Clusterfrag

Max maintains his hard glare, and asks, "How many men in each team?"

Max gives the man a slight smile, and says,

"Shotguns eh?"

The elf relaxes his grip on the worker, looks him in the eye, and says,

"Get running, pal. Get running and don't look back. If you alert your friends, we'll know, we'll find you, and we'll do very, very regrettable things to you."

Glaring, Sinjin cracks his knuckles and dons his most menacing expression to underscore Max's words.

"You've got three seconds to get lost. One....two...."

The man takes off, whimpering comically as he goes. Max turns to his cohorts, and asks,

"Any reason to draw this out any further?"

The elf cranes his neck hard to the right and produces several meaty pops, then admires the new battlespines on his armor.

Adams shakes his head.

"Let's find out what this place has been up to... And get you a new shotgun."

The Firestarter team assembles in the cramped confines of the elevator, having bypassed the security with a key lifted off the guard. Doc scans the elevator's interface, settling finally on the archives level. He presses the corresponding button and the lift takes off, making protesting noises at the amount of weight its accommodating.

Adams idly taps his foot to the soft rendition of The Girl from Ipanema as he muses.

A piece of my past missing, then surgically replaced with real/fake memories, a veteran with a military -- no, spy agency -- level chip in his head that only contains a few bytes of data; Data which led us here. And the canisters, where do they fit in?

Out of curiosity, and to pass the time, he pulls out the cyberware scanner that he had used on the veteran, and waves it over his own skull, shrugging at the others as he reads the results.

The elevator doors open to reveal a long hallway, littered with reinforced doors. In the center of the hallway, two armored guards are talking. They casually glance over as the elevator chimes and stare dumbly.

Discreetly, Sinjin palms a pair of throwing knives. The tension is palpable as the guards turn to stare blankly at the team, who are doing their best to look as though they have every right in the world to be there.

He talks loudly, presumably continuing a conversation the four had been having on their way up.

"..and our Q1 projections are looking dismal! Manufacturing is down 16%, new orders down by 20%! Im telling you, with all the trouble we've had in delayed shipments, not to mention a laundry list of item returns and warranty claims on Ishimura components, these guys have a lot to answer for. And they better have some good answers!"

Adams gives a knowing look to Max.

"Your cue," he whispers before stepping out of the elevator.

"We can discuss the materials cost in the meeting. But we're ten minutes late, and I know the engineering team is eager to show us their latest work. Something they dug up from an older design, apparently," he says, doing his best to look distracted and uninterested in the guards.

[ Max = 52 ]
[ Sinjin = 48 ]
[ Guard A = 48 ]
[ Guard B = 42 ]
[ Doc = 40 ]
[ Val = 36 ]
[ Tyros = 33 ]

Both guards raise their shotguns, clearly threatened by the alleged-businessmen in the future armor.

Veteran experience alerts Sinjin to the growing hostility behind the guards' eyes. Instant threat recognition courses adrenaline through his veins. Faster than thought, his musculature contracts, pumping with engorged blood to become harder and more responsive. Silver streaks flash over Doc's shoulder as Sinjin extends his arm, releasing a pair of spinning knives towards a white-eyed security guard.

((Attribute Boost: STR, followed by thrown weapons + Power Throw. Sorry for going first, John...GOD (Nick) told me to! ;0 ))

{{ 12P DAMAGE! }}

The guard's neck snaps back, the hilt of a throwing knife protruding from his forehead. He crumples with nary a sound.

Max rushes Guard A, his arms stretched out in front of him and his hands snarled into claws. The knotted muscles in his wrists and forearms stand out grotesquely, his augmentations plainly visible.

Max palm-strikes the surprised guard. The blow knocks the man off balance, who careens into one of the reinforced doors and smashes his face against it. A trail of blood and the unnatural angle at which the man's head rests indicates that he was killed instantly.

Adams breaks off in mid-sentence as two blurs go streaking past him on either side. One blur terminates at a guard's head, sending the man crumpling to the floor, the other resolves itself as Max, slamming the other guard into the wall with incredible force. There is a sudden silence in the hallway.

"Well, that works, too," he finishes.

Doc sets to work quickly scanning the interior of each room from a tiny window affixed in the center of each door. Most of the rooms are full of filing cabinets or data storage. He continues to move from door-to-door, unsure what exactly he's looking for, but certain it'll become obvious.

He freezes in front of the last door, at the end of the hallway. Just inside, sitting calmly at a workstation, is special agent Jeng.

Max gives Sinjin a curt nod, impressed with their mutual efficiency. The elf then kneels and retrieves one of shotguns dropped in the fracas, tests its weight and action, and drops it to the ground. He looks at his teammates and says, "Chinese drek. I'll be better off with my fists."

Doc looks back at the team, pointing to his eyes, and then the room.

He mouths, "we need him alive."

He gingerly tests the handle, finding the door to be locked. Raising his SMG, he steps back before lunging forward and slamming his heel into the door.

Doc throws his shoulders back and sinks his boot into the steel below the lock. The door shakes at the transfer of kinetic energy--which is significant enough to tear the deadbolt from the frame. The heavy door swings open, framing a fuming Doc Adams as he glares into the room. Jeng jumps out of his seat--startled--and backs away.

"What is the meaning of... you! You can't be here! What are you doing here?!"

Adams strides up to Jeng, furiously silent. He shoves the barrel of the gun into the man's face.

"Sit. Down. SIT DOWN!" He bellows at Jeng.

"You wanted me here. Well here I am. And you're going to answer some questions for me. You're going to answer them truthfully and promptly, or my friends and I will make you answer them."

Jeng raises his arms and sits slowly, but a grin is spreading across his face. He indicates the Colt Cobra with his chin.

"Think I'm going to be scared of that little pea-shooter?"

Max pushes his way into the room and wraps a powerful hand around Jeng's throat, growling at Doc,

"Come on-- it's more fun with your bare hands."

The elf begins to squeeze, allowing his fingernails to dig into the man's soft flesh.

Jeng's face begins to lose color as Max tightens his grip. The agent squirms in his chair and slaps the sides of the elf's forearms. He nods vehemently, indicating that he's ready to talk.

For a moment, Max can only further constrict his grip as he looks into the face of the man who has caused his friend so much distress. A vein pops from Jeng's ever-reddening forehead as Max glares hard into his eyes. Finally, with equal measures disdain and force, Max releases the chokehold with a small shove, pushing Jeng's shoulders back and sending his head lolling slightly. Tiny rivulets of blood trickle from ragged wounds on his neck. Max stands very close at hand, arms crossed in front of him, stares hatefully down at Jeng, and says nothing.

Jeng rubs his throat and returns the glare. He turns to Doc.

"Where would you like me to begin?"

Adams re-enters Jeng's view, and places a hand on each arm rest, bringing his face close to Jeng's.

"Let's start with what happened in 2066. I've got a nice big hole in my memory covering that time period, and so did another vet. One, whom I might add, had an interesting little data chip with some lethal modifications."

"What did you do to our memories?"

Jeng grinds against the back of the seat uncomfortably and averts his eyes, but starts talking.

"Ishimura Industries was a private defense contractor operating out of Tokyo before the war. They specialized in chemical weapons; specifically nerve agents and amnesiatics. Saito brokered some deal with the company to allow them to test their latest product during the war, a product that they would supply for free. What you--and many other soldiers--are experiencing are the after effects of that weapon."

A cold shiver moves up Doc's spine.

Chemical weapons? The bastards actually used them...

He keeps a stone face. "What were the other effects of these weapons?"

"Observed side effects included period-specific amnesia, nausea, insomnia, and in some cases, cytoleukemia."

Jeng rolls his head. His expression can best be described as regrettably apologetic.

"Simply put, during the time you were inhaling the vapors, your short-term memory was sabotaging itself, isolating the neural connections that would be used to later recall those events. The memories aren't gone, just... disconnected. Very few people ever recover the memories, but it's not unheard of."

A glimmer of hope mixes with fear at the thought of recovering the missing slice of his past. Doc presses on.

"We'll get back to that later. I still don't understand what I was doing here. It's not just missing from my memory, it appears to have been redacted from my record."

"No, you wouldn't..." mutters Jeng. "There's a data-chip on my desk, marked subject 16. Plug it into the workstation."