Shadowrun: Death of a Salaryman

It's a three-hour non-stop flight from Tokyo to Taipei, speeds raised only somewhat by more advanced engine technology from what they were in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. You're travelling business class and after the stresses of the last two days, you intend to take a nap. You slap patch yourself with a tranquillizer and lean back into the thick form-fitting upholstery of your seat, and fall away into sleep. You almost expect to dream, but there's nothing, nothing but grey emptiness and voices.

You wake up as the time-release stimulant component of the slap patch kicks in and pulls you back into the waking world. You didn't get a window seat, as you intended to sleep, but pulling up a feed from the outside on your neural link, you can see Taipei laid out below you. A vast mass of lights and towers. Even at this altitude, it seems like Tokyo or Osaka, or Hong Kong or Bangkok, one of the great cities of Asia, the new cockpit of the world.

You lean back, check your straps and hold on tight as the aircraft drops in towards a landing the ground coming up slowly until its speeding down the runway, engines pulling back as it breaks to a stop. There's several minutes of taxing and then finally you're able to debark, stepping out down the long tube into Taoyuan International Airport's main terminal.

If there is any true monoculture in the world it is airport. You aren't that seasoned a traveller but you've been to places before. To London on holiday with your parents, to Cario on a business trip. To Seattle and Hong Kong. You've received corporate dignitaries at Tokyo and Osaka's main airports. All of them are the same. Giant interior corridors that resemble a slightly upsized shopping mall connecting to weirdly primitive and rough kept rooms where anything involving, for instance, bags goes on.

Out of the gate you pass through a customs security checkpoint where you run through a biometric system before a sternly beautiful dark haired vat soldier checks and stamps your papers. A corporate agent as you are its at least a quick process. There's a special lane and everything. You step out into the airport and look around, considering buying something to eat from one of the many convenience stores but deciding it'd be better for your figure and your first impression on any welcoming committee to come out without eating. Best to just go collect your bags and get out of here.

You walk down to the baggage carousel and find your bag, tagged in AR, relatively swiftly. It's almost midnight, but you feel reasonably refreshed after your sleep on the flight. The stim is still in your system. You stop in a bathroom, wash your face and take a deep breath. Time to see who you're meeting. You grab your case again and walk out towards the front of the airport.

You get an AR ping as soon as you're outside the security perimeter, directing your attention to a small group of women sitting at one side. Of them, four, three humans and an Oni, are obviously bodyguards. Black suits, wrap-around sunglasses, actioneer business suits cut to conceal weapons. The humans look like vat troops, that flawless poise and beauty of biotech grown into the system directly rather than put in later.

The woman sitting between them, sat on an airport bench with all the grass of a Queen is something else. Your overlay indicates her as Kuge Sakura, and you would never have thought her anything else. Her body is an exquisite example of the biosculpter's art, natural seeming but with just enough flourish to show off that she has undergone some seriously expensive surgery. She's a pencil skirt and a silk shirt and dark jacket, a Shiawase pin on the side. You see her notice you, her eyes ice blue.

You are
[ ] Enchanted
[ ] Flattered
[ ] Terrified
[ ] Tongue tied