Too Sexy For This Run

Our adventure began about three floors up from the ghoul waterfall. Aneki, Ronin, and Dodger, not being the smashingly fit specimens that our runners clearly are, were quite winded and found themselves in need of a breather. Clem opened the elevator doors on the nearest floor, and our whole merry band exited the shaft for a bit of a lie-down. Rhineholt, seeing light about twelve floors up, levitated Pary up the shaft to see what she could see. Seeing that the electricity on this floor was on, Pary grabbed onto the ladder and called down that the rest of her companions should come on up, the weather was fine.

If you thought Aneki was tired after three floors, you should have seen him after twelve (or however many he actually made it up before he fell off the ladder). As his hands slipped from the ladder, Rhineholt (with his lightning-fast magic reflexes) cast levitate and floated him safely up to the lighted door. Clem broke open the doors when he reached the floor, and bright light flooded the elevator shaft.

The team now found themselves in a well-lit, open area that was most likely another mall. Despite the dramatic improvement in the lighting situation and the fresh air flowing through the ventilation systems, this mall was grimy, dirty, and covered in trash. Furniture everywhere was overturned, and there were dirty fingerprints on the elevator buttons, as though something very much alive had been trying to escape whatever horrors had occurred here.

The runners pushed the elevator button, hoping that the power on this floor would make the elevator work. Much to their relief, the elevator doors closed, and they could hear the sound of the elevator ascending. The elevator doors opened a few moments later to reveal the blood-streaked interior of the elevator car. Despite the mess, the group piled into the car (it was bigger on the inside). The buttons on the inside of the elevator went up to 150, so the team arbitrarily chose 145 in the hopes of not walking into a trap on the top floor. One of them summoned the nerve to press the button in spite of the blood spatters, and…. nothing happened. Ronin, finally doing something useful and not just standing in the way, pulled out some sort of electronic tool and fiddled mysteriously with the control panel. After a moment there was a buzz of electricity, and the elevator began to rise.

A few minutes later, the elevator jerked to a stop halfway between floors. Pary could see through the open door on the bottom floor (get it, cuz she’s short?) that that floor was clean, well-lit, and seemingly abandoned. The top floor, on the other hand, reeked hideously, and the taller members of the team could see that the floor was dark and dirty. Naturally, the team chose to explore the bottom floor. Dropping out of the elevator, they found themselves in an entirely empty white room. A large red circle, triangle, and square were painted on the floor, and there was a flashing yellow light on the ceiling.

“Mr. A.,” Clem began.

“Yes,” Aneki replied.

“Mr. A.,” Clem began again.

“Clem,” Aneki replied.

“Mr. A., what’s in this room?”

Aneki considered this for a moment, then answered, “… There’s a triangle. And a circle. And some other kind of shape, it’ll come to me in a minute.”

Clem, maybe letting his frustration get the best of him just a tiny bit, suggested that maybe Aneki should try the puzzle. Aneki shrugged innocently and began to wander into the room, stopped only when Ronin and Dodger pulled him back, giving the orc their nastiest looks.

After a brief consultation, the runners decided to attempt the puzzle themselves. Clem entered the circle, and Pary chose the triangle. As Rhineholt stepped into the square, Pary realized that she could see some sort of faint outline under the paint of the triangle. At Rhineholt’s last step, the room began to shake, and the floor suddenly dropped out from beneath the shapes. Pary managed to scramble onto the floor of the room as her teammates plummeted into whatever waited below.

Clem found himself sliding through a series of twisty tubes, smacking into cross beams as he slid. Soon enough the tubes deposited him in a large warehouse, filled with smoke from unseen smoke machines and lit only with strobe lights. A booming voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once declared, “Let the games begin!”

A few floors above, Pary and the Overwatch agents also heard the declaration. Ronin and Dodger swore a bit, then explained to Pary that the games in question were DEUS’s way of testing those who would enter the arcology. With their usual amounts of charm and empathy (please note the sarcasm), they told Pary that her friends would be hunted down and brutally murdered. Pary, after a tense moment of consideration, realized that stopping DEUS had to be her priority. With a heavy heart, she turned and started helping the Overwatch guys back into the stalled elevator.

A few floors below, Rhineholt found himself in the same warehouse that Clem had discovered a moment before. As he levitated himself to a higher beam in hopes of gaining a good vantage point, he heard Clem call out, “Are you okay over there?”

Unfortunately, the sound of the bellowing orc was enough to trigger two Medusa drones into action. As the drones flickered on, Rhineholt and Clem both noticed a glowing exit sign in the center of the floor. Clem, some of his usual confidence restored, began to strut down the catwalk he had landed on, singing “I’m Too Sexy” and dancing like no one was watching. As Rhineholt started levitating towards Clem, the catwalk the orc was strutting down started to groan. A beam from above suddenly swung down and guillotined the end of the catwalk, and Clem pulled a dramatic twirl and gave Rhineholt the Blue Steel.

Unable to contain herself at the sight of this orc (who clearly should have pursued a career in modeling instead of shadowrunning), hurdled out of the smoke towards Clem. Clem drew his axe and leapt off the catwalk towards the drone. The two met in midair, and Clem’s axe embedded itself in Medusa’s body. As they fell towards the ground, the pair caught on a beam and dangled there precariously.

On the other side of the warehouse, the second Medusa launched itself at Rhineholt, interrupting his levitation. Rhineholt was stopped on his merry way to the floor by some razor wire that helpfully snagged around his leg. As the Medusa whirled to attack Rhineholt again, Clem pulled his axe from the first Medusa and landed lightly on the floor, turning towards his friend.

At this point, Pary and the Overwatch guys had reached the floor above them. Pary exited the elevator to see a row of cubicles separating her from a large amount of growing vegetables, which seemed just a little bit off. Motioning for the Overwatch guys to wait by the elevator, she snuck around the edge of the cubes. After finding nothing but a pile of bodies destined for fertilizer, she waved the Overwatch guys forward. As the group crept past the pile of bodies, Pary noticed a group of ghouls feasting in the middle of the vegetable patch. The group managed to make it past the ghouls and to the stairs, heading upwards into the arcology.

Meanwhile, back in the warehouse, the second Medusa leaped forward and sunk her claws into Rhineholt’s guts. Clem pulled out his SMG and mowed down the Medusa, which collapsed amid a spray of steel and fluid. With the Medusa threat neutralized, Clem untangled Rhineholt from the razor wire and used a medkit to patch up the worst of his injuries. As the supplies were being packed back into the kit, Clem and Rhineholt noticed a couple of DEUS’s banded standing on a catwalk above, armed with shotguns and serious cases of angry eyebrows. Clem, realizing that there was no time to lose, picked up Rhineholt and sprinted towards the glowing exit sign.

As they quickly approached the exit hole, Clem and Rhineholt realized that it was filled with pointed steel. Clem screeched to a halt at the edge of the hole, and Rhineholt tuned into the astral plane long enough to sense that the spikes were merely an illusion. Just to be on the safe side, Clem squatted on the edge of the hole and carefully lowered Rhineholt down to get a closer look. A shotgun shell crashed into his back, and Clem dropped Rhineholt to the bottom of the floor before hopping in himself. Just after Rhineholt hit the floor, real spikes shot out of the walls. Clem managed to land on the non-pointy side of the spikes and gingerly navigated his way down to join his friend.

Pary and the Overwatch guys reached the next floor to find a dirty hallway leading to an elevator on the other side of the floor. The Overwatch guys waited at the stairway as Pary darted down the hall and pressed the elevator button. The doors opened, but instead of an empty elevator car, Pary was met by the sight of her friends climbing up the maintenance ladder. The runners took a moment to have a quite touching reunion before heading further up and further in.