Snips, Royston, and Martine Eloise put together a team for a little run with a lower payout that looked not terribly dangerous: The Butch Killers gang had acquired a valuable tech item and kept it in one of their local gang turfs. It was also not too far away, and so Snips understimated the job, as she so often does.

Royston brought the robots Costa and Roger, and Martine Eloise tried to recruit a fellow hacker called Wicked Flynn … but he rebuffed her. Royston’s friend Woody tried again and brought him aboard. Martine Eloise hired another hacker instead, Leah Veillon, who had the proper looks: violet hair, red eyes, toughster style; but less powerful software on her cyberdeck. She also brought Kendal along, since a nomad is always useful. Snips brought trusty Randal — who had levelled up and demanded a full share now, which he got — and Adelard. Two fresh player characters were the Ronin Darwin and the Sneak Veil. And to top things off, Royston hired a Face, Isolde Wescott. She might come in handy to negotiate for the treasure, so we thought.

Moving out into the Wastes, the group ran into a bank of fog. They moved onward slowly, scanning the fog for bots and cyberware to be on the safe side. Suddenly seven humans faded in from the fog. The group decided to step aside and let them pass, but they did not want to pass: They were lowlifes armed with cheap knives and metal tools who stepped forward to inspect our gear and started bullying us “Fine stuff you have there… show it to us. Come on, why not share with a fella!”

Isolde tried to earn her keep and negotiate with them, but they just brushed her aside. Then, just as Snips moved in to aid her with nonlethal violence, one of them cracked open Isolde’s skull with a tyre iron.

Gloves off

A fight broke out in earnest, and the lowlifes attacked for real. But Randal distracted half of them by activating their phones and beepers, Adelard sheared off a brute’s arm with the power tool, and Woody took out the one who had murdered Isolde with a shotgun at point blank range. Snips hated to lose someone again, and pulled out her hatchet. She took on the biggest and meanest of the guys and hacked his gut right open. In a moment, only three of the attackers were left standing and ran. Snips followed the wounded big guy and sheared off the back of his head to bring him down. Her tolerance for needlessly attacking fellow travellers was down to zero.
Two of the bullies escaped into the fog – hopefully with a lesson learned.

Snips took up that tyre iron. Who knows what it might be useful for.

Minimal Risk Tactics

Close to the target area the fog lifted, and the group saw a group of wild dogs in the distance. They decided to avoid the animals by a wide berth, and that worked.

In the gang block, lots of Graffiti helped orientation. Snips advocated for minimal risk, again: We went in very sneakily and scouted out the block as quietly as possible. Snips’ goal: Find just the target stash or person, extract it without fuss, and disappear – ideally with no-one the wiser.

The target building had three floors, and it even had electrical power and lights on. A small alleyway with some trash and graffiti, and a back exit to the left, a main entrance in front, and two storey building right next to it. Martine Eloise was able to identify the target signal somewhere in there, on floor 2 or 3. Royston inspected the building with Costa, and found security cameras in most rooms, and metal bars in front of some windows. Only one room, on the back, had neither, and a computer inside. Snips assumed that the two doors would be secured with traps or alarms, so she opposed trying them.

She led the way up to the roof, to break into the building at leisure.

Cat Burglary

Snips and Veil crawled up like cats, and the Nomad Kendal was strong enough to pull himself up, but the tech users, true to cliché, struggled up the rope, scratched the walls with their gear, and made some amount of noise, which triggered angry dog barking inside.

Snips pulled up the rope after the stragglers and the team spent a turn resting quietly up there, gazing up at the sky without moving, while downstairs guards opened windows to look out, and doors clipped and clapped, but since the gang members found nothing and nobody, they told the dogs to cut it and things quieted down. There was no skylight or stairwell up on the roof, just a flat area, so we were not worried.

Hacking the Security systems was next,
but failed: All old-school cable circuits, no wireless connections.

But Costa had identified one window on floor 2 with a computer and no camera, so that was where Snips rappelled down to. With the tyre iron she cleared off the broken window glass, then she climbed in to inspect the computer.

Gunfighters

Suddenly 6 Butch Killers came around the corner and things went sideways – as they always do, out in the wastes.

The gang members noticed the broken glass and the rope, and Randal tried to distract them with his function, but he got only half of them. [The incident made clear that the function “Distract” was written too strong, so this situation is one that has a direct impact on the next iteration of the rules.]

A battle broke out between the undistracted guys on the street and the party on the roof. Like in the old west! Wicked Flynn the hacker got hit and died on this roof, and Martine Eloise got wounded and fell back out of sight.

Some gangers fell, one of the Butch Killers screamed crazy stuff and fired up with guns akimbo, high on some hard drugs, so it took a while to take him down. The last survivor of those six turned tail and ran, but too late: The noise of concentrated gun fire had attracted more.
Five crazy gang members stormed closer from across the street, bringing axes and hatchets to a gunfight, and wanted to crawl up the rope, but took some heavy fire. That did not deter them, they wanted to climb up to us to cut us like onions, but Royston severed the rope and that was that for now. The crazies ran around the corner to enter the building.

Meanwhile, two more guys with auto-shotguns came into Snips’ room. Their first salvo missed the lithe little sniper and disrupted the plaster at the walls, and she took the hint and monkeyed up the wall, back to the roof. The two guys came out the window and crawled up after her by punching handholds into the wall with their insane fists, impervious to hurt like robots.

Indeed, they were Synths, and they climbed up fast and started to dish out damage. They got hit a lot by burst fire and rifles, and carved up by Snips with her handy tomahawk. From their wounds leaked white cooling fluid. Lots of shouting, hacking, and shooting, reduced the two menaces to scrap metal and plastic in a pool of white liquid.

Battle won, but war only just beginning: After this insane fight, all ideas of stealth are just fluff in the wind. We have started a hot war inside gang territory, and our half-baked plans are in shambles.

We are on a roof, with one neighbouring building right next to us, presumably dead and empty. All other buidings are either across major streets or across one small alley jump.

Next up: Escape with long odds.

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Snips 1 – Fighting Dogs
Snips 2 – Fighting Robots
Snips 3 – Fighting Swordsmen
Snips 4 – Fighting Kids
Snips 5 – Fighting Dreadnoughts
Snips 6 – Fighting Running from the Boss
Snips 7 – Fighting Cops
Snips 8 – Fighting in the Pharmacy
Snips 9 – Fighting Cats
Snips 10 – Fighting Lions
Snips 11 – Fighting Code
Snips 12 – Fighting Chaos
Snips 13 – Fighting Words
Snips 14 – Fighting Mechas
Snips 15 – Fighting in Cubicles
Snips 16 – Fighting Fire
Snips 17 – Fighting Frogmen

Snips 18 – Fighting Raiders
Snips 19 – Fighting Rivals

Snips 20 – Fighting Frog Commandos
Snips 21 – Fighting in Cyberspace
Snips 22 – Fighting Greed

Snips 23 – Fighting Butch Killers
Snips 24 – The Head of Alfredo Garcia

Snips Special: Messy Mission
Snips Special: Gentlemessy
Snips Special: Razor Clause
Snips Special: Pro Level

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Photo by Anastase Maragos on Unsplash