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30shadows · 10 years

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Kestrel had met Crass eight years ago when she'd first joined up with her old Fixer, Black. Black was the owner and operator of Greyscale, an upscale craft cocktail bar nestled in the heart of Downtown. While most of Greyscale's business was legit and the bar did very well, there was always additional money coming in from the door out the back alley. Black was more of a Johnson and less than a Fixer. Most of his jobs were personal to him, aimed at cutting down his competition and raising up his own business through not-so-legal means. For a Johnson, he treated his small teams of runners very well. Quinn Ward had come to his back door late one afternoon in the dead of winter, armed with little more than an old Colt she'd "rescued" from a ganger that was using it to threaten some of the other kids at the shelter, and the name of the troll, Guildenstern, that had referred her. Black took her in as Kestrel, settled her pitfighting debt with Bradley Games, and set her on the road of shadowrunning. Crass was part of her original team, along with a human woman named Scarlet and a dwarf named Toad. Crass provided the magical defenses and offenses needed for the team. Scarlet covered the tech side, hacking on the fly while Toad stood guard and Kestrel snuck into the target area. They worked very well together. She'd always been on good terms with Crass. He was a bit on the eccentric side, and spent more time wandering around on the Astral Plane than could have been healthy for him, but he never once did her wrong. He was totally and completely unlike Suki in that respect. She'd only worked with Suki once. It was all because of that smug decking bitch that Kestrel had landed herself in prison for three years. They were the three longest years of her life, and the world continued to spin on without the presence of a small, horned elf with white hair wandering the UCAS streets. Black's illegal dealings had finally caught up to him, and he was jailed. Greyscale had closed and reopened under new owners by the time Kestrel had breathed free air again. Toad went and ate a frag grenade on a run for a greedy Johnson that had played him and his team. She'd heard neither head nor ass of Scarlet--which was a damn shame--and Crass had gone his own way, finding odd jobs for a few fixers throughout the greater Seattle sprawl. As for Suki? She hadn't heard from her either, but if she saw that inept bitch again, Kestrel would wipe that smug smile right off her face. Black and blue would look good on her stupid human face. It was a rainy spring afternoon the day the SeaTac Federal Detention Center opened its heavy iron gates for the woman who had spent the last three years as Quinn Ward. There was a cold breeze coming in from the north, and the rain was pouring down in sheets. They'd given Quinn back everything she'd come back in with, which wasn't a whole lot, and tossed a black mark on her SIN on top of that. It was going to be a hard road ahead finding any sort of employment--legal or non--with a criminal notation on her SIN. Most legitimate places would find reasons not to hire a felon. Most Fixers, not bound by law and regulation, would turn her away for the sheer risk they posed of getting caught. Her jeans wore tight around her already slim waist, the band biting at her hips. Everything else fit fine, though the way her ankle-length boots pressed on her feet felt alien compared to the loose, prison-issue sneakers she had worn for the past three years. Her duffel was regrettably empty and her wallet moreso. Quinn tugged at the sleeve of her t-shirt, trying to pull it down just enough to cover the small, scratched "A" tucked between the tattoed sleeves she'd brought with her to prison. Her Ancients branding had proved useful inside, offering her protection from some of the nastier prison-borne gangs, but she wanted no affiliation with them on the streets. It would only lead to trouble. "And lastly: One wallet, containing two thousand cash nuyen, SIN ID card, expired Stuffer Shack coupons. SeaTac FDC is providing the business card for Officer Eddie Sterling, assigned as your probabtion officer for a minimum time of six months," the prison exit guard was drolling on, placing the items down into a small metal tray as she went through the paltry list of items with which Quinn was going to be leaving. The horned elf had balked, grabbing the wallet from the tray and flipping it open. "What the...? No. I had a credstick when I came in. Twenty-five thousand nuyen. Where the fuck is it?" The guard was an older troll woman, probably around thirty years old, with greying curly hair and a row of peeling, asymmetrical horns poking through her thinned locks. She looked at the small elf with a mix of disdain and pity, turning towards her computer console and tapping a few times at the screen. The computer looked to be about as old as her and chugged along until it finally pulled up Kestrel's profile, marked with the mugshot she'd had taken three years prior. "Credstick, credstick," the woman mumbled to herself, scrolling down the block of indecipherable text, "Ah. One credstick, twenty-five thousand nuyen, unsigned. Sorry, honey. Looks like they confiscated it." Quinn's heart sunk into her stomach. The credstick was from the last job she'd done for Black, the infiltration on Winter Systems that Suki had royally fucked up. Regardless, she'd gotten paid for it. It was her money, not the fucking UCAS' personal piggy bank. They wouldn't have even known where the money came from. It wasn't the job that had landed her in prison, persay, it was the aftermath. Her connection to the Winter Systems break-in and the death of that security guard was clean. There was no reason for them to take it. The guard seemed to register her internal panic, and the troll turned her eyes back to the computer screen. "The UCAS has been cracking down on unsigned sticks, honey. Anything not tied to your SIN is considered potentially unlawful. This is going to apply to any future credsticks you own, too, should your probation officer have any reason to check your things." Quinn clutched at her wallet, shoving it into her duffel bag, "I needed that money. How am I supposed to survive with two thousand nuyen to my name?" The troll looked almost sympathetic as she swiped the screen away from Quinn Ward's file, "I suggest you seek out hostels and soup kitchens until you can get on your feet." So it was back to square one. "Your probation officer will provide you with resources to help you find employment. They've established a residency for you at your old address. The rest is up to you, honey. Enjoy your freedom." With that, Quinn Ward walked through the iron gates, and Kestrel found her freedom on the Seattle streets. She left her real name behind everywhere she could as she tried to rebuild. Officer Eddie helped her net a job at the Brunchoreum, an Aztechnology-owned breakfast buffet. It was legitimate work with free meals whenever she was on shift, and she snuck by on her rent and bills. The itch to return to the shadows, however, was strong. She'd returned to Black's door, unaware of what had prespired over the past three years, and found it locked. The woman who finally opened it for her told her off, practically sweeping her back into the gutters with the bristles of the broom she was wielding. It was a mix of desperation, then, that led her to a single name she'd heard in the shadows, and the small bar that the owner of the name maintained. In late summer of 2071, Kestrel took the 445 bus up to Fremont Street and trekked underneath to the concrete-laden entrance to Troll Bridge. There she found the name--Mouse--and the woman who owned it. Mouse promised to hire Kestrel once her probation was up, and sure enough, at the seven month mark the shadows enveloped her once again. It was Mouse that had helped her reconnect with Crass. Although the bartender and Fixer hadn't worked with him before, she asked around with a few of her contacts and got Kestrel a quick lead early on in their running relationship. He had been bouncing between Fixers as well as growing and selling Deepweed to the magically inclined. It was good to see him again.

#30shadows nano #nanowrimo #shadowrun #nano2k14 #nanowrimo 2014

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30shadows · 10 years

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Gold Sun exhaled as she settled back down onto the metal stool behind the counter, and leaned both her arms onto the counter. Brushing some stray strands of hair from her face, she squeezed her eyes shut for a good few moment, then opened them to stare back towards Kestrel. "Someone set fire to Troll Bridge last night. Mouse was inside at the time, but she was taken out and brought to a secret NeoNET facility Downtown. I'm sure you saw the fire on the trid, they're saying Halloweeners did it, have part of it pinned on one of the runners Mouse works with. I think you've run with her once before. Porter? Mohawk, huge metal raptor legs? Metal tail?" Kestrel stood, arms crossed as she listened. "I was on my way there to get blasted, but the Star was swarming the place, so I rabbited. And yeah. Once before, and we grabbed her out from the run to stop that batshit crazy lady." Kestrel remembered that run fairly well. Apparently Bianca was a former member of Mouse's team, and something in her flipped and she sort of went nuts. Porter had been tied up and her mouth sewn shut, presumably to be some sort of sacrifice. She wasn't sure how much she liked Porter; they'd only worked together a few times before. She did go for pizza though, which was sort of cool and definitely bumped her up on the list. "If you'd gotten there after the fire was out, you would have run into your usual team. Wolfram, Sugar, Stout, and Porter were on site along with Jack," Gold Sun was droning on. "They went in, grabbed some of Mouse's stuff, and helped track her down. Reports said she was at Sea Strictly speaking, she didn't care for most of the runners. Wolfram was alright, though. He was an elven sniper, mostly kept to himself. He tolerated Kestrel well enough, and she tolerated him. That was about as good a relationship as she had with anyone she'd been running with lately. She was part of their team, though, which meant-- "Why the fuck didn't you call me in on the job? No one rang. I could have helped. I know her better than any of them." Gold Sun's brow furrowed, "Are you even listening? They were on site. They were already there. You weren't at the time, so you lost out. I'm terribly sorry you couldn't get paid for the rescue. They didn't even, I don't think." It wasn't about the money. The principle of the thing is what really got to Kestrel, just knowing that she almost was in the right place at the time, almost was there to meet up with the group and save one of the few people in Seattle that she would have cared enough to save. Kestrel scowled over at the raven-haired woman. "Fuck you, Goldie." Gold Sun continued regardless, "Yeah, and don't thank me for saving her life or anything. Don't bother to thank me for spending all night pulling out wires from her chest and keeping her from flat-lining on the spot. If I'd wasted time to try and call you last night, Kestrel, she could have died. She would have." "Fuck you." Jack had been standing there, glancing between the two with a very awkward expression on her face, and he growled out, "And we're wasting time. The two of you, shut the hell up." Gold Sun turned away from Kestrel, sliding her chair across the tiled floor over towards the computer terminal. She gave one cursory glance back at Jack, and turned away. "I've got work to do, anyway." Kestrel respected Jack a lot more than she did Gold Sun. Truth be told, she wasn't even sure why the Fixer seemed to hate her so much. From the moment she'd arrived, Gold Sun had treated her with disdain and like a child. Like she was stupid. Kestrel wasn't stupid. Jack, though? Jack was great. His memory was a bit on the shady side, but she had never run into issues with the troll. "Okay. 'sup, Jack. Whatcha need?" "Better," Jack rumbled out. "I need you to go back into the bar and retrieve some documents for me that Mouse had stored in the bar's safe. I had the other guys go in earlier, but they brought me back pictures and not the originals." He scratched at his head, craning his neck to better get behind one large, scaly ear. "Mouse says that isn't good enough. She thinks someone might be trying to get the documents. I know you're sneaky--" Perhaps that was because she'd snuck past him on her first trip into the bar. "--and the site's still blocked off by police. You can get in." Kestrel nodded, "What sort of documents are we talking?" "The 'none of your business' kind, Kestrel," Gold Sun chimed in, to Jack's grunted disdain. Okay. Not that it would have mattered anyway. She was asking mostly out of curiosity, but assumed they were whatever sort of files a Fixer would need to keep to do their job. Gold Sun? Gold Sun had computers to store everything on, she assumed. The Emporium was built on the back of technology. She couldn't picture the elf, especially typing away at the damn terminal as she was right now, handwriting down all her important secret records. Mouse had no such infrastructure, as far as Kestrel could tell. Troll Bridge itself was tiny and cramped, and that was saying a lot coming from an elf of her stature. In all likelihood, Jack probably hadn't gone in and raided the safe himself because he probably couldn't even fit a single arm in the back room, much less his entire body. "So yeah, I'll go in. I need to bring someone with me, though. I don't do solo shit." Solo shit, as she had put it, got runners killed. While she wasn't quite sure how dangerous the job would be--it seemed like the biggest danger was getting arrested for trespassing by the Star--she didn't like the idea of not having someone to watch her back. You never went in without someone to back you up, as a rule. Even if it was just a decker watching you from a hijacked video feed. That had backfired on her before. There weren't any cameras in Troll Bridge as far as she could tell, in any case. Jack considered this, "I suppose that would be okay. I didn't have anyone else in mind for the job." "I can find someone for you," Gold Sun craned her neck back, "I'm not paying them, though. If you want someone, Kestrel, you'll have to pay them on your own--" "--Fucking hell, Gold Sun, I don't need your help. I'm not bringing in some strange asshole. I don't work with people I don't know. At least Mouse understands that." Gold Sun rolled her eyes and turned back to the computer, mumbling something under her breath that Kestrel's ears didn't quite pick up. Kestrel flung up her middle finger at the Fixer's back anyway, just because. "Whoever you decide to bring in, they're not to handle the documents, okay? Mouse was able to give me the combination while we were able to talk, so you won't even have to pick the lock." A pang of jealousy hit Kestrel, and she grimaced. Mouse talked to Jack, sure. Jack was her go-to guy. That didn't make it suck any more that Gold Sun wouldn't let her even so much as see her, even if she was unconscious at the time. She scanned through her mental dossier trying to figure out who she would try and call. Kestrel knew almost immediately it had to be Crass. Not only did Crass have the magic she needed to back them up--invisibility, specifically--but he was also one of the few people from Black's squad that she was still in contact with. Crass was an ork shaman, a gangly, stick of a guy with a penchant for making friends with spirits and living as exclusively on the Astral Plane as a person could without dying. "No worries, he'll be my backup. He won't even go in the bar." Which was all true, on a technicality.

#30shadows nano #nanowrimo #shadowrun #nano2k14

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30shadows · 10 years

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The ambulance was gone.

Kestrel had turned down onto northbound Fremont, same as the Doc Wagon would have, but there was nothing there. The cars were slowly pulling back into their lanes from the right, which meant it had come down that way, but where was it? There were no flashing lights, no sirens fading into the distance. There was nothing at all and for the life of her, Kestrel could not understand it.

As she turned off of the shoulder and onto Fremont Avenue proper, Kestrel merged the bike in with normal traffic, and sat in the stop and go while her heart continued to race. Speeding and breaking traffic laws wouldn't do her much good Downtown. There were cameras on every post and cops on every corner, and they all lived for the sole purpose of coming down hard on people like her.

It felt like an eternity until Sacred Heart finally came into sight. She paid her ten nuyen for parking, kicked the stand down on the bike, and rushed upstairs into the hospital proper.

She pushed past an elf and an ork at the front desk, standing up on her toes to better see over the high counter.

"I need to check on someone," Kestrel blurted out, ignoring the complaints behind her. "She was just brought here from the fire on 99."

The receptionist, a young human woman with pulled back long hair, looked down on her with a furrowed brow. She took a cursory glance behind her at the couple she'd shoved her way past, and sighed.

"Name?" she asked, her hands poised on the keyboard.

"She's named--aw, fuck."

Kestrel didn't know Mouse's real name.

(SOMETHING SOMETHING THEY WON'T GIVE HER ANY INFORMATION BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T HAVE MOUSE'S INFORMATION AT ALL. FUCK. KESTREL ENDS UP STORMING OUT)

Kestrel had only managed to get to sleep at around sunrise, only after spending the night calling around trying to find more information about Mouse. It had only been a few years since she had gotten back on the Seattle streets and her contacts were limited. Batty didn't know, but had passed along rumors about the fire.

According to the trid news, the bar was being reported as an illegal establishment--which was accurate--and the fire was being reported as arson started by some trigger-happy Halloweeners. Kestrel had scoffed. Some of the bar's best patrons were Halloweeners. Why the fuck would they burn down one of their hangouts?

Batty was convinced that the bar was targeted and the Halloweeners were just pawns. She'd thanked the kid. Her old probation officer, when she got in touch, had been tight-lipped about the situation. He wasn't allowed to release anything, he said, but the press release would be out tomorrow.

She'd gone to bed terribly drunk, and sometime in the night her sheets had twisted and one corner had somehow wrapped itself around one ankle. Kestrel's head was pounding with the onset of an incoming hangover. It was barely eleven in the morning--way too fucking early--and her commlink was ringing.

The sudden noise jolted her from a dreamless, alcohol-infused sleep and she bolted upright, nearly falling off the small twin bed frame in an effort to grab the comm. As the calling tune swung into "Crazy Bitch" by The Finks, Kestrel squeezed her eyes shut, cursing to herself. It was not the ringtone she wanted to hear this morning, but she answered it regardless.

"Gold Sun," she growled out, "I don't have time to pull a fucking job for you today. Leave me the fuck alone."

There was a disgruntled huff of air from the other side of the line. She could picture it, Gold Sun sitting at the Emporium on the little stool behind the counter, getting pissed at the little horned elf that dared interrupt her in the middle of her bullshit. It wasn't a good idea, cursing out a Fixer, but Kestrel was running off of barely two hours sleep. She had spent the night drinking and punching at the concrete walls, and her head was ramping up for a full on throbbing contest with the bruises and scratches on her fists.

"God damn it, Kestrel," the lady at the other end responded, her voice young and terse, "That's not what I'm calling for at all, I need you to--"

"I need you to shut the fuck up and leave me alone today," Kestrel spat. "I don't care what you're--"

Wait a second. Kestrel paused, taking note of who she was talking to beyond the fact that it was her least-favorite Fixer calling her up. Gold Sun might be a bitch, like her ringtone suggested, but even Kestrel couldn't ignore that Gold Sun was good at what she did.

"Fine. If you're not willing to even hear me out about something that you want to hear--believe me, you do--then I'm hanging up."

And what she did was hoard and sell information.

Kestrel scrunched up her toes in frustration and bit at her tongue, "Wait, I need to buy something from you. I need someone's name."

Gold Sun sighed on the other end again, "I don't have time to procure anything right now. Kestrel, will you just shut up for a second? I really do need to talk to you about--"

"--You fucking shut up, I need you to get me Mouse's real name. I'll pay."

"Kestrel, I don't--"

"Real name. Now. Fucking hell Goldie, do you give all your paying clients this much shit?"

"Kestrel. God damn it, Mouse is here. Wolfram and the crew brought her in last night. Get your ass down to the Emporium or don't come at all and I'll have Jack find someone else."

Oh. Shit. Oops.

Kestrel didn't even bother to hang up the call, tossing the commlink down onto the bed. She shouted a few words, something along the lines of ,"I'll be there soon," and completed a less than graceful fall onto the floor from the bed thanks to the twisted and turned sheet impeding her. She'd fallen asleep in her clothes last night, and it took just a few adjustments--bra, socks, belt buckle, commlink back on her wrist--and she grabbed her keys from the bedstand table and bolted out the door.

The horizon wobbled slightly as she made her way through the back alley where she parked her Mirage. Two hours sleep, incoming headache, and she still had a slight buzz going. It was a great start to the morning--even as the time shifted into the noon hour--and she climbed onto the scratched leather seat, coaxing the engine to life with a flip of the keys and a twist of the gas.

The back streets of the Puyallup Barrens--her own backyard and the home she'd known for the entirety of her adult life--were a drastic change from the rest of Seattle. Most of the storefronts were covered in thick bars, some were boarded up. The building where Kestrel's basement flat was located was a crumbling mass of old brick and metal that had somehow been left standing after the Great Ghost Dance wreaked havoc on the Puyallup city streets. The old lava flows had been chipped away and the streets repaved since the mountains had all exploded at once. That was a long time ago, before Kestrel was born, but this part of Seattle hadn't quite escaped the after-effects of it all. No one cared enough about Puyallup to restore it to the same sheen that coated Auburn and Tacoma to the north, much less to the glow of Downtown.

Kestrel took the back roads towards 161, taking care to avoid Loveland. The Loveland Strip was about a mile's length of road, packed to the brim with mafia-owned casinos, Yakuza-owned bath houses of ill repute, and even at this time of the day, it would likely be packed full of dregs from all the corners of society trying to score a cheap lay or make a quick buck. The crime lords' "law" enforcement would also be out and about to flag down vehicles speeding or otherwise breaking the law of the day. It was a monetary sort of order, Puyallup law, and Kestrel was short enough on cash that she couldn't afford to bribe a Yak out of repossessing her bike.

She passed through significantly better neighborhoods on her way out of Puyallup, through Auburn and then through the industrial complexes of Renton until she had nearly reached the division line between Renton and Bellevue. Gold Sun's place was called The Emporium of the Golden Sun. Kestrel pulled in to the lot, crossing between the central dividers out on the road, and found a parking spot right at the front of the store. She pulled her bike around, aiming the Mirage's front wheel towards the street, and disembarked.

She could see the familiar metal-encased horns of "Ironhorns" Jack, Mouse's only bouncer, at the top of the towering figure inside. There was a shorter figure behind the counter, dwarfed by the troll's massive arms, much less his entire body.

Kestrel pushed one side of the double doors in, and looked between the two figures.

"Okay. Where the fuck is she?"

The girl behind the counter was Gold Sun, and she rolled her eyes. Her raven-colored hair was messed and frazzled, and with the way she was leaning against the countertop, it looked as if she hadn't slept in a week. The troll looked fairly worse for wear as well, but he forced a smile as Kestrel walked in.

"She's downstairs under the auto doc. And no, you can't see her, she's alive but not in great shape," Gold Sun sighed, "And now that you're here? Floor's yours, Jack."

Jack smelled like a liquor store, though the troll seemed to be handling it well. He was still wearing his usual get up from the bar--a long jacket with armored shoulders over a plated vest. He had a bag slung over his back that was heavy with something that clinked as he moved to bring Kestrel into the conversation.

His signature horns were each thicker around than Kestrel's arms at the base, and coated in a grey metal. They curved like ram's horns down over his ears, and he kept the hair between them neatly plaited into a small braid that ran down the back of his neck. He breathed in, his chest rattling, and sighed.

"I need you to do something. It's very important, but I can't pay you for it."

He sounded worn, stretched thin. The bass in his voice was scratchy and rumbled and came with the aroma of one too many beers.

Kestrel stared Jack down, instead turning back to the elf who was rounding the counter again. "I'm not doing shit until I see Mouse and not until I get told what the fuck happened. So make with it."

Gold Sun and Jack exchanged looks for a moment.

"It's okay," Jack spoke, "Kestrel's good. Mouse has known her for many years. She wouldn't want her left in the dark."

"Yeah, bitch, you heard him," Kestrel shot a glare at the raven-haired woman. "Make with the talking, or I make with the leaving."

#30shadows nano #nanowrimo #nano2k14 #shadowrun

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30shadows · 10 years

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1. (continued)

The euphoria that Kestrel had been riding on had gone, replaced instead by tightness in the elf's chest. Traffic continued to crawl, and a firetruck screamed by followed by an additional Docwagon, following the same path on the shoulder towards Troll Bridge that the previous vehicles had taken. The bar was in its operating hours, which meant Mouse was there, and she knew damn well that Troll Bridge didn't have a back door. A million scenarios flashed through Kestrel's head. Maybe Mouse had stepped out for a moment. Maybe she'd actually taken a day off for once--which meant Rime was watching the bar, which really wasn't any better, but then again that would mean it wasn't Mouse in there--or maybe Troll Bridge itself really wasn't on fire. All the same, maybe she hadn't been able to get out. Maybe the fire had come much too quick, sparked up and roaring in a matter of moments. Kestrel pulled up the sleeve on her studded leather jacket until she could see the entirety of the commlink attached to her wrist. It was small, as commlinks went, with a two-inch square screen that lay flat like a watch on her arm. Kestrel swiped through a few of the menus, navigating through the icon-based menus with speed. She flicked her fingertips down until she came across a small icon of a wedge of cheese, and jabbed it as if the extra pressure would make the comm dial faster. The line rang. And rang. And rang. Shit. Not waiting for the line to run dry and disconnect the call, Kestrel shoved her foot down on the clutch and revved the Suzuki's sports engine, and peeled off onto the shoulder to follow the path the flashing lights had taken. A cursory glance in her sideviews showed no one following her and no more vehicles approaching, and before long she was speeding past the rows and rows of Americars and beat up Scoots. A few cars laid on their horns as she passed by, the sound barely perceptible at such speed. She let the engine whine down as she approached the embankment, ready to let gravity help the bike down the concrete sides, but stopped when she saw the scene unfolding beneath her. There were flashing lights everywhere, and the Star had more or less fashioned a barricade of vehicles around the area closest to the bar. More were setting up tape to completely cordon off the area. Two firetrucks were on the scene with the second behing the one that had just arrived. At the center of the flashing lights was, of course, Troll Bridge. Smoke billowed out from the single doorway into the bar, and through cracks that had appeared in the troll itself. The hand holding the old VW Bug had cracked and the concrete-encased vehicle had broken free and crashed to the ground. It was like looking into the maw of Hell. Flames licked and ate at the bridge above, and a firetruck was working to soothe them. The roaring of the fire was like a constant low rumble. There was an Doc Wagon ambulance already at the scene, an older model than the one she'd seen blow past her on the shoulder, and it was just closing its doors as Kestrel sat there, letting the engine idle. The driver hopped aboard and the vehicle drove northwards, taking the road back up with care. Part of Kestrel's chest relaxed. They'd been able to get some people out, so there was hope. There wasn't much she could do at the bar itself, but the ambulance was leaving, and that meant they were going to a hospital. It was going north, which meant Seattle Sacred Heart. Kestrel pulled back onto the shoulder and let the engine scream.

#30shadows nano #nanowrimo #nano2k14 #shadowrun

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30shadows · 10 years

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Quinn Ward was riding low on the back of her Suzuki Mirage and riding high on cloud nine as she made her way west on the 520 coming out of Bellevue. The ritz and sheen of the quiet upscale low rise community exploded into a canvas of skyscrapers and neon as soon as her motorcycle made ground just over the Lake Washington bridge. Night had fallen hours ago, but the glow of the trideo-lined facades on the buildings and the neon signage hanging from just about every post and bar kept the city in a constant state of light. The engine was roaring between her legs, though the sound was mostly lost to the white-haired elf thanks to the small buds shoved into her ears. The dulcet tones of her favorite punk band, Pink Mutiny, served as her very own soundtrack to Downtown proper. As the road shifted and she took the northwest exit out onto Pacific Street, so did the track, and their 2072 hit, "Cranial Bomb" revved up in her ears. Quinn Ward, better known as Kestrel on Seattle's dark and illegal streets, had just gotten laid by her girlfriend, and everything was right with the world. Nothing could go wrong for her, not even the slowing traffic as she approached the I-5 Expressway. She'd gotten laid, she'd stopped for burgers on the way back out of Bellevue, and with a full stomach and euphoric mind, she was going to go get blasted at her favorite bar. A text-based warning, one of those safety alerts, judging by the Lone Star symbol that preceded it, popped up on the augmented reality display built into her blue cybernetic eyes. Kestrel scowled as the alert scrolled by at the top of her field of vision. The words meant absolutely nothing to her and with both hands on the handles of her bike, she couldn't access her text to speech application safely enough to figure out whatever it was they meant. Regardless, as traffic slowed to a crawl, she could assume well enough that it was a traffic alert of some sort. The cars ahead slowed to a crawl and she downshifted her bike, letting the engine drop to a low rumble. It was then she noticed the thick black smoke filtering out from just above the hill ahead, towards the west. Smoke that black was probably from gasoline or some other sort of fuel. Great. A car must have caught fire or something. Traffic stopped completely and Kestrel sat, parked amidst the sea of red tail lights. It was a good opportunity to tussle her hair, untangling it a little from the pair of cybernetic horns that gently curved from just above her ears towards the back of her head. It was hard to mess up a feathery pixie haircut and she did prefer the "messy" look, but she had a very specific way to achieve it. Being on a motorcycle going sixty wasn't exactly the best way to keep her hair perfect. Still, the only helmets available--aside from that fancy custom shit--that accommodated horns were troll-sized, and standing at barely over five feet tall with the frame of a toothpick, that was something Kestrel was not. Pink Mutiny sang on in her ears, the earbuds barely able to contain the tinny bass that was blasting during the song's killer bass solo. Only the flashing lights reflecting off the cars and plascrete barriers in front of her alerted her to the Docwagon ambulance and its three tailing Lone Star vehicles barrelling down the shoulder behind her. They tore past, flinging up dirt and dust in their wake as they peeled off towards the 99 intersection. Traffic shifted slightly, moved forward over the hill, and Kestrel found herself swearing. The flashing vehicles pulled right onto northbound 99 and one of the Lone Star vehicles veered off the road completely, driving down the embankment towards the plumes of billowing smoke. Kestrel was very, very familiar with that embankment. To most of Seattle, it was considered the home of the Fremont Troll, an old pre-Awakening concrete statue. They called it a troll, but it wasn't really. Trolls, before the Awakening and before Goblinization, were very, very different. The statue wasn't what mattered, though, it was what was under it. There was a bar there, called Troll Bridge, dug underneath the statue and run by Kestrel's favorite bartender and her Fixer and provider of the work she did in Seattle. The bartender's name was Mouse, and she was an elven woman with a chrome hand and a penchant for not taking anyone's bullshit. Kestrel swore, loosing a string of explicit words that were muted to her own ears as Pink Mutiny blasted on in her ear buds. Troll Bridge was the bar Kestrel's bike was pointed towards, and it was on fire.

#30shadows nano #nanowrimo #nano2k14 #nano 2014

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30shadows · 10 years

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Heads Up

I decided I’m actually going to post this in chapters, so each chapter may be shorter or longer than 1,667 words. I figure it’ll be easier to read.

Yeah that isn't going to work well. I also realize how terrible this might be to read on a board that shows posts newest to oldest, but oh well. I'm gonna keep on keeping on!

All parts will be tagged with “30shadows nano”.

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30shadows · 10 years

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Happy November!

Today marks the start of my "live" posting of my 2014 NaNo novel, "A Game of Cat and Mouse." My writing starts later today. Let's do this thing.

#NaNoWriMo

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30shadows · 10 years

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You just spent 30 days writing around 1,600 words a day. It will be terrible. There will be places where you wrote [RETURN TO THIS SCENE AT A LATER DATE] or [SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENS FIGURE IT OUT AFTER CHRISTMAS]. That’s okay.

Get tips from Sumayyah Daud on how to conquer November ~ “NaNoWriMo Approacheth!” (via writtenwordsl)

#nano2k14 #nanowrimo

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30shadows · 10 years

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Over the last month, I've been doing a lot of writing for my main character, Kestrel. A Game of Cat and Mouse will take place approximately nine years after this short story. I posted this on my main blog earlier in the month but figured it wouldn't be out of place here!

The Peregrine of the Bradley Ring

February tenth wasn’t the first time Quinn Ward had arrived at the shelter with a black eye. It certainly wouldn’t be the last either, and she knew it well. All the same, she held her head high as she walked in and down the corridor towards the Puyallup shelter’s sleeping quarters.

Her worn sneakers, wet with the slush from the sidewalk outside, squeaked against the linoleum with every step she took. Shifting the duffel bag slung over her left shoulder—her right ached far too much to carry anything—she turned the corner and entered a room full of beds. The lights were still turned up bright, the fluorescents still casting their yellowed glare down onto the bodies gathered there. The path to the beds was broken up by curtains on rollers, providing a barely adequate form of privacy for the residents therein. Puyallup saw all types here at the shelter, and she recognized some of the usual faces.

One face in particular, a thin dwarf named Reddy, smiled and waved as she neared his bed.

"Hey there, Quinn," he waved, "Peregrine get her ass kicked over at Bradley again?"

#shadowrun #writing

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30shadows · 10 years

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NaNoWriMo Planning

Status: Red

The klaxons are screaming and my soul is weeping as NaNo approaches. I’ve only got two days left, realistically, to finish planning my novel before November hits.

Since I’m writing a storyline that both incorporates things from my concurrently-running Shadowrun game, I’ve had to write a timeline of everything that’s been going on with the involved characters through the whole of 2075. Trying to plot out my novel around everything else the characters have been doing is a little difficult, but I think I’m making it work.

I’ve also got to plan out some things for my Thursday Shadowrun game, too! Oh dear. This will be interesting.

#nanowrimo #shadowrun

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30shadows · 10 years

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Hello, writerly friends!

National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us! Are you ready for 30 days of literally abandon? I sure hope so! :D Otherwise, though, you have no reason to worry because I’ve compiled answers to the most common NaNoWriMo problems, along with a bunch of helpful links!

If you want to see my silly face (and hear of the ridiculous challenge I am going to be doing during NaNoWriMo) then feel free to give the video above a spin! Otherwise, you can just head over below and checkout the answers to your questions~ ♥︎

If the problem is that you don’t have a story idea… No need to worry! I have been making Story Seeds and Weird Prompts for over 2 years. Of course, you’re allowed (and encouraged) to change, twist, and combine prompts as you see fit! No sourcing necessary c;

If the problem is that you haven’t done any outlining… You’re in luck! I have a two-part video where I go over my system for brainstorming, fleshing out, and plotting a novel! Click HERE to check it out :D

If the problem is that you’ve lost the motivation… I have just the thing for you! I recently uploaded a video titled ‘How to Regain the Motivation to Finish your Novel' and it contains my *best* piece of advice for reigniting the flame and getting back into writing!

If the problem is that you’re a little rusty… Then you’ve come to the right place c; My youtube channel is full of Writing Exercises and Writing Challenges!

Finally, I have a couple extra things for you! :D

If you need a little more help fleshing out characters… you should head over to my collection of Character Questions!

If you need a little bit of encouragement… you should check out my Writer Positivity page, and remember that if you have a writing question you can always send it my way!

Finally, if you love listening to music while writing… then head over to my 8tracks page and pick up one of my many Writing Playlists! Made by writers, for writers c;

I hope this helps~ ♥︎

And, of course, make sure to subscribe to me on Youtube if you want more writing advice videos, and if you would like (even more) writing advice, positivity, and prompts, then make sure to follow my blog: maxkirin.tumblr.com!

#nanowrimo #nano2014

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