get into their power focus and draw them into a spirit pact in the guise of being an avatar spirit. This focus was later confiscated by Knight Errant when the ganger's safehouse was raided in an unrelated drug bust. The Merlyns wanted their focus back, so they got a member of the Finnigan mob to put out feelers for a runner team.

## The Meet

The meeting was scheduled for midnight. The Johnson, ignorant of the whole imp stuff, explained that the runners were to retrieve a magical item from a Knight Errant evidence locker before it was processed and moved to a higher-security location. The runners negotiated a small pay increase due to the large amount of unknown variables involved. While the J clearly didn't care very much about the whole thing, the runners made a good impression.

## Legwork

A map of the police station holding the artifact was acquired through a matrix search, and some info about the station and its surrounding locale was recalled.

That same night, the runners drove over to the police station to scope out its defenses in more detail. Vitki was turned invisible to enable direct-connect to a door (slaved to the host) without being spotted. The hacker was able to access the cameras, map the locations of KE personnel inside the building, and disable the camera inside the evidence room, but was forced to retreat from the host after being spotted by some particularly lucky IC.

To support the fake identity Kat was to don for their plan, a burner SIN was acquired for her from a contact.

## Run

The plan was simple: Kat would draw the cops away from the part of the building where the locker was, Vitki would hack open a door, and Curveball & Frank would enter the building (their stealth skills augmented by Improved Invisibility spells to avoid detection by cameras), pick the lock to the evidence lockers, find the focus, and get out.

After all the buff spells were cast, Kat made her move. In the guise of a distraught woman whose car had been stolen with her (fur)baby inside, she pulled several KE officers into dealing with her problem (after a quick hack from Vitki helped corroborate her story).

From there, the hacker used direct connection to open the fire door and disable the alarm so Frank and Curveball could enter the station. The infiltrating duo encountered no resistance, and were able to pop the lock to the evidence locker without issue. The focus was easy to locate just by searching the lockers tagged with the right date. Frank pocketed it and they made to leave.

For Curveball and Frank, exiting the station was as painless as entering it. For Kat, her exit was slightly trickier. Since she was using the persona of a distraught (dog) mother, she couldn't just walk away without attracting suspicion. Her solution was to pretend to come to her senses and accept that Knight Errant wasn't going to get her stuff back that same night, and to "head home to get some rest." She rendezvoused with the others once she was out of sight of the cops, and the team drove off.

In the car, the team celebrated their successful heist, then noticed Frank was whispering to himself and making to get out of the car. Entranced by the desire reflection power, Frank was following the imp's instructions to stall until it could mitosis-ize a new imp into Frank's reagents. Fortunately for everyone involved (except the imp), some tasering was able to snap Frank out of the power long enough to realize he was being manipulated, whereupon he banished the spirit for messing with his head.

## Aftermath

Mr. Johnson was confused but not unhappy when the runners explained that they had dealt with an imp inside the focus, as he had been unaware of its existence. One high-ranking Merlyn will be confused as to why their "mentor spirit" is no longer talking to them. Due to the disguise and fake SIN, Knight Errant has no leads on Kat. Similarly, no traces were left by the other runners.

## Rewards

* 3 Karma
* 14,000 Nuyen
* 2 CDP
* 2 more CDP

## Player After-Action Reports

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