It would be half past one in the afternoon, and with clear blue skies around the private jet that their client had loaned them for their flight to Lisbon. Their client even taking measures to ensure that all could fit comfortably inside the aircraft. Since the last thing the client needs is an annoyed shadowrunner.

On the outside of the plane, it looked generic, but on the inside, it was certainly easy to be comfortable, as if the client cared about their well-being while using one of his private aircraft. There were plenty of seats, a table, and even a tv to help pass the time until the plane reached its destination. Along with some refreshments.

They are in the final stretch to Lisbon after several hours in the air, and their Mr. Johnson looks like an average one with a black suit and shaded glasses. He is a human with a bald head and a clean-shaven face. He was busy looking at a tablet and was sitting near the cockpit. Barely making a sound as he focused on whatever he was looking at while occasionally touching it and typing in stuff on the tablet.

Now, what our team of Shadowrunners are doing to pass the time is up to them. Meanwhile, the team's resident shaman and healer, a oni wearing a black coat with black clothes and pants who goes by Bomoh. He was busy watching the tv after taking a long nap. Specifically, the channel he had flipped to was currently on a new channel and right now. It kept his attention despite him looking somewhat bored and was flipping a good-sized coin with his right hand. As if waiting for something or someone to grab his attention.

Reinhard 'Tenno' Martin

Tenno needed nuyen to live, and had been steadily regaining a measure of ambition, or just a will to live so that he can stick it to the Corpos. So the young man had decided to join the team of Runners going to that Mr. Johnson looking for competent people... Which he technically was. He recognized very few of the faces around him, and even then only vaguely; good - They were not too notorious. Going up to the Oni shaman, the young man, clearly not having shed the last remnants of boyhood, streached out his hand for a shake and said, "Greetings; my name is Tenno - I'm a Mystic Adept specializing in anything that requires straight-up endurance and various barriers."

As for the rest, he'd wait for them to speak up or move around, but for now, he'd try and chat up the Oni, take a few drinks and pastries, and occassionally scan the Astral and Physical planes with his 'special eyes' just to make sure there was no surprise treachery or ambush - Or because he was bored.

With boredom came a slight simmer of anger, anger that the Flux State had not succeeded in defending itself long enough against the enemy, anger that at the end of the day, mutual aid and co-operative networks of defense weren't enough. That the Corpos had won just like they always had. That he had to work for them in order to stick it to them; irony of ironies.

And underneath it all was the memory of torment. Of years in Saeder-Krupp's clutches and being subjected to their sadistic whims. But he was no edgelord, not yet; he'd put up a brave face for his fellow Runners, smile and nod and try and be friends. Like them, so he can be liked in turn.

Then maybe there can be some redemption for him, redemption for his failures and that time when he had accepted his captors' power over him, that they had broken him.

That was something he did not want to acknowledge had ever happened.

@Theyra

CAPTCHA reclined in a chair, one hand lazily resting atop the seat controls whilst the other rested over her eyes. By all appearances the woman had drifted off to sleep shortly after the flight had left the ground, and while in a sense that may be true it was not totally so. Her body lay still, but her mind wandered afar. It ranged across the matrix, hopping from grid to grid with only the slightest speed bumps of data trail intersections slowing her down. The Global Grid was always a mess, and being so high in the air meant that general distance noise and altitude chatter was interfering with her Persona-- even so, leaping across the globe via the Matrix was a simple affair and CAPTCHA knew where she was going.

Shifting onto the Seattle Metroplex Grid was effortless, her persona's subscription key being recognized opening the proverbial gates to the city for her as soon as she reached for it. From there, locating her downtown apartment was child's play. She ranged through the security cameras, pulling up data feeds from her hasty exit a few days prior. With the speed granted by raw data contact with her mind, she fast forwarded through and overlayed multiple days of visual feeds at once as she hastened through the week of time since she left. Four days after her exit, three days before the present, the door to her apartment suddenly exploded inwards as smoke filled the room. She waved her hand over the virtual stream of the data, switching the feeds to thermal imaging-- only to find that the smoke was heat-laden, smothering even the thermal imaging feeds. CAPTCHA digitally chuckled and shifted into a separate device in the living room.

The motion sensors installed in the floor paneling of the high end apartment's walls combined their datum feeds with the cameras, granting outlines of forms within the smokey visuals. Heavy footsteps, a stooped figure, lumbering gait- a heavily armored troll. It had put the boot to her door and come in first. At the troll's back came a diminutive figure, some dwarf variant if the gap in footsteps was anything to note, and finally footfalls that barely registered. She brought up the MAD analyser in the doorframe and noted that the dwarf and troll were carrying heavy cyberware, but not the third figure who came into the room.

Next came the audio feeds. Three omnidirectional microphones- the doorhandle, which was giving fuzzy feeds after slamming into the wall, an obvious game station setup on the home entertainment station below the trid, and the final one a concealed skimmer drone above the chandelier concealed in a light fixture. The trio of data feeds provided a complex overlay of accurate positional data and completed the previously obscured image for CAPTCHA.

"Slitch is gone." The troll barked, sweeping into her bedroom. "Recent, too, soykaf's still on the nightstand."

"Quiet." The dwarf- a woman- hissed in a shrill voice. "Any sign of her, Slant?"

Slant. She knew that name, that explained the third figure. Slant was bad for business. The thick southern drawl of an ork spoke, finally concreting the position of that lightly-stepping third figure;

"She's long gone, two steps ahead."

"What now?" the dwarf sounded exasperated.

"If the hen's not at roost, then she's on the range." Slant clicked his tongue. Already the smoke was beginning to clear, and she could make out the infuriating stetson hat of the tall ork through the clearing feeds. "'Sides, you really think this was gonna be this easy--"

The sound of a shotgun erupted from her bedroom, and CAPTCHA chuckled to herself as she watched the scene of chaos unfolded. A troll, wrestling with a Doberman drone toting a double-barrel shotgun. Said troll lifting the drone and hurling it out of a window, causing an alarm to trip. The dwarf drawing two machine pistols and hitting the dirt as a multi-armed serving drone in the kitchen whirled to life and began to throw a series of knives into the living room. Slant narrowly avoiding a cake knife by casually leaning to the side. The blazing sight of a fire spirit as it appeared before him, its flaming hands grabbing the serving drone and melting its limbs to slag even as it continued to flail its appendages. The dwarf firing two streams of bullets through the glass of her coffee table, a series of micro-explosions ripping into the sentry turrets that had just deployed from their housings in the roof. The troll barreling into the living room with an Ares Duelist on its back, a sword-arm thrust deeply into its lower body while the other tried to coil around the troll's neck. The troll twisting in its sprint and leaping, slamming its back- drone, blade, and all- into the concrete support beam in the corner of the living room. His howl as he ripped the blades from his body and slammed the barely-functioning Duelist into the floor, then crushed its pilot-housing underfoot.

"Mm. Torch the place." Slant drawled, turning to stride from the room. On the way out the door he kicked a hairbrush deftly off the ground and into his hand. He paused at the threshold, lifted the brush to the nearest camera, and lifted his head to let his red eyes pierce into the camera feeds. "...Be seein' you around, CAPTCHA, can't run forever."

And the last thing in the data stream was Slant and his crew making their exit as that fire spirit spread its arms, flames growing as if bidden from the floor itself, and engulfed the entirety of the apartment in.

CAPTCHA yawned, sitting up in her chair as she thumbed the seat controls and sat up. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms, her legs trembling as they mimicked the motion. At last she smacked her lips and rolled her neck, sitting up straight in the chair. Without even opening her lips, she spoke to the others on the plane in a private manner;

Hoi there chummers, having a nice flight? CAPTCHA introducing herself properly at last.

The message would seamlessly, and simultaneously, flow into each member of the team's commlink-AR field. It would be visible as a benign scrolling message in cybereyes or as a simple text message on the physical device itself, but as an addition to her message the trid screen before Tenno and Bomoh would distort its news broadcast as CAPTCHA projected her Living Persona onto its screen, lounging on the news table and counting the flowers in her bridal bouquet. The equally attractive, though distintly corpse-ish, figure on the screen winked at the two in front of the trid display in a coquettish manner.

I don't know this J well, but international work is always messy. Just glad that I could fit the Excalibur on the plane. I run recon and matrix support primarily, but in a pinch my babies can act as fire support too. Don't be a stranger, I don't bite.

---

---

Harmless text scrolled slowly across the contacts that Nadya wore. A friendly greeting that sent a shiver down her spine. She was wary of the Matrix. She didn't understand the Matrix. Not really. Not like she understood magic. Not like she understood violence. She didn't trust the deckers, riggers, and technomancers that lived there. And she didn't appreciate someone, even a teammate, beaming text across her eyes uninvited. She buried the small frown that followed beneath a gentle smile. Feeling her claws shifting expectantly.

Barely looking up from her cards, Nadya stretched a hand protectively over the growing pile of bottle caps, nicknacks, and small objects that were piled on the table in front of her. A collections of winnings she had acquired piece by piece from the large troll sitting across from her over the unfolding hours. Makeshift chips that they had hastily assigned Nuyen values to in a smattering of Vietnamese slang, insults, and rude gestures.

"I'm Wildfire," Nadya said, turning a steady glance towards the three strangers scattered around the cabin. Polishing off the glass of vodka she had been nursing, she offered another serene smile, "I'm the muscle."

She nodded towards Frost, "And that's Frost, she's the charmer."

Behind her mask, in the looming distance, Nadya could feel her nerves fraying. She hadn’t slept since they had accepted the job and the calm of meditation could only do so much to stave away the weariness that ate at her bones. The soft, cushioned seats offered her no respite. Comfort and class didn’t leave her with the space to relax among a rag tag group of walking uncertainties. She had eaten lightly, picking at small cuts of meat and cheese, deciding that poison or a sedative was unlikely. The puffers of Bliss she had tucked into one of the concealed pockets of her flight jacket sang their familiar siren song. Later she promised herself. When she and Frost were alone. She trusted the troll more than she trusted herself. She knew that she would keep her safe.

Picking up a Lightning Cola bottle cap in her left hand, Nadya rolled the garishly bright bottle cap across her knuckles. Holding the glowing neon disc in front of her as if examining some precious object she winked playfully at Frost, tossing it to her in a sudden flash of motion, "We said, these were worth 50¥, no? Your stack is growing unfortunately sparse, my dear sister. At this rate, I worry that you will not have any funds remaining by the time we reach Lisbon. Maybe poker's just not your game, Frost. We can always play something else..."

---

Frost's eyes barely flickered up from behind her cards as Nadya introduced the two of them to the rest of the assembled runners. A shaman, another adept and a technomancer. A motley crew if she'd ever seen one- though then again most assembled runner crews were. At least they checked most of the necessary boxes of a crew. Frost preferred running jobs with just Nadya and herself, cleaner and less corners to watch, but such was the nature of freelance work outside of their usual circles. She was used to it, if still not somewhat grumpy about it.

"Da." Frost grunted in agreement, with Wildfire, her own way of an introduction. Her voice was a low, gravelly, but still feminine baritone. "Pretty as picture."

Frost shifted in her seat, her boot lifting to rest on an impressively large duffel bag of presumably gear. Beneath the fabric, untold pounds of metal, plastics and composites jingled and clacked against one another. "People seem to stay on my good side wherever I go. Guess I have a way with words."

Frost chuckled a bit to herself at the poorly disguised joke, the rumble quickly dulling as she took a look at her hand- or more specifically the tiny cards within it. She dipped her hand forward, a thick hand backstopping the flying chip and lightly dropping it into her own, quickly diminishing piles of caps and tchotchkes.

"I'd be doing a lot better if you hadn't dealt me the same hand four games in a row." The troll grumbled, setting the cards down and standing up, finally frustrated enough to give up on the game. Her horns almost scraped the top of the plane as she stood to her full height. "How much longer until we land?"

Frost looked back and forth, seemingly displeased with how little space there was to walk around in on the plane before sitting back down, this time next to her adoptive sister instead of across.

"You need to rest." She urged quietly. "Can't watch my back if you can't keep your eyes open."

Intan flipped his coin one more time before catching it mid-air despite the mini scare of the text that CAPTCHA sent him. He was not expecting it and would have preferred she just say something. The Matrix is not his area of expertise, and he is more knowledgeable about magic and medicine. Still, it's nice to know that they have someone who is skilled with the Matrix. Since Intan has noticed that they do not have a Decker, they have everything else but that. Hopefully, having a Technomancer is enough.

Still, now that everyone has introduced themselves, it is only fair that he does as well. So he turned down the TV and spoke in a friendly tone. "I am Bomoh, and I am a Shaman. I will be the one healing you guys with magic or with first aid. Though I am not so good with cyberware... healing the flesh is my strength, not the metal parts." Sounding a bit sorry in the last sentence.

A shortcoming he knows too well, but he was trained to be a doctor and not one that dealt with cyberware. Intan does know someone that could be a help in that department but she is doing her own thing at the moment. But the team seems solid enough to the eye and no one has done anything that is a red flag to him.

"I think that we are landing soon?" Intan sounded unsure as they had been in the air for hours already and they should be close right? That was his thought really. So Intan turned his head to their Mr. Johnson and asked, "Are we landing soon?"

Mr. Johnson, barely looking at Intan or the group from his tablet, simply replied, "Yes" in a monotone voice, and his eyes went back to the tablet.

"Okay, soon, so that is good, and well, if anyone wants to watch something on the TV, just say something, otherwise, I am going to leave it here." He put the remote down on the armrest next to him and went to lay back in his chair. The flight had been comfortable so far and it is rare he travels by private jet let alone for a job. But, the client is really not sparing expenses, it seems, and now he just wonders what may happen if they fail. Though he soon dismissed the thought, not time to be thinking of failure. Especially, when they have not even landed yet.

However, just to be sure of one thing before they landed, Intan asked the group this. "So has anyone here been to Lisbon before? Just curious if anyone has any experience with the city that could help us in finding the girl. I have never been there so I can not help much in that regard."

"Never been." CAPTCHA replied easily, her voice ringing aloud. "Been to Berlin, been to London, been to Hong Kong, but never been to Lisbon."

She rises out of her chair and stretches in a languid manner, yawning as her eyes flutter awake fully. CAPTCHA's next steps took her over to that trid screen before Bomoh and Tenno, which she rapped her knuckles upon lightly. Her Matrix Persona mimicked the action and danced to the 'front' of the screen to meet CAPTCHA's fist with the digital equivalent of a fist bump. CAPTCHA winked at herself on the screen, and the corpse-bride half of her brain blushed before racing off-screen.

"I'll see what I can dig up on the quick." CAPTCHA ran a hand through her hair in an almost lazy way as she leaned against the screen and shut her eyes. "We're closer now, noise isn't so bad..."

And before their eyes she digitally grasped the trid screen with her mind, claiming it for her matrix display. Within a few moments a map of the city projected from the trid screen, growing increasingly more detailed and complex as CAPTCHA rested against it. A strange limpness overcame her body and she seemed to sag against the device, her voice coming from the screen itself rather than her body as she next spoke;

"I hope you all like a rowdy place." her voice sounded playful and amused. "Corporate parliament, standard fare after the Eurowars, but there's a lot of SK bankrolling going on in the high level investments. Not gonna dig into that, just means there's eyes on the place. Wuxing is bound to be active in the port, I can't imagine them not having their golden fingers in the pie somehow. Conjecture, no time to verify, just spitballing how I see it. Lusiada is the ruling corp, and there's been a couple recent declarations about trying to combat the piracy and smuggling in the port. That tells me we'll have some shadows to work with, this sprawl isn't the shiniest. So long as we have good intel from Mr. Johnson over there, I think we'll be able to squeak through the cracks of this place."

The map focuses in on the port for a moment, detailing the unholy expanse of man-made islands and shipping lanes, and how the district appeared almost like an inflamed cancerous growth on the rest of the city that was bleeding into the ocean. The map shifted, momentary blips of traffic data flaring up as CAPTCHA raced her mind across the city-

But she hissed between her teeth, her eyes fluttering open. She wetted her lips and pulled away from the monitor, turning to back away from it as she studied her handiwork.

"And that's all GOD wants me to have today, I won't be able to jump onto a local grid until we land so unless we need more data in a pinch I'm taking it easy on the deck-work for now. I saw a few other headlines, but I don't think a mystery about a string of serial murders is going to be relevant to us. Once we're on the ground I'll get eyes in the air, but I'll be most comfortable if we can secure some wheels- particularly a van, otherwise I'll be trying to sneak Excalibur up alleyways."

By now she's backed to the rear of the cabin to flit her gaze down towards the ongoing series of poker games. She shifts her hips, sliding back easily onto the table to lean over the pot of 'gambled goods' and lean really really close to Wildfire and Frost. She raised an eyebrow as she studied them, then smirked for no discernible reason at all.

"Yep, I've got a good vibe about this crew. You all might be younglings, but that's no issue for me at all."

"Van would be good. Or Box truck." Frost agreed, her eyes half-heartedly scanning the map that CAPTCHA had set up for them. "Between the drones and the guns, I'd rather not be arrested for domestic terrorism." She and Nadya hadn't been this far west in a while- and had never been to Lisbon either for that matter. The streets looked cramped, but crowded and rowdy suited Frost's needs better than quiet and clear. It was easier for someone of her size to blend into a crowd when there was a crowd to blend into. A van would at least allow them to stow gear without getting stopped by cops every few steps.

"We'll need to set up a safe house. I'm not sharing a truck bed with this one." Frost grunted as she jabbed a meaty thumb at her sister. "I'm not sure how long we plan on staying in Lisbon, but if we're looking for a needle in a haystack, chances are we'll be here a while."

Being on the plane for so long and with so little information was more irritating than it was relaxing, and short of pacing up and down the plane cabin, Frost's aggravation was subtle, if still noticeable. She wasn't a fan of sitting around idly, and without any further information from their Mr. Johnson, all they were doing was basically twiddling thumbs and shooting the shit until they landed.

Leaning over, Frost reached over towards the plane's bar cart sitting conveniently close by- the two sisters having already raided the minibar for all its worth and grabbed a bottle of their acquired whiskey and a handful of tumblers. Their hosts had told them to make themselves at home after all. With surprising deft, especially given the relative size difference of her hands versus the glass, Frost quickly poured out a set of drinks and gestured for everyone to take one.

"Drink." Frost commanded, picking up one of the tumblers and downing the amber liquid instantly. "There are two types of people- those I shoot at, and those I drink with. Decide."

Reinhard 'Tenno' Martin

"Sure," Tenno said as he walked over and took a large sip of the burning alcohol from one of the glasses; he was a Mystic Adept; he can take this. Besides, it took him all he had not to lose himself in alcoholism when he found himself not just free, but with enough nuyen to buy... Drink.

Either way, he let the others plan; he had lost faith in his own intelligence and genius a long time ago. After all, nothing had saved them from the fall of the Flux State and the torment that had followed. An entire nation that claimed not to be a government; a state that was not a puppet of the corpos or a force for stasis. Good things never really lasted in this crapsack world, didn't they?

Without prompting, Tenno took another sip, then another, then yet another, before saying glumly, "The Flux State was a good thing. And it's never coming back. Not as it once was; the Corpos can leave Berlin tomorrow and it won't come back. No hope, no light, nothing besides hand-to-mouth survival in this fallen world."

He perked up, trying to regain the apperance of hope, "Well, that and the Nuyen; sorry for being a debbie downer - Let's enjoy ourselves! Did that mini-fridge have food?"

The hollowness of those words would be ignored by his team-mates; he was convinced of that. It didn't matter; he was determined to pull his own weight. Nevertheless, he started planning for if the 'Lost Heir' didn't actually want to be found, didn't actually want to succeed her father, or if her father was lying and had bad plans for his own flesh and blood. Should he bring it up with the rest? Would they agree to betray their contracts out of morality?

The answer to that was no, so Tenno would not tell them his suspicions. Besides, he was only one person, best not to rock the boat; he had learned his lesson in Saeder-Krupp's 'facilities'.

He was only as useful as those in power saw him as.

Enough! Just eat; maybe the mini-fridge had something with actual sugar and cocoa - That ought to actually lift one's mood!

---

---

"Here’s to not getting shot," Wildfire said, downing one of the glasses Frost had filled, with a gulp, and heavy exhale.

"By Frost or anyone else," she teased.

"Don’t worry adept," She added, "We’re just here for a payday, no need to concern yourself with the past. What’s done is done and always was."

Leaning against the drink cart, Wildfire twirled her empty glass, spinning it around as if it was some old Western revolver, rather than a fragile glass that would break if she dropped. Beaming with a smile that she felt thanks to the heat of the whiskey, she winked at the Technomancer, grateful for the show and distraction to keep Frost busy and off her back, "Rowdy sounds good, dirty sounds better, and you had me at cracks big enough for us to slip through."

Waving at the laconic Johnson, her voice was laced with sweetness, "Johnson-sama, what’s the budget for a ride? And somewhere to stay? As my sister so kindly pointed out, it would such a bother for her if she had to share a small bed with little ol’ me."