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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

From: Jaimie Nicholson <jaimie.nicholson@********.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Subject: Pyro hit
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 14:15:30 +1200
*****PRIVATE: RJohnson
>>>>>[You wanted to see the raid, so here it is.

The guy with the camera is one of your 'Raku goons, he had the thing
installed a couple of years back, so it's not SOTA, but it'll do.

+++++Begin footage

The opening scene is of a two-storied sporting goods shop, called in a
somewhat less than imaginative way "Rossi's Sporting Goods". It is early
morning, false dawn visible on the horizon as the cameraman checks the sky.


The word "go" lights up on the camera-man's vision, and he moves towards
the shop, bringing up an HK227 SMG. Reaching the doorway, he pauses and
checks the street. Ronin gets out of a parked Eurocar, carrying an Ares
Alpha assault rifle, dressed in black. The samurai crosses the road,
checking his rifle as he moves, and joins the camera-man. Said individual
holds up a hand as numbers start to count down in the corner of his vision.
Ronin waits until the count, relayed by the camera-man's fingers, reaches
two, then moves out of the doorway and out into the street. Taking a couple
of quick steps, he throws himself at the window, arriving and passing
through it milliseconds after it shatters inwards under some unseen impact
as the count reaches zero.

The camera-man moves around to look into Rossi's, and sees Ronin crouching
behind a shelf as a blast of gas boils out from further inside the shop. A
fire is visible behind the gas, lighting it up like some scene out of hell.

The source of the flame is revealed as a humanoid fire elemental, striding
out of the gas, and leaping to the top of Ronin's cover. Ronin rolls
backwards as the elemental leaps down on him from above, and the camera-man
opens up with his SMG. Distracted, the spirit loses sight of Ronin, who
attacks from the side with a baseball bat plucked from a nearby rack. The
spirit shouts in anger, backing off at speed and throwing a sheet of flame
at Ronin. The samurai ducks under the worst of it, his hair still singed by
the heat, and moves around a shelf, out of sight of both camera and spirit.
The camera-man draws a dai-Katana and moves forward, dropping his SMG to
hang from it's shoulder sling. The spirit rushes forwards, throwing itself
at the camera-man, who ducks and spins aside, sweeping his blade through
the fire elemental. It dives towards him, and the victim of it's attack
yells in terror. Before it can engulf the camera-man though, Ronin, barely
visible through the flames, rounds a shelf, bat raised above his head, and
strikes at the spirit with a shout. It disappears from the physical plain
with a wail, releasing the camera-man before any serious harm is done.

Ronin drops the bat and recovers his Alpha from the ground where he dropped
it, then looks at the camera.

"You okay?" he aks quielty, barely heard over the hissing of the
fire-prevention gas.

The camera-man nods, then slaps his Katana into it's scabbard and takes up
his SMG again. Two more black clad men move in from the street, one
carrying an HK227, the other bearing an Ares-Stoner GPHMG with a 200 or
more round belt. They move past the camera-man, into the thicker part of
the gas, Ronin just ahead of them. The camera-man follows, SMG at the
ready.

"Hows the astral battle going?" Ronin asks, talking to one of the Renraku
troops.

There is a brief pause, then the man he asked makes a hand-rocking gesture:
not bad, not good. Ronin nods, then finds the back wall of the shop and
sees the vent out of which the anti-fire gas is pouring. Looking at it for
a moment, he shrugs, then moves along the wall to the left. The others
follow, the camera-man bringing up the rear. At the corner of the shop,
where two walls meet, there is a doorway in the back wall. Ronin checks the
handle, then steps back and kicks it open, dropping back and rolling as he
does so. When no-one shoots at him, he gets up again, and takes a quick
look around the doorframe. Holding up a clenched fist, he moves through the
door, and the others follow. Beyond are stairs, and the group of men move
up them, pausing at the top. Again, Ronin checks the doorhandle, but this
time he opens the latch by hand before shoving it wide with his foot. When
no hail of bullets result, he moves through the door. Once at the top of
the stairs, the camera can no longer pick up any sign of the gas that is
filling up the downstairs room.

Moving into the room at the top of the stairs, the camera-man steps around
Ronin. There are two corridors leading away from the room, one towards the
street, the other running paralel to it. The camera-man, Ronin, and one of
the others move into the paralell corridor, leaving the man with the GPHMG
to watch the road-wards one. The three doors in the hallway are on the road
side of the corridor, and Ronin checks the first of them, finding a
bedroom. He is about to kick down the second of them, when there is a yell
from behind him, and the sound of the GPHMG opening up.

The camera-man spins, catching a glimpse of the gunner before he is
overwhelmed by the charge of another fire elemental. The spirit wraps
itself around him with a howl, and the gunner screams in agony as he starts
to burn. Ronin and the others sprint down the hall, Ronin moving first and
fastest, throwing himself into a flying kick to what appears as the
spirit's head. Passing through, he leaves a trail of flame, and the spirit
howls again. The camera-man arrives with his Katana as Ronin bounces off
the wall and spins to face the spirit, and they attack simultaneously. The
spirit abandons its victim and attacks the camera-man, but under his and
Ronin's double assault, it is quickly disrupted.

Just as it disappears though, a hail of bullets strikes down the
camera-man. He goes over backwards, head striking the wall, and his eyes
close for a moment. When they open again, the camera is pointed at the
ceiling. For the next ten or twelve seconds he stays that way, more gunfire
and the roaring explosions of mini-grenades sounding out of his field of
view. Then he gets his head up, taking a look towards the corridor. Ronin
is standing to one side of the entrance to it, holding the Ares GPHMG at
the ready, his Alpha slung across his back. All has gone quiet for the
moment, and Ronin takes advantage of this to move down the corridor, GPHMG
held in front of him, belted rounds jingling at his side. He moves out of
view, and the camera-man shuts his eyes again for a while, just after
catching a glimpse of the last uninjured Renraku man moving after Ronin.

The next time he opens his eyes, Ronin is back, holding the body of a small
man, either dead or stunned, over his shoulder.

"Pyro?" asks the camera-man.

Ronin nods, then helps the fallen man to his feet. The burned gunner
appears to be dead, but the other Renraku man brings the body along as the
team head down the stairs.

As they leave the shop, the group split up, Ronin heading for his car still
carrying the body of Pyro. Dumping it the vehicle's trunk, he pauses,
looking around, then comes back to the camera-man.

"Chip?" he asks, holding out his hand, palm up.

For a moment, the words "ejecting chip" flash on the top of the screen.

+++++End footage

Your astral hitters confined themselves to stunning attacks, so Pyro was
still alive, and once they'd cleaned out the spirits, I was able to reach
his comatose body and carry him off. Interrogation resulted in no happy
news, so he's dead now. I won't be back tonight, but I'll probably see you
sometime tomorrow. I'm not going rogue or anything, I just need some time
to think.]<<<<<
-- Ronin <19:14:34/03-19-58>

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.