//File 2.1.1 - More Crossed Paths

Mr Johnson's intel had been wrong. Hotaru and Clint had been sent on a wild goose chase for the runners who stole the mutagen. A dangerous pair consisting of a woman and a large humanoid were spotted, but they weren't the perpetrators. The culprits were still at large, and Hotaru and Clint were currently at a dead end.

Eunbyeol and Jack had shaken down the contact given to them, and had picked up their next promising lead, a dealer named Shosen. It now remained to be seen whether they needed to do some legwork first before looking him up.

What do the rest of you do?

I think we should get some info before we go charging 8n. Let's stop at Joe's for a bite to eat and some information.

Hotaru and Clint

"Lucio! You're in neo-Tokyo eh?" Sonny Kaneda, aka Sonny the Spinner, one time combat-class drone-arena champion of the Japanese leagues, now a successful owner of the Speed Spinneret, a local chop shop and racing training school, was someone Hotaru had never met face-to-face, but knew from his own participation in his rigger races. "Sure, I can fix you up, come down to the shop. I might need a hand with a simple rig." He pinged over the address, which was a little out of the way at Daikoku, but Hotaru had his own transport anyway.

Jack and Eunbyeol

Jack and Eunbyeol made their way back to Joe's, having gotten the information Eunbyeol needed. "Well?" Joe eyed the two of them as they returned. Neither looked hurt in any way, but they were certainly a bit rougher around the edges, and there was at least some blood flecks on both of them.

@Sonny "Thanks a bunch, I'll be there as soon as I can free myself."

Hotaru will go back to the clinic, drop Clint there, report on the situation and see if he can freely leave to Sonny's shop (with or without the car).

Clint uses the few contacts he made since he arrived in Japan to find out what establishment have any chances of being frequented by shadowrunners and could be used to close active deals... He feels like it was to early to give up and wanted to go out again, following his instincts...

"There's going to be a couple more steps to this... We got the name of the dealer now, but we haven't spoken to him yet." Eunbyeol briefly relays the information they received. "Ever heard of this Shosen, Joe?"

Hotaru and Clint

"It seems your lead wasn't as useful as we thought." Mr Johnson remarked when Hotaru and Clint returned with a report of a dead end, in a tone that must've annoyed Hotaru further as it put the blame on the intel Hotaru provided rather than the fact the her own sources pointed them to the wrong pair of runners. "A female human and a large male orc or troll is not a common duo in the shadows. We can get our mages to attempt to trace their astral signatures, but without an actual item that belongs to them to use in the spell, the chances of finding them astrally are next to impossible. We can hack into the police database, that'll give us their real SINs, but will not tell us where to find them. Time to do what you're hired for Mr Edwards, come back with better results."

Or the two of you could follow up with Mr Westwood's trail of the missing crates from the hijacked plane. We know where they fell out, but our recovery team did not manage to find them."Eunbyeol and Jack

While Eunbyeol is talking to Joe, Jack spends some time with his shaman contact.

Miyashi, I was wondering if you ever ran into a dealer named Shoshen. I am helping Joe's friend out, and this guy seems like the next ring on the ladder, and I hate going in blind.

Hotaru blinked twice very slowly. Just can kind of amateurish operation was this? He gave a accurate set a data for analysis and its being discarded because some retarded witness can't tell the difference between an ork and a troll? Moreover he'd been paid for intel given and sent on a identification mission which he did and now HE was responsable for their failure? This was some psycho bullshit at dangerous level. Between them and the police, it felt that every Japanase organization were incompetent and deluded, that thought did not inspire any confidence in the future.

Hotary sighs.
"If you say those crate are related, then it could be worth investigating. If Clint or some of your men can bring Max (Hotaru points to the dogdrone) on site, I might be able to pick up a trail that has been missed.

For myself, i'll need some quiet time to analyse the data properly. If you can get me their SIN as well as a list of known associates, that would definitely help.

Just to be clear, I find those guys or the mutagen for you and i'm free to go. I'm not part of your war nor do I owe you anything."

Hotaru and Clint

"Mr Edwards, if we had to ability to easily locate the thieves, or retrieve their SIN, we wouldn't have needed you in the first place." Mr Johnson was surprisingly candid. "You have been paid, both materially, as well as with your new SIN, for a lead that you provided which we have not been able to track yet. Your evidence is useful, but only if we can do something with it. If these runners are as good as you make them out to be, it'll take some effort on all our part to find them. Yes our deal is for locating the mutagen, or failing which, locating the missing crates, nothing more. As for the war, Mr Johnson smiled, "Welcome to the shadows of neo-Tokyo Mr Edwards, you will find it hard to conduct yourself here without a better undertanding of who runs these shadows, and who your friends and enemies are.

So by all means, proceed with Mr Westwood, and also pursue your investigations. We should be able to uncover at least their purported identities tomorrow."Eunbyeol and Jack

Joe's scratched his chin at Eunbyeol's question. "A dealer you say? Knew a crew once, worked the international circuit, Europe and the far East. Their hacker was a man named Shosen. Not your typical matrix jack. He was good with people and machines both. Worked both sides of Saeder-Krupp and MCT, made himself a pretty stash in the process moving classified corp tech back and forth.

Miyashi nodded wordlessly at Jack's question, and shooed the troll back out of the upstairs room which the shaman used as an inner sanctum. Jack knew what that meant, and left Miyashi to do 'that hocus pocus thing' while he went back down to catch the conversation between Eunbyeol and Joe. "No real astral footprint, this Shosen of yours is warded. Whoever's working with him though lights up the astral like, I believe your expression is, like a Christmas tree. He's somewhere in the Shinjuku arcology now." It confirmed Tetsuo's information when he said to find Shosen in Kamebara.

Hotaru and Clint

Don't take it the wrong way kid but I'll be following you for a while. Part of my job is to protect you and with those insect things after you earlier, I think you'll be happy if they come back and I'm still around. We could go check for those crates together but if you have something else in mind, I'm staying with you.

That looks like our next stop then.

Jack turns to Eunbyeol

Next time you feel the need to start violence, give me a signal. If that Chrome boy had been as good as he looked, it could have been much worse.

Says the f* lady who won't mention who i'm working for, or why... you're definitely not my friend and not to be trusted. I should have stuck with the police...ugh

"Sure, ok. Give me the address for the crates, lets get this over with."
Well shit, I was starting to like you jailer.

Hotaru looks at Clint and respond sarcastically "How could I take that the wrong way? By the way I need to pee, can you come? There might be an un-flushed insect there.
Hotaru was surprised at his own words. I'm gonna need to do something about that mouth of mine if the day ever end he thought to himself.

At the same time, He sent a commlink to Sonny :"Sorry, I don't think I can make it. Not clean anyway, and I don't wanna drag you into this shit. I'll contact you when I get free."

After sending the message, Hotaru start mentally searching the Matrix for some info or guesses about the shadow structure here. He needed to know a bit more about who's pulling the strings.