ALL QUIET IN THE "BIG CITY"

Yesterday was a quiet day in the Secret War on the San Francisco front.
Lawrence Yi, Hard-Boiled San Francisco Maverick Cop, would disagree,
though.  If this were his story, it would go something like this:

"As I picked myself off the street, I realized I needed a new car -- and
fast.  I like fast cars, but that wasn't the cause of my urgency.  A few
minutes ago, I tracked Joey 'The Bishop' Regetti to the fourth floor of
an office building on Sutter Street.  He was disguised as a copy machine
repairman, but a real repairman doesn't carry enough C4 to take out an
entire floor.  I stopped him from arming the big bomb, of course, but not
before the Bishop managed to put a couple holes in some good office
furniture, and set a couple things on fire -- including my best jacket.

"I had him cornered, too, but he was desperate.  He tried to smash me
with a copy machine -- or so I thought.  I dodged it, but he just pushed
the machine through the window and followed it onto the street!  I didn't
think he had it in him.  He landed on his fake copy machine repair van --
must've been padded or something.  He got in, and took off.

"I had to follow him, of course.  I had to know who his boss was, and I
had the sneaking suspicion that if I couldn't find out in time, the
Golden Gate Bridge was going to be the next target.  And that'd really
make my commute unbearable.  But there was no way that little van would
get away from my RX-7.

"Unfortunately for me, the photocopier landed on my car.  Even worse,
Bishop managed to plant a small explosive in the copier before I got
there.  My RX-7 was toast.  Of all the months to forget to pay my car
insurance.

"So that's why I needed a car fast.  Luckily, there was one around.  It
wasn't exactly a Masserati, though.  Actually, a Honda del Sol, but its
top was down, its keys were in the car, and beggars can't be choosers.
I took off after the Bishop.  SFPD would reimburse the owner for the car
-- they'd grumble at me, but they'd do it.  But I'd have to eat the loss
of my RX-7, especially since I was supposed to be off-duty.  This wasn't
turning out to be a good day."

But this isn't Yi's story.  Yi led a pretty exciting life so far, but he
still didn't know squat about the Secret War.  Now, Katrina Lupus,
Triumvirate Dealmaker, knew about the Secret War.  Then again, it was her
job.  She supplied items -- guns, drugs, information -- to interested
parties in exchange for certain favors.  She would never carry anything
illegal herself, of course, but she always knew how you could get it
safely.  Yesterday, she was on a tight schedule.  She'd just told Tony Lo
the name of a certain rival of his who was undercutting his business in
London in exchange for the passwords to the Heathrow airport security
systems, and was heading to Ricky Lin to let him know just how he could
get his brother away from MI-5, when she noticed her Honda del Sol was
missing.

That was a setback.  She could get another car, no problem, but she
needed to get across town, because Ricky didn't like to be kept waiting.
Lupus wasn't afraid of Ricky, but she really needed to know who was
responsible for the strange weapons turning up around the Bay Area.  If
Ricky got petulant, that meant delays, and delays can be fatal.

But minor setbacks can be dealt with.  Lupus would handle this in her own
way -- she'd go to the police.  Not just any police, of course.  She'd go
to one of her Pledged cops.  She found one three blocks away.  His name
was Steven Sullivan.  She'd work with him before.  She had him give her a
ride to Ricky.  It'd be a bit unusual arriving at the meeting place in a
cop car, but Ricky never had anything to fear from cops, and he'd worked
with Sullivan before.  The siren would help get through cross-town
traffic, and afterwards, she'd have Sullivan track down the car thief
and take care of him.  It wouldn't do to have the Grand Theft Auto
division handle this case, after all.  In a day or two, no outsider would
suspect that anything unusual had happened.

That is, no outsider except maybe Sammy Chen, Sullivan's partner and
Kung Fu Cop.  Sammy was new to the police force, and this was his first
time out on the beat.  He learned martial arts first from his father, and
then, when his father disappeared suddenly, from his uncle.  His father
had also taught him to help those who could not help themselves.  He
would have been proud to see him in uniform.  It's a hard job, but Sammy
was having a blast.  The only thing was that, for some reason, Sammy just
felt uncomfortable around his partner Sullivan.  Sullivan seemed like an
affable enough fellow, and Sammy liked to give people the benefit of the
doubt, but Sullivan always seemed to be watching Sammy a little too
closely, his questions were always a little too pointed.  Sammy wondered
if Sullivan had some sort of grudge against him that he didn't know
about. (In a sense, he did.  Sammy didn't know that the Lodge took a
special interest in his career.  His father was an active participant in
the Secret War before his disappearance, and they wanted to know if
Sammy had a Dragon within him.)

As Lupus approached Sullivan about her stolen car, Sammy was in the
lobby of the Genutech building, taking care of a couple of young hoods.
One of the hoods had a silver canister that he'd just taken from some
middle-aged guy coming out of the building.  He was swinging it like a
club, hoping to bash in Sammy's brains.  The other hood was getting back
up on his feet, after Sammy had taken out his legs, and looking for
something big to throw at Sammy.  He decided on a chair.  Sammy dodged a
few swings of the canister, punched the hood in the face causing him to
drop the canister, jumped over an oncoming chair onto a desk, and kicked
a potted plant thrown at him by the second hood into the face of the
first hood.  The first hood was out of the fight.  The second hood tried
to dive for a gun that Sammy kicked out of his hands about 30 seconds
ago, but Sammy intercepted him, leaping off the desk and smashing him
with a piledriver, before he could grab it.  Sammy got up, pocketed the
gun ("Evidence," he thought), and handcuffed the two hoods.  Piece of
cake.

Sammy opened the lobby door.  "Hey Sullivan! I bagged both of them, and
never drew my gun.  You owe me a doughnut." Sammy thought it was
important to not draw his gun when dealing with young punks, unless he
had to.  It was to show the kids that guns didn't make them important.
Lately, there was a lot more gang activity, and really powerful guns had
started to appear in the hands of a lot of young kids.  There were rumors
of almost magical weapons, that really powerful guys could get.  Sammy
didn't want kids hooked into gangs by promises of that kind of power.

"Great kid!" replied Sullivan. "Now, could you process them on your own
too?  I'm going to take care of a stolen car."

"Are you serious?" asked Sammy.  But Sullivan had already started to
drive off in the police cruiser. "Hey, wait! How am I supposed to get
them to the station? Take them on the BART train?"  Sullivan wasn't in
hearing range by the time Sammy finished.  "Sheesh, what'd I ever do to
deserve that?"  This was definitely weird behavior.  Maybe there's more to
this, Sammy thought.  He definitely saw a woman in a black, well-cut
business suit in the passenger seat of the car.  She was a real looker,
too.  Maybe....

Sammy decided not to think about that just then.  He needed to call for
some back-up.  There was a phone in the lobby.  As he connected to the
station, he wondered what to say.  He had a feeling, though, that even if
he reported his partner's strange behavior to his gruff old lieutenant,
nothing would come of it.

"This is officer 98318; I'm going to need some bAAA!!!" The phone
started hissing and getting hot, and Sammy threw it just before it
exploded. (It'd never done that before.) The two hoods had gotten out of
the handcuffs -- melted them actually -- and one of them was holding
some sort of device that looked like a really big cigarette lighter.
Sammy drew his gun, but the hood pointed the lighter at Sammy, and Sammy
saw blue sparks fly around the lighter.  Sammy's gun misfired, which was
weird because Sammy hadn't pulled the trigger. (Sammy would not realize
until later that the gunpowder in all of the bullets in his gun had
simultaneously gone off.  At the moment, all Sammy really knew was that
his hand was burned badly.) The hood with the lighter pointed again,
blue sparks appeared again, but this time, the lighter exploded.  The
hood was thrown against the rear wall, minus his right hand, where he
lay unconscious.  The other hood grabbed the silver canister Sammy had
left lying on the ground and took off.

Sammy quickly checked the first hood, but it didn't take long to figure
out he was dead. (He wouldn't notice until later the strange stigmata
that mysteriously appeared on the right side of the hood's body.) So he
took off after the first hood.

Sammy got out in time to see the hood run into a bike messenger and
knock him off his bike.  The silver canister tumbled to the ground and
rolled around a few feet before he jumped into a motorcycle of his own
and ride off.  Sammy caught up to him just as he rode away.  Sammy thought
about jumping onto the other hood's cycle, but for some reason, the keys
weren't left in the motorcycle. (As Sammy would later learn, the bike
keys were embedded an inch deep in the dead hood's body.)

The bike messenger decided to complain to Sammy. "Hey, that jerk knocked
me off my bike!"  Sammy didn't have time to deal with him, though.

"Sorry about that, sir.  I'll need to confiscate that bike as evidence,"
said Sammy, as he hopped onto the 18-speed touring bike.

"Hey!" yelled bike messenger, as the Sammy pedaled away. "What do you
think you're doing!"  Sammy had been exercising a lot, but he still
couldn't catch up to motorcycle on his own.  But, he pedaled up to a
passing car, and grabbed its rearview mirror.

"I'm a cop!" yelled Sammy. "Follow that motorcycle!"

Bill Hemley, bike messenger, watched as a cop on his bike hitched a ride
on a BMW 911.  This wasn't turning out to be his day.  He looked down at
the package he was supposed to deliver -- a long silver canister. "Man,
I'm gonna lose my job again." he thought.  Bill Hemley was not a good
bike messenger.  He couldn't think of anything else to do, so he decided
to visit his girlfriend, who was an intern at an local television
station, which happened to be located down the street.  Maybe she could
think of something -- she was pretty smart.

Bill strolled in to the station. "Hi Sarah," he said.

Sarah stared at him. "Bill, I'm working now," she said.

"So am I.  But I lost my bike, and I gotta get this package to Anderson &
Brady Architects."

"You lost your bike again?"

"It's not my fault this time.  I was --"

"I don't want to hear this." Sarah Allen looked at Bill and wondered
once again why she hung around with this loser.  She wanted to be a
muckraking gonzo journalist, while Bill Hemley apparently aspired to be
a bum. "How did you get in here? There's a lot of sensitive electronic
equipment.  Visitors aren't supposed to come here."

"I just crawled through the window." Sarah buried her head in her hands.
"I thought maybe I could borrow the News Van again and --"

"No, you can't.  It's out collecting news right now.  Without me, I might
add.  If you hadn't borrowed it to deliver a cake to a bachelor party
I might have been able to ride along, but no....  Besides, how important
can your package be, anyway?"

"Well, it's a blueprint or something.  Maybe it's for the new baseball
park in China Basin.  Here, I'll show you."  And Bill then made the
biggest mistake of his life -- he opened the canister.  The foul demonic
sputum contained inside blew out, covering his face and body. (About
this time, Sammy Chen would be wondering why hoods were stealing
proposed blueprints to Fun-Fun Mountain Amusement Park.)  Bill screamed,
stepped backwards, and tripped other a tangle of power cords.  The rank
fluid ate its way through the rubber insulation, diverting most of the
station's power through poor Bill before tripping the circuit breakers.
The room plunged into darkness.  But before the power failed, Allen saw
that Bill was no longer himself.

His skin and hair and the sputum had melted together to form a motley
purple covering over most of is body, except in some small patches where
the skin had melted off completely and exposed charred muscle beneath.
His limbs elongated -- his bones had been softened, and then a crystline
structure grew over them -- and his three remaining fingers on each hand
grew claws.  His lower jaw hung open uselessly, exposing a straggling row
of fangs.

Bill Hemley, bike messenger, became Bill Hemley, Test Subject.

The former Bill Hemley screamed out its rage and pain.  It staggered
forwards, almost drunkenly, trying to feel its way out of the building
in the dark.  It found the door, fumbled for the doorknob, but realized
it no longer had the co-ordination to work it.  So it tore it down and
ran out through the hallway.

Sarah Allen looked on in horror and fascination.  A more cautious woman
might have wondered "How do I get out of here?"  A more caring woman
might have asked herself "Is Bill OK?"  But Allen just thought "What a
story!  How am I going to follow this thing?"

And then she thought of the traffic helicopter....

This was going to be her day in the spotlight.

     *****     *****     *****

Today, Daryl Wong is having a bad day.  He remembers how it all began.
Yesterday, he looked out of his office window.  He had a great view from
the 40th floor of the TransAmerica Pyramid, and he was having a slow
day, so why not watch the city go by?  There seemed to be a lot of
commotion on the street though.  He could see a few police cars, a couple
of sports cars, a motorcycle or two go by....  Was that a bicycle?  And
some sort of glowing thing, that looked almost human. (It was a clear
day, so he could see all this even from the 40th floor.) But what really
caught his eye was the sudden appearance of a helicopter just outside
his window.  One of the blades shattered his window, spraying glass all
over his office, which was just cleaned the day before.  The next thing
he saw was a woman with a video camera jumping from the helicopter
through the window into his office.

"Excuse me," said Sarah Allen, as the helicopter fell 40 stories onto
the street below. "Can I use your phone?"

Daryl Wong is an insurance claims processor.  He is completely unhurt by
yesterday's events, but his office was trashed.  He's now working out of
a temporary cubicle, processing thirteen separate claims for damages.
He'll be there for weeks.

     *****     *****     *****

Today, "Fast Eddie" Tran runs a large car dealership, which just happens
to be located on a minor feng shui site.  Thirteen people are going to
come in today looking for vehicles to replace ones that wore out.  This
is Fast Eddie's lucky day....

But for everyone else, it's just another day in the Secret War in the
"Big City."  With a little less traffic.

-- Randall M! Gee, Keeper of Gummi Wisdom
(gee@math.berkeley.edu)

Copyright 1996 Randall M! Gee   All Rights Reserved

Shadowfist and Feng Shui: The Shadowfist Roleplaying Game as well as
all characters described therein are copyrights and trademarks of
Daedalus Entertainment, Inc.   All rights reserved.