Fuckin' rain. Always fuckin' rain.

Wylde squeezed the packet of hot sauce into his ramens. How many was this, three? It was a habit he had formed while aboard the Scylla - a UN drop ship - during his time with the CDP. The rations they had to eat then... well it required every bit of flavoring you could find. Now back on Earth, it was mostly salt and some other artificial flavoring - chicken or beef - and that was just not enough.

The packet squeezed empty and the brothy ramens went darker red. Rett stirred it a little with the chop sticks and then proceeded to shovel the noodles into his mouth. Not bad, he thought, even as he smiled to himself that the Noodle shop owner had had enough money to afford a Persian cat! Definitely a synth, but still, That's irony!

He stood under a canopy, street level, while he ate. His spinner was parked about five vehicles down from him, but there was nowhere dry nearby it and he didn't want to sit inside. He preferred being outside most vehicles now. Feeling the G-force affect you, as a drop-ship fell into a planet's atmosphere... yea, he experienced that enough. Rain or not, Rett preferred it outside.

His mind continued to wander while he ate. The difference of LA on Earth compared to Rust-Vaal on Calantha - one world of continuous sunshine and desert heat, to this shit hole where the rainfall is measured in months.

Wylde shook his head. He was one year into this new job with the RDU - five if you included his off-world excursions in the CDP. From behind him, someone yelled out an insult in Chinese. Well, he thought it was Chinese. Could have been Korean, or some other bastardization of every language spoken in this city. There was no gunshots, so he ignored it.

Another mouthful of ramen.

One year and already one desk-duty. The fucker hadn't listened. It wasn't his fault that the man wouldn't drop his weapon. There was now a hole in the skull where the man's brains had been. Should've listened, he told the ghost for the thousandth time.

Needless to say there was an inquest into the event. Two weeks off - no badge, no weapon. Talking to a fucking shrink. Mandatory desk duty for what had seemed like forever, but was all of six weeks. Now Wylde was back on the street doing what he knew how to do.

His KIA chirped in his pocket and Rett cursed as he spilled hot broth on his hand and coat reaching for it. He saw the screen and the channel that was calling - Holden.

He tapped to answer, "Wylde."

Holden's face on the KIA's screen does nothing to improve Wylde's day.  "Wylde, good.  At least someone's taking their damn KIA with them.  Listen...  Wait, is that rain?  Where the hell are you?"  Looks aside for a half-second.  "Actually, I've decided I don't care.  Crowe and LE1-1.3 have run into something in Sector 12 that looks like it's RDU business after all.  Something about skinjob parts - they'll give you the details.  Get on to Elly.  Crowe's back to leaving his KIA in the damn car."  The man takes a drag on what Wylde knows is a more expensive cigarette than he'll ever be able to afford.  "Listen, I don't know what this is and I don't like not knowing, so I need you to keep me in the loop." 

He doesn't say 'Crowe used to be Internal Affairs and I don't trust him as far as I could spit him into the wind'.  Nobody in Rep-Detec needs to say that.

Five minutes later, after Elly's impassive briefing, he poses the all-important question: "Whaddaya want me to do?"


So, you have an opportunity here.  Normally RPGs implicitly (or explicitly) argue against splitting the party but in Blade Runner it's often necessary.  There's a countdown happening, and events moving in the background.  If you want to get ahead of them, you'll need to cover plenty of ground quickly, and that often means sending different people to chase down different leads. 

At the moment you have:
1.  Plenty of forensic results to get back from the Crime Lab (requires a visit to LAPD HQ)
2.  Esper footage to analyse (can be done at HQ or at home)
3.  Varela's reports on previous break-ins to analyse (can be done anywhere, but HQ gives access to the Mainframe and Denabase, which may assist)
4.  Street contacts to speak to (various locations), and
5.  An unwelcoming door at the lowest level of the warehouse where the smash 'n' grab happened. 

Elly let Wylde's question sit for half a second while the rain hissed faintly through the open dock beyond them. The KIA screen showed his face in miniature, wet light and street glare behind him. "What's your location?"

   Assuming Wylde shares his location. I'm also assuming that Wylde is not in our sector, so it would take him some time to get on scene. If I am mistaken about this, that might change things...

As she listening to Wylde's reply, Elly stepped away from the blood trail near the loading dock and looked back toward the darker interior of the warehouse, where the other path waited... the one that looked too unwelcoming to ignore.

"Crowe and I still have one unsecured lead in the building. We're going to clear enough of it to know whether it connects to the robbery."

She lifted her KIA and sent Wylde the scene packet: freight access blood, marked bullet impact, loading dock photographs, bent security gate, tyre marks, camera location, and the preliminary note on the stolen Tyrell stock.

"You start the HQ side. See if you can come up with some contacts to follow up on. I suggest pulling the dock camera first. If it was online, I want the footage queued for ESPER. If it was down, get the time of failure, the last successful upload, and whether the outage matches the disruption upstairs."

Her eyes shifted briefly to Crowe. "Then get Varela's reports on the previous break-ins. Look for overlap: target type, entry method, missing inventory, vehicle size, witness descriptions, anything that smells like pre-blackout Tyrell stock."

She paused, giving her human partners a moment to process. "Also, run the truck. Medium commercial vehicle. Likely damaged from the security gate. Possible paint transfer pending lab confirmation. Check theft reports, insurance claims, trucking companies, repair shops, chop shops, impound logs... anything recent."

"That should give us a few leads." The warehouse lights buzzed overhead. Somewhere deeper in the building, metal ticked as it cooled.

"When we're done here, we'll meet up at HQ. I'll work with the crime lab and ESPER, you two can hit the street before things go cold."

Another small pause. "And Wylde—ask about the Tyrell parts carefully. Whoever hit this place knew what they were taking. I'd like to know who else did."

Elly lowered the KIA and turned toward the short stairs and the steel door waiting below. She looked at Crowe to ensure he was ready. "Let's see if the building has anything else to say."

  So, Elly's suggestion is that Crowe and her finish this last lead and then head to HQ. While they are doing that, she's suggesting that Wylde head to HQ and try to find them some leads/contacts that him and Crowe can follow up on while Elly works with the crime lab, ESPER, and HQ's resources to process evidence and review footage and reports to see if we can find some more leads.

God, he thought, Reps... they never miss a beat.

Wylde listened to Elly go on about the new case evidence and what they needed to do. He watched her through his KIA, shoved some ramen into his mouth, and then gave her a sarcastic, mouth-filled reply, "Anything else?"

She didn't blink. She didn't smile. She didn't reply.

"All right, I am on it. See you both back at HQ. Don't go gettin' shot on me." Wylde's last comment came with a smirk and then he ended the call.

Ret thought about his new assignment. What the fuck? Data evidence and paperwork? That wasn't his thing. He was a door kicker. He was the guy that these motherfuckers didn't want to meet.

He sighed as he shoved some more ramen into his mouth, and then stuck the chopsticks into the carton. Covering his lunch from the rain - who knows what toxins were in every drop - he made the short distance to his spinner. There were shadowed shapes in the doorways and alleyways that he passed, but he ignored them. They were all trying to keep dry, too.

Rain pattered inside his vehicle, even as the side door began to descend. Wylde activated the engine and the spinner elevated from the ground. He didn't turn on his lights, just let the spinner ascend until he came to a travel lane and directed it towards their headquarters.

While he drove, he brought up on the spinner's dashboard display the profiles of Crowe and LE1-1.3. He knew them by name, after all they worked within the same department, but he had never been assigned with them to anything big.

And you always know who your partner is...

That was a hard lesson learned in the CDP - the Colonization Defense Program. Out on the rim, you lived by knowing the person beside you would do whatever it took to see the job done. No hesitation. No questions. Get it done. Anything else and your filling a cold locker.

And it didn't matter to Wylde - reps or humans. He would work with anyone (or thing) that did their part to make sure he came home at night. He actually preferred a good replicant... they calculated every option and always had a good edge.

So Elly... or LE1... or El... whatever she called herself? Ret welcomed the opportunity. As for Crowe, he had no opinion... yet.

The journey across town was quick and the dark, foreboding appearance of the LAPD headquarters appeared. Wylde parked his spinner, proceeded inside with his cold ramens, and set about the task requested.

---

Not sure if you need any rolls from me, Paul, but he will spend his current shift working on the items that LE1 requested.

I will give you two, though. TECH and INSIGHT - the one to manipulate the computer, analyze the evidence data, and the other to see if he can put anything together:

Skill: TECH

Rolled 1d8 : 2, total 2
Rolled 1d6 : 4, total 4

Skill: INSIGHT
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I will push on both rolls:

Skill: TECH

Rolled 1d8 : 1, total 1
Rolled 1d6 : 4, total 4

Skill: INSIGHT

Rolled 1d8 : 6, total 6
Rolled 1d8 : 2, total 2

If by chance you didn't need ANY rolls, you are welcome to ignore these.

Maybe an OBSERVATION too?

Skill: OBSERVATION

Rolled 1d8 : 7, total 7
Rolled 1d10 : 1, total 1

Wylde 1  

I have to get the hang of this again, so that I am not making so many replies!

TECH - failed, 1
INSIGHT - success
OBSERVATION - success

No worries, Doug - we're all learning as we go!  I should point out for descriptive purposes that LA isn't all rain all the time - most of the city is actually in the grip of a thick (and mildly caustic) fog at the moment.  I assume that Wylde was a fair way out from the centre of town - the megalopolis is huge enough that different parts will have measurably different weather.

Narrative post to follow soon-ish.