Also, I've never really even considered letting firewing go on the first playthrough, even though on the first playthrough of the original DF I never talked to her. First time around I freed APEX - it promised less combat and I was really into avoiding it at all costs, and the idea of setting an neo-eldricth-abomination loose seemed like a good idea at the time. The world was run by corrupt and soulless f***kheads and my sympathies were with the F-state. It seemed to me that whatever it's motivations were they'd be different from the ones which drove the kind of organizations which gave me the creeps up to that point, and controling a bunch of german anarchists was probably low on it's list of priorities. It seemed like it could be a great natural disaster kind of thing to set loose on the corporations to tie up ther resources (it seemed like something Apex would do for the lols anyway). Turned out I was right on the money there ^^
Then I gave it firewing too, with a dragon to fly around that thing seemed like it would REALLY be bad news for anyone trying to set up some sort of exploitation system in Berlin, and heckling the little folk was something Apex had been capable of doing even as a glorified firewall, it seemed like the prospect of that would be boring to it. Had I talked to the Firewing, I might've decided different, but I didn't so... APEX on the loose was a bad idea for the general decker community but as far as letting an eldricht horror loose without destroying the world outright and giving the corps something to sweat about it seemed great. Whatever you or your team did with your lives afterward was always going to be small potatoes and low on anyone's priority list ^^
EDIT: And one important thing - APEX told me it'd f**k up a vastly better funded organization of armed and dangerous creeps who tried to kill me allready and attacked my hood if I freed it. I freed it, and lo and behold it f***d up a vastly better funded organization of armed and dangerous creeps who tried to kill me already and attacked my hood. It did ask for a dragon in return at one point, but seeing that it was about as pissed off at the corps as I was, and that it was perfectly willing to take them on (with relish and flair) - it's seemed like a completely square murderous techno-deity. You free it - it's f***ks creeps up. You give it a dragon - it f***s even bigger creeps up (since anyone you could aim a loaded dragon at is pretty much guaranteed to be a creep). V nice in my book. It had a million ways of screwing me over, never did, never had a reason to, and never will most likely ^^
On the DC playthrough I decided to wipe APEX out, and it ment the mission was a complete breeze, but when left with the fate of Firewing (I didn't have academic or clue that they added an option to side with Vauclair) in my hands, I decided I liked her outlook as I was about as pissed off at the moral state of thing as she was, and again, setting her loose looked like a v. nice way to provide the big boys with something to worry about while the team and me slip into the shadows. Yep, she was a bit insane and murderously furious and stuff, but - so was I. I had to kill Vauclair because he and Audran were trying to kill me, bombed my hood, killed my pixie boss, set drakes on me and my homies and killed my intel guy, but Firewing helped me out when I needed it and if I woke up in a fucked up world which caused me insane grief and pain and had the opportunity to lash out against it - I probably would. At least she wouldn't buzz me up in the middle of a run asking me to do inhumane things while I was desperate for cash enough to not really have a choice.
So I told the girl where to go sleep the age through and recover from the torture, bcause, heck, that's what any noir protagonist wants to do after the story is over, and it was what I was looking to do - slip out quietly, glad I was alive. And if she ended up making a mess, well, more people tied up with a mad dragon rampage means fewer people coming after a small-time kiez godmother looking to keep a low profile.
Never even considered siding with Lofwyr, doing his bidding through Duerr (at least I assume that was his bidding) was enough of a taste for me to be uncomfortable with it. And I killed and screwed over enough corporates and corp security over the course of the game to know that I'd much rather be on the other side of those kind of runs in the future.