Sasha carefully adjusts his leg as he sits down at his workbench. The stiff brace on his knee is the only reminder of the last run he was on. It was a successful job, but a painful one. As he settles onto his chair he flexes his leg slightly, testing his knee. Just a little tenderness left, not uncomfortable though. He picks up his tools and begins inspecting the digital camera before him. After a few minutes, Sasha determines that the I/O jack is damaged and begins dissecting the piece from the camera. It's a slow night and he takes his time doing the various fix-it jobs that were dropped off that day at the shop. The most difficult job is a broken trid unit, which he decides to leave for the next day.

At midnight Sasha closes up shop and limps out to the street to hail a cab. The driver seems uneasy about his destination, but Kozmo flashes a few extra nuyen and the driver grudgingly continues on. Pulling up in front of Moon's Shine, Kozmo is sure to count out an extra 50 nuyen for the driver. He barely has the door to the cab closed as it speeds off.

"Lousy drek." Kozmo mutters to himself as he turns and limps toward the door. He enters the bar and scans the main room. Usual characters about, he wouldn't trust most of them to take out the garbage. Not catching sight of his contact, Kozmo moves over to the bar and finds a stool to plant himself in. Even as Kozmo sits down he continues to scan the main room looking for someone. His attention is jolted back to the bar as a booming voice says, "What'll it be omae?"

Kozmo looks up startled, "Wha! Oh, hey Kruk." The gigantic face of the troll bartender greets Kozmo. "Just a soy beer for now, thanks."

"You look pretty banged up. Work been tough to find lately?" Kruk asks as he pours the soy beer into a relatively clean mug from the tap behind the bar.

"Not tough to find, just tough on me." Kozmo says with a chuckle.

"Know what you mean chummer." Kruk says as he bangs the full mug down on the bar top. "You want this on your tab, neh?"

"Nah, I'm going to nurse this one for awhile. I'm sort of here on business." Kozmo says as he pays for the beer and turns to continue scanning the room. As he sits looking around, the sounds of the live band fill the room. It's a decent blue's band that definitely fits his mood. The back-up guitarist is well out of tune and Kozmo does his best to set his sound filter to block it out, amused that a work related implant could sometimes have benefits for his personal life. Not too long passes before a man walks into the bar. Kozmo immediately notices him and relaxes a bit. Finally Jared is here. Kozmo orders a second soy beer and begins to limp over to Jared. When he's about half way to the door Jared notices him and a small smile comes over his face.

"What's the word chummer?" Jared says. As Kozmo approaches he holds out the second soy beer and hands it to Jared. Patting Jared on the shoulder he points to an empty booth along the side of the room.

"Let's sit, my knee is getting sore." Kozmo says. The two men reach the booth and sit down. Before Kozmo continues he slides to the inside of the booth and stretches his leg along the bench, "Omae, that last run was brutal." He says with a little chuckle.

"Well, at least it didn't ruin your sense of humor." Jared says, "What the frag happened with your crew?"

"The job sounded good on our end, but you know how these things go. After we met up with you we started planning things out. A few of us had met up with this other runner who turned out to be a wiz driver. Which was great considering the job you had lined up for us." Kozmo smiles and takes a sip of his soy beer. "So we contact this guy and arrange to meet. We give him the details and he's ready to go with us. He's got a pretty good idea of how to set the transportation up and he arranges to modify our van to do the job."

"What's that? Are you sure you should've been trusting this guy?" Jared says.

"Well it crossed my mind, but this guy seemed real slick. I don't know the details, but Fifi was telling me he did some job where Renraku was after him and it just sounds like if he wanted to take us out he could've done it well before then. Not to mention our gear is pretty low-ball compared to what he was working with. So, the plan we come up with for the job is straightforward and we're sure there's enough room to improvise if need be. The mojo-slingers in my crew can handle most anything. Fifi packs the punch, while Titus is good at snooping about. Between Arrow and I, we figure we got the stealth worked out."

"Whoa, what about the merc Troll you guys had?" Jared asks concerned.

"I don't know," Kozmo says dismissingly, "something about him needing to hone his skills or something. He's back doing the hardcore military type work. We're lookin' for someone now. Maybe we'll fill his spot, but who knows. So we aren't going into this job with our full firepower complement. Which is probably a mistake. Arrow and I figure we can jump over to the truck from the van, I pop the hatch to the cargo hold and she'll get my back. We figure we drop in some neurostun and slip in and out null sheen. Not! We can't get a hold of any neurostun and concussion grenades are likely to damage the package." Kozmo glares at Jared with a twisted smile, "So we figure Fifi can knock anyone out with her mojo. So we head out on the job. We pull up in the van, Titus checks things out and it looks like there's two guards inside...fortunately one's a troll so this should be easy...neh? Well, just before I'm about to jump over to the truck I ask Titus to check out the front cab. Good thing I asked, because there was a full security complement in there including a fraggin' troll with a fraggin' mini-gun."

"No kidding!" Jared lets out with a large laugh.

"Yeah, not as easy as you thought, neh? So I don't know why, but we decide to go stealthy to try and collect the extra nuyen. I didn't think it was worth it, but the other guys got big eyes and decided we should 'At least try.'" Kozmo says sarcastically. "So I sneak over followed by Arrow and Fifi. We rigged up safety harnesses to latch onto the truck. Well, as we make our way to the cargo hatch, that fraggn' troll comes up and next thing we know he's leveling his mini-gun at us. We got fraggin' lucky too. It's a good thing it takes a while for one of those puppies to warm up 'cause I think Fifi took him out just before he was going to shred us. We weren't out of the clear though. One of his buddies pops up and lays into us and next thing we know we're takin' on the whole truck and they all got assault rifles. Arrow and Fifi are good at the close range hand-to-hand stuff and they manage to move in and take out the guys shooting at us. Titus had tried to help from the van, but his thing ain't shootin' from a movin' vehicle at high speeds. So Fifi grabs a couple grenades and uses them to take out the rest of the drek in the cab. Except, now the guys in the cargo hold are waiting on us and we're all banged up. I unlock the cargo hatch then head to the back of the truck to try and create a distraction. Well, I did a pretty good job cause I fell off the truck and found myself hangin' from the safety rope slammin' into the back of the truck. Arrow comes back to help me while Fifi does her thing. I don't know 'bout that mojo stuff, but she manages to knock out the two pieces of drek. Arrow helps me back up and we use some mojo Titus and Fifi got to bring the package over with us. So we make the switch and decide that to make it look good we should bang up some of the other crates to draw attention away from the package. I have to admit I was ok with this idea. Then I tripped the neurostun on a container and barely made it out of there." Kozmo stops for a deep breath before taking a big gulp of his soy beer.

"Well chummer, sometimes the drek just hits the fan like that. You had the right instinct though. Next time push your team a little harder for the safe route. Nuyen is nice, but your life is better. Was someone desperate for the cash?" Jared says.

"I don't think so. You know hindsight is 20/20. I think if I could do it over, we'd have picked up some concussion grenades, or offensive ones, and had those to take out the guys in the cab, null sheen. I would have set Arrow up in the van a few lanes away to snipe any one coming out of the truck through the roof. Once the cab was neutralized I would have had Fifi take out the guys in the cargo hold. Then our worst problem would have been the emergency rigger, which didn't seem to be a problem in the end anyway. I think the plan was good, I like when we don't over analyze a situation. I think we maybe weren't as careful as we should have been once the job started" Kozmo says. "Anyway, that leaves one last thing. I got a list of gear I'm going to need. Some of it is pretty hard to find, but most of it is routine." Kozmo pulls a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and slides it toward Jared.

"No problem, I'll get back to you when it's ready. Would you accept partial delivery or should I hold shipping until the order is complete?" Jared says with a big grin and the two men laugh at the joke together. "Well it sounds like you'll be trying to get healthy for a while? Probably aren't interested in any jobs I got that are hangin' out there undone?" Jared says.

"No way omae. I'm taking a little break." Kozmo pauses, "Call me end of next week." The two men smile and laugh. Jared indicates he's going to have another beer and invites Kozmo to join him.

The Fast Lane

Titus walked in to Antonio's Italian Restaurant, walked to the head of the long line, and waited while the maitre'd finished talking to his patrons.

"I'm here to see Mr. Vespuci."

"Ahh, yes. It'sa so good to see you again, Mr. Titus," the maitre'd replied. "He's in his usual corner, I hope you don't 'mind if you show yourself--we're very busy tonight."

"Not at all." Titus walked through the food, wine, and merriment that always went on at Antonio's. He paused at the smell of a tray of food going by, but reminded himself of the purpose of his trip.

In the corner of Antonio's, Vespuci was holding audience like a handsome elven pope in a corner booth. Titus waited while he finished with his current meeting, ending with the suited Orc grabbing an improbably heavy to-go bag and heading for the door.

"Hey, you enjoy that 'canelloni, eh?" Vespuci called after him in his thick Italian accent. "Titus! It's 'so good to see you! Please, have a seat! Can I get you something?"

"I'll have a glass of wine, thank you, and I'll trust your pick," Titus replied, sliding into the corner booth.

"Ramon! We'll have two glasses of Tir '43 over here!" Vespuci called, his smooth voice raising above the din and across the restaurant to the Orcish waiter who nodded and headed into the kitchen. "So tell me, Titus, what brings you here tonight?"

"Actually, I'm looking for some electronic gear."

"Yes, yes, I'll help you, but first tell me what you have been up to. It's so hard for me to hook you up with jobs when I never know what you do."

"Hmm, yes. Very well, this most recent run has been a good demonstration of my talents." Titus paused as the waiter brought two glasses of red wine. "Thank you." He picked up the glass and smelled the wine while the waiter left.

"The goal was fairly simple,” Titus mused, swirling the wine. “Switch a crate out of a moving auto freighter. Of course, the auto freighter would be moving since the best time for the switch was mid-route. That made it difficult to use anything purely astral, such as elementals or astral projection.”

“Fifi, our shaman, seemed to have made a new friend in some slick shadowrunner with driving skills, so we had our driver, who also modified the van somewhat to facilitate unloading the crate at high speeds. Past that, the plan was pretty straightforward. We approached the auto freighter, I scouted the area with clairvoyance to locate the guards, of which there were two in the back where the crate was and four very well armed ones in the front. Seeking to avoid the well armed guards, Arrow, Kozmo, and Fifi went aboard the freighter while I provided some magical support, making them invisible and prepared to levitate them should any fall. They all made it across safely, but must have alerted the front guards because I see them tense up and stare in horror at some clanking and a whirring sound coming from the front of the cab. They shoot everything they have at the roof of the front and are able to neutralize what I later found out was a troll in security armor with a mini-gun. What follows was a precarious fight with the remainder of the guards in the front cab with my teammates hanging off the top and side of the truck, my trying to levitate them back on, and ending when Fifi and Arrow were able to crawl up and engage the last guard in melee range.”

“Right, so your ‘skills could best be described as… …supportive,” Vespuci noted, tapping his pocket secretary.

“Yes, I’d say that’s accurate. Once the fight died down, I glimpsed inside the back again and found that the guards were, of course, painfully aware of our presence and waiting to repel us. Our plan hinged on the combat shaman disabling them with a well-placed stun attack and as it stood, she would be shot at as soon as she looked inside. So Kozmo, our nimble burglar, climbed to the back of the truck and started trying to open the back loading doors to distract them. I glimpsed inside again and saw Kozmo’s ploy was working, then made Fifi invisible and silent to allow her to open the hatch and dispatch the guards. Then we switched the crates with the assistance of my levitation spell, made it look like we were trying to loot the container, and headed off to collect our nuyen.”

“Hey, bravo! You see, when you tell me such ‘good stories, I find you good jobs real soon.” Vespuci raised his glass in a toast. “To Titus, you ‘so much more than you seem. Now what was it you wanted again?”