There needs to be an inspirational quote here. Something that will gift you, the reader, with a profound insight or bestow upon you a bit of knowledge. I thought about it and came up short, so I'll just say this....
Survivors write history. Think long and hard about that.
~ Thomas Michael Gunne
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Fear.
That little four-letter word is pretty powerful. I think that all of us have experienced fear to some degree. When we are very small we may be afraid of the dark, spiders or monsters in the closet. Throughout our childhoods we may know fear of rejection or of the terrifying entities that linger in the astral plane (magical kids do have it rough sometimes). But most adults have come to grip with their fears to the point where they don't collapse in a heap. Shadowrunners often pretend they are utterly fearless.
I'm not going to perpetuate that lie. I was scared drekless.
"MORTAL! SURRENDER THE PRIZE OR FACE OBLIVION!" My skull rang from the telepathic beating even as blood began to run from my ears. I felt bloody tears on my cheeks and the cold ground of Pepper's grave beneath my knees. The largest dragon I had ever personally seen was seething in palpable rage directly in front of me and there was no one around to save my hoop. I forced myself upright, stood and faced her with my boots digging into the mud. Somehow, I didn't feel alone.
"A third time I ask and then be done: Will you deal, or will you be barred from the Place of Gates for ages?" I was shaking in fear, standing in a puddle of piss and felt certain that I had made a horrible miscalculation.
Her thought voice rang in my skull and blood spurted from my nose. "It would almost be worth the wait to hear your suffering. I swear I'll ...."
The pressure on my brain vanished as I heard a pair of vehicle doors slam.
"YOU SCALY BITCH!" I couldn't see her, but I heard a voice that filled me with a deep, soul wrenching fear that threatened to grow into full blown panic.
"GET AWAY FROM MY HUSBAND!" I had never heard her sound like that. Rage echoed in her voice and I heard the steel of her mother's will ringing out in every word. "YOU SEND PEOPLE TO SHOOT AT MY BABIES AND TRY TO KILL MY HUSBAND?!?! BITCH I'LL MAKE YOU INTO A PAIR OF BOOTS!" The dragon craned her long neck over its wing to behold my wife, standing at the gate to the graveyard training a shotgun up at the monster's enormous head.
I felt an impact in the Earth as something heavy landed on either side of me. A pair of massive hands grabbed me under the shoulder and by my thigh, hoisting me two meters off the ground in sudden jerk. "Come on chummer," Crank growled. "we are leaving. Now, Shade!"
The night erupted like an exploding star. My vision went white and the dragon's angry roar shattered the windows and drowned out the sound of a shotgun blasting away. I felt a rush of air as Crank raced away, weaving about to avoid the headstones. My earpiece chirped as a certain console cowgirl hacked my comm and brought me online with my unexpected rescuers.
"Damnit, Tommy you should have called!" Angel swore in my ear, barely audible over the hurricane of rage that roared behind me. "Incoming! Detonation in FIVE. THIS ONE'S FOR RATCHET! THREE."
Static blared in my earpiece as Crank raced to get us clear. I was flash-blind and weak as a kitten from the magical and mental assault.
"Two." Angel's voice broke through the static, ringing with murderous intent. "DIE!"
Everything went black.
*****
I woke up to sirens blaring in my ringing ears, a smothering weight pressing down on me, and the smell of smoke mingled with peach body wash, blood and peppermint tooth paste. Red and green spots crowded the vision of my left eye while my right was muddy with blood.
The church was on fire.
Crank was bleeding profusely from a wound somewhere on his head. His blood flowed over the right side of my face, leaving me half blind. He was limp, still and massive.
"Crank," I wheezed. "come on chummer. Get off me."
He didn't move, didn't say a word.
I flick of the wrist and a respectable dose of magical energy wrapped Crank in the same spell I used to levitate the twins. He was far more massive though, and I felt the strain of the spell as I my magic struggled against his mass to lift him from me. My immediate reward was the ability to breathe again.
I wove a simple spell of invisibility around Crank and myself and hurried away from the church as the fire department frantically worked to quell the blaze.
There was no sign of Aria.
I was hurrying across the street, away from the watchful eyes of the firemen when Shade stepped out of thin air before me. "Tommy, let's get him on his feet and get the hell out of here."
"Where's Aria?" I wheezed.
"Dragon grabbed her." his voice was tense. "We've got to stop the bleeding Tommy, help me."
The spell holding Crank unraveled as the full weight of Shade's words hit me and I suddenly felt sick. Crank hit the ground and I fell beside him, 'Dragon grabbed her' kept floating through my mind.
Crank was dying in front of me.
"TOMMY!" Shade snapped at me. "Get your head out of your ass and help me or we'll lose him!"
"What?" I said weakly.
Shade slapped me. "NOW, DAMNIT!" He grabbed the back of my head and forced me to look at my best chummer. His right leg was gone, just above the knee. "We need to do this together or he'll never make it!"
Crank was pale, barely breathing as I forced myself to my knees and pulled the small vial of water from the Blood Falls. "Creo sanitatem mutato hominum de ex mystio creo sanitatem" Shade and I recited the spell, over and over as I poured out the sacred water over Crank's still form. "Creo sanitatem. Mutato. Hominum de ex mystio. Creo sanitatem!" Shade's invocation reached its crescendo as I struggled to focus, my magic trickling into the spell while my soul ached with worry over what may have happened to Aria.
Crank's wounds scabbed over. He took a shallow, shaky breath.
"He's hurt bad." Shade muttered. "He needs a hospital."
"Get him there. I'll make sure the bills get paid." Shade was fresh faced, unhurt, while I was battered and still couldn't see out of my right eye.
"Which way did the dragon go?" I asked.
Shade pointed to the western sky. With a wave of his hand Crank's limp form rose a meter off the ground. "I'll get him clear." Shade shook his head at me. "You're going to die if you go after that thing."
"Take care of him Shade. I'll make it up to you when I get back."
The air elemental lifted me into the night. A block over the church was awash in flames that were being beaten back by the drones and metahumanity of the Seattle Metroplex Fire Department. I couldn't see the dragon anywhere. I reached out with my mind and touch the connections between Rose, Lily and myself.
"Girls, come to me." my thought command found their essence and they responded in a flash.
"Mother commanded that I watch the girls." she spoke with the tone of a guilty child. "She left father, I didn't want her to but she left."
"The Place of Gates is unguarded." Rose interrupted. "What advantage do we have left?"
"Were going to get your mother back." I replied. I took their hands and felt their power connect to mine. "If anyone tries to stop us, kill them."
We soared out over Seattle, chasing after a monster we couldn't hope defeat and my own guilty conscious.
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Thank you for reading my fan fiction. Once again, I want to thank Russell Zimmerman, Stephen Kenson, Lisa Smedman, Robert N. Charrette, Tom Dowd, Mel Odom, the legendary Nigel Findley (RIP), Michael A. Stackpole and so many others who have brought the world of Shadowrun to life for all of us fans. Each added more color, depth, and breathed life into the setting in their own way and I am grateful to each of them.
We are nearing the end of "Aftermath". I hope you are enjoying this tale and that it in some way will breath a little more life into your own Shadowrun world and experience.
I invite you to join me for Chapter 15, the conclusion of 'Aftermath'.
Thank you.
W.S. "Sam" Quinton
