Date: December 12-13, 2073
Location: Washington, DC
Mr. Johnson: Jenny White
Team: Rajah, Ohran the Red, Sweet Cassie, Joker
Jenny,
I’m hoping we can work something out with those videos of the run. I think they show my skill as a driver and maybe you can find a way to resell them to some humor site after we wipe the faces. Since we weren’t going after any real people, I don’t much care who sees them. Because of the rapid evac last night (how can they still be getting radiation alarms going off, aren’t they all burned out?) I didn’t get to tell you the scoop on the whole run (I’m used to filing a report after every mission).
It would have been nice if you told me Rajah was part of this run — or that he was alive. I don’t like ghouls, and I don’t like running with them. I follow orders and do my job, but this was not cool. Thankfully his memory seemed to be mostly blurry. Or perhaps there’s a 9mm round stuck in that part of his brain. Whatever works.
As soon as we headed out of town we ran into a UCAS tank on patrol looking to keep people from entering the zone. Talking our way past them was pretty easy, and having Cassie along to do the chatting helped. From there it was mostly clear. I spotted what I thought was a vulture, given its wingspan and altitude, but it turned out to be something more. Rajah, unannounced, decided to go ghost and fly out there to check it out. I had no idea until I saw the creature fighting with the air shortly after Rajah went limp. I told Ohran to open up with the LMG, and he knocked that thing out of the sky. Rajah had bled like a stuck pig in his hazmat zuit, so I know it did something to him, but he seemed fine.
I drove over to investigate and immediately saw 18 sets of human/dog eyes on me. These things set upon the jeep hella fast, and immediately Ohran and Rajah were in hand-to-hand with them. Rajah had gotten out already and I kept the jeep in gear while I yelled at him to get in, something he just didn’t seem to want to do. He and Ohran started slicing these things into pieces but they kept getting up. Rajah called up some earth spirit and ended up blocking my egress route. I finally released the brake, spun the jeep into a bootlegger, swung around to Rajah and spun around again, ready to go. Somehow Cassie got hella stronger, because she grabbed that giant troll-ghoul and dragged him along as I came around. One of the were-men-wolves unloaded with the LMG into the cab of the jeep (thanks for the armor upgrade) before Ohran sliced him up, leaving his hands still attached and firing. Rajah seemed determined to get himself eaten so far, and didn’t even properly strap in as I rammed my way through the crowd of creatures (Cassie did something to them to make them back off, too).
I was not prepared for the river to still be flowing in DC. Thankfully we ran into a mostly functional barge and a reasonable survivor who seemed less interested in our money and more interested in his mutations. I traded some of my hard labor working on their engine to get us passage across the river.
The old CIA headquarters were gone, save for the bunker we needed to access. Thanks to some of my new programs (thanks for the hook-up), I was able to hack my way into the remains of the mainframe and get the bunker to open up. Getting that package was the first and last time I left that jeep, and I would have been happy to skip that.
I thought the route back would be pretty easy, but not so. As we were rolling, I felt some tremors and started avoided old subway tunnels for fear the ground might collapse. No — instead some giant creature of I-don’t-know-what-the-hell sort came out of the ground and literally tried to eat the jeep. Check the video. If you can tell me what that was, I’d like to contribute to its place on the endangered species list. The jeep was popcorn to that thing. It must have not gotten a good grip, because I somehow managed to break away. Watch the video. The fact that I brought any vehicle (let alone only 2/3 of one) back is a testament to my skill. Just like with the bomber, I was overmatched by my opponent on brute force, but clearly not on skill.
Here’s the part of the video that you might find funny. Watch where the creature ate Rajah. I knew this was our chance to get away before it could come back and kill us all (I remember my training). I gave Ohran a millisecond to fire a parting shot, and boy did he. He tore that thing into pieces, somehow missing the ghoul-troll. How Rajah survived, yet again, is unknown to me. How he came out unscathed, yet again, is unknown to me. All I can guess is that the undead can’t get dead and that they flirt with death like it’s their high school sweetheart. I’m not sure that hazmat suit of his, shredded after the were-dog-man fight already, was still clinging to parts of him, but he must have glued it into place, or all the coagulated blood acted like glue.
Now that you’ve got some context, and proof, I want to make sure you keep me in mind for future work. If it weren’t for my skills, none of these jobs would have succeeded. I’m happy to take a side job helping you repair, maintain and trick out some vehicles to help cover damage costs, but I am otherwise broke from lack of work, and I don’t envy doing nothing but military patrols and S&R. My hacking is coming along nicely, though we both know not top-notch, and I am working with drones a bit, so I’ve got a lot more to offer.
Rewards: Each team member receives 17,500 nuyen and 5 Karma. Ohran received 1 extra karma for “but it was even or odds – I could have been odds.”