//File 2.1.1 - More Crossed Paths

Clint stood along one of the many rows of pachinko machines, the steady clinking of the jackpot-like consoles filling his ears. Just outside, Hotaru monitored the proceedings, his Hornet keeping a close eye on the ins and outs of the main entrance without actually entering the building. They were on the trail of the runners who had stolen the mutagen from Hotaru, right under the noses of airport security. A magic-wielding adept and her large humanoid companion was hard to miss, and they were last sighted entering Matsuyo's.

Clint contemplated whether to follow the casino's henchmen through the door at the back, or if there was some other way of entering. He did not have to wait for long.

Eunbyeol had gotten the information she wanted from Tetsuo. The show of force was necessary, and Jack was the perfect partner to bring the beatdown on the Tetsuo's men, without getting so much as a scratch on his tough troll hide. They now had a name, a lead to follow, a shady corp leak named Shosen, and made a beeline for the exit to their next destination, a bar called Kamebara. They re-entered the main pachinko hall.

Jack was sorry it came to violence, but it always did. At least he was on the winning side.

He followed his charge through the flashing lights and noisy gamblers. His eyes on the lookout for the next threat.

Hotaru stays safely inside the parked car, he can do everything he needs from there.

He set the dog in autonomous mode near the main entrance in a discreet position. It is to warn him if it detect the recorded smell patterns of the thieves or if it is physically touched.

The rotodrone is used to circle around the building like a delivery or publicity drone, Hotaru use it to keep an eye on anybody who exit the secondary entrances.

He focuses mostly on the hornet, finding a moment or entrance to sneak into the building undetected. Staying out of sight, it follows the commotion to see what is happening.

Eunbyeol and Jack stepped back out of the office through the same way they came, returning to the main pachinko hall. Once again they found themselves in a riotous environment of lights and sounds as the patrons were oblivious to what had transpired in private. Only the other security man in the hall gave them a wary look; he had evidently been communicated to, and told to give them a wide berth, which he did.

Clint saw a woman and a troll exit the door he was watching. These were definitely the targets they were told to pursue, although they didn't match the description that Hotaru had provided. Outside, Hotaru had monitored the exterior without incident. He waited until the main door slid open again before flying his Hornet into the gaming hall. It was against regulations to do so; drones were prohibited from entering gaming casinos, for obvious reasons associated with cheating. It was possible that there were measures put in place to prevent drone spying.

"Jack, I've been away too long. Do you know anything about this Kamebara place, or about Shosen?" She looks up at the much larger man. "More specifically, can we walk in, or do we need to worry about setup?"

Mach wracks his brain trying to place the name.

You have been gone for a long time, and I am pretty new to the area. We could make a quick stop at Joe's someone thete would know.

As Eunbyeol and Jack discussed how best to find out more about Shosen and Kamebara club, they both noticed the only out-of-the-ordinary person in the gaming hall. In the centre of the room stood a man dressed as a cowboy, or more specifically, what looked like cowboy armour. He moved with a confident step that was unmistakeably dextrous, not unlike the two of them. And he was staring directly at them.

Jack looks at the cowboy, then at his companion.

Are you seeing that guy, or gave the lights given me a seizure?

Once we get back to Joe's, Miyashi will know about the gang. He may not be running anymore, but his Weasel spirit keeps him well informed

"I'm seeing him; I'm just not sure why. What kind of baegchi dresses like that?"

Maybe he thinks Clint Eastwood was REALLY east.

Unaware he is being watched, Clint tries to follow the 2 without being spotted by them...

Drop Science

As Eunbyeol and Jack began to exit, Clint let them, knowing that Hotaru would be outside and be able to spot them. He himself waited for a bit, before trying to follow them discreetly.

Hotaru hornet quickly slips into the back area to hear people talking about the 2 bruisers leaving the establishment.

A quick scan of the premise show no sign of the airport thieves, only Clint going after a random odd couple. The young rigger quickly slip his hornet out of the building, before it gets detected.

Opening a commlink to Clint :"Where are you going? Those two are not the ones I saw. Different looks, different gait and..." Hotaru expertly switches between his drones leaving the rotodrone in autonomous mode to have direct access the the dronedog sensor. "...a different olfactory pattern also. Better head back, this was a waste of time."

On the way back, Hotaru get in touch with an local contact, a mechanic who did some custom drone job for him in his old life.(in Japanese) Hi, I'm a friend of Lucio (his old rigger tag), he gave me your info. I need to lay low in Neo-Tokyo for a while and I'll need a gig and a place to crash. Anything you could help me with?" (

Mumbling to himself Drek..., over the comm, Acknowledged, going back in...

Jack keeps looking over his shoulder. He was sure the cowboy was following them, but he peels off and goes back where they were.

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.

Hotaru and Clint

Hotaru found he didn't know quite enough about the ways and workings of the inscrutable Japanese. He knew the obvious, that many of the biggest megacorporations, or megas, in the world were Japanese, or part Japanese. Renraku, Mitsuhama, Fuchi, were all AAA-rated organisations, meaning that they controlled all the wealth and the daily lives of regular chummers and wageslaves. The items one owned, the transport one took, the food one eat, everything was a product of these companies. Even security and the police were corporatised. The only personage higher than these megas was the emperor himself. Japan was still a monarchy, and while the emperor himself did not hold power, the favour of the imperial court indicated who was allowed to dominate society and receive privileges others did not.

The megas extended their influence into the shadows, but typically did not maintain their overt presence for one obvious reason: the Japanese underworld was entirely run by the yakuza, or Yaks, clans and families with histories that go back hundreds of years. Other criminal organisations have tried to penetrate the Japanese underworld, but without much success. Rival clans, or gumi, claimed territory, physical territory, the astral, even the Matrix. Hotaru knew Mr Johnson represented one of the clans, from what he had heard of Clint's conversation with her, it was the Wanabuchi-gumi. But that was all he had picked up.As Clint was the one who had logged the loss of the crates when they fell out of the plane he was in, the data was available to him, and confirmed by Mr Johnson's assistant. According to the plane's flight and their GPS tracking, the containers should've hit the ground in the Saitama prefecture, in the environs of greater-Tokyo. That was about thirty kilometers from where they were. Finding the crates themselves could present some difficulty, it would be impossible to tell the exact spot they landed.

Eunbyeol and Jack

"I see some others." Miyashi traisped downstairs a couple of minutes after Jack had gone back down to the main bar. "Does a man in some Western garb, you know, like a wild wild west trideo, ring any bells? And a man who controls machines? I have the sense you'll be crossing paths, something about your needing them or they you." Jack had never known the shaman to be wrong with his visions.

Hey Eunbyeol, looks like we are going to have to find that Clint Eastwood looking guy. Miyashi says he can help us, or we need to help him...or both.

Jack looks at Joe.

Do you know the old west dressing dude. I would say probably muscle for hire.

Hotaru let the car drive itself to the address given to him.

He spends the time silently browsing the Matrix for information. First a general knowledge search about the Wanabuchi-gumi then another one about the Saitama prefecture. Lastly, he'll make a search for weird comments or report online that would coincide with the time of the falling crate.

Once on site, Hotaru will control his two flying drone to explore the area and find recent signs of falling debris from the sky.

Hotaru and Clint

General information about the yakuza was readily available: organised crime families, related either by blood or by loyalty, with traditions that go back hundreds of years, and a strict hierarchical structure, consisting of the oyabun, or foster parent, as the head of the clan, and a brotherhood held together by a code of duty, justice and honour. Of course, this was all possibly a romanticised version of what was essentially large crime syndicates with tendrils in robbery, extortion, laundering, drug and BTL trade, prostitution, and assassination. What wasn't easily available, of course, were specific details on the clans, where they were based in, what their mode of operations were. Hotaru had no problem finding out that the Wanabuchi-gumi was one of the oldest, more respected clans, but they did not currently have the emperor's favour.

The Saitama prefecture was largely a post-modern agricultural combine. Formerly fields of rice and wheat, with fertile hills and basins, it was now layers and layers of fully automated terraced farms, crops hydroponically grown, genetically modified, and enhanced with the latest bio-technology, producing high-yield super-crops. If there was news about strange falling crates from the sky, Hotaru could not find any.Eunbyeol and Jack"Cowboy street sam?" Joe chortled. "Never heard of such a thing in my life. No wait," Joe flicked the remote on the trideo display over at the far wall, to the grumblings of the two patrons who were absorbed watching the Fighting Fantasy Football league match between the Toyama Trappers and the Yokai Yen. "Here's one of their favourites here, Gaijin Gunslinger." On screen was a trailer for its titular star, a wild west cowboy who finds himself in Japan, crossing paths with cyber-ninjas and learning the way of bushido. It was a huge hit as a Better-Than-Life simsense experience, where viewers could put themselves in the shoes of the Gunslinger himself as part of their virtual reality entertainment. The feature character looked very much like who Jack saw at the pachinko parlour earlier.

Hotaru and Clint largely ignored the sights and sounds of the Saitama zone when they arrived at the prefecture. There were modern buildings juxtaposed with older architecture, and a couple of ancient temples still standing, ravaged by time. Hotaru drove them straight out to the Warubi district: the GPS coordinates Clint had provided narrowed the possible crash site to a likely 10-20 hectare radius; there was no way to narrow it further than that. The centre of that radius took them to an agri-tech facility, an ultra-modern farming estate. Cutting edge agriculture in the Sixth World were often terraced biospheres: layers and layers of crops planted one above another, suspended in frames, automated with water and fertiliser distribution systems.

Hotaru pulled up his Skyline outside the main gates of the Kensai-Warubi farming complex. It was past midnight, so there was little activity to be seen through the high fences that ringed the entire complex. Behind the fence were various bio domes, from above, Hotaru's drone camera feed showed six of these domes, and various small buildings dotting the complex. The domes and buildings were interconnected via pathways, rails and bridges. The main building in the centre of the complex was presumably the office. For all intents and purposes, the crates had landed somewhere inside the complex.

Hotaru first scan the place for signs of damage from falling object. He obviously keeps an eyes for security measure and obvious clue while doing so.

Edit 3 questions :
What should I be on the lookout for here?
What is my enemy(crates)’s true position?
What is my best access route?

Clint looks for any accessible high ground he can reach to overlook the area...

With the combined efforts of Hotaru's drones and Clint's surveying, they jointly gathered the following information: The high fences were standard, but there were security camera posts at regular intervals behind the fences. The bio-domes themselves were essentially like massive greenhouses, made of clear, technologically advanced glass alloy, weaving glass with a metal latticework frame. They each had an entrance and an exit. As it was late night, there was no one around on security patrol, but there was at least one security drone patrolling each of the bio-domes on the outside. One of the buildings nearer the front gate still showed signs of activity, it was likely that that was the security station for the entire complex. There were no signs of a residential area in the agri-tech complex.

Next to one of the domes though, were what looked like a large construction drone and its control console, and various building materials: glass panes, and metal girders were neatly stacked to one side of the dome building, evidence of recent repair. In the darkness through it was hard to see which part of the dome surface had been damaged, if it indeed had been damaged and fixed.

Without a mage deceiving the cameras, or a hacker hacking into them, any attempt at entry was bound to occur within the view of at least one security camera. However, with no patrols nor human activity, it did not seem that their breaking and entering would attract much notice.

Anything you can do about those cameras ? Can you cover them with some clothing with your drones ?

@Clint "Let me check if I can confirm the crate presence first. Disabling the camera is bound to attract attention."

Hotaru will use the small hornet to check around the security office for traces of those crates.