Run 00: Still Water
Six floors with no water, a stolen pump, and two buildings that both needed it.
On this page (9 sections)
Mr. Johnson's Pitch#
A stack in Koreatown had no water above the third floor for eleven days, because somebody unbolted the booster pump off the riser and walked out with it. The mains only push water up three stories; the pump is what fills the roof tank during the hour a day there's pressure to draw on. Without it, floors four to six are dry.
The building's owner of record is a management company that exists as a payment address and nothing else. It wanted the pump back, not out of concern, but because forty households had stopped paying rent, and that was costing more per week than hiring us.
| Client | A management company. No name worth writing down and no person to meet |
| Broker | Fontaine, ten per cent as always |
| Offer | 7,500¥ flat, 2,500 each. No second offer, no twist in the payment, nobody buying anybody's silence |
| Deadline | None stated, which meant the rent strike was the deadline |
| Status | Closed. Paid in full, in a corner shop, in cash |
We took it because we live around here.
Complications so far#
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The pump hadn't been stolen for money. It was bolted to a riser two buildings over, in a stack whose own pump had failed a month earlier. Sixty households up there with the same problem and nobody to call.
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There was not enough water for both buildings, and there still isn't. Moving the pump takes forty minutes with a strap wrench whichever direction it goes, so the only thing we had to decide was which stack ended up dry.
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Buying another pump was not an option. We checked, because it was the obvious way out of it. Nobody in this city manufactures one. Everything that works came in through the port years ago on somebody's manifest, and every unit in the basin that still runs is already bolted to a riser with people living above it, because in a city where forty households will go dry over one pump, anything sitting idle is sitting idle because it's broken.
What's actually available: bodies in the salvage yards off Alameda, plenty of them, all missing impellers and seals. Those are imports, the harbor pump crews hold what stock exists, and they trade them for favors rather than money. Or a working unit from the Risers, who are the only people holding any, at seventeen and a half thousand installed. The job paid seven and a half.
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The Risers offered to arbitrate, for a cut and the standing. Taking it would have settled the thing cleanly and left us in a relationship with a utility cartel.
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A fire escape on the target stack is load-bearing in a way a fire escape should not be, and somebody's grandmother uses it daily.
Scene 1: Eleven days dry#
Last week a stack in Koreatown had no water above the third floor for eleven days, because somebody unbolted the booster pump off the riser and walked out with it. The mains only push water up three stories. The pump is what fills the roof tank while there's pressure to draw on, and there's pressure for about an hour a day. Forty households stopped paying rent, which cost the management company more per week than hiring you did, so it hired you. Six thousand, flat.
Scene 2: Two buildings over#
You found the pump two buildings over, bolted to somebody else's riser, in a stack whose own pump had failed a month before. Sixty households up there with the same problem and nobody to call.
Scene 3: However they settle it#
However you settled it, you settled it, and you're the ones who have to keep living on that block.
Scene 4: The Stuffer Shack#
Fontaine took her ten per cent, same as always, and said she'd buy you dinner with what was left. She picked a Stuffer Shack halfway between the two stacks because it's open at that hour.
The money is on the table between the soy fries. Nobody came through the door, nothing happened, and we finished our dinner. That's where the campaign actually starts.
All four scenes above are played and published: session 1 ran the whole run. See session 1.
Payout#
7,500¥ (2,500 each), her ten per cent charged to the client rather than to us, handed over at a Stuffer Shack halfway between the two stacks because it was open at that hour and she was buying.
Nothing else. No favor owed to us, no bonus for a clean job, and no interest from anybody in what we had actually done up there.
Aftermath#
Settled 2026-08-14: we took it back. Vinnie and Hunter walked in the front door dressed as Riser people, badges and clipboards, claiming to be Ozzie's boss down from headquarters doing an audit. Down in the basement with the pump, we ran water and a recording of dripping pipes to cover our own noise, talked our way past a kid who'd skinned a knee and a looky-loo, and had it off the riser in twenty minutes. An Awakened dwarf came down for laundry partway through, got a Stunbolt off at Lux Vale, and went down under a pair of shock gloves; we left her on the floor, breathing, and left a business card behind that said the pump was broken and to check back in two days. Full account in Session 1.
People#
Played in full in session 1. Fontaine brokered it and
took her ten per cent, and the crew dealt with Ozzie.
Yolanda Fierro is tagged unmet: handing the dispute to the
Risers to arbitrate was on the table and the crew never took it, so
she stayed a name in the GM's half of the night.
Tally is tagged unmet: she is named in Logistics as a way in and the
crew went another way. She is a known contact and her page was never gm: true, which is a
different question from whether this run introduced her.
Grace Reyes was met that night too, on the way, and is on the
session page rather than here because this run never sends anybody to her.
