Katherine “Kay” Yamashita sat in the back of a windowless van, three shadowrunners along with her. A voice occasionally piped up from some speakers in the back, the drivers she assumed. Two of the ‘runners in the back, the one called Grin, and a dark-skinned elf woman wearing a dull grey jumpsuit, were talking about something they were watching on their commlinks with the driver.
‘The frag they take the SUV for?! They just walked past a GMC Phoenix! Things a work’ve art!’.
‘Work’ve art with no tires on it’.
‘They coulda put ‘em on! It’s not rocket science!’.
‘They did not have that much time’.
‘It had concealed armour, a rigger interface, electrochromatic coating, and a hidden integrated light machinegun! They coulda made time!’.
‘Your just mad you didn’t get a chance to take it for yourself’.
‘Doesn’t mean I’m wrong!’.
She didn’t know what they were talking about with such fervour, and she didn’t care to find out. The other ‘runner who had been there to… escort her away from Pedro and Kenda didn’t say anything to contribute to the conversation. That rainbow haired ‘runner, Chromatic, had done nothing but stare at Katherine since they had entered the teams van, sitting opposite from her with stern, steely grey eyes. She had the distinct impression that the ‘runner had taken a strong disliking to her though she could think of no reason why Chromatic would have such strongly negative feelings towards her. That said, she didn’t blame her; Katherine didn’t particularly like herself either.
Where had it had all gone so wrong?
When Katherine first heard about the project to infiltrate the Redmond barrens and study its inhabitants first hand, she was excited. She saw it as both an opportunity to give her corporate profile a unique flair, and as a chance to get some thrilling stories to tell her family and work colleagues. Katherine had never thought that she would become attached to the people she met down in the squaller of the city, let alone come to love any of them.
Things had started off as she had expected. There was some initial distrust from the locals, but she had managed to win them over with her charm and willingness to apply some of her medicinal knowledge along with her healing magics towards them. It had been an excellent occasion to apply what she had learnt from both her psychology courses and medical school studies in sub optimal conditions, in the field as it were. Her professors were thrilled with the papers she wrote based off her early experiences; her star rose in ascendance.
Then she met them.
Kenda and Kay had only crossed paths by happenstance, meeting in a bar and striking up a conversation that wound up lasting all night. Most of the time Kay only formed the most superficial of connections with people, even when living her normal, her real life. Being raised by MCT she was taught that true fulfilment came from being part of something greater than oneself, not personal gratification. It was also a culture that rewarded those who could make the most use out of others without being used too badly in turn. When she spoke with Kenda though all those engrained lessons faded away. Kay felt… empathy for the exiled troll. She felt herself bonding over their shared experiences of being outsiders. True, she had to dance around some details, tell outright lies in some cases. But the core concepts of what they shared were what mattered, and she didn’t lie about them.
For all her life Katherine had been isolated from others. First it was her being raised in a MCT arcology, never knowing anything other than what the megacorporation permitted. Then it was due to her magical ability; she was separated from what few friends she had made as a child and moulded into what the corporation wanted, only for them to be disappointed when she turned out to be weaker than they had first thought. When she was sent to the University of Washington Katherine had hoped that she would be able to finally experience the life she had always wanted. She had, to an extent, but Katherine had learnt early on that the university was not all she had longed for.
There were cliques there that controlled most of the social scenes and she was never able to fully integrate into any of them, only ever being on the periphery. Megacorporate students weren’t encouraged to mingle with those from rival megacorporations too much, and Katherine’s family wasn’t high enough in MCT for her to rise far in the MCT clique. Nor was she intelligent enough to be seen as one of the great talents that people sought out. She was beautiful and charismatic to be sure, but that didn’t mean much to people who could afford the finest cosmetic surgeons to enhance their own looks. Katherine found herself marooned to the margins of university social life, forming many superficial relationships but never feeling a true connection with another person.
That was what had drawn her to Kenda and kept them together. Her first real friend. Someone who understood what it meant to be on the periphery through no fault of one’s own. That had been perhaps the beginning of things becoming more serious than she intended.
Meeting Pedro was definitely when things began to progress in ways she hadn’t intended though.
Unlike with Kenda, Kay had purposely sought out Pedro. She had heard about him in passing from some nameless acquaintances and had decided to strike up another superficial friendship. Kay knew that the barrens were dangerous, so she wanted to be on decent terms with people who could protect her. It didn’t feel good to think of using Pedro like that now, and Kay was grateful that the shadowrunners hadn’t revealed that specific detail to him along with everything else.
When she had originally set up their “chance encounter” at the Tarnished Gold bar Kay hadn’t been expecting much from Pedro. She knew that he was magically active to some degree, that he participated in local Urban Brawl matches, and that he had some degree of what passed for a reputation in the barrens, but that was all. Kay had expected to find a thug with some minor magical ability that had lucked into learning how to throw a fireball and was trying to make a career out of participating in violent arena sports. She’d never expected to find somebody like… him.
Seeing for herself that Pedro possessed more raw magical power than she did was humbling for Kay. She had learnt in her lessons in applied thaumaturgy that magical potential was not bound to any geographical place, belief system, culture, or race. That said, she had always presumed that without the benefits of a professional education system any magical power a person possessed would never be fully realised.
But for Pedro it was.
He had spent years of his life learning about magical theory from obscure matrix sites and cheap books he’d discovered. And not only had he grown and developed in terms of raw magical power, but his understanding of magical theory was greater than her own! He might not have known the names of every thaumaturgical principle and theory, but he comprehended them better than most of her fellow students. Not only that but he was smarter than she had expected as well. In their first conversation the two of them had discussed various subjects with Pedro easily able to keep up with her and her megacorporate sponsored education. Kay had intended to impress Pedro with her understanding of magic and possibly buy his loyalty through offering to teach him spells, but in the end, she found herself once again outclassed as he had managed to learn many spells that she didn’t know through various, and often unlawful means. It was through his tutelage that she’d learnt how to cast a stunbolt recently, for all the good it had done.
The two of them became friends in a matter of hours after first meeting, and even closer by the end of the night. Being with Pedro gave Kay a rush, but not simply out of the taboo nature of their relationship, that was only a tiny part of it. No, what she found so intoxicating about him was his passion, his drive to become something greater than what he was, his lust for life. Pedro could easily have joined a gang or a larger criminal organisation and lived a comfortable life by Redmond standards, but he had chosen to instead pursue a career in Urban Brawl. It wasn’t because it was easier, rather it was the opposite; achieving notoriety in Urban Brawl was a difficult prospect with many young people in Redmond seeking to escape the barrens in a similar manner. It was dangerous, violent, and highly competitive.
Pedro loved it.
When they had talked about it in the past, he had always said that he enjoyed Urban Brawl because it gave him an opportunity to revel in his magical combat prowess without having to worry about seriously harming anyone. Pedro did also enjoy the adulation of the crowd when he got it. She could see it went deeper than that though; perhaps he recognised it, perhaps he didn’t. But she could see that the challenge of the task itself was part of the appeal to Pedro. He wanted to struggle, to reach his limits and push beyond them.
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To Katherine, who had lived her entire life following the orders and instructions of others, watching Pedro live his own life on his own terms, challenging himself because he wanted to not because he had to… He was utterly unlike anyone she had ever met before, even in the barrens. Pedro and his ardent passion drew her in like a moth to a flame. And just as in the metaphor she had gotten burnt.
‘Annnddddd boom. Now we get to collect on that bounty from the Mob as well after this. Double payday!’.
Cheers rung out in the van and through its speakers and most of the shadowrunners celebrated something that they were watching on their commlinks. All except for Chromatic who continued to stare daggers at her. Katherine didn’t care about any of that, she was simply mildly annoyed that she had been rudely disturbed from her ruminations.
Katherine hadn’t worked out how she could prolong her time in Redmond after her graduation from university, but she had vague plans. She hoped that she could somehow find a way to perform post graduate studies that would let her continue to go to the barrens. Her research had caught the interest of several prominent members of the faculty, it hadn’t seemed too farfetched at the time. After that? MCT would want Katherine to join the megacorporations workforce properly at some point after graduation. She knew that she would never be deemed worthy enough by the University for them to purchase her contract from MCT. That was reserved for the most capable and intelligent students, a lofty status far beyond her meagre abilities. And there was no way that she would ever be able to find time in-between working a megacorporate job to carry out clandestine visits to the most dangerous and deprived section of the city.
The idea of somehow convincing Pedro and Kenda to somehow leave the barrens behind and join her in working for MCT had crossed her mind, but she knew that was something that would have taken years of groundwork to convince them of. If it was successful, she would still have very little influence to apply to actually get them employed by the corporation. But if she had then at least the three of them could have stayed together, perhaps slipping out to the barrens for old times sake. It would have been good. She was sure that with enough time some opportunity would have presented itself to her, she would have been able to figure something out. And until then she had been having so much fun, enjoying herself in a way she never had before.
Everything had been going so well.
Every time Katherine left for the barrens, she made sure that she wasn’t followed nor was she walking into a dangerous place. She’d learnt where the most dangerous parts of Redmond were and stuck to the “safe” paths to Touristville, the “safest” part of the barrens. It had worked for months, and she’d heard of no hint of any gang activity in that area. When she’d spotted them, Kay had moved to hide as best she could. Both Pedro and Kenda had stressed to her the importance of not engaging a gang in a fight, about how they would almost always have numbers on their side but also how they would always look for the easiest target. If they couldn’t find you, they wouldn’t even try to search, just move on to find more prey.
But those gangers hadn’t given up. They’d kept looking for her. Hunting her. When she saw one of them brandishing a mage-hood she knew that she was in trouble. She’d called up Pedro as fast as she could, hoping against hope that he would through some miraculous luck be nearby and able to rescue her.
She hadn’t even managed to finish her call to him.
Somehow, they gangers had managed to cut her matrix signal. Then they’d found her, pinned her down as she screamed and cried out. Just another of many such cries that echoed through the barrens at any given time. Nobody came to help her, if anyone heard at all.
When the gangers began to take her boots off, she feared the worst but felt the tiniest hint of relief when she saw them smashing them along with her commlink before forcing the mage-hood on her head. Then true dread dawned on her as Kay realised that the gangers must have known about the tracers she had in her boots and commlink.
There was no way any random group of gangers could have found the tracking equipment hidden on her person. She had been assured that they were advanced enough that even professional electronics expert, a decker, would have struggled to find them without knowing that they were there. If the gangers hadn’t found them then that could only mean that they had been told about them. Someone knew about her, about her double life, about how she had really first come to the barrens. As the thick, heavy hood flashed bright lights in her face and blared high pitched noises in her ears to prevent her from focusing on her magic Kay had begun to panic. She tried to flail her arms and legs in a desperate attempt to escape the nightmare she was trapped in. It was futile. They lifted her body up and she felt a sharp jag in her back as a tranquiliser was injected into her, forcing her to sleep.
It was a dreamless sleep that granted Kay no rest. When she later awoke, she didn’t know how long she had been unconscious for or where she was. All she could hear were the constantly distracting sounds of the mage-hood. All she could see was the bright lights flashing in her face. The mage-hood stank of a rancid mix of dried vomit and blood. She felt the cold grimy floor beneath her, and her body ached from her ordeal. She had gone from an uncomfortable sleep to a waking nightmare.
Things became worse when somebody barged into wherever she was being held and went on a long, rambling, boastful rant. He claimed to be the mastermind of everything, that he was going to sell Kay to… somebody, it was unclear who, the mage-hood made perceiving anything outside of it extremely difficult. He appeared to be certain that he would use her to buy his way into the greater ranks of… something. The main take away from him was that Kay understood that the gangers were indeed middlemen and that as far as they were concerned, they were selling her on to somewhere else.
She couldn’t think of who would gain from acquiring her. Kay was not an especially talented student nor powerful spellcaster. That all led her to conclude that she was going to be used to make either U-Dub or MCT lose face and damage their reputations. Kay could already see the news headlines:
“MCT University student kidnapped by barrens gangers – How could this be allowed to happen?”
If that was what was intended for her then once the media agencies found out, there was no need for her. Katherine had visions of her being dragged down to a bunraku parlour, strapped to an operating table and having crude cybernetics forced into her body. Turned into a puppet, becoming an outlet for the darkest of lusts of the most depraved of people.
A living hell.
Had Kay been able to take her own life she would have seriously considered it. While exploring the Redmond barrens she had seen evidence of some of the worst things a person was capable of inflicting upon another person. She had always managed to avoid seeing it for herself, but she knew how bad things could get in the barrens. Kay had been so sure that such things could never happen to her, that she was too clever, too savvy, to ever become a victim.
Then, just as things had seemed to be at their worst, they came for her. Pedro and Kenda. She had heard some loud noises of indeterminable origin through the hood but hadn’t expected that to be a sign that she was being rescued by her friends. For a brief, shining moment it seemed to Kay that everything was going to be alright, that she would go back to the adventurous lifestyle she had become accustomed to.
And then the shadowrunners came and ruined everything.
She was free, she had her friends, her secret was safe and then they came and undid everything. In a matter of minutes, they destroyed her before Pedro and Kenda, ripped apart the image she had built up over all her time in Redmond.
Chromatic continued her incessant glaring at her and in a fit of pique Katherine returned the spite filled look. They had torn her world apart for nothing more than nuyen and the ‘runner had the audacity to look down at her as if she was the villain? Katherine had friends and a life that she enjoyed for the first time in her life, and they had robbed her of that.
Some small part of her, driven mad with impotent rage wanted to lash out at them all. To throw spell after spell at them and beat them all into the ground for ruining her life. To let them see how it felt to be powerless in the face of something beyond their control.
Katherine did nothing though, save blink first and look away from Chromatic. She understood how the world worked. The powerful did what they wanted and everyone else had to deal with the consequences. She didn’t know any offensive spells anyway. The closest thing she had was her stun bolt spell that she had learnt from Pedro.
Pedro…
Fury that had been growing within her had disappeared, like a fire quenched by a bucket of ice-cold water as she remembered his earnest plea. For Kay to stay in the barrens, to fully abandon the world that she had been born into and embrace the life that she had been half living.
It was tempting. She would have been lying if she claimed that she’d never considered it before. And more than that, seeing Pedro still want her made Katherine’s heart race even in the miserable situation that she had been in.
But she rejected his offer.
There were a million reasons for why she did that but in the end, there was only one that mattered. Katherine Yamashita was a coward. For as much as she enjoyed living the life of a runaway corp-kid, living in the constant adrenaline rush that was the Redmond barrens, Kay never seriously considered living there for the rest of her life. She needed, craved for the safety that could only be found in the protected and constantly monitored corporate enclaves. She liked to be able to buy food and not have to worry where it came from or if it would make her sick, to walk down a street and not hear gunshots in the distance, seeing a corporate security officer and not have to worry about them attacking you out of instinct.
Being kidnapped also played a significant factor into her ultimate choice. She loved Pedro and she cared for Kenda, and they had managed to find and rescue her in her hour of need when things looked the darkest. But what if they hadn’t? Katherine had come so terribly close either death or a fate worse than it and it had been so sudden. She had no clue that it had been about to happen, no warning she could have seen and used to avoid what happened. The instigator of her kidnapping was still out in the world as well. Would they leave her alone after the failed attempt? Katherine wasn’t willing to risk it.
She had hoped that Pedro and Kenda would be able to accept her decision. To not make things any more difficult than they already were. But that had been one more of a string of vain hopes for the day.
Saying that it was easy or that she had no regrets was wrong. Katherine wanted to stay with her friends, she did. She lacked the bravery and conviction to go through with it though. And she hated herself for that weakness.
Now she was stuck in the back of a van surrounded by hired criminals being escorted back to the University of Washington where she would most likely be punished for allowing things to escalate the way they had.