A week in Seattle? No problem. Just the cover to get the Hell out of this outfit and onto the real mission. Monkey Wrench was a magnet for bad luck, but she was a damned fine runner when it came to the wire, and Brimstone and Gideon could more than take care of themselves. Right now, there were bigger fish to fry.
Under the guise of looking for information on the streets, he slipped a few nuyen to a guy he knew, and wiped whatever RFID tags he might have been inadvertently carrying, then dumped every piece of gear the UCAS people had given him into a steel drum, weighed it down with a few pieces of a speed bump, and dropped it into the sound. It wasn't perfect, but it would bloody well give him more than enough head-start to get himself where he needed to go.
Word gets around in the shadows, and it ALWAYS got back around to Station, one way or another. Those cartel bastards who let Jenny die as leverage were going to be having a big meeting. A lot of bigwigs, all in one place at the same time. It was too good to pass up. Damn the risks. Sometimes you just have to do it. Sometimes making a stand is more important than getting out after.
A few grand and a spirit summoning will get you from Seattle metroplex to Tenochtitlan faster than a suborbital, and with less fanfare. Hell, if you play your cards right, the smuggler will paying you for the service. Station was damned good at playing his cards right.
There was a lot of muscle and magic guarding the place, and sneaking in wasn't going to happen. That's fine. Station wasn't planning to sneak in anyway. They knew someone was there a hundred yards out. Maybe more. It didn't take long for them to figure who was coming. Maybe he would want to talk, they thought. He was a pro. He understood business, and had been known to work with and for former opponents, right? If Station wanted trouble, he'd have brought the whole fragging team with him, no?
That hesitation cost them. Magic fingers isn't generally thought of as a combat spell, but if you pump enough mana into it, it'll beak a bull in half. A couple of trolls at the door didn't stand a chance. A flock of spirit crows wasn't much of a distraction to the blood mages, but they sure scared the Hell out of the mundanes. A hail of EX explosive rounds did a fine job of keeping the casters on their toes. Station was geared up with every defensive tech and magic he could get his hands on, but eventually, things started getting through. A bullet graze here - a manabolt not quite completely shut down there... It added up, but for every injury he sustained, Station killed half a dozen Azzie goons and a ranker.
A few of the Azzies broke for the doors, but at some point, a truck had parked against them, and they wouldn't open. Damn, that mage was fast. Faster than words. Faster than thought. Not even a tweaked-out street sam with full-on Move-by-Wire could keep up. As he learned to his dismay.
"My name is Michael Stea!" he shouted, his voice echoing off of the walls of the building. Spraying another dozen rounds across the room, then reloading in the blink of an eye, he didn't give them a chance to react. Even that was magically enhanced. "You killed someone dear to me... You'll probably kill me, too today. I don't care. You, and everyone like you, will know before this night is over..." The Magic fingers slammed a truck into gear, smashing into an oil drum. Soon, gasoline fumes filled the building. "Sometimes, the person you cross is a force of nature... You never fragging know when the man you cross is your death!" A guardian spirit picked up a fallen machine gun, filling the room with even more lead... At some point, the gas had lit. Whether from spellfire or something mundane, it was impossible to tell, but the orange light and black smoke prevented nearly all sight... except for the raging bard, hurling spells, bullets, and curses into the night.
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"..and in other news, a massive fire erupted in central Tenochtitlan, the capitol city of Aztlan last night. Traces of magical energy are rumored to remain, but the Aztlan government is refusing to comment. The identities of the victims are officially unable to be determined due to the size of the blaze. There were no survivors."
