ATeam-Ch10


 * Chapter Ten:** Manic Mercurial


 * Characters:** Anne-Marie, Tony, Nova, and Glitch

The meeting's stipulations require everyone to wear a suit or other appropriate dress, and while Glitch makes due with a quickly-purchased Tres Chic suit -- Nova looks like a ragamuffin in an untailored Arman' knock-off he kept from the 'Van of Idiocy's original owner. Tony, of course, looks impeccable in his immaculately tailored suit. The suave troll frowns upon Nova's poor excuse for a wardrobe, and decides to make it a point to teach the elven street samurai some much-needed social graces. The A-Teamers are given electronic security badges by the receptionist at the front desk, and directed to the automated elevators. The lift's AI immediately recognizes their destination and whisks them up to the 157th floor. There, they meet with a receptionist named Miriam who shows them into the office of Maxwell Cardigan, the handsome chairman of Buzzsaw Records. The dapper Maxwell has them all take a seat, and tells them that due to reasons of confidentiality, the job in question must be agreed to before the details are even given. In addition, they must submit to giving thumbprints and biological samples as proof of this agreement. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and the runners are so strapped for cash that they immediately agree to the tune of a 15,000¥ advance on 30,000¥ a piece total payment. Once Miriam has taken the necessary samples, Max Cardigan continues. Maria Mercurial, the internationally loved pop diva -- and biggest name in music -- has been receiving death threats demanding great sums of money. The frequency and accuracy of the threats has proved great enough to raise the concerns of all parties involved, and Max decided to hire outside help to augment her personal security and investigate the source of the threats. Maria Mercurial's comeback album, "Wonderland", hits stores the following day; with her Through the Looking Glass tour following in less than a week. The shadowrunners are to accompany Ms. Mercurial and her entourage for as long as it takes to solve the mystery behind her extortionists. They leave the following day for London, where the European leg of the tour is set to begin. Glitch, being a huge fanboy of the superstar, cannot believe his good fortune...Guarding Maria Mercurial on his very first shadowrun! Once the runners are sent home to pack for the trip, the decker immediately visits the Buzzsaw shopping center and purchases all manner of things Mercurial -- including her entire album collection on Simsense (nothing less for the chiphead) -- and some new duds from the Structure. Tony takes Nova up the street to visit his tailor, Sir Charles Wellington III, and buys the elf two brand new freshly-tailored suits for a small fortune. Nova finds that he likes his new look very much, and he can also appreciate its functionality. Meanwhile, Anne-Marie heads straight home and pays her long overdue rent. The next morning, the A-Team returns to the Buzzsaw Towers, bags packed and ready to go. The male members have one or two small carry-ons each, but Anne-Marie brings along three cumbersome suitcases full of whatever it is women bring on trips. In fact, she has so much that she must enlist Tony's aid in carrying it all. The runners are granted access with their weapons and gear, and take the lift up to Max's office where they meet Miss Maria Mercurial herself, along with two of her personal bodyguards -- Dutch, the head of security, and Bishop, his Lieutenant. Both men are over 6 foot and muscular, and the team concludes that Dutch is either a physical adept or a very expensive samurai from his lack of obvious augmentation. The bald Bishop, on the other hand, speaks through subdermal speakers in his throat without moving his lips. The two groups of hardened male samurai take an instant disliking to one another, and the one-upmanship ensues between them. Meanwhile, Glitch makes a fool of himself while trying to talk with Maria Mercurial, and Anne-Marie begins to flirt it up with the very promiscuous Maxwell Cardigan. Maria Mercurial takes a liking to Glitch, and gives him the very first press of "Wonderland" -- which she autographs and personalizes. After some drinking and chit chat, everyone heads to the rooftop and an awaiting Buzzsaw VTOL -- which whisks them away on their long journey to London. While on the plane, Glitch loses himself in Simsense bliss, Tony teaches Nova how to play cards, and Anne-Marie gets the dogshit screwed out of her by Max Cardigan. Miriam tries several times to flirt with Nova, but the socially inept elf just doesn't pick up on her signals. On the last leg of the flight, Nova's sensitive cyber-hearing picks up what he believes to be movement from somewhere on the VTOL. He informs Dutch, but his concerns are ignored -- which almost brings him to fisticuffs with Bishop. Eventually, they pass the defunct eco-dome of London and land at a massive Buzzsaw Records estate outside the city. The grounds contain three swimming pools, a mansion, a helo pad, and are patrolled and guarded by a force of more than 40 Buzzsaw Security personnel. Everyone debarks and heads toward the homestead. As they enter the impressive interior, Nova's suspicions are confirmed when he distinctly recognizes the sound of extra footsteps with their group. He pinpoints the location as next to Bishop, and openly confronts the surly bodyguard. Things become heated and Tony instinctively puts his hand on the butt of his pistol -- this sets Bishop off, who draws his own piece -- while Dutch grabs Glitch and puts a gun to his head. Nova and Tony both attempt to draw down, but find they cannot move and are rooted to their spots. A female elf magically shimmers into existence next to Bishop -- Sierra, the mouse shaman. Both groups are held in a mexican stand-off until the stealthy Anne-Marie slips behind the magician unseen and puts a Manhunter to the back of her head, ordering the release of her friends. Everyone stands down, and Dutch explains that Sierra had been with the group the entire time for their protection from the A-Team. Max does his best to schmooze everyone into cooperation, and Anne-Marie invokes her authority as the team's leader -- talking Tony and Nova into playing nice for Maria's sake. At a meeting before dinner, the A-Team are introduced to the other members of Maria's personal guard. Remillard, the former freedom-fighting Frenchman. Mosier, the knife-weilding physical adept. Carlito, the Aztlanian hitman. Roderick, the heavily armed dwarven weapons specialist. Dorian, the cigar smoking old man. And Tango, the red-headed elven Euro-punk decker. Dinner is served, and everyone has a moderately good time. Afterwards, Maria, Max, Glitch, Miriam, and Anne-Marie retire to the study where they conversate and listen to "Wonderland" for the first time. The next day the entourage heads to the Chesterfield Sky-rise in London, and set up guard. Glitch and Tango start scouring the Matrix for clues while the others accompany Maria Mercurial on a myriad of public appearances, talk shows, and interviews. Eventually they end up at the MTV London studios for her appearance on TRL London, hosted by V-Jay Malcolm McMalcolm. Anne-Marie is posted inside, while Tony and Nova are put outside on crowd control. During the interview, Tony breaks up a nasty brawl and Nova spots a mysterious elf with long hair and his face painted up like a clown. The painted elf just stands stoic and watches Maria's interview intently. Nova tries to get to him, but can't make his way through the crowd -- and eventually loses all contact. TRL London ends and everyone returns to the Chesterfield. While in the Matrix, Glitch finds a Shadownode and meets with three deckers -- St. Michael the angel with bloody wings, Gorgon the lizardman, and Dahlma the six-armed Hindu god. Being an amateur, Glitch lets slip too much information about his job, but the deckers help him out with some paydata -- in exchange for a favor later on, of course. It seems that five years before, Maria Mercurial had a falling out with her manager, Murray Andrews, and her recording label, Crystal-Coastal Recordings. Mercurial was the biggest name the record company held, and when she left them on bad terms they went bankrupt. Her former manager also committed suicide after losing everything he had in the successive lawsuits involved. Glitch takes it all as possible motive, and leaves the node feeling something like a real shadowrunner. He tells the A-Team, and they decide to keep their findings to themselves. The first concert in Mercurial's Through the Looking Glass tour begins at Manchester Stadium with Glitch sitting back in the hotel surfing the London Grid, Anne-Marie taking a bird's-eye vantage point in one of the owner's boxes, Tony working security on the floor, and Nova on perimeter guard. Opening for Maria Mercurial are Caribbean-League jam sensation Shady Slim, and a tribute band to a murdered punk group, 'The Acolytes', called the 'Acolyte's Soul'. As the other members watch the floor show, Glitch does some legwork and finds that 'The Acolytes' belonged to Crystal-Coastal before they were kidnapped and murdered in 2054. The lead guitarist who started the tribute band was kicked out of 'the Acolytes' right before they made it big. He was a prime suspect in the murder investigation, but there wasn't enough evidence to make a conviction. Glitch jacks out and calls Tony, relaying this information during the 'Acolyte's Soul's first number. The troll relays the message to Dutch, but the street samurai discounts it completely. The band finishes its set without incident, and the stadium darkens in preparation for Maria's performance. When her show begins, Tony spots the painted elf Nova described from the TRL London interview. He relays the information over the commlink immediately, and directs Anne-Marie to a visual of the elf with her binoculars -- all the while approaching the clown-faced individual. As soon as Anne-Marie spots him, he looks up, and seems to stare directly into her eyes. His eyes flash green, and startled, she drops her binoculars -- causing her to look up. When she does so, she spots a sniper in the rafters, hiding behind a scoreboard and prepping a scoped rifle. As Tony gets very near the elf, Anne-Marie makes a beeline toward the sniper above thousands of screaming fans. As the killer preps his shot, she silently draws her blade and slits his throat while deflecting the reactionary firing of his rifle. No one is injured, and a collection team arrives very soon to clean up the blood and dispose of the body. Meanwhile, Tony reaches out to collar the painted elf but is given the slip and gets laughed at. He goes for a tackle and is blindsided and restrained by invisible hands. He continues to struggle against this new threat, and receives another terrible blow to the chin which knocks him on his ass. The elf taunts him and disappears into the crowd. Tony calls all kinds of jargon over the radio, and Nova reports that he has eyes on the elf trying to leave the crowd. As Tony tries to get to him, Nova attacks the elf and puts a spur through his throat. Tony reaches them both, and finds Nova standing over the body of a dead human man in shorts and a t-shirt. The elven samurai is damned shocked, and they surmise that the clown must have been a magician. A disposal team cleans up their mess too, and they report everything to Dutch -- who questions Sierra. The elven girl insists that she was running astral security the whole time, and that no spells were cast in the stadium. The concert ends and everyone returns to the Chesterfield Inn. Maria Mercurial is stunned and visibly shaken when she learns of the events that so endangered her life. Four days and two shows later, Maria receives an anonymous delivery at the Chesterfield. The package contains an old-fashioned red brick with a death threat tied to it -- written using magazine letter cut outs. It proclaims that Maria's failure to cooperate with the extortionist's has rendered her life forfeit. Enraged, the headstrong Maria declares that she will not be held captive to fear, and decides to go out for a night on the town. This sparks a conflict with Dutch, who she threatens to fire if he even attempts to follow her again (everyone gets the feeling that this kind of thing has happened before). She decides to take only five of her bodyguards -- Tony, Nova, Bishop, Glitch, and Remillard -- as well as Max. The group gets ready and heads out to a London nightclub called 'Serpentine Fire'. Inside they are seated in the VIP area, and served the best Crystal champagne and liquors. Maria takes Glitch out onto the dance floor for a solid half hour, but warns Tony and Nova to stay on the outskirts at risk of being fired. The elf tries his best to keep watch, while the troll sees over the crowd quite easily -- spending time at the VIP table where one of two twins courting Max Cardigan takes an interest in "climbing Mt. Tony". Nova spots six identically-dressed Japanese businessmen carrying briefcases being seated across the VIP area, and his instincts scream that something isn't right. As Maria returns to the VIP table to chug some expensive Crystal, the six Japs suddenly stand in unison -- bringing up their briefcases, which fall away to reveal angry-looking sub-machine guns. They kick over their table and immediately begin sending a wall of lead death across the VIP area and into the Mercurial party. Nova, being the only one clued into the situation (and right beside the six men), draws his own SMG and returns fire while Tony flips over their group's table for cover. The Death Squad's bullets spray everything in their path -- killing two waitresses, both twins, countless crowd members, and wounding Tony, Max, Bishop, and Remillard. Nova's own shots strike a yabo in the side -- who guns down the elven samurai with returning fire. Glitch drags the screaming Maria through the crowd toward the back exit, while the Japanese Death Squad advances around their table and begins firing in a moving formation. Their very effective methods manages to kill a lot of innocent people, and succeed in keeping our remaining protagonists pinned down. Tony shoulders the large VIP table across the floor and slams it into the six men -- knocking them off their feet -- while Nova gets in behind them, using their abandoned table as cover. Max throws a flashbang (Dutch slipped it him), which disorientates the Japanese men long enough for our heroes to slay them all with small arms fire. Everyone beats a hasty retreat to the limousine and rolls back to the Chesterfield. Max calls in professional magical healers for the group, and they spend the rest of the night licking their wounds. Dawn brings little in the way of answers -- only more questions -- and while Buzzsaw Records toils away at covering up Maria's involvement with the shootout, Dutch formulates a plan to keep everyone on the move. From now on, he says, the group will travel to a new location daily. No Buzzsaw Security personnel will be allowed to accompany them, and their agenda will remain hidden. Maria will travel only with her personal guard, the A-Team, Maxwell Cardigan, and Miriam the secretary. Everyone packs their shit and the fun of relocating begins. For the next several days, everyone remains on the move and stands almost constant watch. Glitch runs the Matrix and uncovers that Maria's life insurance policy names Max as her sole beneficiary. He shares the information with Tony and Nova, but they keep it from Anne-Marie to avoid any personal feelings she might have for the man -- as he is now a prime suspect. The A-Teamers begin to formulate various theories... Tony believes that they are being set up to take a fall, and that Miriam is somehow involved -- but he doesn't know how or why. Nova suspects that Max is behind it all. And Glitch thinks that Max Cardigan and Dutch are working together to off Maria. They all agree; however, that the enigmatic clown-faced elf plays into the whole equation somehow. Eventually, Maria Mercurial holds another concert at Gilliam Hall, and everyone is assigned the same duties -- only with Glitch now wired into the building's security system. There is no high-rise vantage for Anne, though -- and she contents herself to wandering the corridors checking doors and windows. As the concert ends, Glitch reports that the elf is standing static in a hallway, staring right up into his security camera. As the crowd envelopes him, he simply vanishes. Dutch raises the alert flag and gives everyone five minutes to be back at the limousines or they'll be left behind. The group has a hard time of maneuvering through the throngs of people, but they eventually get to the limo's in time. The convoy drives for several hours, exiting the London bio-dome and heading into the lush countryside. They arrive at a small, out-of-the-way hostel run by an aging Irish woman and bed down for the night. The remoteness of the location has Tony spooked, and the troll is especially on his guard -- paranoid about being setup in something he doesn't yet understand. The hostel is also inhabited by a hitchhiking German couple and a surly drunken dwarf. After dinner, Nova heads upstairs to get his allotted four hours of sleep -- while Glitch jacks in to find some clues -- and Tony walks around the premises. Anne-Marie retires to her bedroom shared with Sierra, while Max strangely stays with Miriam. Tony finds Remillard getting drunk in the limousine, and leaves him to his own devices. Glitch snoops into the Buzzsaw computer systems, and while searching numerous dossiers, discovers that Miriam the secretary is Miriam Andrews -- the only child of Murray Andrews, Maria Mercurial's former manager who committed suicide. He also discovers that Miriam is set to inherit Max's fortune if he passes away. The decker immediately routes a commlink signal to Tony to warn him, but is attacked by Tango in mid-sentence. Tony, hearing more than enough, yells at Nova to wake up and bolts from the room. Just then the lights go out and the German couple begins to scream. Tony heads downstairs and finds Glitch in a seizure at the telecom. Knowing little to nothing about decking, he pulls the plug on Glitch's connection and sends the decker into a deep coma. Dorian enters Anne-Marie's room with his shotgun and kills Sierra, then blows Anne's foot off. The elven physad shoots the old man between the eyes and truncates her wound with torn bedsheets. Nova runs into Roderick in the hallway and gets into a firefight, with the dwarf lobbing a grenade into Nova's room and destroying all his stuff. The elf kills the dwarf. Tony gets shot at by Carlito, and stabbed in the gut by Tango -- who he knocks out and fractures his arm. The troll blows the Aztlanian's head off with his shotgun and heads upstairs. Bishop guns down Dutch, then Nova shoots Bishop in the head. He sneaks into Max's room and finds Miriam, but no Max Cardigan. The elf knocks the girl out and heads onto the balcony in search of more targets. Anne-Marie crawls to her doorway, and ends up shooting Tony in all the confusion. Nova rejoins his teammates as the door to Maria's room slams shut (she screams), and he and Tony go to investigate. Nova kicks in the door, and a grenade banks into the hall -- landing at their feet. The elf punts it into the room across the way, blowing it and Miriam Andrews up. They find Maria Mercurial gone, and the doors to the balcony open. They split up and head out onto the balcony through different rooms, where Tony gets stabbed to death by Mosier -- who has collected both Maria and Max. Nova plays cat and mouse with the physad for a while, relying on his supersonic hearing to guide him. Max tries to escape, but is stabbed through the spinal chord by Mosier. Anne-Marie passes out from blood loss, but her life is spared by the physad. Nova and Mosier have a mexican stand-off on the stairwell, and the knife-wielder runs away -- stealing a car and driving into the night. Nova checks on Maria and finds Dutch still alive, though badly injured. He hears Tango dragging himself out the front door, and hog-ties the decker -- who passes out from the pain in his arm. Nova hauls the decker upstairs to join Maria, and gives Dutch first aid. The sound of broken glass crunching underfoot downstairs gets Nova's attention, and he finds the clown-faced elf examining Carlito's corpse. He draws down on the enigmatic character, who introduces himself as "just a fan". When pressed harder, he gives in and says that his name is 'Mr. Quentin'. The elf seems unfazed by the gun being stuck in his face, and Nova is damn shocked at his behavior. He asks if Maria Mercurial is alright, and when it's confirmed he departs -- leaving behind the business card of a London streetdoc. He instructs Nova to tell the doctor that the team was sent by 'the Laughing Man', and dissapears out on the front lawn. Gathering Dutch, Maria, Tony, Tango, Anne, and Glitch together; Nova stuffs them into the remaining limousine -- where he finds Remillard with his throat cut. As an afterthought, he retrieves both cyberdecks and then drives everyone into London -- where Dutch dies in surgery. Buzzsaw Records is contacted, and they immediately whisk Maria Mercurial and Tango off without even so much as a goodbye. It is surmised that Miriam Andrews blamed Maria Mercurial for her father's death, and tried to extort millions from her by enlisting the help of some of the diva's very own personal security. When that failed and the A-Team entered the picture, she decided to kill both Maria and Maxwell Cardigan to collect both of their insurance monies. The A-Team is returned to Seattle two days later, and paid an extra 20,000¥ over their agreed 30,000¥. While Tony nurses multiple stab wounds, Glitch is placed in the care of Seattle General Hospital -- with Buzzsaw Records footing the bill. Anne-Marie waits a month for a vat-grown replacement foot, and gets her new ped attached. Nova holds on to Tango's deck, and has Anne-Marie fence the ware for 350,000¥ -- of which Anne pockets 50,000¥ straight away -- then divvies the remaining 300,000¥ evenly between herself, Tony, and Nova. With his new-found wealth and some loans from the conscious team members, Tony goes under the knife and gets some Boosted Reflexes installed. Nova uses 75,000¥ of his share to realize Johnathan's conceptual dream of the 'Death Chariot', adding all sorts of goodies to the A-Team's wheels.
 * Summary:** February 9th, 2064. Three weeks after rejoining the civilized world, the members of the A-Team are in serious need of some cold hard nuyen -- fast. They are contacted by a faceless Mr. Johnson, who offers them a job if they agree to a meeting at the Buzzsaw Towers -- the home of media giant Buzzsaw Records. Buzzsaw erected the twin towers in early 2051, with the label's signature 'Hornet & Lightning Bolt' insignia plastered on almost everything. The towers are surrounded by a small shopping center, complete with dining facilities. Buzzsaw Records represents some of the biggest names in the music industry worldwide, and has major footholds in the European and Asian markets as well. Needless to say, the runners accept the job and the next morning find themselves disarmed and in the massive lobby of Buzzsaw Tower 1.