You’d just returned to the XCom base with the Sextant of the Worlds and the Phaistos Disc recovered. The base looked different. A number of propaganda posters hung in the hallways. Looks like Laurent had gotten busy with Photoshop or something. Speaking of the dwarf he is waiting for you just in the base’s entrance.

“You like?” Laurent asks. “Well, you better cause I got more of them. Figure if this alien shit hits the fans we need to be ready to win the hearts and minds. Anyways walk and talk, tell me about the artifacts.”

Smoke lights up a joint and starts talking. “The Phaistos Disc is a tricky one man, because it appears to have multiple functions. The easier-to-understand one involves it acting as a sort of Rosetta Stone for the other artifacts. Properly understood, the symbols on it provide a guide for how the others can be used. Note, though, that you really have to look at the symbols, both physically and astrally. One thing I noticed while assensing it, though, was this— that thing is way to powerful to just be a glorified instruction manual. There’s some serious shit going on inside that thing, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that is.”

“Whisky Tango Foxtrot! Alien Exterminators?!” Andre interupts

“Yeah, I particularly like that one.” Laurent says, “Continue.”

A couple of seconds of silence and then Allan continues for Smoke.

“Umm yeah, it may, perhaps, have something to do with the hidden part of the object’s aura. You get a weird sensation that something is missing, like there’s a closed door in your field of astral vision, but behind that door is a light shining so bright that some of it can’t help but get through. It’s evasive, though—every time I tried to look directly at this closed-door thing in order to figure out just what I was seeing, it skittered to the edge of my vision. Needless to say, I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and I certainly couldn’t figure out how to open that door. We left the experience certain that the disc had some other function, but hours of staring at and trying to interpret the inscriptions brought us no closer to the truth. Roy’s flying didn’t help. I swear he mapped out where the most turbulence was and flew through it.”

“You think Roy’s flying was bad, you should have flown with Grace.” Andre says taking his eyes off the poster as he reacts to Grace slapping the back of his head.

“The Sextant might have had a hand in that.” Midnight interjects. “The two things I’ve been able to discern is that it has chaotic effects on the astral (and occasionally material) plane around it, and that those effects seem to be growing stronger over time. Whether that is something that is built into the artifact or that is occurring due to increased exposure to the other artifacts is unclear. But if you’re Awakened and you come near this thing, you can feel its presence. It’s difficult to describe, but think of the opening of a football game when the team rushes onto the field through some paper banner or something. Now think of what would happen if the entire fabric of reality was made of paper, and the sextant was a football team moving in slow motion, ripping its way through. That’s what it feels like to be near it—you can almost hear the reality of space and time tearing as you get close.”

“Is it just me or do I just look damn good in all these posters.” Roy says.

“How did C Team do?” Grace asks.

“They failed to acquire Shantaya’s Compass, the final artifact.” Laurent says. “And if it’s function is anything like it’s name it may lead them to the other artifacts and us. For now, the base it on lock down, while Smoke, Midnight and Allan see if they can unlock any additional information from the artifacts we have.”

“Oh and one more thing, what caption should this poster have?” Laurent asks.

“Someone’s going to die for that!”, Grace turns and stalks out of the room.

The roads to the rail station are patrolled, but you managed to find a path through some jungle to bypass the patrol. The path cuts fairly straight through some dense jungle and you are saving time.

W1S31 starts singing and music plays from his comm.

“The Sam walks warily down the street, with their brim pulled way down low. Ain’t no sound but the sound of their feet, machine guns ready to go! ”

He then looks sideways towards the you. “What? Every good hero should have some theme music.”

Ahead, the path continues through a small clearing. On the side of the path, centered in the clearing is a shoddy wooden shack that looks like some kind of neglected fruit stand. Hanging over the counter is a and-painted sign reading “Stuffer Shack.” Huh, I guess they really are everywhere.

It is then that you notice the jungle birds and animals you’ve heard up to this point have gone quiet.
You hear a reptilian clicking noise from the jungle to your left. The clicking to the left is followed by a
reptilian clicking noise to the right side of the clearing. Then a blurred form moves in the trees from the clicking’s origin.

“It’s the Varmint-Cong! We have to fall back on superior intelligence and firepower!” W1S31 yells.

“We came to the Stuffer Shack to eat some soy and kick hoop. The Shack is all outta soy.” SMRT1 follows up.

Sun shines on the Hawthorne Grill as your team approaches. Large glass windows reveal a modest crowd occupying the high quality synthetic chairs, tables, and booths inside. All seating surfaces are covered with a comfortable vinyl padding that blends into the overall restaurant design. Cheap mass-produced art in plastic frames hangs from the walls and plastic plants dot the restaurant.

Stepping inside, you see a “wait to be seated” sign, but a whistle and wave draws your attention to the Johnson’s table. You easily make your way through the restaurant to join Sid. “Glad you could make it. Have a seat. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Sid Gambetti. Pleased to meet ya. Feel free to get anything off the value menu, on me.”

An ork waitress with the name tag “Lola” approaches the table to take your orders.

As the waitress walks away to place your orders, Sid takes a large gulp of coffee and proceeds to explain the offer. “I guess we can get started. The job is an extraction job outside the US. Transportation to and from are included. The targets are willing and are going to be in a vulnerable place ready for the taking. The targets are not to be hurt. You rendezvous with them, then make your way to the docks and you are home free. The pay is a valuable artifact known as the Phaistos Dis if you are interested.”

Sid calls out to the waitress “Garçon? Little coffee here!” She returns and fills his cup, commenting “Garçon means boy” before walking away. He looks back to the team and asks “Any questions?” before slurping a drink.

“All-righty then, I think you have all the info you need. I need to go drain the lizard and hit the bricks. If you have any more questions hit me up on the comm. Trust me, it will be awesome—you guys are gonna storm in there like the last action heroes on the planet.” With that, Sid scurries away from the table to the restrooms.

As you start to look to your other teammates and discuss preparations for the upcoming mission, two patrons at another table jump up waving Ruger Super Warhawks.

“Everybody be cool, this is a robbery!” screams the blond male human in the Hawaiian shirt. This is quickly followed by the red-headed female human screaming “Any of you fragging pricks move and I’ll execute every mother fragging last one of you!”

gh0st’s commlink starting ringing. Switching to AR he say it was Allan. That could only mean Allan had broken some electronic device and wanted it fixed or there was a job. Either way he was getting paid.

“Hello Allan, what’s up? You lock yourself out of one of you commlinks again?”

“No I got us a job. Meet us at the…..”

Suddenly the commcall gets interupted and an icon of a tough looking paperboy riding a bike appears, what looks like an Initech debt collection satchel worn over his chest.

“Four week, 20 stories, that’s 2 nuyen plius tip.”

“What the hell, I’m not giving you a dime!”

“I didn’t ask for a dime, 2 nuyen.” The icon says in a threatening voice like drawing a switchblade from it’s pocket. As he depresses the button on the switchblade a comb rather than a blade pops out.

Having enough of this you go to switch off your AR by closing the virtual door of your house, the icon sticks his foot in the door link-locking you in AR.

We approach in the van to the “haunted” house that the locals in the area directed us to. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of electronics nearby. I drop into VR and take a look around. Not surprisingly there is a host running silently. I grab a mark and enter. Looks pretty much like the interior of the house might. A bunch of cameras, a few maglocks, scanners, drones and more all controlled by 2 nodes within the host. I grab a mark on the node which seems to be linked to the cameras. I send the feeds to the rest of the team. Then focus back on the rest of the contents in the host. I see a decker’s persona looking about. I try to grab a mark but fail – in return he gets a mark on me and notices I’m there. I try to data spike him but he fights me off. We exchange another round of data spikes and both get through. Mine was laced with biofeedback. Guess he didn’t like that so he logs. I send a last message through the node to unlock all the maglocks and then exit and jack before the ICE finds me.

“We need to get moving now. I messed up, they know we are coming.”, I say and André hits the gas and screeches to a stop by the gate. I see André dose with Kamikaze as I jump out the door and head toward the gate.

I spot a couple of drones heading in my direction. One takes a shot but I grab a bit of cover by the gate. The others advance and damage one of the drones before a couple of big, cyber’d mean nasty dogs rush Mako. He goes down again. Damn he falls hard. A bullet fires almost straight down between André and I. No clue who was targeted. André takes a shot and I hear a whispered “Damn right!” through the comms.

Shawn summons his second sadistic bunny which decides to feast upon one of the dogs. We manage to take down the 2 drones, both dogs and the killer bunny and head for the door.

A Renraku manservant drone takes a shot at André. I give it a slash and it falls and sparks fiercely. 20K nuyen down the drain. I send the video to Roy and promptly receive a “God damn it Grace! I can’t believe you did that and ….” I ignore the rest of the message and suspend further messages from Roy.

André opens the next door and throws in an explosive grenade. In return some turreted drone opens fire. Then a guard opens up with submachine gun fire. André looks to be in pretty bad shape.

I walk in and slash the guard pretty badly and Mako follows up with a punch that sends him flying into the corner. The others manage to take down the wheeled turret drone and I hear a scream from the next room.

André opens the next door and narrowly avoids getting hit by another Renraku manservant. I drop into VR and data spike the drone and he drops like a brick. Before I can exit VR, I see on Mako’s video feed that he entered the room and punched the downed decker/rigger. When I get there, it is immediately obvious that he’s dead. There’s an RCC that Roy will most likely want. My scan of the body pulls up an implanted deck, data jack and cybereyes. I open the access hatch to the deck and then look up to see Shawn casting a spell. Another damn bunny appears just outside the door and it heads right for André and stabs with the injectors on its hind legs. André goes down. We take out the bunny but Shawn is casting again. I point my sword towards him in a questioning motion and he quickly says “Antitoxin”.

Luckily no more bunnies appear.

“Umm guys, there’s a conversation in the guard’s commlink from yesterday and today…

Sent: Keeper, there is a Trog P.I. investigating around the neighborhood recently looking for that dandelion eater we nabbed for the ritual last month. What do you want done?

Keeper: If he comes around again kill him, nobody will miss a dirty trog. Also we need another sacrifice for the ritual, this one needs to be magically active.

Sent: Disabled the P.I.. Looks like he was magically active. Will he suffice for the ritual?

Keeper: He should suffice, Trogs have sentience even if only barely.", Grace looks nervously towards Mako but then realizes he wasn’t listening and is already on his way down to the basement towards the chanting. Yeah, of course there is chanting…

The sounds of a firefight start to be heard, slowly growing louder although somewhat muted as if heard through water. When Grace realizes what it is, she attempts to draw her pistol and sword but her cyberarm clangs off something metal.

Where the hell is Alan and Godzilla, Grace thinks. Something seems wrong with that idea but she isn’t exactly sure what just now.

She shakes her head a bit to clear her head and realizes her eyes are closed. Oh that makes more sense, the Godzilla movie start screen is cycling on the screen of the Valkyrie module. She presses the button to open it up, climbs out and heads to the door of the van. She pulls up André’s video feed and GPS coordinates. From the video feed, she can see the fight is over and André is looking at the body of some alien mutated ork. She sends an “omw” message and heads into the weapons shop. Luckily Mako manages to avoid throwing a knife in her direction. Guess he didn’t understand what “omw” meant.

There is chanting which seems to be coming from down the stairs so André, Mako and Grace start down the stairs. As they near the bottom of the stairs, a toilet flushes and a door opens. André shoots and the guard is knocked back into the washroom. Grace rushes forward saying, “Gross! Wash your hands next time asshat!” and then slashes him with her sword.

“Gross!”, Grace backpedals as the guard explodes in acid. Luckily her armor protects her but the acid seems to be eating at it.

Mako moves forward and attempts to kick the solid metal security door open. It bends a bit and the card reader starts to spark but the door remains closed. Shawn runs down the stairs and works the keycard over the card reader a few times before the door opens.

Another one of the muton orks, grabs a big alien gun, like the one that shot Roy and Alan, and rushes towards the door. Grace looks in AR at that big alien gun, switches to the attack configuration on her deck and dataspikes the gun. The gun sparks, lets out a puff of smoke and all the lights on it turn off.

There are 4 other guys in the room working on a ritual. One breaks off and spits acid at Mako.

The muton throws down the gun in disgust and punches at Mako with his spurs. They proceed to punch at each other ineffectively exchanging blows.

Rifts opens behind Grace and a creature with large arms and a huge mouth pulls her into a tight hold, while a muscular blue humanoid races after Midnight. Grace manages to free her arm and stab the Maw with her sword. Luckily her armor saves her once again as the creature tries to take a bite. Grace stabs again and the creature dies while Midnight fires burst fire into blue giant.

Shawn casts a stun bolt at the mages in the other room. A rift opens up and a fanged monkey appears, runs and hides deeper in the room around the corner.

“You stupid monkey”, Shawn screams.

The mages in the other room seem to be having difficulties, maybe with the monkey?! One of them charges one of the others, grabs his medallion and then runs off in the direction of the monkey. Another grabs the muton’s big gun from the ground and heads in the same direction. Another couple of rifts open. A glowing ball appears from the one near André and a creature with long sharp claws appears from the other near one of the mages.

The glowing ball engulfs André briefly and his skin starts to turn yellow. The creature with the claws attacks the mage and the mage freezes as if turned into a statue. Another mage is frozen by the creature before it attacks the muton.

Mako picks himself up for the second time during his boxing match with the muton. André kills the gargoyle like creature before it can get to any of us. Grace finally downs the muton with a fourth strike from her sword.

Midnight rushes forward and downs one of the frozen mages. Mako rushes forward and punches the other frozen mage into a wall. André turns the corner and fires at some black nightmare of a creature with long tentacle like arms. It falls and dies but unfortunately that frees up the 2 mages who were fighting it and one of them launches a stun ball. Grace charges the other and impales him with her sword. André takes out the last one.