Another of my favorite hobbies is writing. It is just a hobby and I claim no skill at it, but I enjoy it and sometimes use what I write in the table-top role playing games I so enjoy.

I am in the midst of writing a short story based on the game Shadowrun. Shadowrun is a cyberpunk game with magic added in. This makes for a wonderful mix which allows for a lot of different play styles and stories. More information about the game can be found at Shadowrun Universe.

I’ve decided to post the first half of the story here just for the sake of getting myself published even if I am writer, editor and publisher. I guess that is the beauty if the Internet.

So here goes and please feel free to critique, criticize and comment. If you think it sucks please say so but also let me know why you think it sucks.

Thanks,

Mark

Sun and Moon: Part 1

By Mark Munson

“I’ve had enough of women and their demands!” Taiyu thought as he trudged through the incessant Seattle rain. His mother had sent him another message asking for more money to support a lifestyle she couldn’t afford. Taiyu’s account was nearly empty and he hadn’t found any work in months. The charity work at the local shelter sometimes earned him a free meal and a bed but tonight he wasn’t so lucky. The place had been packed and he’d had his hands full handing out meal packets and blankets while healing the occasional wound or, more often, washing infections away with the caress of mana. It was tiring and dirty work but it made him feel better about his own, not nearly as dire, predicament.

Instead of washing away the normal stink of the street, the rain seemed to intensify certain portions of the complex combination of smells. A foul rot from deep in the sewer seemed to push its way up from the grates to lie like a dead thing between the towering concrete buildings. As he made his way down the wet and dirty sidewalk he made sure to keep his detection spell up so he wouldn’t get any nasty surprises from the many dark alley ways and closed shop fronts he passed. He hurried through the rain towards his “favorite” coffin-motel even though he wasn’t looking forward to another soy-paste meal from the bank of vending machines that were arrayed out front. The dark irony of rushing to the motel only to be sealed into a plastic coffin to get away from the smell of rotting death occurred to him.

The cold rain was beginning to worm its way down the back of his armored jacket as he neared the coffin rack when he felt a sudden tingle of magical detection coming from a stinking, pitch black alleyway. He slowed and then paused a moment; listening for movement or hushed voices over the sound of the rain. He could hear a soft moaning from several meters away but couldn’t see anything in the light-less concrete canyon that separated the two faceless apartment buildings. With his heart hammering in his chest he reached up and touched a contact on the side of his smart-glasses, hoping that they would decide to work this time. After a few moments of flickering the infrared image stabilized and he peered intently down the alleyway, relieved that the technology was working tonight. In infrared, the alleyway was a cold blue over even colder black but he noticed a dim sliver of heat poking from behind a hulking trash dumpster.

Clutching at a talisman in his jacket pocket Taiyu increased the mana output to his life detection spell and cast his expanded senses down the alley. Besides the original weak ping of life there was nothing but a fat rat scuttling through the bottom of a dumpster. The life he could sense was coming from a human female and he could see that the glimmer of body heat was a booted foot, and he also noticed the life detection was getting weaker. A sudden sense of urgency propelled him into the alley but he slowed his footsteps and his right hand slid under his jacket to his holstered pistol as he neared the massive, steel dumpster.

His heart nearly stopped when the heat glow from the booted foot disappeared around the corner of the metal dumpster and he clumsily yanked the heavy Ares Viper out of its holster. Taiyu dropped his maintenance of the detection spell and prepared to throw up a barrier, his left hand frantically searching his pocket for another tiny fetish. After several seconds Taiyu noticed he was holding his breath and he released it with a gasp and a spray of rain drops from his dripping wet face. His body shivered with adrenalin rush and the massive pistol began to weigh on his outstretched arm but there was no more movement or sound.

Stepping forward slowly and leaning to peak around the edge of the dumpster Taiyu saw the heat glow of the foot and then a leg and finally a torso when, with a pop and a fizz, the infrared image that his smart-glasses were projecting onto his eyes pulsed brightly and disappeared and he was dropped into complete darkness. Blinded by the after image of his dying techno glasses Taiyu fought to control a scream that pushed at the back of his throat. He heard the soft crush of plastic trash bags and then a scrape of metal on concrete from where he had last seen the infrared heat image.

“Please,” Taiyu whispered into the darkness, “I only came to help. I thought you might be hurt.” He heard a soft moan and then nothing. After several very long seconds Taiyu reached up and pushed repeatedly at the toggle on the side of his smart-glasses until finally they flickered and came back to life. He could see immediately that the outline of body heat was broken by a cooler, irregular blob.

“You’re bleeding!” he gasped. Taiyu had seen dead and dying bodies by thermal light before and recognized the blood that was slowly pooling around the one lying on top of torn plastic bags of trash in front of him. He holstered his pistol and snatched a penlight from one of his many internal jacket pockets. The sharp, bluish glow showed a female form covered in what appeared to be a tight fitting urban-camouflage jump-suit with a hood drawn up over her head and sealed tightly around her slack face. She seemed to be unconscious and Taiyu’s hand went automatically to her throat searching for a pulse. Signs of life fluttered weakly beneath his probing fingers and Taiyu began to search for wounds on the girl’s body.

Taiyu could see no obvious wounds so he rolled her limp form over to check her back. As he ran his hands across the back of her camo-suite he felt a warm, wet patch. He brought the penlight closer and saw a small, dark hole near the left shoulder blade of the unconscious girl. “Entry wound but no exit is not good.” He whispered to himself. Taiyu focused his mind, while he placed his hands on either side of the girls wounded shoulder, pulling mana from the shadowy place from which all mana flowed. He directed the mana inward, probing and stroking at the damaged flesh left behind in the bullets wake. The bullet had penetrated deep but hadn’t tumbled and the wound was not as bad as he had feared. Taiyu felt a resistance as he washed mana across the damaged flesh; her implants were interfering with his healing efforts, seriously interfering. “You must be full of tech!” he gasped as he sat back on his haunches, his head spinning with the effort of healing.

Taiyu rested his head against the dumpster behind him and closed his eyes as the dizziness swept through him. A few seconds passed while Taiyu resisted the urge to faint and then he heard a small voice whisper “Thank you.” Taiyu jerked forward and stared down at the girl lying in the heap of trash. She was looking at him with metal eyes and the irises of those strange eyes seemed to glow softly in the glare of his penlight. Taiyu smiled nervously at her otherwise plain face. “You were shot in the back.” he mumbled as questions swirled through his head. She was obviously well equipped with the amount of technology that was wired into her body as well as the camo-suit she wore and the assault rifle that lay next to her on wet plastic trash bags. “How did you come to be here?” he whispered.

Fear flashed across her face and she jerked her head back looking up into the falling rain. “My team!” she gasped. Taiyu followed her gaze, pointing his penlight up in time to see a humanoid shape flash across the gap between the apartment buildings high above. As he watched several more dark shapes began to descend from the edges of the apartment building roof tops.

“Who is that?” Taiyu whispered at the black clad girl. For an answer she hissed and snatched the penlight from his hand. Taiyu was dropped back into impenetrable darkness, gremlins in his smart-glasses again, and he scuttled away from the girl until his back was against the corner made by the apartment building wall and the trash dumpster. “What’s going on?” he gasped in fear. Then the darkness was shattered by a deafening, hammer blow of sound and a blinding muzzle flash as the girl fired a burst from her assault rifle up into the space between the buildings.

“They’ll kill us!” the girl shouted as she rolled from the trash pile into the middle of the alleyway. Her assault rifle thundered again and again as she fired deeper into the alleyway. The muzzle flashes turned the scene into a flickering, surreal nightmare as the attackers moved with incredible speed, dropping to the ground and then darting from cover to cover, leap frogging each other closer and closer. Taiyu dug frantically in his jacket pocket trying to find the small steel ball-bearing he kept there. When his fingers finally closed on the familiar smoothness of his fetish he yanked it out and threw up a magical barrier around himself and the girl, trying to fend off the incoming gunfire. The glowing hemisphere he had created began to flicker immediately as small arms rounds bounced off it. He could feel mana drain through him and realized that the barrier wouldn’t last long.

One of the approaching attackers stumbled and fell as gun fire stitched across his legs, inertia causing him to tumble and slide into the side of another dumpster. Taiyu could see that the attackers were dressed the same as the girl he had just saved, tight-fitting black jump suits with hoods drawn tight. Their weapons were also the same, equipped with under barrel grenade launchers, which one of them used to pop a grenade into Taiyu’s magical barrier. The grenade bounced off the glowing barrier and up about a meter before exploding. The explosion knocked Taiyu’s barrier down and slammed him against the side of the dumpster behind him. He dropped face down into the pile of trash bags he had been huddling in, stunned and deafened, but otherwise unhurt by the grenades blast. His magical barrier had reflected the shrapnel from the grenade but the air pressure wave trapped between the concrete walls had smashed everyone in the alley like a giant’s fist.

When Taiyu was finally able to raise his head and peer down the alley he could still see muzzle flashes, though there seemed to be fewer, but it was all happening in a muffled, ringing silence. None of the fire seemed to be directed at him so Taiyu focused his attention on the girl who seemed to be fighting to protect him. He could see little in the flickering light of the muzzle flashes so he once again tried to get his smart glasses to turn on. He lay in the pile of stinking trash pushing at the power switch on the frame of the glasses, alternately begging them to work then cursing his bad luck with electronics. The glasses filled with static and pulsing colors leaving Taiyu completely blinded and blocking out even the flickering muzzle flashes. He cursed again and yanked the glasses from his face and tossed them into the trash heap.

Taiyu realized with a start that the alleyway was once again completely dark and that the fire fight seemed to have ended. His damaged hearing was even more pronounced and startling in the inky dark. Taiyu reached into his pocket for his pen light but realized he didn’t have it, the girl had taken it when the fight had started. He froze as his fear reached new heights; he was blind and deaf and didn’t know what to do next. Taiyu’s fear pierced him like a physical thing and he hunched over thinking he would be sick. His mind was blank with fear when he noticed the tattoo on the back his hand begin to glow and calming warmth begin to flow through him. When the remaining mercenaries approached him and turned on their flashlights the fear was completely gone. Taiyu looked up at them as they raised their weapons and flames poured from his body and washed over them. He couldn’t hear their screams but he watched them dance and shake in the flames. The fire continued to pour from him, draining mana and his remaining strength until there was no motion except for the flicker of flames. His consciousness swirled and flickered like a dying flame until he crashed downward into darkness.