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Chica Mendez     Seattle Metroplex, Redmond District...

    The warpgate that Ainsley emerges through appears to have grown in inside an abandoned building, up in the fifth floor. Much of the west wall has fallen away, leaving the building exposed to the wet, cold weather that was pretty common this time of year. At least the rain is keeping the smog down, but the pollution made it acidic.

    The immediate area is filled with similarly ruined buildings and wrecked streets. It's pretty easy to tell why this place is called the Barrens. Really, there doesn't seem to be a single living soul out on the street today. Even the most doped-out person knew that staying out in the rain without protection was a bad idea.

    Mystically, the place isn't much more lively. THere doesn't appear to be anything in this building worth notice, but there might be something... Something distant and plaintive, coming from the southwest. A call for aid sent out across the Astral, perhaps.
Ainsley     It was cold, so Ainsley was glad she brought a few clothing items to get warm and stay warm. She stepped out of the warp gate and into an empty structure... The silence aside from rain is what caught her attention first. Then she approached the hole in the wall, and turned her sky blue eyes into the bleak expanse of ruin. She squinted as she looked around, searching for signs of life. Finding nothing, not even a scavenger to scurry out of her sight, she activates her Arcane Sight, peering beyond the physical to find signs of anything else.

    When she spots the call for help, the lizard woman looks up into the rain, and then lets out a gentle sigh to herself. She pulls her hood up over her head and pulls out an umbrella, and tests the rain here by holding it out into the droplets for a moment. She knows about acidic rain, because her world has plenty of areas with the same problem. She just wants to make sure it won't eat through her umbrella.

    After that, she starts making her way toward the southwest to locate this soul in need. She makes sure to drop down where the least amount of people would see her and the fewest cameras would detect her, knowing this world has technology; she saw signs of it in the air with her Sight. The Signal was hard to miss.
Chica Mendez     The good news was, the rain wasn't so acidic that it'd eat through plastic very quickly, but after spending enough time out she might want to consider getting a new one. The longer she's out, the more discolored and thin it'll probably get. As she made her way down onto the street level, it becomes clear that the streets are pretty labyrinthine around here. Some of them end up being cut off by ruined streets or collapsed buildings, so she'll have to slip into some of the alleyways to get around.

    Thankfully for her, there doesn't seem to be much of a Matrix signal here. There's barely any reception here in the first place. What she finds on her way, however, is people! Huddled into corners and places where the rain can't reach them. It starts off small, but as she gets closer towards her destination more seem to pop up from nowhere. Most of them are slumped and hidden away by coats or blankets, but some of them are up and about, and they give the passer-by a hungry look as she crosses their path. Some of them look between her and the rain above with uncertainty--whether or not they want to brave the rain unprotected.

    There's a break in the buildings near one of these groups of people that shows what seems to be the source of the distress: an abandoned hospital. The windows are busted, metal corroded, doors no longer on their hinges. The letters barely hanging to the side of the building read 'Redmond General Hospital'.

    There spiritual call seems to be coming from the upper floors, but the building has seemingly been wired for full Matrix access in the basement.
Ainsley     The state her umbrella gets into is worrying. Ainsley makes sure not to step on the ground too much, either, as she doesn't want to rest her feet in the acidic moisture. She tends not to wear shoes. Her path through alleys and around destroyed structures means she glances at people here and there that aren't doing so great. People that are in a terrible state. People that give her hungry looks, that she wishes she could help in a way that wouldn't get her mugged for her trouble. It doesn't distract her away from her path, though, or even put a frown on her face. She just looked back at them, some right in the eyes, and continued on her way.

    She had more important things to worry about.

    She found the hospital. Shambles would be too kind of a word. She frowned at it, because it was the most unfortunate part of all of this world she had seen... a place of healing having fallen apart. She enters the building carefully through the front doors, floating over hazards like broken glass and rusted metal. She puts away her umbrella when she gets inside, and begins seeking a path upstairs, but she's cautious about her surroundings. If it has a connection to this Matrix below -- she could see it from her vantage near the warp gate -- then it's likely to have people living here. People that might not like visitors.

    She scanned around, searching out for traps. Traps of a certain complexity might require wires or mechanisms. The trap itself would be invisible to her, but computerized components would be bright and shiny by contrast. Her Sight granted her some safety, so she could find the source of that astral pleading.
Chica Mendez      There's some muttering from the chipjack-wearing vagabonds, getting agitated, but the rain still held them back. One of them almost decides to go through with it, but he's pinned by Ainsey's stare, even if he can't see it. Eventually he slowly shakes his head and backs away, and the others join him after casting dubious looks over in the Quetzal's direction. The last thing they wanted was to rob a potential shadowrunner.

    The inside of the the hospital is about as badly touched as the outside, with a lot of trash and glass strewn about, a few upturned gourneys, ruined tile--the works. There doesn't seem to be any active traps here, though there's a door behind the reception desk that seems to have been wired with a camera and a keypad that're still working. The rest of the building's electricity is long dead.

    Then in her Sight, Ainsley might see her. A spirit on the second floor roaming the hall in the Astral Plane. It falters for a moment when it notices an Awakened here. Then it boldly comes forward--and ejects itself from the Astral Plane to form into what looks like a nurse in a early 2000s appearance. A human, blond woman with blank eyes.

    "Why have you come?"... It asks aloud.
Ainsley     Ainsley takes note of the keypad and camera in particular. She frowns more at the sight of it... it's a strange concept, to set up shop within a hospital. Especially one that is clearly haunted as the lizard woman soon discovers. She follows the apparition's path to her, the ghost eventually approaching her. Noticing the invisible gets you noticed. She makes note of that fact when the spirit confronts her directly.

    She doesn't show an ounce of fear. Instead, she deactivates her Sight again and speaks to the ghost in a gentle voice, "I approached because I saw a call for help." She adjusts her coat and pulls down her hood, continuing to speak, "Was that you? Do you need help?" she asks, gesturing at the ghost with an uncurling of her fingers. An offer to be the person to help, if this is the right spirit.

    Her arm drops to her side. As she unzips the coat, it reveals she had a longsword hidden under there. She's got no hostile intent, but you can never be too prepared when travelling to foreign worlds.
Chica Mendez     An offer of help? The spirit looks upon Ainsley warily for being so willing to come forward when she'd been ignored or dismissed before. "You are not like them," She whipsers. "You do not have metal that destroys the soul. You do not have an injector of poison... And you are not metahuman." Slowly, she nods as if thinking to herself before she speaks again.

    "I am a Spirit of healing. When magic first returned, I came to this place to ease the suffering of those we could. The hospital was abandoned long ago.... I stayed to calm the minds of those who hid here." Suddenly, she's gritting her teeth, generating hostility for someone not there. "Then she came. She brought them poison. They put it into their mind. It put them into a sleep of false dreams. They will not eat... they scarcely sleep."

    Looking down at their feet, the spirit shuts her eyes. "Below... She makes this poison. Tests it. Many die screaming from horrors in their minds. I can feel them down there. Their minds rot away... They cannot be saved. But she can be destroyed. And the thing that spawns this poison. Will you do this?... You are armed and powerful. Will you?"
Ainsley     Being called 'not metahuman' momentarily causes a scrunch of Ainsley's brow, as if that was not something she expected to hear. The spirit's next words were unsettling... a spirit of healing, in a place such as this? But it began to make sense when she explained what had happened here. The people here were being taken advantage of, that much was certain. Selling these brain-frying chips was an abominable act. But... There was something else to the story. The same story across countless worlds.

    She looked toward the door for a moment. "Not all people want to be healed," she tells the Spirit, "Some wish only for a slow death, even if they would disagree openly. This world is painful enough for them, and you are asking me to remove the veil from their eyes for a moment and expose them to the pain that they want to hide from." She turns her attention back to the Spirit. "And only for a moment. They will not be safe from the predators that fill the void she leaves until they learn to fight back against the poison itself. I don't ask for a reward. All I ask is that you try to help them learn how to survive without this poison. Will you be able to do that?"

    "I will stop her, whether or not you are able to do more for these people," she adds, just to ensure this request isn't seen as an insult.
Chica Mendez     The spirit shakes her head mournfully as she steps back, looking back down at the basement below them. "The unAwakened do not want to see me, or hear me. I have tried to come to them in comfort, but they flee from me..." It's likely they actually think she's a ghost of some long-ago nurse. "I will... try what I can. I will try to make this place as it once was. But I cannot stop the ruin of the world..."

    The spirit turns away slowly and starts making her way back down the hall, but stops quickly to turn and offer, "I have seen that woman touch the door to open it." She reaches out and drags her finger along the wall, marking out in the dust.

    3473.

    As soon as she's done, she returns to the Astral, her presence moving to what seems to have been a nurse's resting area to wait.
Ainsley     The spirit is given a warm smile. Really, all Ainsley wants the spirit of healing to do is to try. Then, as the Spirit shows the door code, there's only a brief nod from Ainsley. She approaches the door and then looks up at the camera at least for a few seconds. There's this intense stare, like she's wondering if she just got lied to... it is possible to deceive her, but she doesn't think that a Spirit this desperate for help would do something like that. After that thought, she spoke a single phrase to the camera.

    "Déjà vu."

    A whisper and a ripple through the air, and she casts a spell to try to loop the camera feed so it looks like nobody is there in front of the door and nobody opened it to go inside. All the spell is doing is making the camera feed repeat the same digital information. Only after she's done this does she try to open the door with the code the spirit gave her and enter the lair of this street predator.
Chica Mendez     Seemingly, Ainsley's magic does the job. Neither the door nor the keypad locked down, so that's good. Furthermore, the code on the keypad transmits a loud buzz when the numbers are fed to it, and the door swings open on rusty hinges to reveal a flight of stairs down, bathed in red emergency lighting. The stairs seem stable enough, if slightly rickety.

    The stairs lead to a short hallway with four doors, one on each side. Most of them look like they're rusted shut, but one door is hanging slightly ajar, pumping out loud elfpop music.

    If Ainsley's sneaky, she could probably get to the door and take a peek inside. It seems a lot of the gourneys got taken down here, and many are occupied by various types of people. Humans, a few orcs, a troll or two. Not all of them are still alive. Those that are are trapped in a Better Than Life haze. Off in a corner, tapping away on her computer, is a dwarf woman and a young teen with fresh urgery scars around his chipdeck. Seems she might be testing right now.
Ainsley     Sneaky is one word for it. Ainsley can fly unassisted, and so she carefully floats down the hallway, pulling the longsword from its scabbard. The lizard woman's movements are gentle. Meticulous. When she spots the people on gurneys, she narrows her eyes just for a second. Some of them really are dead. People that couldn't possibly have all volunteered for this. Or maybe they had, but only out of desperation for a quick fix, so to speak. She carefully cases the room, checking for signs of cameras and other defenses. Really, this woman would be expecting trouble with a job like this.

    Then the slender snake-bird person slips through the door without further opening it, and sticks close to the floor, floating along the perimeter of the room from an angle the dwarf woman isn't looking to try to get up to a point right behind her. This angle is used because it'll minimize the chance that a light will bounce off the sword or a button on her clothing, and distracted people like this are usually expecting person-sized threats, not floating snake people. She stops, lands carefully on the floor, and holds up the sword. Provided this all works as intended, she waits for a beat or two to make sure she has the drop on the dwarf lady, wary of any sort of immediate retaliation.

    She wants to be sure she has the advantage before she does anything else. The alternative would mean a long few nights in Medical after explaining she got shot by a digital drug dealer in a world she just visited for the first time.
Chica Mendez     There doesn't seem to be cameras down here, at least. Though to say the woman is defenseless might be a bit of a stretch, especially once Ainsley comes closer. Resting on the wall behind her is a pretty vicious looking auto shotgun, and she's got a pistol on her belt. Too bad for her, she's never dealt with levitating snake people. Heedless of the coming danger, she continues working, occaisonally stopping to scratch at something.

    The old computer's battered display is showing a screen full of lines of code. The dwarf taps enter, sending the code to her commlink. Once that's done, she starts to lean over towards the teenager. Checking the surgery, it seems. "You're going to get the first taste of the new version, kid," she singsongs.There's a chip in her fingers, ejected from her commlink...
Ainsley     "Put that chip in him or make a move I don't like, and I will be cleaning your blood off of my coat," Ainsley speaks with a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice. "Don't even touch the keyboard." Both a threat and a simple fact.

    "Hi. I understand you engineer the local mind poisons," she says, seeming as cold as a corporate assassin, though she says, "I am not an assassin. You may call me Argent. As you might realize from this situation, someone has taken a disliking to your business here. Particularly in this hospital." She leans in. "You see, she wants you gone," she says, with almost a whisper. "But I feel like killing you would go against both of our natures, and you would just get replaced by the next peddler to scurry through the area. You see, I prefer when people learn from their experiences."

    "So. Tell me your side of the story. Let's see if my restraint is worth our time."
Chica Mendez     The dwarf woman freezes immediately as soon as she hears Ainsley's voice and slowly leans back, coming to find a feathered snape woman holding a sword right up in her goddamn face. THe dwarf woman raises her hands slowly while trying to but as friendly a smile on her face as she can. Which, actually isn't so bad. Unlike everyone else here, it seems she's got some dental service. "Jesus, chummer. What are you, a Yak? I heard the Yaks and the Japanocorps have bio-engineered ninjas and drek. You don't look Japan, though. Some... Amazonia? Aztlan?" Her fingers wiggle spookily.

    This woman seems to be remarkably calm in this situation. "Look, chummer, this place has been abandoned since the First Matrix Crash. There's nobody here, and nobody owns this place." Slowly, she shrugs. "It's a living, isn't it? Everybody has to make their money somehow... It's a service that the world needs right now. Can you blame 'em?" Her hands wave around dramatically to what's around them.

    All the while, her right foot creeps slowly closer towards the very side of her desk. Trying to reach the cyberdeck underneath it.
Ainsley     Ainsley blinks slowly as she speaks. She smiles, with some kind of amusement, when the word 'Aztlan' is dropped. It might be misconstrued as a lucky guess. It's both right and wrong at the same time.

    "Yes. We all need to eat," she agrees, her feathers bristling a little as she says it. The sword tilts, repositioning. She drops the smile into a frown. "But you misunderstand. No world 'needs' this. They 'want' it, because they want an escape. You are killing people, and hiding them from an ugly truth. It is an empty act. All you are doing is providing a smooth ride into oblivion."

    "You'll be forgotten as easily as these people you have killed. Because that is what this is: Murder. Slow murder, in some cases." And then she lids her eyes, "You clearly don't want to die," she points out, her sword lowering to the leg that's moving, and it traces the tip along the dwarf woman's leg.

    "Maybe you just lack perspective."

    She speaks in a low droning tone of voice. The words come out as concepts. The Astral would ripple around her... it's not the same thing Mages of this world do. It's something else. Her eyes glow with the arcane symbols of her Sight.

    "Despair."

    It thrums through the room as a sickly light and a hostile whisper... just a feeling of Despair, to try to provide the perspective she mentioned. It's the fragments of emotion, desperation and hunger she picked up along the way to this place, from people that, presumably, she had met and dealed these chips to. She didn't have time to properly record the feelings, so she's just spitballing it. It isn't mind control, but a glimpse through the window at what she's doing to these people. A glimpse that is sharper than any person might experience in their lifetime.
Chica Mendez     It seems to be pretty clear that the dwarf is trying to distract Ainsley with her movements and words, but adly that doesn't seem to turn out quite the way she wants to. Her cheesy smile turns a little bit sickly when the blade touches her leg. Shit. Her expression sours into a scowl, all the games done. "Shove your white-knighting, slot. Nobody cares about anybody down in Redmond Barrens. What, are you new in town? The Chonsong Ring owns this part of the Barrens, and you're fucking with a supplier."

    If the intimidation doesn't work, there's not much telling what else she can really do to get out of this. Whatever this chick's deal-- Perspective...?" She grunts with unease while Ainsley reaches into the Astral to start doing... Things. "Fuckin' mojo--" She is, of course, trapped. Despair floods through her like a torrent of pain, causing her eyes to go wide and her body to shake under the onslaught. Maybe it's not as bad as it could've been... but it's bad.

    When it ends, she's a gasping, quivering wreck on her chair, gripping the armrests so tightly thta her knuckles have gone white. As her vision clears, and her face colors in anger and shame. "F-f-fuck.... you...." She hisses through chattering teeth.
Ainsley     Ainsley watches the spell go through its work. She realizes just then what she can do to people, just like what she experienced from beings stronger than herself. She points the sword back in the scabbard, because she doesn't think this person's going to be much of a threat. She considers the computer for a few minutes, staring at it quite purposefully, and then she leans down to get a look at the deck. And she even crouches to retrieve it, holding it gingerly and sitting on the desk nearby.

    "Sorry," she says, with a legitimate grimace on her face. "I wasn't lying when I said that someone wants you gone, though. Someone asked for help, and I'm helping them. I would just prefer you left under your own power, and you were alive to understand why someone wanted you to leave." She tilts her head.

    "Can you walk? You should probably leave." She looks away for a second, and then back. "This was just a distraction for me. Don't let it be anything more than that for you. Neither of us want this to get more complicated than a disagreement on principles."

    She smiles at the decker as pleasantly as she can muster. "I'm keeping this, though." She would indicate the cyberdeck.
Chica Mendez     The cyberdeck is about the size of an average iPad, molded green and blue and white plastics in swirls and whorls. The dwarf woman actually growls slightly when the snake girl touches it. Slowly, she starts trying to force her fingers to start working. She's a little too busy gritting her teeth and trying to make her body respond to really try to answer about who or what wants her out. Slowly, the dwarf leans forward, murder clearly on her mind.

    "You either kill me now and take my deck, or you take my deck and I hunt you, scales. I know just who'll pay for good information for you." Her legs are starting to work again, that's good. Maybe she can go for the pistol on her belt.
Ainsley     Ainsley looks at the dwarf with that smile for a while. She reads the woman's face and body language. The threat was clearly there and it was the threat of someone that didn't learn their lesson. There's no way to know what sort of risk there is in letting the woman go, besides 'very bad.' She sets the deck down as if to placate the infuriated decker. "Well, when you put it like that..." She draws the longsword out of its scabbard with trained ease, slipping off the desk and jerking forward to try to skewer the decker into the chair. She's not the best trained swordswoman in existence, but she knows how to do this. It may be possible to get off a shot before this happens, but it won't stop her from doing this, and Ains has her wits enough to avoid death at the very least.
Chica Mendez     The dwarf woman watches, closely. By now, her limbs were back under her command, and she's watching the cyberdeck like a hawk. For a moment, her eyes flicker between the deck and Ainsley's face as she sets down the cyberdeck... and as soon as it's on the desk, she goes for her pistol at the same moment Ainsley goes for her sword.

    BANG!

    The gunshot is incredibly loud in this enclosed space, but none of the people on the gourney even twitch.

    The dwarf woman, meanwhile, spits out blood as Ainsley's sword pins her. The bullet hit the ground just ahead and to the right of it's target, scoring the concrete floor. All the while, the dwarf woman sputters and groans... then eventually spits blood at the Quetzal's feet. Then, she sort of just lies back... and breathes her last.

    It seems that the deck has a program running that's got all of the chipdecks here slaved to it. Ainsley can force them all into a feedback loop to kill the subjects--probably what the dwarf had been intending--or she can shut down the chipslots themselves to let everyone wake up.
Ainsley     Ainsley pulls the sword out carefully and pulls out a cloth to clean the blood off of it. There's a quiet click of her tongue in the silence of the room where no one can hear it. She looks at the corpse for a while, and then breathes a sigh. "The spirit'll understand," she says aloud, then she replaces the sword in its scabbard and picks up the deck. She makes sure to read it over carefully, scanning for information that might get activated that isn't immediately obvious. But when given the option, she breathes through her nose once and then turns off the chipslots.

    And takes the deck with her when she leaves, not waiting around for anyone to wake up. Time to go tell the spirit the 'good' news. And while she does this, she would explain that, perhaps, a more friendly appearance would help them accept healing a little easier. The spirit will probably have a lot of work on her hands, with all these chip junkies waking up to a world that tortures them.
Chica Mendez     In the dim lighting, it might be hard to miss... but the blood coloring Ainsley's sword shines with a faint iridesence before she finally wipes it all away.

    And so she was gone. Eventually the people down here would wake to see their dealer's corpse, and hopefully be taken in by a much kinder guardian than she. A BTL den is down, to the betterment of Redmond... What little betterment there can be, at least.