Kozmo's Warstory

Aleksandr Shevchenko walks into the dingy foyer of his apartment building at around midnight. He has a laundry bag full of clothes slung over his should and a Tupperware container of still warm, meat-stuffed pyrohy in one hand, the kind only his momma can make. He lets the bag drop to the ground as he reaches his mail slot. The sound of the bag makes a dull thump, Aleksandr winces and reaches for his ribs on the right side of his body, still sore from his last run.

"Fraggin' rats," he mutters, "that was some messed up drek."

"Running around in a basement full of sewage and evil, magic rats. Is this the kind of drek I can expect?" he thinks to himself. The extra cred eases the soreness; maybe if he can make it last then momma will get a nice birthday present. It's hard to keep up with Vanya and his gifts. Aleksandr sorts through the daily mail. Usual drek of bills, promos...ahhh, something worthwhile, the monthly issue of 'Conspiracy' has arrived,

"Not too bad." He mutters quietly while making a wry grin on his face. Aleksandr reaches the door to his apartment and reaches into his pocket looking for his maglock passkey. As he fumbles around for the card his neighbor, an Italian woman named Mrs. Nesta, opens her door and peers out.

"Mr. Shevkchenko?" she asks in a thick Italian accent, although she knows full well that it is Aleksandr as she spies on everyone who enters the building from her bay window perch above the front sidewalk, "I thought it was you. Have you been home to your mother?"

"Yes Mrs. Nesta." Aleksandr says with his back to her so she can't see the look of embarrassment on his face. He turns around slowly to face her, "Its rather late Mrs. Nesta shouldn't you be in bed sleeping? Or spying on the people across the street?" Its well known in the neighborhood that Mrs. Nesta is quite the snoop.

"Oh an old lady like me doesn't sleep much. Besides things are quiet around here for once. You know the lock on my door is still acting funny. I had to swipe my card several times today before it let me in and it still doesn't close right. Do you think you could take a look at it again?" Mrs. Nesta makes an imploring look on her face giving him her best 'helpless-little-old-lady' act.

"Yes Mrs. Nesta," Aleksandr says with a sigh, as if defeated, "I'll stop by tomorrow afternoon." With that he turns and swipes his card in the lock and begins to enter his apartment.

"Oooh, thank you that would be perfect. How about around 4 pm? I'll be here because my niece Antonia will be coming around that time too. Won't that be wonderful having so many visitors." Mrs. Nesta says as she quietly closes the door to her apartment. Aleksandr closes the door to his apartment drops his laundry bag on the floor and walks into the kitchen dropping his mail on a table along the way. At the refrigerator he exchanges his Tupperware of pyrohy for a soy beer, then makes his way back to the living room where he plops down on the sofa and turns on the trid.

"Big bad shadowrunner Kozmo," he says with a disgusted tone, "goes home to momma to do laundry, does favors for the little old lady across the hall, and gets set up on blind dates with all of her nieces." This won't be the first time Aleksandr has been set up by Mrs. Nesta to meet one of her nieces. The last time was a disaster as he spent the evening listening to one of them talk about her latest career goal of being a manicurist. Unfortunately Mrs. Nesta enjoyed being the mother of Gianluigi Nesta, a thug in the family that made Vanya look like a little schoolboy. He could only guess what would happen if he got on Luigi's bad side.

Aleksandr sat on the sofa watching the trid when his cell phone rang, checking the ID he sees its Vanya. Its too late to answer, no doubt Vanya wants to go to a club and party all night. It's tempting, but he's still tired from his last run. Aleskandr lets the voicemail pick up.

"Some other time bro." he mutters. As he watches the trid, his thoughts drift back to the run and how it went down:

"Jared was right about this biz. No one looks after you. I got lucky hooking up with him and this crew. He did good by me to fence that box we found in the basement. He could have easily muscled me and the crew out of our cut, or worse, if he wasn't on the level. It just seems like the crew works well together." In between thoughts he scans the trid channels,

"We could have used that fraggin' massive troll. I bet he would have just destroyed those things null sheen, probably wouldn't have even broken a sweat. It was a good thing we had Arrow with us. This was old hat to her, hunting down those nasty rats. Damned if I would have known what the frag to do. Fifi was a rock though." He laughs thinking of the tough orc and how anyone could stick her with the name Fifi,

"I got a little nervous when the rats began overrunning us. That look on Fifi's face made me think we were lucky that she was going berserk on that dead piece of meat in front of her. Arrow really came through for us, without her shotgun we'd probably all be rat shit at the end of some sewer tunnel by now. I have to admit it was handy having something that packs that sort of punch, almost wish I had one, but that's just not my bag. The spell slingers sure came in handy too. This awakened drek is nasty. They knew what they were and what to do about them. I was glad to have them at the end too because it looks like they know how to patch us up with their spells and with just plain old bandages, which is good for me because I think they don't like all the cyber I got in me." He shifts on the couch to lie on his back,

"I wonder what the final rat count was? I hope the next time we do anything like that we can think of a better strategy. It just seemed like those things just kept coming out of nowhere and there were so many. There had to have been a more methodical way to do that run. I thought Fifi was onto something with that mojo she was slinging. I guess that spirit thing was supposed to find them, but it didn't seem to do a good job. I think she's just new at this, we all are, and we have a lot to learn." He finally settles on the late-late-night news,

"Titus isn't too bad either. He's pretty good slingin' the mojo. I didn't mind that he got pretty lucky poppin' a few rounds in those rats that were nippin' at me. At least he didn't freeze up. I think his strong suit is using his mojo to find things. He seemed to have quite a few spells that worked for that." As Aleksandr begins drifting off to sleep,

"I hope I can work out a deal with this crew to work together, we got a good thing going on. We keep up at this pace we'll have a good rep, with a lot of good cred to go along with it. Jared said that your rep is everything." As the warm glow of the trid shines on Aleksandr's face, he falls off to sleep.