Aswon used his new phone, and made some calls to his contacts - Sing Wan in Hong Kong and Mr Hu in Shangzou. Mr Hu, a weapons dealer based in China said that if the team could get to Volgograd, he had work waiting for them there, smuggling some arms to a third party. Sing Wan however mentioned that she had customers waiting for rare creature parts - if the team could find any. In particular there were a number of paracritters that were highly sought by talismongers and enchanters, and if Aswon and his team could take them down with natural weapons, she could offer top dollar for them. After discussing the situation with Aswon and finding out that the team had lost almost all of their gear, she also sent him to the bank and transferred money over to him - saying it wasn't a loan, or a gift - but an investment.
Marius started work on the truck with Kai assisting him, making use of the tools and facilities at the garage to repair the damage caused while the rest of the team headed out searching for the local hospital. After some wandering, they found the Aldar Medical clinic - a once shiny corporate looking building, now definitely down on its luck.
They headed in, and found the interior just as run down as the exterior -faded mint green paint with a light patina of dirt, missing light bulbs, scuffed tiles and a waiting room full of sick people, all trying to see the "cheap" doctor. The waiting room was oppressive, and they could sense the pain and suffering of the people clearly – it was a building without hope or joy. Approaching the bored receptionist, they asked to see a doctor, happily signing up for the 150 Nuyen "premium medical service".
Very shortly afterwards, Hunter, Shimazu and Aswon went into the examination room and waited for the doctor, whilst Tads headed into the waiting room and checked over the people there. She spotted one small child with a gushing head wound crying whilst held tightly in her mother's arms, a bloody towel pressed tightly over the wound. Tads struck up conversation with her mother and then offered to help the child.
The mother, confused, asked her if she was a nurse or a doctor – and Tads just smiled at her, evading and not giving her an answer. Instead she prepared her magical skills and tried to heal the child. It was hard to channel the mana in the dismal waiting room – the suffering and depression of the people caused a background hum or malaise that interfered with her ability to concentrate and control the power. After a moment though, her hands began to glow faintly with golden light, and sparkles of mana drifted out from them towards the open wound. The child stopped crying, entranced by the pretty lights, but the mother stared at her in horror. During the attempt to channel the power, her Shamanic mask became visible for a few seconds. Her features twisted and grew, and shifted slightly to resemble Elk – her totem. The changes made the mother recoil, and caused shrieks of horror and "witch!" to echo around the waiting room. A few seconds later, amidst lots of angry locals, the "security" goons arrived, and grabbed hold of Tads.
Aswon and Shimazu burst out of the examination room when they heard the screams, with a horrible feeling that the noise was something to do with them – and found the burly thugs dragging Tads towards them.
"Take your hands off her!" Aswon called out – not shouting, but speaking firmly.
"No – this one is a witch! She cavorts with the devil!"
"This one is a close friend of Yusif Khalilov – you know, in the local Police. You might want to think about that."
"Local police! Pah." The thug spat on the floor, leaving a thick gobbet of saliva on the cracked tiles. Clearly he wasn't impressed with the threat, and they continued dragging Tads past Shimazu and Aswon, down a corridor that lead further into the clinic.
Aswon and Shimazu followed them, and the two guards looked back at them over their shoulders, with one snagging his radio and calling for backup. As another pair of guards turned up, Aswon ducked into a room and looked around for a weapon, finding a long piece of metal conduit - vaguely spear like. In the corridor, Shimazu faced off against the guards, who had shoved Tads into a small laundry room and locked the door, before turning to face him.
With arms held wide, they both attacked, moving to engage him on both flanks. They swung, somewhat clumsily, and one landed a punch on Shimazu – but quickly found out that Shimazu was not only athletic, but had stomach muscles conditioned by months of training. The second man's swing was equally clumsy, and a neat sidestep and a horrible joint lock left him crying on the floor in a great deal of pain. The two additional thugs drew their coshes and moved to attack, and the first guy was just about to swing at Shimazu again when Aswon attacked him from the room, slapping him across the forehead with the end of the metal tube and sending him reeling. In the next few seconds, a flurry of blows left another thug nursing a headache and out of action - at which point they made a good call and backed off - releasing Tads from the locked room and telling the team to leave - which Tads and Shimazu promptly did.
Hunter meanwhile chatted with the doctor who had arrived who enquired what services were needed. The big ork explained that he had implanted platelet cyberware – a great modification that stopped you bleeding out when shot or stabbed, but with the unfortunate side effect of making the blood very thick and viscous – and as a result needing to have low doses of blood thinners to counter the cyberware when it was working 'too well'. The doctor listened and offered a choice: Western made Rivaroxaban at 5,000 for a 30 day supply, or Russian made Warfarin at 1,000 for a 30 day supply. Knowing he was going to inject the drugs into him, Hunter decided to get the good stuff, and spent nearly half the money given to Aswon earlier on securing his meds.
Having established that Hunter was in the line of business where getting shot or stabbed was a reasonably common risk, quick chat with the doctor revealed that he knew someone looking for people with "specialist skills" - he introduced them to one of his patients - a wealthy man in an expensive suit that was towing behind him an IV stand with some unknown drugs being dispensed. He asked Hunter if he and his team would go and fetch a specific individual and bring him to the clinic, at night, unseen. Hunter told him he would have to check with their boss, and then left the clinic, meeting up with the rest of the team back at the truck, where he detailed the potential job offer. As Hunter described it bluntly, most of the team seemed acutely uncomfortable with the idea of kidnapping someone and taking them to a clinic – especially one like that – in the dead of night.
The afternoon was spent shopping for food, water, cleaning the truck out and making it more comfortable and getting additional blankets and other supplies. They also chatted with Yusif Khalilov, and after checking on his daughter's well-being they asked what the local laws were on hunting, establishing that they didn't need permits to go hunting in the hills - but that some of the local tribes might object.
Discussing the calls from their contacts, they decided not to do the kidnapping for the man at the clinic, but instead head to Baku to meet up with "Kiril Patronovich" near Baku - who Tural Abdulin, a contact of Shimazu, had said needed a team of people to move something. Once that was done, they would look for rare creatures for Aswon to send to his contact, and gradually work north towards Volgograd.
They established a watch order and settled down for the night, planning to hit the road to Baku in the morning. About 1:30am, Aswon was on watch, and noticed a battered car creep around the corner and watch them for a minute. He was interrupted from his surveillance when a spirit manifested in front of him, its pale ghostly body swirling in front of him. With a start he realised that Tads must have summoned the spirit earlier in the evening and had asked it to guard the truck.
"Strange men over there. Have bad feelings about the truck. Want to hurt people. Mistress said to tell you!" The spirit seemed insufferably pleased with itself for having carried out the orders, and bounced up and down merrily.
Aswon woke up the rest of the team and told them what was going on, pointing at the waiting car through the polarised windows of the truck, and describing what the spirit had said to him. Hunter and Shimazu crept out of the rear door and worked their way around the buildings to take up ambush positions – and while doing so they spotted one of the guys get out of the car and sneak towards them. He was about halfway toward their positions when a break in the clouds suddenly highlighted the two team members – and their prey suddenly froze before quickly doubling back to his vehicle.
Seeing that their counter-ambush was blown, Aswon decided to walk openly towards the car, assault rifle in hand, with Shimazu as backup. The enemy, whoever they were, backed around a corner in their car. Moments later one of them carefully peered around the corner but Aswon spotted him and shouted across the street as he continued to approach.
"Evening! You lost? Need help? Don't worry, we can help you I'm sure!" The man turned and fled, diving back into his car and they left the area with a screech of tyres and the smell of burnt clutch behind them.
Tads relaxed her mind and let out a deep sigh, following the training her mentor had instilled upon her back in her homeland, and let her soul lift up and divorce from her body, leaving the physical meat in the truck and pursued the car astrally. Floating high up in the air she had no problem following them through the quiet streets to a dingy side street bar where she saw them park up and approach a few large and heavy set men nursing drinks. One of them had his arm in a sling, the other a noticeable black eye – the two 'security guards' that Shimazu and Aswon had dealt with when they made a grab for her. She hovered over their heads, her astral form invisible, and listened in as the two newcomers described how they'd been spotted as they tried to creep up on the truck and that while the two injured men were friends, they weren't dealing with bad guys with assault rifles and no qualms about using them.
She headed back to the truck and reported in to the rest of the team, who relaxed when they realised the calibre of their opposition, and they settled down to try and get back to sleep for a few more hours, but the team decided to hit the road early, and drove to Baku, making good time down the E119, amidst light traffic. They arrived at a truck stop just outside Baku, between the M1/M4 routes, and bedded down again for a few hours.
At 10:00 Shimazu contacted Kiril, and they arranged a meet near the airport. Despite excellent driving from Marius, they struggled to get there on time, arriving at just about the allocated meeting time, then working out who was going into the coffee shop to meet with Mr Patronovich and discuss the possible job offer…
