It had been a couple weeks since our first gig, assaulting Mel Cozi’s house, raiding his slush fund and stealing his antique gun collection. His widow was set to inherit everything else, so she was happy-ish, and I’d seen her on the trid telling an embellished tale of the horrors of what happened, as if she hadn’t been hiding in the bathroom the whole time. Didn’t matter to me, so long as no one started really searching for the people who did the hit.
Berzerker managed to get in touch with a Mercenary contact of hers who knew a guy that collected antique guns. While the whole collection was supposed to be worth 250k nucred, obviously, the guy wasn’t going to pay that much, especially not when the goods were less than legally obtained. Still, Berzerker’s contact managed to get a final fee of 200k. Once his 10% ‘finder’s fee’ was taken out, and split six ways, we were up an extra 30k for the run. All told, we made out for just over 70k each. Not bad for a couple days’ work.
I saved up most of my money. The kinds of things that would be big upgrades for me cost a lot of nucred, and also would require more karma than I currently had in order to use them. However, it wasn’t like I did nothing to work on my kit. I’d picked up two light pistols at character creation. Hadn’t needed them so far, but that didn’t mean I should just leave things be. So, I went to an armorer, and got each of them fitted with internal sound suppressors. Cost 600 nucred each, but it was worth it, since it would slap a -6 dice modifier on anyone trying to track me by the sound of my guns. Useful, if I needed to shoot someone.
Of course, I’d kept up with the rest of the team. Bezerker (Sonya, when we weren’t talking business) spent most of her days at my place. Her cravings were to the point where she didn’t have to get nookie every day, but if she didn’t get it, her will wasn’t strong enough to resist if someone offered it to her. Like, literally. She suffered a -4 dice modifier to resist temptation if she hadn’t sated her craving recently (like, in the last day or so), and the test to resist was based off her WIL, which she only had a 2 in.
Fortunately, feeding her craving was no hardship on my part, and she was getting used to being my little sub. However, since her going off on her own was probably a recipe for disaster, we decided to combine our living arrangements, with her sharing the costs of my two lifestyles. The per-month cost went up by 10% for each, but cutting the cost in half more than offset that.
I found out that Ricki (the technomancer Twilight when she was on the job) actually had a fairly large following as the virtual streamer, BlackDove. Basically, she played games, reacted to videos, and stuff like that, while wearing an avatar for people to fawn over her, and they ate it up. I’m sure the ‘provocative’ nature of her avatar’s outfit and dimensions had something to do with it. It ate up about twenty hours a week, but that was something we could work around.
She wasn’t the only one with a day job, of course. Mary (Babydoll) and Sally (Sexkitten) both did twenty hours a week in the White Petals Spa. It wasn’t actually a spa, but that was a convenient lie for tax purposes. It was actually a bunraku parlor, a brothel where the women (and sometimes men) on offer typically had data filters to keep them from remembering anything. Some had their girls altered to resemble celebrities, sometimes even going so far as to get personafix programs to make them act like the real thing. Unlike most of the girls, they were, technically, not trapped there by debts or other things. However, if they quit, they’d either need to find a new day job, cough up the twenty karma needed to pay off the quality, or replace it with something else.
That was something that we might need to work on together. Preferably, they could find another day job, but that might not be possible, depending on how things shook out. However, there were some relatively harmless qualities that they might be able to switch for, without needing the karma investment.
Selina, the last member of the team, and better known to me as Shadowgirl, had made some improvements to her ride. The bike she’d been riding was now sporting an assault rifle built into the body, which she had gotten concealed. To go with that, she’d also picked up the ‘Gunnery’ skill, which allowed her to use vehicle-mounted weapons. A decent skill to have, if you were looking for something to branch out into.
Everyone had taken my advice and spent a few days just living their lives in game. You only got the best results when you actually lived in the world, rather than treating everyone around you as bags of loot and maybe XP. However, a shadowman couldn’t just let things lie for too long. Skills would get rusty, and bills would still need to be paid.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Fortunately, though, Twilight’s connection to the Yakuza was working to our favor. She’d been approached by one of her contacts, the wakagashira of the Kenran-kai, one of the Yakuza clans working in Seattle. Wakagashira was basically the second-in-command of the clan, so this meant that whatever was happening was important.
Of course, the Yakuza used shadowmen, just like anyone else. However, that didn’t mean they liked or respected them. We were basically tools to be used for actions they could not take without causing trouble. If shadowmen killed a mafia boss, then that was (arguably) not a cause for war between the yakuza and mafia, even if everyone knew who paid for the hit. Just as an example.
Still, a job was a job. We talked it through, and decided that the best course would be to go to the meet in the two vans. That way, we’d be basically ready to roll, if we needed to, with enough transport for everyone, and their gear, but without needing to convoy with six different vehicles. With that in mind, Babydoll was picking up Sexkitten and Twilight, and I’d be riding with Berzerker as we went and picked up Shadowgirl. But the meet wasn’t for another three hours. So, why were we pulling up in front of Shadowgirl’s place?
Well, that had something to do with the restrictions of Shadowgirl’s powers as an adept. One of the negative qualities any magic type could pick up at character creation (or later) in order to get more points to spend was called Geas. Basically, it imposed a restriction on your magic if you didn’t do something, effectively reducing your Magic attribute by 1 until you satisfied it. The old tropes of arcane gestures or spell incantations were both a form of Geas. I had a ‘condition’ Geas, where my Magic was reduced if I wasn’t holding a blade. Hers, on the other hand, was more of a ‘ritual’ type, where she needed to have sex sometime in the last twenty-four hours to satisfy the Geas.
Now, fortunately that change didn’t hurt her too badly, usually, because she was an Adept. Her Magic attribute wasn’t used for many tests, since she didn’t cast spells or do anything like that. However, she did lose some of her powers. She wouldn’t be as nimble or dexterous without them, which was not terrible for day-to-day life. However, when she was working as the ninja/thief for a team of shadowmen, that was more problematic.
So, being a team player, I was at her door an hour before we really needed to leave. When she opened it wearing nothing but an embarrassed smile, I knew immediately that I made the right choice in teammates. “Uh, hi. And thanks for this, Mirikon.”
“Oh, believe me, it is my pleasure, Selina,” I said as I closed the door behind me. “Now, how would you like it? Bending you over the couch? A quickie up against the wall? Or maybe in bed?”
“Well, at least you aren’t making this awkward,” she sighed as she turned to walk to the living room of her small apartment. “And here I was, worried how this would affect our teamwork.”
“I mean, Sonya already moved in with me, since she’s got an addiction, thanks to her qualities. You’re pretty much in the same boat, with that Geas. There were others in the beta who took stuff like that. Mostly as an excuse to slut it up, if I’m being honest, but they quickly realized that addictions or qualities like that have a life of their own.”
“Yes, it feels as though I am… incomplete, somehow, if I haven’t satisfied the conditions. Not enough to make me incompetent, but enough that I know it, and feel it keenly.”
“I know the feeling. My own geas means I am ‘incomplete’ as you call it whenever I don’t have a blade in hand. So long as I have a blade or two on my person, things are manageable, but I can only be out of arm’s reach of a blade if I’m in a place I know is completely safe.”
Selina nodded, and bent over the arm of the sofa, giving me a perfect view of her pussy lips, and the bit of wetness there. “Well, that makes me feel a little bit better about the fact that my first time with a guy is in a video game, of all places.”
“Don’t feel bad about that,” I said, moving up behind her. I slid two fingers along her lips, causing the Latina woman to shudder slightly, while I unzipped, and began stroking my ‘friend’ to life with my other hand. “Most girls rarely see any men that aren’t their father, or maybe a brother. Being in a position where you meet a guy who you actually want to get with, and they’re not already attached? That’s rarer still. Why do you think sixty percent of pregnancies happen through sperm banks, rather than the ‘old way’?”
Selina moaned as she arched her back to rub against my hand. “Mmmh. What about you, Mirikon? You said you were in an accident, but with that kind of attitude, and the way you just took control of Sonya? You had to have lots of experience.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I was a playboy, but I wasn’t chaste, by any means. Still, my ‘body count’ in game from the beta is easily double what it was in real life.” I was ready, now. Didn’t take long with a view like this.
Selina gasped as I brushed her lips with my tip. “Is that? OHHH!” She found out exactly what it was as I thrust forward, taking her to the hilt in one go. “Oh, fuck me, Mirikon!”
“Oh, I intend to, Selina.” With a grin, I pulled back, almost all the way out, before slamming back in, and establishing my rhythm for a good, hard fuck. We didn’t really have time for ‘lovemaking’, and weren’t really in that kind of relationship. And while Selina might not be experienced, I was able to keep it from being a recreation of my first time, back behind the bleachers in high school.
A smirk crossed my face as I thought of that time. As one of only four guys in my senior class, I’d certainly had options available. We all had, even Gary, the fat, nerdy guy. With that kind of ratio, a guy would have had to be either gay or a truly toxic asshole to not at least get some action before graduation. Of course, the other three had already been married by graduation. The girls’ parents had rather insisted that the father of their daughters’ children be in their lives. Which is why I made a point of finishing in the girls’ mouth. At least until I was in the game, and the consequences weren’t exactly something I needed to deal with.
I felt Selina shudder as a pulse ran through her. That was enough to send me over the edge, as well, and it seemed a shame to pull out of such a lovely pussy. And she never mentioned it, anyways. So, I just did what came naturally, and enjoyed every second of it.