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My boy Dan has started running a game for our local group to take some of the slack off me. The price being an awesomely creative force of gaming is that you’re often barred from the player role, so this is very welcome.

The campaign is Shadowrun circa 2050, using a homebrewed system combining elements of all four editions. This is my first real foray into the setting; but after reading it’s substantial background I’m very inspired by this cyberpunk/urban fantasy. Yeah, genre mash ups aren’t usually my thing yet here I am presenting a character study of my newest player character: David “Dark Friend” Mavion.

February 25th, 2050. New Seattle.

The half empty bottle of Lion Spirit lager made a thud when the man returned it to the tabletop, the only furniture easily visible in the piss-hued light of his dank and disorderly studio apartment. Lean built for his earlier thirties with a manila complexion, longish and swarthy features of perhaps Caribbean or Mediterranean ancestry, the only occupant sat wearing a pair of dingy white under-shorts as he stared at an assembly of familiar components with a narrow box in his upturned palms. He put the box of cleaning compounds and utensils under the table, smoothed back his wavy black hair though it was only long on the top and focused his mind on the task before him: rebuilding his newly cleaned Ares Viper sliver gun.

“David, a gun with no ammo is just a fancy hammer,” an instructor once told Mavion, so he began loading the slivers into the empty clip with a smirk born from the simple truth remembered. The projectiles weren’t needle-like, as the label sliver implies, but silvery fine-edged triangles the length of thumb tip to first joint, width of a fingernail and thick as a coin - for those that still used money - at the base. More expensive than bullets, but they were far more beautiful. Tungsten razors matched the precise elegance of sword tips with the addition of modern power. Magnetically propelled instead of muscularly thrust, they would be what mighty Achilles wielded if born in the same century as Mavion - or so he imagined.

He was in a firefight against armed protesters intent on kidnapping his mother, Adele Mavion - CEO of Achilles Shield Security, when he first took a life with a regular gun. Bullets aren’t far from the metal balls they supplanted. It was like throwing a brick at insane force through the fat bearded man who was intent on doing the same to him. The assailant flew back through a cloud of his own blood and innards. It was an ugly death for one possessed of such strong passions and ideals, rarities in the apathy of today. Neither David’s fear nor his disagreements with this crusader were excuse for such a savage act. A sliver would kill him as surely, but cleaner and slow enough for the fat man to briefly reflect on his life and accept its ending. Make personal preparations.

Before loading each triangle, David balanced the sharp tip on a fingernail edge for three heartbeats. A small exercise he’d been trained in upon his Awakening to Magic. Yanking a rabbit out of a hat? No. Mavion was an adept, meaning his magic was infused in his being rather than conjuring effects from beyond into this reality. Still, his family couldn’t accept or speak of his talents. It was a time when the world was changing too fast. Thousands died from new viruses or unexplained calamities. Children were born of apparently different species than their parents, others changing later in life. Old nations fractured and had minority groups or corporations replacing their order. The manifestation of True Magic was just one of many oddities, but one that touched him.

Consciousness was a continual development of attention to calculation into intention and then action, which created behavior. His attention could go directly to action, so he could do what he wished to do before he did it without paying it the slightest mind. Each sliver balanced perfectly because he countered its desire to obey gravity faster than his conscious mind could register the imbalance and with dexterous movements so minute he couldn’t perceive them, just as he couldn’t see the star-shaped pattern the tip cut into the enamel of his nail surface. Regardless of this metaphysical mumbo jumbo, a satisfying click echoed through the room with each insertion of a tungsten sliver.

Twenty-seven were loaded. The clip could hold three more but three cubed held mystical significance and gave more than enough for his purposes. David began to assemble the pistol named for a god of war few remembered and a reptile few met and survived.

The breech locked superior slide to inferior assembly and formed the copper ribbed path the sliver would be catapulted along. He was on a path forged by those that assembled him. Privilege allowed parents the security to control their children through supplying support and proper instruction. Most couldn’t give their children either far into the teen years. David wasn’t much for academics beyond history but naturally athletic like his father Capt. Jesse Francis Mavion, himself an inheritor of wealth. He and Mother incorporated Achilles Shield Security (A double S) as a subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnology but Father never lived to see its growth into independence and bring further prosperity to his children.

David, the corporate prince, was to be a field coordinator until his adept talents began to show at seventeen. They required distance, a freak in the family wouldn’t do to maintain political neutrality, so he was employed as David Frank - fake surname a version of his handed down middle name Francis. His talents served him well and gave the family board of directors a direct view into the details of each mission. Though loaded with training and with twelve years of excellent service aiming him for promotion, like any projectile a myriad of things can go bad once fired from the barrel. Young Mavion ricocheted.

The butt cap aligned rear sight with the forward sight atop the superior slide. A point would overlap the target while two bars bracketed its image when you were lined up for an ideal shot. Mechanical perfection was always ruined by the obstructing whims of the actual world or intrinsic human shortcomings, but still there were degrees of failure. David‘s last contract mission was a minor failure on paper. The protection invested in the asset was insufficient for the projected threat level; hence liability to ASS was minimal. Paper was generally descriptive, sterile in its portrayal.

Sevonia Ordonez was a sheltered girl of corporate wealth not unlike Mavion when he was her age. Bookish but blossoming into the potential of rounded Latina beauty and curves, she was still intent on her studies in history and philosophy. Subjects David had himself enjoyed between the tedium of Virtual Programming 106 and Poly-planar Algebra 202. He and she spoke on them often as he and his associates escorted her to and from classes, lessons, recitals and other engagements that her father, a V.P. at Aztech, approved of though ignorant to her fraternization with the help. After several rough assignments, this tertiary prioritized contract seemed the next best thing to a vacation for Mavion. He didn’t see the brackets surrounding Sevie until the trigger was pulled.

David scrutinized the locking pin under the yellow light, a half finger length metal rod as thick as a grain of rice. When not fully inserted into the inferior assembly it could obstruct the safety switch feed that sent power from battery to ignition plate, which fired the sliver. It wasn’t fully inserted that day, as David wasn’t fully in the mindset he was required to be in. His job. His purpose.

They’d sent near a dozen threats to Mr. Ordonez but he was too proud to acknowledge their influence. They caught Nathaniel and Shime by surprise outside the restaurant. David could feel it coming and had the girl under the table and Viper drawn when they walked into the door. He sighted and pulled the trigger for three perfect shots to the head or heart, but no slivers left. Bullets did come and one pierced stomach just before another hammered through his thigh. He regained his wits from the pain in time to see a barrel aimed for his face at the end of muzzle extending from a jacketed arm. His wounds slowed David, so the attacker was able to watch his wrist broken, elbow dislocated, shoulder twisted then feel the pain of each before Marion’s palm crushed his windpipe. A sharp blow from behind ended the recollection.

He awoke in a med-facility days later on the mend and thankfully free of any cyber implantation. Such artificial assistance would only disrupt the energies of his adept body. Abigail, his older sister, saw that this didn’t happen to his surprise. She was always trying to get him more serious on his studies and into a desk position, which would have prevented this. A visit from the family meant he must’ve been close to eternity.

Mavion was informed that Sevie lived; the attack was merely a warning to her father. When able he went to visit her in the upscale clinic were she convalesced, but didn’t find the same young women he knew. The natural beauty she was forming was replaced by a cosmetic caricature of prettiness meant to conceal the damage. The eyes that held great wonder and reflection now hollowly gazed about, even the real eye that remained next to its new technological mate. Sevonia’s manner was measured and formal, her attentions turned to superficial concerns of her station, her warmth extinguished. A vacuous aristocrat using poise to hide herself and the pain that composed her. This legally minor failing was a tragedy to any who really knew the girl she was before. After parting, David’s chest heaved with a thick stifling grief that served to bellow the fires of rage within him.

The bottle cap sized power cell snapped onto the power lead, fit in the grip head and connected to the inferior assembly, where the locking pin fastened everything together. A brief hum sounded as the powered weapon went into standby but primed its magnetic inducers. Trigger assembly slid into place smoothly as Mavion entered the headquarters of those responsible. Still on medical leave, he felt more than well enough to right this dishonor even though Vice President Ordonez consented to their demands. This was what the ancient Romans would call “pro fides“.

The two he saw in the doorway that day fell first. An armed woman, perhaps the one that waylaid him from behind, put up a fight with muscles enhanced by cyber - nano-fiber tissue over titanium bone. David’s thigh wound was aggravated by an amazing kick but she too was human like him, mostly. He coordinated every working muscle of his body to his intention and spirit to magically focus the amalgamated power of hundreds of bio-kinetic impulses into a motion-blurred face shattering haymaker. Not a doctor himself, Mavion still doubted Sevie’s top-priced surgeons would be able to save the bitch, much less reassemble the skull. Engage in the dirty business of men and renounce all chivalry. That she left David alive was a fatal mistake. The Viper held nine more slivers.

The clip of twenty-seven slammed into the pistol grip hard enough to shake the table beneath his sharp elbow. Resurrection. Reunion. Completion. David finished the beating of the executive that gave the warning with a kick to the diaphragm. Sent flying into his desk, it was painful like the few dozen other blows he received, but not grave. David Francis Mavion stood near the corporate officer who reclined seated and panting against his desk. “Whuh … whuh … WHY?” he managed.

The A double S operative and heir blinked in surprise. He had forgot to mention the reason for this unsanctioned assault. He sighed to his core, “Sevonia Michala Ordonez.”

The executive wheezed a chuckle at this and viewed Mavion incredulously. “She lived! She’s not even crippled! Business is business. Fear is a tool of business. It worked! Her daddy is playing ball,

But now … NOW, he’s started something sending you!”

“Wasn’t sent by him, if that matters,” David admitted, “but MY business ends here.”

Muffled cracks sounded from the desk as tungsten splintered wood behind the man’s chest. The pistol was silent by design and perforated lungs gave only wet whispered pops. Mavion left with the burbling sound of blood-choked final gasps at his back. His career died with the businessman.

The medical record officially says David Frank died from a drug interaction during rehabilitation. Adele Mavion’s son could never be acknowledged for risk of involving the family in a high level vendetta. Abigail’s brother was provided with some seed money and a ticket to New Seattle, where the shadows of society would hide him. Here he sat in this squalid abode, a shadowrunner for near a decade. Still living by the gun, but now only he decided where it was aimed and why is would be fired. It just cost him his life, but could never diminish his noble ideals native to a bygone age more fantasized than recalled.

The impact of loading the pistol knocked over the bottle and spilled amber all over the table. Drowsy in the early morning he’d had enough anyway. Without bothering with the mess, another stain on the grimy surface of the table and his life, Mavion flung a naked sliver across the dark room.

Perfectly hitting the power panel, nicked and gouged from many other cuts, its impact turned off the light.

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