Editing User:Gadget/Thicker Than Blood/Episode 2 (section)

==Hangover Cures==

After a long night of sitting in a holding cell or face down in the mud hiding from the cops, the runners were looking quite a bit the worse for wear. None had slept, and Jackie, despite her superior constitution, had managed to get hypothermia from being in the Pacific Northwest January cold and rain all night covered in wet mud and leaves. None of them had had anything to eat since the afternoon before, either. Needless to say, it was time for a hangover breakfast and a warm place to sleep the previous evenings shenanigans off.

Jackie barely managed to make it to Puyallup in one piece as her body began to shut down and her hypothermia grew worse, and she couldn't manage to do anything but terrify the clerk at the Overnight Motel into denying her a room. Luckily, Ling Ling and Two-Face had decided to take their cab straight to the motel and managed to find Jackie wandering in parking lot in time. Ling Ling procured a room while Two-face talked Jackie down and they got their fellow runner into a warm bath and gave her proper emergency hypothermia care. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine and Two-Faces know how, Jackie was stabilized in a little over an hour, and they were back to some of every runners greatest life problems...where and how to score some food and a couple of hours of sleep before getting back on the job. They, also, had to deal with the fallout of Cat's shenanigans and figure out how to cover their tracks before their job went sour.

Jackie had managed to contact her hacker friend Red with her coordinates before going into full hypothermic shock, and had asked him to help her with a data trail burn of the previous evening. When Red arrived at breakfast and the issue explained, and especially that Paku was involved, he quickly moved to help his friend and her fellow runners to break the trail of their commlinks, in exchange for a favor to be paid at a later date. While Red worked, Jackie and Ling Ling went to procure some new clothes for Jackie, Ling Ling got in touch with her Ancients ganger contact, Lao, about getting a new hacker for the team, she attempted to contact Paku to give him a status update, and Two-Face did some Astral recon of the Port of Tacoma and then summoned a very powerful fire spirit.

What Two-Face found at the Port of Tacoma holding center he had not been suspecting. The entire place was tainted, not only with the Astral resonance of the Tacoma Aroma, but something far more sinister that corrupted the entire docking area of the holding branch and particularly the warehouses themselves. He barely managed to avoid a resident watcher spirit, a translucent and many tentacled thing with a large central eye, as he researched the aura of the place and found that the background count had been created by some form of magically active drugs. None appeared to be present at the time, but they had been left an undeniable taint to the place. As two-Face continued to investigate he accidentally ran smack dab into another watcher spirit, which immediately set out an alarm and ran away. Two-face thinking it best to take a hasty retreat, left immediately to avoid further detection.

in the meantime, Lao was more than happy to help Ling Ling out, for a favor, and began to ask around. He eventually came to the fixer, Ariel, who was more than happy to put another of her representatives on the job...especially given that she owed Lao a number of favors. Ariel contacted Martin and laid out the meets details, and that he was to be very careful with Lao as he was a very dangerous individual who did not take kindly to being crossed. Martin loaded up his van and was on the way.

After a short get together with Red, and being reunited with their newly refitted commlinks, Ling Ling and Jackie walked in on the end of Two-Face's ritual summoning, and were contacted by Paku for his status update. ling Ling did a fine job of damage control, and won some points with him for taking the initiative on getting a new hacker. Jackie and Ling Ling were then off to procure their new comrade in arms.

Smartly, Jackie covered her head and wasn't wearing gang colors when she dropped ling Ling off at the Ancients hangout, and then made a hasty withdrawl from her rival gangs territory. Ling Ling was left to fend for herself, but being a semi-regular visitor and acquaintance of Green Satan's Black Banner gave her a lot of leeway with the gang members. Lao instructed her that there would be a new shipment soon and that he would like her help, that the hacker was on his way, and that she could wait in the rundown office of the Ancients warehouse. When Marin arrived, however, it was a very different story.

Parking his white van in front of the Ancients hangout, and radiating social awkwardness and timidity, the gangers swarmed like sharks to a bleeding meal. Harassing the Martin inside his van, they quickly intimidated him out of it and proceeded to rob him at gun point until he managed to convince them that he really was asked to come by Lao. Lao got Martin his shoes back, and instructed him that Martin would owe him a favor for saving his ass, and then and took him to Ling Ling. She negotiated Martin into joining the run and metaphorically wrapped him around her little finger. Meanwhile, Lao listened in on the proceedings and then left them to the ends. Upon leaving, Lao threw Martin's armored jacket at him, after having retrieved it from the other Ancients, as a reminder that he owed him one and that he aimed to collect.

Upon returning to the room at the Overnight Motel, Ling Ling and Jackie crashed out while Two-Face and Martin worked on a plan and Martin did some recon, information gathering, and hacking on the Port of Tacoma's main node.