After our first couple of clashes with the Butch Killers Diamondback and Alexa stayed back to nurse wounds and keep an eye on the cars and motorcycles. The rest of the team packed up and went back to the gang HQ in a roundabout way to let Malkin climb up on a wall with few windows.

He monkeyed up and barely managed to avoid getting seen by six new gang members coming in from the northwest. Once they were gone around the corner, the rest of us dragged our sorry butts up to the roof on a rope that Malkin dropped for us. From up there we spied, through a skylight, for gangers on the top floor who peered out into the streets from the windows.

Trackers

Malkin spied the six coming out of the entry window again, with the dog handler and a gaggle of dogs. They followed the path that we took earlier, apparently on our scent, and therefore going towards our wheels. We could not have that, so Malkin tried to snipe the dog handler. He missed!

He won the initiative for the next round and tried again: This time he hit the man and took him out. The dogs are loose! The other six gangers turned around and opened up at the roof, but none hit.

Heavy Fire

Meanwhile, at the same moment that Malkin took his first shot, we broke the skylight and threw molotov cocktails at the four lookouts. One burned fully and died, two burned a little, one was missed entirely. It followed a prolonged shootout from the roof into the room, with lots of misses. Beijing finished two of the guys, the last tried to flee through the door but couldn’t open it. Snake Tooth and Kira both jammed their guns trying to get him, until Kendal blasted him away with his tech pistol.

The group turned around to find Malkin dead: The gangers got him while we were busy wasting ammunition missing our targets. And all that ruckus destroyed any chance we ever had to go in surprising anyone. Our kidnapping target would now definitely be armored up and well protected. It was completely unclear how we could manage to take her. But Kira reminded us that Snake Tooth had the Tranquilizer drug. If he could manage to hit her he might take her out alive and we could still win.

Cunts

Kendal dropped into the room as soon as the fires went out and inspected the dead. They had phones, and he checked their call records for something that looked like “boss”. And indeed, there it was, “The Boss”, right the top entries of the call history. Kendal called her and she picked up.
“Have you fixed our problem?” she asked.
“Not really,” said Kendal, and drew breath to offer her a chance to give herself up. While he still struggled for the right phrasing, she said:
“Then why do you call me, idiots? Kill those cunts and call me again when it is done!”
With that she hung up on him.

Seemed like she was not even in the building, maybe not even in the block. Bad news for our plan, and our revenue.

Room to room

Snake Tooth kicked open the door and went room to room with Beijing, finding nothing of value, until he met a gasoline trap. It doused him in liquid but he managed to jump out of the way before it ignited. The room behind the trap was cleared out too, so it was all for nothing. Being covered in gasoline made him more careful so Snake Tooth fell back for now.

Kendal tried to crack open the next door but failed – at least he got shot at from the other side so we knew we had found someone. Beijing kicked the door down so that Kendal could fill the room with fire from another Dragonbreath round (Thanks, Santa!!).

Two die, two flee, Beijing and Kendal hunt them down and kill them one floor lower in a big, nearly emptied showroom. Meanwhile the others find a bunch of boxes with semi-valuable clothes and glitter. And a lift! They prepared the boxes for transport, as a replacement profit for not getting our target.

Locked in

We went through all the places we could go, but we failed to open up the front entrance Kendal failed to break open the door to the room with the broken window, where we had met the dog handler the first time around. A weird trap got him and injected him with some booster so he got harder to kill for a while.

Still, we were locked in. So we decided to take the fire door out. That triggered a loud alarm. We took up the boxes and legged it. But we did not get far, because the alarm drew a gang car: It was only a clunker car, but it still looked hard with all the gang tags sprayed and metal parts glued on.

Boss Lady

Behind the wheel was none other than our target, the boss lady. Tough looking, eternal scowl twisting her face, and both arms metal. She stayed in the car though, and only let five Parkour monkeys jump, roll, twist and vault out of the back seat. They laughed and jeered and brandished their various guns akimbo.

Overconfidence is not good in the wastes, though. We quickly mowed down three of them, and Crusher the dog tore out the fourth one’s throat.

The last guy wised up, turned around and ran away like Usain Bolt. Crusher the dog zipped right after him, and neither the Boss Lady’s call to her man nor Kira’s whistling for the dog could change any of that.

The gang leader got behind her car and pushed it at us like a siege shield on wheels. But our nerves held and we let her come. We had no reason to give up our own cover behind some old husks of burned out cars.

Epic battle

Then she jumped out and brandished some very weird melee weapon, a huge megascythe. She held her own quite well against Kendal and Beijing duking it out with her blade against blade, while Snake Tooth attempted to stick her with his Tranq needle. He failed and failed and failed, though, so Boss Lady kept swinging. Lucky for us, she also kept missing, and the one time she hit Beijing she rolled very low on the damage — a high roll on that weird weapon of hers powered by her cyberarms would slice any level 3 character right in two.

As it were, though, our two swordfighters gave good, and whittled her down with deep cuts and damage to her cyberarms. They rolled all their damage in the top tiers, plus they had three attacks against her one. There was the question of holding back a little, trying to subdue her, to allow Snake Tooth to finally place that needle. But trying to grab her did not really pin her because she was so strong. So Kendal spat out and thought fuck it! I won’t risk Beijing for money.

The knives stayed out, and it ended with Kendal’s sword dealing the finishing strike. The Butch Killer Lieutenant went down.

Homewards

And we had a car!

We stashed her body, the boxes full of junk, and what valuables her crazy clowns had in the trunk. Kira had managed to get Crusher back, and we drove to our alley. There we reassigned vehicles and then navigated back home through the ugly streets of the wastes.

On the way home we even saw members of the Radiant Family, but we had no way of talking to them and anyway, what should we say? So we happily waved greetings and drove on.

Back in the safe zone we got weird looks for driving such an obvious Butch Killers car, and we had to pay extra for a specialist who removed the gang bling and re-painted our new set of wheels in a nice Burgundy Red, to complement our Cobalt Blue primary car. We sold the damaged cyberarms and the content of the boxes, and we informed the Radiant Family that sadly, there had been an accident, so there would be no kidnapping of the lieutenant they sought.

No money for us, and Malkin dead, but: a second car!

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More Wasters.

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Photo by Paul Einerhand on Unsplash