Shadowrun Story Snippet

So my friends and I have been gearing up to get into Shadowrun.  Shadowrun is a dice based RPG set in a dystopian future.  It combines scifi elements such as cybernetic body parts, etc with magic and magical races.  You play the part of a shadowrunner, who is basically a criminal for hire.  Mr. Johnson (the name of ALL clients, for privacy, in shadowrun) hires shadowrunners to accomplish tasks of questionable legality.  It could be stealing corporate secrets, or retrieving items, or anything else they want to pay for.  It actually looks to be quite a bit of fun.  I've been reading the rules and going through the character creation process.  Well, it turns out that in fourth addition, in the extended rulebook Augmentation, there are rules for sex changes.  I'm not talking about rules that could be used to create a sex change.  There are actual rules specifically for it.

So yeah, genderswapping is an official part of Shadowrun.  Needles to say, this sent my mind off on some interesting thoughts for character backstories.  And, consequently, inspired this short story snippet.  Really its more of an introduction to the story, it just gets things started.  I think it could be quite fun to write some of the things that come next.  But let me know what you think?  Would you like to see more?  Any suggestions or advice?  Leave me a comment.

It was a run, much like every other run you’ve been on.  You have a mission, you have your weapons and you have your wits.  You had your cyberware tuned up earlier that week just to make sure everything was in top shape.  There was only one thing that made this run different from the others.

This one was personal.

Mr. Johnson, one of the many Mr. Johnson’s out there, is the target.  This one, though, seemed to have had it in for you since day one.  You don’t know why, but every time you think you’ve gotten rid of him, he pops back in to screw you over.  The first time you refused to pay you, so you raided his office.  You only took what he owed you, of course.  But after that you’d find another runner getting paid to mess up your job, or your ride gets sabotaged, or your supplies would get cut off.  All courtesy of the same Johnson.  But when he blew up your favorite safe house?  Now the drek has to stop.  You smile as you imagine kicking his hoop hard enough that he’ll have to unbutton his shirt to use the toilet.

But first you have to get to him.  And that’s the hard part.  Tracking him down cost you a lot of time and even more nuYen, but money is no object on this mission.  Now you are outside his home, hidden in a dark alleyway across the street from the luxury complex.  You activate the thermographic vision of your cyber-eyes to get a count on the number of people in the building.  You count at least five guards on the ground floor.  There are a few more on the floors between, and one lone figure, your target, at the top floor.  Time to move in.

A flash-bang leaves the two outside guards stunned long enough for you to get in and finish them off.  Flick of your wrist and twin Colt ‘66’s drop into your hands from their hidden sleeves.  You kick open the door, throw another flash-bang through, kick in your wired reflexes and cut through the guards like a knife through butter.

You’re cutting your way through the defenses like only a souped-up street samurai can, when you get to the top floor.  Just on the other side the door is the target.  You open the door and stride through confidently.

“Alright Johnson, now its time…oh DREK!” you say, as you realize your target isn’t alone.  Instead it looks like you are facing a military platoon, all decked out in the latest full body armor.  A quick check reveals, sure enough, their armor has thermal dampening, they don’t register at all in your augmented vision.

“Ah, how nice of you to drop by,” says Mr. Johnson.  “I’ve been expecting you, you see.  I’d like to introduce you to some friends of mine.  Get him.”

You dive out the door followed by a hail of bullets.  You’re not quite fast enough and one of the rounds blows through your leg.  The armor didn’t even slow it down.  Fortunately your pain dampener keeps you from feeling it, but its going to be tough getting out on one leg.  Already the goon squad is coming after you.  You get to cover behind a thick column and start returning fire.  You get lucky and one bullet manages to pierce a joint in one of the goons’ armor, and he goes down.  The rest might as well have been spitballs for all the good they did.  Dropping your useless guns, you flick out your forearm blades and wait for them to come closer.

The group advances and starts to come around your cover.  This time you have a much greater effect, their armor not standing up so well to the blades.  You fall into the rhythm of the combat, strike, dodge, parry, strike.  You lose yourself in the deadly dance, taking out enemies as fast as you can.  Then, suddenly, the rhythm is shattered as the butt of a rifle slams into the back of your head and you go down, dazed.  You look up blearily, to see the barrel of one of your own pistols right between your eyes.  The world swims in and out of focus as you prepare for the final shot to come.  But it never does.  You hear Mr. Johnson say, “No, don’t kill him.  I have a better idea.”

Darkness swallows you and the world falls away.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

“…wake up,” says a voice, that’s vaguely familiar.

You’re drifting peacefully, simply existing somewhere.  Nothing matters, there is no world, no people, no you.  Just peace.

“I said, it’s time to wake up,” comes the voice again.  This time it shatters your peaceful existence and you feel yourself coming back to your self.  With a groan, you open your eyes.

“That’s better,” says the voice.

You have no idea where you are.  You don’t know how you got there.  You’re lying in a bed.  Above you is nothing but some strange tubes extending down and a pristine white ceiling.

“Good morning sleepyhead,” says the voice, mockingly this time.  And this time you remember it.  The bastard Mr. Johnson you were after.  “You’re probably a bit groggy right now, but that’s only to be expected after such an intensive procedure.”

Intensive procedure?  That grabs your attention right away.  “What did you do to me?” you shout with as much force as you can muster.  Which, honestly, isn’t all that much.

“Take a look,” Johnson replies with a wicked smile, just before whipping off the sheet covering you.

“You fragging bastard…” is all you can say.

“That’s right, sweetheart.  And its you I’ll be fragging, but that will come later.  It would have been easier to kill you of course.  And much less expensive, so I do hope you appreciate all the trouble I went through.  And to make sure you get the full effect, allow me to give you the ‘guided tour’, shall we say.  First, we pulled all of your old cyberware.  It was pretty beat up, and really, you won’t be needing it anymore.  Next, the most obvious, was of course the full biosculpt sex change.  It was really quite fascinating, watching the doctors transform you from a brutish chromed street samurai into this petite, downright sexy little girl.  You’re probably feeling a bit bottom heavy right about now, I mean, you do have such wonderfully curvy hips and a such a luscious butt to match, but nothing at all up top.  But don’t worry, wait till you see this.”  Johnson pulls out his commlink and presses a button.  A strange sensation causes you to look down.  You watch, horrified, as your chest shifts, then the flesh behind the nipples pushes outward, expanding into two small, but definite, breasts. 

“Its amazing what they can do these days,” says Johnson, grinning.  “Cybernetic breast implants.  They use pressurized gel reserves to allow the size and shape to be altered.  Right now, yours are set to A cups.  But they don’t really balance out your booty, so lets go up the alphabet a bit shall we?”  He presses another button, and your chest expands once more.  They continue inflating until they seem massive to you, large bags of flesh protruding from your body.  “Now that is nice, DD suits you.  But I think we ought to firm them up a bit.”  Another button press.  This time, instead of swelling, you watch as they cease drooping and slowly move up on your chest until they are jutting forth like mountains.  They still bounce with every move you make, but now they always return back to a perfect spherical shape.  “There we go,” says Johnson, “nice and perky.  They are soft enough to be delightful to squeeze, but firm enough that you could walk around without a bra.  I think I’ll set this as the ‘default’ for now.  But don’t thank me yet, there’s more!  I’m sure you haven’t noticed it since it’s up under a cap, but we replaced your hair.  You’ve now got some lovely fiber optic hair that comes down to that wonderful butt I mentioned before.  For now it’s set to blonde, but we can play with that some more later.  We also gave you a bit of dietware, so you’ll never have to worry about losing that hourglass figure of yours.  And do you see how perfect your skin is?  Yep, we gave you a nice Silky Skin treatment to make sure that you were perfectly smooth to the touch.  Oh, and speaking of touching, we increased the sensitivity as well.  You’ll also find we added some tailored pheromones, just to make sure that you’re found attractive.  It’s those little details that matter, after all.  I thought about bio-tattooing makeup on you, but I decided that it would be much nicer to let you do your own.  And now that you are awake, we can start adjusting the voice modulator, get your voice as pretty as the rest of you.”

You glare at Johnson, “I’m going to kill you!”

“No, my dear, you are not,” he says.  “Because, if you had let me finish, you would know that we also installed a few things to keep you compliant.  I’ll let you find out about them on your own, but be warned, the most drastic one is, well, a bit messy.  So do try not to make me use it.”

You glare at Johnson again, but this time you don’t say anything.

“Better.  We’ll work on the attitude later.  I promise you, when I am done breaking you, you’ll be happy to be exactly what I want you to be.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“Oh don’t worry, you’ll still be a shadow runner.  Only you’ll work for me, doing the runs I want done.  Obviously you won’t be able to fight your way through them anymore.  But I’ll be training you in other ‘skills’ much more suited to your new body.  And, of course, in between runs I’ll give you plenty of opportunity to keep said skills sharp.  I’m having custom knee pads installed under my desk, just for you.”

You glare at him harder, with a bit of disgust thrown in for good measure.

“Though your former street moniker is hardly suitable anymore.  You’ll need a new one.  I’m feeling generous.  I’ll let you pick your own, as long as it’s suited to your new, softer self.”  Johnson squeezes one of your breasts for emphasis.  The shock of pleasure it causes nearly makes your eyes roll into the back of your head.

“So, what do you want to be called?”

 *End, for now*

So, who's up for some Shadowrun?