Jump 393: Shadowrun

Jump #393: Shadowrun
>Five of Cups, reversed: Dissatisfaction gives way to a new hope and understanding.
>Age: 31
>Location: Tenochtitlan
I start in Blood Magic Central? Come on, this is EASY MODE.
>Identity: Human Street Mage (-100)
>Drawbacks: (+400) Assassin's Creed, Hot Under The Collar
Gee I wonder why some corp wants to kill me, it couldn't be because Aztechnology's pyramidal corporate headquarters disappeared overnight could it? At least the other drawback makes me avoid too much collateral damage.
>Build/Repair (1200)
As long as I understand how a thing works and is built, I can repair it and reproduce it as long as I have the tools. This is more useful than one might have thought.
>Awakened (Free, Mage)
Well, at least I can use the local type of magic.
>Wetwork (900)
Ah, the joys of violence! I have exceptional skill with the local methods now, both up close and at range.
>Exceptional (600)
Speaking of exceptional things, this is neat. It doesn't let one go above the cap itself, but it DOES push that cap higher...
>Sorcery (450, Mage)
Not only can I use the magic, but now I know how!
>Conjuring (300, Mage)
Conjuring is silly, but knowing about the astral plane and the sort of things that live there is important.
>Initiation (0, Mage)
Because I can GO to the astral plane if I feel like it, never mind the bonus metamagic I can use to modify any known spell I have. Which is also useful.

So! It appears I'm in Mexico City in 2070. This is very silly, and I decide to do something equally silly and UTTERLY over the top. I wait for nightfall, empower magical fire with a restriction that it can't actually hurt anything living, then set it on the Aztechnology pyramid in Tenochtitlan while I shift into dragon form and fly lazily overhead. This way I can enjoy the bonfire, everyone can escape safely (if nakedly in some cases), and freak the hell out.

Everyone in the world sits up and pays attention when a new dragon appears, typically. When that dragon appears to be more than a dozen miles long, with a targeted spell effect that obliterated a major corporation's primary headquarters, and just keeps flying around the city for seven days? A lot, and I do mean a LOT of people around the world are sounding the brown note. When Aztechnology's blood mages attempt to strike at the dragon, and their magic is seemingly just ignored by said dragon until they spontaneously combust at the twitch of his claws? Even the other dragons are getting nervous. Because this is a dragon that they do NOT know, and it started out with a massive show of force and followed up by casually killing mages a mile below on the ground.

And then that mysterious dragon FLIES OUT BEYOND THE MOON AND DISAPPEARS FOREVER. Which makes everyone go 'what the FUCK' because the local sort of magic isn't supposed to work in space, and experiments on magical critters have either left them highly weakened or dead as memory serves.

After that point, when I've reverted to human form and teleported back to earth... well, I'm just a guy on the ground being a thorn in Aztechnology's side and using everything at my disposal to blend in and make life hell for them. Sure, destroying their HQ doesn't stop them or the cult that is behind them (and just what sort of a name is Smoking Mirror, anyway?) but groundwork can work wonders. Not to mention hiring shadowrunners to work with me or to do other related jobs to cripple Aztech in ways that only a precog can calculate. The only thing, of course, is that it's absolutely mandatory to wear luchador masks whenever fighting them.

This led to a hilarious resurgence of underground luchador themed fight clubs throughout the southwest and Mexico, incidentally. Because decapitating Aztechnology means disrupting the government in charge of Aztlan - the end result, though it took years and a little nudging to keep it from being excessively bloody, was Aztlan's borders being redrawn and Mexico itself taking control of its destiny once again. Also, they brought back the formerly banned Catholic church in a big way - when you drive something underground like that, it finds a LOT of sympathizers. Especially when in the post-revolution atmosphere, paperwork is found that proves that the entire ascent to power of the Azatlan party was based on fraud and subterfuge, and the Church was little more than a convenient target at the time.

The Republic of Mexico's reincorporation in 2074 is heralded worldwide by flooding the matrix with new telenovelas, Lucha Libre, and a major spike in exports of tequila. Also, a dozen AAA corps fighting for the rights to the land that the Aztechnology pyramid had stood on previously. Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the UCAS.

When I'm not busying myself being a royal pain in the ass of Aztechnology while being very deliberate to not kill innocents in the crossfire, I'm poking around other planes. And not just the Astral. A person of my abilities shouldn't be content with just wiping out a blood cult, they should be dealing with Horrors more directly. For example, there's this guy named Thais who's half-elf and half-horror and wouldn't it just be a crying SHAME if someone with precognitive abilities happened to be able to trace people back to the present day and play scry-and-your-head-a-splode.

>"Wait, my head's a what?"
"Splode."
>"AaaaaAAAAAAA-" *POP*
"That."
>"RRRRRRRRRRGH."
"WHYOA WHAT THE FUCK. Goddamn horrors, I SAID YOUR HEAD A SPLODE."
>"RRRRRRGH- rrrr? AAAAAAAAAAAA-" *BOOM*
"Fucking Mary Sue villains."

I left his remains on Harlequin's doorstep.

Honestly though I've killed minor demons with more class than these so called horrors. Sure, they're intimidating to people on the everyday mage level, even the past gods are afraid of their corrupting effects, but... come on, I can either ignore the corruption or actively subvert it to work for ME. Plus I've got the Necrosword, the White Blade of Truth, purified by the Grail itself. While they're busy trying to be intimidating and mock me for invading their realm, I'm cleaving them into bits with weapons that they wouldn't think could affect them, then using artifacts to cleanse the metaplane around me. The magic skull from Actraiser is especially effective in this - sure, it was sucking out so much unholy energy from that plane that it was glowing white-hot, but it cleaned things up nicely.

For an encore, I went to Chicago and spent some time squishing bugs, before I went back to dealing with insect, toxic, and blood mages. Much of that was, honestly, with the assistance of a number of shadowrunners when viable. Some of the mages were redeemable, but the ones who weren't... well, why tolerate the existence of someone whose purpose is to twist and corrupt things and kill people in so doing? The problem with magic, of course, is that becoming a serial killer is particularly easy, and much of the magic these people do tends to lead them in such a direction.

Oh, and as a final fuck-you to everything in this world, I flew back to Earth in dragon form about halfway through my stay and resurrected Dunkelzahn. That really shouldn't have worked, quite honestly, but watching everyone collectively lose their shit as a giant dragon circles DC was GREAT. It was doubly hilarious when golden light streamed from the heavens onto the site where the dragon had died, and abruptly he found himself intact once again.

>Dunkelzahn looks at himself. He utters, "What."
A voice booms from the heavens, "You have been judged and found worthy, young one."
>Dunkelzahn looks upward at the hilariously massive dragon circling mere hundreds of feet overhead. He repeats, "What."
The voice continues, "By your virtue and the hard work of good men and women, the Scourge has been stopped."
>Dunkelzahn stares blankly. "WHAT."
The dragon coils around, circling. "I am the mountain. You are the shadow. As it has ever been. Enjoy your second chance, scholar, there is much to learn about this world." And then with a slow flap of wings miles wide, the dragon tilts upward, ascending to the heavens and disappearing into the night sky.
>Dunkelzahn screams after the dragon, "WHAT."

Trolling dragons is hilarious, but trolling the entire setting in so doing is the best.