Okay so when we left Pudding he was with the gang meeting an arms dealer. After that meeting ends,

Pudding splits from the team to make hiis way home, talkign great care to remain hidden from the PCC

forces still out searching for him. As he walks, a van pulls up alongside him and the side door

slides open; one of his contacts, a Darcy O'Hara, yells at him to get in immediately. Judging the

ride to be safer than strolling the streets, he hops in.

Darcy was the person offering a previous job through her contacts in the anarchist group 'The Cutting

Bullets'. As she explains, they have formed a team of members from several groups labelled as

terrorists by the PCC, but still lack a decker. She reminds Pudding he does still owe her, and thusly

he accepts the job.

Darcy introduces the rest of the team sitting around her; there is Sembue (One-eye), a member of the

Ute tribe, recently annexed by the PCC; a man named Needle, who is also a member of the Cutting

Bullets; and a strange reptilian man with quills or feathers extending from the back of his head and

wrists, introduced as Juruparu. She does nto mention Juru's organisation, but he was the one who gave

the information about the weapon cache.

The job itself is straightforward: in the heart of the militarty-restricted toxic zone is the

abandoned Pendleton military base, buried under tonnes of rubble, sediment and toxic sludge from when

the Big Two and the subsequent tsunami hit. Waste from the destroyed nuclear plant seeped into the

waters and dirt, creating something of a radiactive swampland. With the area lying next to the Aztlan

border, it had been abandoned and then restricted by the PCC military to act as a buffer zone. They

base was home to an extensive store of military-grade weapons and munitions: these are the prizes

they seek.

Pudding accepts the job but informs his employer he requires time to heal and resupply, which is

fine. Sembue escorts Pudding home so he may restock on ammo. At a pinch, he uses the unknonwn

chemical composition he calls 'Red Acid' from the barrel of waste he still has laying around in his

apartment.

A couple of days pass before the job can finally begin. Pudding meets the team at the San Clemente

dock south of the sprawl, the plan is to board a barge which will sail out beyond the exclusion zone

being guarded around the coastline, then take a motorised inflatable raft under cover of darkness to

the shore. Once the barge has reached its destination, Pudding does a scan and hacks into one of the

drones patrolling the area. The drones report back to base every few minutes, if they do not it would

 rouse suspicion, so Pudding sets the team's departure to avoid detection by the patrols, allowing

them to enter the restricted zone without raising the alarm.

The decision is the made to take the raft straight into the Pendleton harbour and attempt to make it

as far into the flooded mainland as possible. This irks Needle, who has not taken a liking to the

half-Japanese ork in the group, but he is shouted down by the others who do not wish to waste time

exploring the coast for other loot.

They make it some way inland but must abandon the raft when they reach a raised bank of sediment and

overturned vehicles. The team choose to ignore floating crates and wreckage, again annoying Needle.

Once they land however, a body is spotted floating in the nearby debris. Not wishing to risk it

becoming a Shedim problem later, Pudding approaches with his shovel used as a push-stick. As soon as

his spade touches the 'corpse', it rears up revealing itself to be a Merrow (mermaid), and lunges for

Pudding. Drawing his machine pistol, Pudding lets off a volley and wounds the creature, which

finishes its lunge and rakes one side of his body with its razor-sharp claws. The Merrow is quickly

finished off with another acid round but Pudding is quite hurt. The wounds are bandaged to stem the

bleeding and halt infection, and plasters applied to help re-seal his suit. Needle seems unimpressed.

Again, Pudding uses his (low) Charisma to steer the team towards what appears to be a hospital

sitting across from the battered freeway. Obviously this is to search for environmental protection

gear for the team and not for medical supplies for himself. They opt to take the more direct route,

crossing knee-deep water to the ambulance bay, Sembue leads the way as their guide, his one augmented

eye scanning the terrain for trouble.

Trouble is does find as he motions the group to halt and backup. He has spotted half a dozen humanoid

creatures crawling around the entrance, they seem to be eating. The team sidle along the shore into

some heavy brush to use as cover, then, they make their attack. Four of the feral ghouls are injured

in the assault, one of which directly attacks Sembue, but is then cut down with his smartgun-linked

tomahawk and hunting knife combo. the rest of the creatures flee. Pudding notices something moving in

the water in his peripheral vision. Piles of dismembered bodies lay in piles dotting the area. Sembue

questions where the bodies are coming from.

They find a gap in the strewn debris blocking the ambulance bay entrance and widen it to slip

through. Inside a collapsed ceiling acts as a ramp to the 1st flooor; they investigate, two abreast

in the wide corridor, searching each room of the ward, finding a single HazMat suit. Needle

immediately claims the suit and dons it over his armour clothing. Signs at the end of the corridor

point to a staging area at the rear of the building (as a military hopsital this would be used to

practice for large scale epidemics/quarantine situations). The team head for the staging area.

Outside is dark, the staging area stretches across a large concrete lot and is littered with gurneys,

stretchers, tents and skeletons. At some point after the tsunami hit, this area had been setup to act

as a live medical unit. Years had passed, and the victims were now rotted to down to the bone.
undeterred, the team stalks across to the tents. The largest is ignored in favour of a closed smaller

one. Pudding nominates Needle to enter on point; Pudding follows in second; the others trail in

after. The tent is moist, fetid and unreaosnably dark. Sembue voices his sense of something

malignant. With his enhanced vision, Pudding sees a shape lunging from behind a curtained area,

straight for Needle. Pudding grabs the man's shoulder with one hand and pulls him back, then lets out

a shot with his weapon. The rotting flesh of the assailant fills the air with a foul odour as the

thing falls upon Needle. Pudding drops his weapon and draws his shovel, takes aim, and golf-swings it

full-force into the creature's head, unleashing a charge of taser-electricity.

The corpse-creature ignores the surge of electrical damage and tears into Needle with a ferocious

rage. The man's dying screams fade as Pudding finishes the creature off with another round of acid to

its head. Juruparu sidles alongside Pudding, leans down and relieves the dead man of his belongings.

Pudding does a secondary rifling and takes the man's necklance: a bullet on a chain. It bears an

inscription 'with all my love, Darcy'. Sembue comments that now Pudding is representing the Cutting

Bullets' interest in this venture.

They push on, leaving Neddle's corpse for the ghouls which are starting to again amass. The terrain

is difficult and the night draws on, so they opt to take the more direct path, and wade into the

waters. The deepest section of the swamp has them chest-high in the unpleasant goop, but they pass

this point unhindered. Then, just as the water reaches belly-height, Pudding again notices the

underwater presence. It appears log-like and circles the trio sevral times, getting closer with each

pass. The rhythmic fashion of its movement provides brief opportunity to make a shot at its exposed

spine, which is covered in a slick hairy sheen. Pudding takes a shot and successfully hits. this

seems to aggravate the thing and it makes a beeline for (Pudding chooses)... Juruparu.

Juruparu cleaves down hard with his obsidian axe but misses completely. He is dragged down and away

by the beast, eventually disappearing in a cloud of blood. Pudding and Sembue sprint as best they can

for the shore. Heaving through respirators as they make 'dry' land, a field of soft sludge, Sembue

asks what will they do now that their guide is lost? Pudding tries a Matrix scan but there is no

Matrix signal here. They find the deserted Pendleton base and start searching.

They know the target of their mission was a facility housing a cache of weapons and munitions, so

they begin looking for an appropriate building. With Pudding's technologically-enhanced eyes and

Sembue's tracking skills, they locate what would appear to be a likely candidate; a small bunker-like

entrance with heavy-set doors and thick, reinforced walls.

The only access point in this structure are the doors, which are far too thick to burn through with

acid. Beside the doors is a panel, presumably some sort of hand or fingerprint scanner. Pudding

smahes it open with acid and shovel, then draws the wiring out so he can jack-in directly. The Host

is powerful but not impossibly so. Pudding manages to break into the Host and locate several server

nodes; a set of data stores, the main functional systems, security node and something he's never seen

before. It looks like a container of some sort.

He focuses on the functional systems, which would control the facility's doors, lifts, lights, etc.

It controls all but one set of doors in the lowest level. Pudding sets everything on/open and jacks-

out. Coming to, he sees Sembue standing watch, the facility lights are on and the doors open.

Immediately inside is a large elevator which can travel 14 floors down, but only open at the bottom

three; B1, B2 and B3. As the lift descends, Pudding smahses the ceiling panel with his shovel and

climbs up, then promptly falls down again as he is tasered. In a second attempt, he thrusts his

shock-shovel upward and shorts out the taser-field on the elevator roof, the shovel losing all it's

electrical charges in the process. He and Sembue climb up and wait.

They arrive at B1, the lift doors open, light streams in. Nothing. They wait a few minutes before

climbing down and entering the floor. It seems deserted. Offices lie in all directions of the T-

junction hallway, doors open, lights on, termminals running without staff. A canteen seems untouched,

office chairs still have jackets wrapped around them: someone left in a hurry. unperturbed, PUdding

finds a terminal and jacks-in to the Host directly. Again, he finds the server nodes and evades the

security systems in place, his decoy clone crawing their attention whilst he cracks a data store open

and downloads as much of the petabytes of data as his physical storage will allow.

Rushed for time before the security closes in on him, he rifles through the downloaded data for re-

occuring phrases or references to the base itself. He discovers the facility is concerned with some

sort of research which involves every imaginable piece of military data available. B1 is the

office/lab, B2 is the security and storage area, B3 is some sort of holding cell.

B2, great, he shoves the files under his virtual arm and turns to vacate the node. An IC blocks his

path; a great faceless grey-black figure. It demands identification. Flummoxed, Pudding stalls for

time. Then, he recieves a text on his virtual commlink in his virtual pocket which until this point

did not exist. 'Hi, you seem to be in a spot of bother, would you like some help?'
Cautiously, Pudding accepts. 'Oh, you'll need to do me a small favour in return. Just go to B3 and

open the door for me. If you activate your decoy program again, it'll take care of security long

enough to hack in. I promise.'

With a sigh of inevitability, Pudding agrees and turns to the IC program blocking his path. A voice

sounds over a virtual tannoy system, calling all guards to sector 14. The IC leaves and Pudding makes

his escape, jacking-out. Sembue immediately enquires about the information, Pudding informs him what

they seek is on B2, but first they must open something in B3. Agaain they board the elevator, again

they climb into the roof and wait. B3 is but a single corridor ending in another set of reinforced

doors. Drone rails line the ceiling, suggesting an armed respones. Pudding has Sembue take watch

again and slumps into VR mode after jacking himself into the eye-scanner panel by the doors.

Inside the host, alarms are flashing. Pudding activates his decoy program, which normally appears as

a clone of himself. This time, the clone startes to fade, then glow red, then multiplies, again and

again until the line stretches to the virtual horizon. The decoys run amok, tagging and distrupting

systems all over the Host. Pudding sets about cracking the unknown node which sits in the centre of

the Host; a strange multi-faced orb with revolving spikes. This node is of a higher rating than the

rest of the Host, which is unheard of, it's almost like a Host within a Host. Regardless, Pudding

cracks in, doubling up his ability by slaving his secondary deck to his usual one.

Almost instantly, the inner-Host stops moving, the decoys disappear, the alarms fade. A message

appears for Pudding, 'Thank you! Could you please do me one more little favour, friend? There are

drones located in B2, where you are headed, I need you to plug one of them into the terminal access

point. I will deactivate all the security measures so you can make your way there.' Pudding agrees,

but barters for transport to leave the base, to which the 'friend' agrees. Pudding will have

approximately fifteen mintes once the drone has been plugged in before trasport arrives, then six

minutes before corporate security also makes the scene. He jacks-out again. Sembue still stands

guard, no drones have attacked. They two acsend to B2.

B2 is a maze of huge hangars, laboratories and armouries. The corridors are spattered with dry blood

and makeshift barricades, skeletons line the doorways and bullet holes/burnmarks decorate shutdown

drones. Pudding and Sembue find the drone station as instructed, at the doorway a skeleton lays on

the floor with a cyberdeck under one arm. It is damaged but Pudding pockets it afer rolling high on

what model it is. A heavily armoured drone stands immediately beyond the station doorway,

inoperative. 'Well, that could have been us if it were not for your hacking skills.' comments Sembue,

who is now in awe of Pudding's abilities. Pudding finds the drone he's been told to jack-in. He doe

snot at this time and instead leads Sembue to the armoury.

The armoury is stocked with assault rifles, pistols, ammo, explosives, grenades, armour and even a

flamethrower. The duo opt to load a trolley with plastic explosives and an array of detonator types,

they are taking these for terrorist groups after all. As Sembue rolls the trolley with some 30 kilos

of explosives towards the lift, Pudding sprints to the drone station and connect the drone up; a

monsterous beast with tracked wheels, heavy armour and twin-machine guns. He runs for the lift, then

is overtaken by the drone which is headed in the same direction. Pudding calls 'friend', who

apparently has left a number on his actual commlink somehow. 'I uh, you aren't going to leave me

behind are you?' 'No of course not my friend, but hurry.'

Pudding and Sembue squeeze into the lift with the drone and trolley. As soon as the doors open, the

drone takes off at full speed across the base. Looking to where they came from, the terrorist pair

spot a tall man-shape, covered in hair slick and sheen like a wet rat, with an alligator's head. The

figure raises its arms and lets out a strange croaking-bellow. Suddenly they are surrounded by a

horde of feral ghouls, some of which are clearly the ones they injured previously. They need to last

at least fifteen minutes before the transport arrives. Sembue draws his tomahawk and blade, Pudding

his assault rifle.

the take down two, four, six of the ghousl racong towards them. Pudding has to reload, Sembue makes a

break for the alligator-man-thing. Unfortunately, Sembue does not manage to break through the

oncoming ghouls and is weighed down under a flurry of claws and gnashing teeth, of which Pudding is

unable to gun down quick enough. Our intrepid acid-flinger makes a break for a nearby building,

sclaing the rusted ladders and loosening their hold with his acid ammo. Kicking the ladders away, he

makes a shot at the gator-man and strikes his hide. This appears to send the gator-man into a furious

animalistic rage, and he races towards Pudding on all fours at breackneck speed. Burning through his

ammo, Pudding makes the kill-shot and sends the sprinting reptilian rolling.

This seems to break the coherency of the ghouls, who lose interest in PUdding and head back to finish

devouring Sembue's corpse. Pudding picks one of them off and the others flee in terror. Sembue's

native trinkets are retrieved, along with his tomahawk, before the military flatbed truck arrives,

seemingly on auto-pilot. Explosives are loaded and the pilot set to the inflatable raft's location.

The truck pilot hits a sludge bank and gets itself stuck a short way from the destination. Pudding

finds a bag in the driver compartment and salvages a handful of explosive cases (about 14 kilos

worth, plus detonators). He make it to the raft and launches for the other transport, a watercraft,

that his friend had agreed to also.

Whilst switching to the speedboat, a band of Merrow attempt to knock Pudding into the murky waters

but are unsuccessful. He speeds off to the barge to have an uncomfrtable conversation with Darcy

about Needle. Leaving the speedboat behind, presumably it could be tracked, the barge makes for

harbour.

Pudding makes shore, meets Darcy, gets paid. She repeatedly asks if Needle relayed a secondary

objective. Pudding lets it known he did nto, but they did run into soemthing else at the base. Darcy

mentions Winternight, Pudding confirms this was the 'friend' he encountered. This news excites Darcy

and sends her into a long ramble about the second coming, breaking of society, mad cultish stuff.
Pudding finds somewhere to lie low and lick his wounds.