foxinthestars

I have written previously about my late friend Magda; and one of the many things she did was to get me into Shadowrun. We had a long-running campaign in which most of what our group did was try to make the dystopian setting a little less dystopian for society's outcasts; so we'd take on criminals whom the law couldn't touch because they were committing their crimes against people who were (deliberately) excluded from society through no fault of their own, we had a street clinic to help people who couldn't get regular paid-for medical care (one of our group was a doctor, and all of us could pitch in and help in various ways), and we'd take a variety of assignments to finance this, but they had to be doing overall good. So we wouldn't take a job from the local Mafia to eliminate one of their members who'd betrayed the cause and gone into hiding, but we absolutely would take one that involved rescuing the don's daughter who'd been kidnapped by the Vory (oh yes, all the organised crime rings from everywhere were around).

The other day I was talking to an online friend who plays, and it got me looking for my old Shadowrun fanfic, which grew out of our campaign. Most of it featured not only my own character, Lethruel, but their good friend Purple, who was played by someone else... because those two bounced off each other beautifully.

Lethruel and Purple had only one thing in common, as far as I could make out. They were both elves. Beyond that, they could not have been more different. Shadowrun elves are normally beautiful but also as arrogant as you can imagine; Lethruel certainly wasn't bad-looking, but they would not have done well if they'd been arrogant, since they were a private detective, which tends to require a lot of being quiet and inconspicuous. Being small, androgynous, and introverted, they did that pretty well. Purple... well, he wasn't really arrogant either, but he was very in-your-face. He was Surged, which meant he had some interesting extra mutations; he was very tall and very purple, with electric blue hair, a pair of little horns, and a prehensile tail, so he basically looked like a friendly demon. He was also highly extroverted, lived very much in the moment (care and planning were for other people, an attitude which very nearly got him killed a few times), liked his drink and drugs, and had an insatiable sex drive. Lethruel, by complete contrast, wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol while working, didn't take drugs apart from (once in a blue moon) Psyche, which was a legal drug designed to help magic users, and was full-on asexual. Purple used to joke that they'd had extra processing power installed where their sex drive ought to be. Both of them could use magic, but, while Purple was very spontaneous about that (in D&D, he'd definitely have been the sorcerer type), Lethruel was a careful magical researcher who kept detailed notes in code. I can't remember what sort of magic user Purple was, but Lethruel was a mystic adept, for those who know Shadowrun.

These two originally became friends because Purple was framed on a murder charge, and Lethruel managed to get him off by finding the real killer. (Lethruel had a few friends like that!) After that, they worked together a good deal; Lethruel had a good income from rich people who were thinking about getting divorced and wanted someone to keep an eye on their spouses for evidence of infidelity, but a good many of the ones who actually were unfaithful went to nightclubs, which Lethruel hated with a passion. Eventually they were able to get some tiny drones which could fly into the nightclubs and gather evidence, but there was also Purple, who just loved nightclubs... so, at least until he got both drunk and as high as a kite, he was able to report back via his commlink, and he could be quite a useful source of information.

Lethruel, on the whole, was very good at their job and perfectly suited to it... except in one important respect. A private detective is, inevitably, going to meet aggressive people from time to time. Lethruel had a phobia of them. While they could be exceedingly diplomatic if there was nobody actually shouting at them, they would usually crumble if there was, unless there was some factor in the situation that they could, as it were, hang on to for support. In one of my stories, there is a man who starts shouting at Lethruel because he believes Lethruel - whom he retained to keep an eye on his wife - has something to do with the fact that Purple seduced her. (This isn't in any way true; Lethruel, obviously, would have stopped Purple, had they known what was going on.) Normally Lethruel wouldn't have coped, but there's something more at stake here, which is the couple's marriage. If Lethruel doesn't stand their ground and explain what is really going on, these two are going to end up divorced, which will make both of them very miserable, since in fact they love each other - they've just been very bad at communicating it lately. So, this time, Lethruel is able to hold firm and talk sense into both of them. It's not a given.

Purple, though? Start shouting at Purple, and he'll just grin and bat his pretty eyelashes at you, and next thing you know he's in your bed and you have absolutely no idea how that happened!