"The caaar inside me~
And everyone's voice." I softly sang, pushing the ground down and away from me. Everything ached. My arms, legs, chest, everything. It was a deep ache that went all the way down to the soul, which made sense, given that my body wasn't the only thing getting a workout. It felt a bit like I was being slow cooked while also being crushed. The only reason I could even move was the [Hamon] coursing through me, strengthening my limbs.
"Onlllly they're not there,
There's just the fucking car~" I growled out the last bit, before I hit the floor with a bone-shuddering impact. I let out a sound like a deflating balloon, because that was just about how I felt at that point. How many push-ups did I get to this time? Thirty something? I flopped over with a wince. Funny thing, I was literally glowing with the essence of health, and yet all I felt was pain and exhaustion.
Straining myself in this way didn't just ache. I could almost feel myself tearing a little at the seams as I repeatedly put my body to the test. In the worst cases, it felt like my entire body was a pulled muscle. I used my health bar to gauge how far my exercise in self-harm would go, repeatedly going to the half-way point until I stopped.
[Health: 419/860]
Come to think of it, hadn't it taken a missile to get me to this point before?
Fucking hell, why did I think this was a good idea again?
[Strength: 70 > 71]
Ah. Right. Because it was the best idea a human ever conceived of, next to sliced bread and flight.
[Inventory Weight Limit Exceeded. Speed Lowered and Sprint Disabled.]
Shaddup, I know what I'm doing. Mostly. Sorta. Kinda. Really, I'm just coasting hard on the fact that I can't die permanently, and the fact that suffering literally 'builds character'.
I hauled myself up, leaning against a dirty wall and breathing heavily yet steadily as I stared at the cracked wall opposite to me. The small second-floor storage room I was hiding out in was pretty dark, and the only thing that illuminated the interior was the light of my aura spilling out uncontrollably. The warehouse I was hiding out in was utterly abandoned, left to wrack and ruin, which is the entire reason why I picked it as my temporary residence.
There weren't exactly many places for me to go, as I was. [Hamon] was the only thing that kept me moving, and using it caused an uncontrollable aura to spread all over me. The energies could conduct themselves through clothing, manifesting as flickers of electricity and rays of light.
I managed to sneak around the mostly abandoned Northside of Watson just fine during the night, but places like Little China and Japantown were right out. I simply wouldn't be able to sneak out and go anywhere with actual crowds, because they'd presumably want answers to why the hell I glowed.
It didn't matter if I dropped everything else in my inventory. All the guns, grenades, medicine and ammunition didn't matter a lick in terms of strain. So long as I had the car, there would be that pressure bearing down on me, forcing me to resort to [Hamon] to keep me staggering about.
Now, I could let go of the goddamn car, just drop it off in an abandoned warehouse and piss off, but… well, the dollar signs were dancing in my eyes. Rayfield made cars for the ultra-wealthy. The demigod-like celebrities, CEOs and corrupt politicians of the world liked their statements of wealth, and the cars they drove were no exception.
I'd gone ahead and done some reading on the net in-between workouts. As an example, the Rayfield Aerondight "Guinevere" cost more than the lifetime earnings of the average Night City citizen… multiplied by fifty-two. A fucking car was worth more than the GDP of a long list of island nations.
Now, the Caliburn currently lodged in my soul wasn't worth quite that amount. Jimmy would have never been able to afford such a thing if it was. The Aerondight "Guinevere" was the latest, hottest thing that Rayfield had put out. In comparison, the Caliburn was old news for the simple sin of being more than five years old, but that was only as far as the elite of the elite were concerned. For people who walked on pavements more than red carpets, the amount a Caliburn could go for was life-changing.
There wasn't much that I wanted… Well okay, there was a lot that I wanted. A place that didn't have roaches crawling around everywhere. A Sandevistan so good it made it feel like I was running around in a world of frozen time. A steady supply of actual goddamn food, from real goddamn animals. A head-to-head with Adam Smasher, when I was ready to try and claim the throne of deadliest sonuvabitch in Night City.
The last thing was less of a thing I could purchase with money and more something I could appreciate only after I'd seriously hit my stride in terms of guns, cyberware, everything. Which, of course, cost money.
Which meant that flipping that car into a worthwhile profit was high on my priority list. Only problem? Actually flipping the fucking thing.
Of the few people I imagined could afford to pay me the amount that I wanted, the bigger fish Fixers were high on that list, and something that I'd learned during my time in Night City was that Fixers were fucking scary. If I recalled the quote correctly, "Information was a Fixer's lifeblood." I could barely remember where the quote had come from, because it sure as hell wasn't something Regina had told me over a call, but the point stood.
Let's say I went to a Fixer worth their salt and told them I wanted to flip a Caliburn. Well, the first thing they'd probably want to know was whether or not killing me rather than paying me was on the table, depending on who I was talking to. The second, more important thing they'd want to know was where the hell this thing came from. Cars like these didn't grow on trees.
The obvious answer was that I'd grabbed it off of Jimmy. But then the more concerning questions would probably start piling on. At this point, somebody had to know that Jimmy and Tanaka had died in pretty much the same place. The Trauma Team grunts sent to check for a pulse, if nobody else. At this point Arasaka probably knew as well. I didn't doubt that all sorts of folks were digging for answers as to what the hell had happened last night.
The good news was that there was nothing that outright connected me to Jimmy and Tanaka's deaths. At least, not that I knew of. There were witnesses at Embers that had seen me and Jimmy in the same room, but the parking lot had been empty of guards, and the time gap between me catching Jimmy and him escaping wasn't long in the slightest. It wasn't that hard to believe that he could have gotten out of our encounter scott free.
The bad news was that flipping a car this good would probably connect me, however tangentially, to the incident last night. Jimmy was keyed to this car, which meant that if anyone checked who it's previous owner was before resetting the thing to factory default, then they could go back to the Fixer who I sold it to with that info. And if that happened, chances are the Fixer would start asking questions like where the hell I'd found the car.
That, in combination with my physical proximity to Jimmy that night, made selling the Caliburn in my inventory a risky proposition.
So yeah. I was stuck with a car that I had no idea how to flip.
On the bright side however, I was now a machine that turned cat food into stat bonuses, with a car as the catalyst. Twenty points in strength after an entire day of effort? Those were some fucking numbers. Hell, it was even faster than I'd gotten at the very beginning of my training!
Of course, me flopping on the ground like a fish and barely managing thirty push-ups didn't feel like peak performance, but that was the price of swoleness. Well, that and feeling like I was lifting something ten times my goddamn weight.
Not that I got particularly swole however. I glanced over to my arm and prodded it, rubbing my forearm and feeling for muscle. I could feel it there when I put on a bit of pressure, but not much of it at all. My arms weren't jacked, instead they were still somewhat average looking, not entirely dissimilar to what I'd see on anybody else, or to what I'd started with.
As it seemed, my physical strength wasn't tied to my muscle mass. Instead, it was tied to a number on a sheet that only I could see.
What did that say? Hell if I knew.
I breathed out a sigh as I watched my stamina bar crawl back up to its full state, and grunted as I peeled my back off of the wall. Everything still ached, but it's not like it mattered. Pain was a way for my body to inform me of damage, but damage was something that [Hamon] regenerated.
My plan was simple. Grind until I was strong enough to take this car with me without the benefits of [Hamon], and maybe down the line I'd be able to flip it without raising eyebrows. It's not like I was planning to do anything other than lay low for a while, what with having killed a goddamn Arasaka executive and all, and what could be more private than an abandoned factory in the middle of the rotting ruins of Northside?
Of course, that was easier said than done. Not that it was hard to do push-ups in the dark. It was just… stressful, having only the company of my thoughts while figuring out what the hell was step two going to be. Maybe there was a carjacking skill I could work on or something, so that I could reset it to factory default. Or maybe I could sell it to somebody out of town.
I was another half-hour into my routine of breaking myself in half before a call caught my attention. I took it with a sigh. "Hey, Regina." I muttered from my position flat on the ground.
"What. Happened." My eyes snapped wide at the steel in her voice. I'd never heard her this pissed before.
"Well… you know a certain Jimmy Kurosaki?" I said, scooting over to the wall and leaning heavily against it.
"Yes." She hissed, before she quickly regained control over herself. "Yes, I know who Jimmy Kurosaki is. He said he would be giving you an interview to feel you out before putting you on a gig."
Okay Razzle, time to lie like you've never lied before. [Covert Talent] rushed to the forefront of my mind and metaphorically cracked its knuckles. Regina was a tough customer, and chances are she had ferreted out more secrets than I'd ever had, but that didn't make her impossible to deceive. I dug into whatever spite I had at the dead man and his actions, seething and raw, "Hell of a gig." I spat. "Fucker wanted me to install a BD scroller just to make me his next hit."
"So you decided to blow him to pieces?" Her headshot scowled, "I've got 'Saka and the NCPD crawling over my joint!" She's on edge, I doubt it's business as usual for her, which means… she might actually be weakened in terms of info gathering. This might work better than I thought.
Okay, now how would 'Razzle' react? Outraged surprise. "Fucking what?" I snarl. I'm a solo, tearing at the bit, hellbent on hitting the major leagues. I just got attacked, and I want revenge. "He's fucking dead?"
"Yes he's dead, haven't you been watching the news lately?" Her voice is tightly controlled. She's pointing out the obvious, calling me a dumbass without saying it. She's fed up, and hates rehashing information, which makes her even more fed up.
[Reflex] fires, and I think quickly. What does a person hellbent on revenge do? No, more than that, what does somebody who's just been attacked by a cyberpsycho do? They lay low and they lick their wounds. Mentally, I'm dinged up by the fact that I nearly died.
I'm mad. I'm not thinking straight. I nip at the hand that feeds. "I've been too fucking busy not fucking dying to watch the goddamn news." I spit out.
Regina rears back slightly, but her professionalism holds. She chooses to let the tone slide for the moment. Now, she's going to ask me what I know, while cluing me in slightly as to what she knows. "Tell me what happened at Embers." Okay, so she knows that something went down at Embers, and this can either be a test or a genuine question. She's reaching the end of her rope, and what's more she's making it clear with her razor-sharp tone of voice.
'Razzle' recognizes this, and pulls back. "I turned the fucker down, and he left." I muttered sourly. "Then next thing I know, there's a goddamn cyberpsycho attacking the goddamn joint. Fucking thing nearly killed me!" Not a thing, a person, but 'Razzle' wouldn't be thinking about that. "I killed it, but when I chased after that bastard he was already gone! How the fuck is he dead?" I take care to inject an appropriate amount of rage into my voice about his 'escape', and the subsequent demand.
Regina is unhappy with a lot of things, the turn this conversation has taken, my tone, the lack of the answers she wants. She's still professional enough to give me the info though, or maybe it's because she's intent on shaking a lead out of me. "Jimmy was found dead last night, a stone's throw away from a dead Arasaka executive. There were enough explosives used to collapse half the building" She declares. That last part, I hadn't realized until I'd set them off. In order to get out I had needed to run to the second story and hurl myself out the window.
'Razzle' is surprised by the latter, not the former. He already knows that Jimmy is dead from earlier in the conversation. "A fucking Arasaka executive?" A slight degree of awe and horror enters my voice. 'Razzle' realizes the enormity of the bullshit he's stepped into. "I didn't fucking do it, I was sleeping off half a magazine, for god's sake!"
I barely even need to guess what she'd say next. "Then who did?" She demands, hammering the question home with her insistent tone. Popping out of character for a moment; wow, she's really digging, isn't she? I keep an eye out for a sign of fake interest, but as far as I can tell there aren't any. She really is just this desperate for answers, or maybe she's just that good.
[Reflex] fires again. Test or not, what would 'Razzle' know? Nothing, probably. I could try and send her on a goose-chase for some sort of mysterious problem that Jimmy 'mentioned' during our conversation, but really, I think the subsequent cyberpsycho attack would overshadow any sort of useful hint gleaned from our chat.
"I don't fuckin' know!" I shout in exasperation. "Fuck, what the hell do I do? I don't have the cash to get outta Night City!" Because what any sane person would do is get the fuck out of dodge if they were even slightly related to a clusterfuck like this. Which… probably suggests that I'm not particularly sane.
Huh. Maybe I need to seriously consider how confident I am with my plan.
"Go to ground, and don't poke your head up until the coast is clear." Regina states authoritatively. At this point, she's not looking for answers, she's just interested in preserving assets. At least, I'm pretty sure this is the reason why she said this. We sure as hell aren't friends. In any case, 'Razzle' isn't thinking about this, he's more interested in preserving his own skin.
"Already on it." I mutter, glance around for effect and… "Stay safe, yeah?" I'm not just keeping consistent with the politeness I've shown thus far, I'm tapping into genuine feelings of concern here.
Generally, I don't want bad things to happen to people. As far as I know, Regina hasn't done anything to merit an interrogation by Arasaka, at least morally. She'd probably be fine, but I still wished her well.
She lets out a frustrated sigh and hangs up. My face slackens, the stricken look of terror previously present loosening into a grimace. Once again, it occurred to me that the longer I went on, the more likely the lies I spun and the secrets I buried would hit the open air. Then again, Night City was an active place. How long would it take before the death of an Arasaka Exec became old news?
In the canon timeline, Maine and Dorio had gone down for it, so they had probably been scapegoated for everything, which would allow the rest of the crew to go on for a time. David and Lucy hadn't been targeted until way later, when Arasaka counterintelligence enlisted Faraday in cleaning up everybody who might have known about Tanaka's secret project. At the end of it all however, there had been survivors. Lucy for one. Falco for the other.
What did that suggest? Chances were, Arasaka would want to silence anyone who was even tangentially related to Tanaka's data, but it simply wasn't all-knowing, no matter how powerful the corporate giant seemed. There was no link between me and Tanaka, only between me and Jimmy, and Jimmy had immediately tried to have me killed, so it's not like I was on his list of confidants or anything.
But there was still a link between me and Jimmy, and he had been at the scene of the crime. So there was a chance, however great or slight, that somebody else wanted answers from me.
Orange circuits crawled up my agent, and the screen flickered. I simply pressed the call button and a buzzing static came on the line. I asked my question of [Sorairo Days], hoping divination would help assuage my fears. "I'm pretty sure she didn't realize, but just in case… does she suspect me?"
Static was my answer.
"Uh-huh. What does Arasaka know?"
I got nothing but louder dead air. Still, I pressed on. "What does the Night City branch of Arasaka know?"
This time I got an answer, myriad voices flickering into each other. Conversations. Names. None of them mine.
[Intelligence: 67 > 68]
I breathed out a sigh of relief as the call cut out of its own accord. I'd have to make a routine out of this every morning, checking to make sure that Arasaka hadn't noticed my link to it all.
Utterly exhausted in more ways than one, I crawled to my mattress and curled up under the covers. How long would it be until I'd be able to move normally again? Only time would tell, I supposed. I figured it would be soon, judging by my current rate of progress.
I could spend all of my saved-up stat points right now and probably end up with enough strength to move under my own power, but it seemed like a waste to me. I would be keeping my nose out of trouble and staying out of the public eye anyways, so why not take this opportunity to secure as much benefit as possible?
Really though, I hoped that this little stint of inaction would end sooner rather than later. Jobs, gigs and things like that… in a strange way, I found a great deal of worth in them. To me, my career was something that I wanted to nurture, to grow by spending time and effort.
The money was part of the reason. If I wanted to progress in my quest, I wanted it to be with high-quality stuff that would serve as a good foundation going forward, and good cyberware had handfuls of zeroes attached to the price tag. The other reason I couldn't quite put my finger on. Maybe it was me attaching a great deal of self-worth to it?
How did that one song go, again? I hummed it to myself sleepily as I remembered the lyrics. 'I have a beautiful wife, I have a powerful job. She criticizes me for being egocentric.'
…I frowned and sat up, turning on my agent and looking up the definition of egocentric on the subnet. Looks like sleep will have to wait a while.
----------------------------------------
The second day gave me some much-needed reprieve from my own thoughts.
It was in the middle of the afternoon, and I was staring at a special edition 'screamsheet' using the light of my agent in the downtime between workouts. The term was technically slang for a newspaper, but what I was looking at seemed more like some sort of technologically advanced material posing as a magazine. Some rare sheets, usually adverts, were animated with eye-catching special effects and articles that I could scroll through with the flick of a finger.
I'd read this screamsheet a few times already, but there wasn't that much else for me to do other than think, and this one was a favorite. I was marveling at the design of both the screamsheet itself and the Aeronlight on it when a message caught my attention.
- - -
David: been-been a while since we last spoke
David: startin to wonder what you're up to
Raz: Just the usual. Feeling cute, might take over the world later… IDK.
Raz: Wanna chat on voice? Rather not text stuff. That shit leaves records.
- - -
The call came through a short while later. "S'up." I grinned.
"Soup." I heard David guffaw on the other end. "Seriously, where have you been? Haven't heard from you in a while."
"Lifting in the dark." I answered with a genial smile, tossing one leg over the other. I gave a wave in the air that he wouldn't see, but I always did like expressing with my hands. "So that mankind can live in the light."
There was a pause as David processed my statement. "How do you come up with half of this stuff?"
I snorted. "I don't. I just hack together bullshit that nobody can source. I like stealing things, and I like it even more when nobody can call me out on it." I grinned with relish. "I'm a sneaky poacher."
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
"Okay. Sure." Good old David, moving the conversation along faster than my mind-to-mouth filter could catch up to. "Old bullshit or new bullshit?" He pressed.
"Ancient. The good ol' days, back before Rache Bartmoss nuked the net." I let out a sigh. The local subnet was still an… experience, but there was something lacking about it. It was too local. And though I was still new to this place, there was still plenty of the world I'd barely seen, and that I was very, very curious about.
There's a moment of choked surprise. "That old?! Christ, Raz. Why the hell are you digging up history for quotes?"
"Mankind's been digging up corpses of dead cultures and lost history to inspire their art for as long as we've had pencils, David. And what am I if not another brick in that wall?" I gave a dismissive wave over my shoulder.
"Name one popular thing based on something before the year two thousand." David demanded.
"I'll give you three! The Rayfield Aerondight," I read from the screamsheet. "Caliburn. Aaand…" I fired [Reflex] off, giving me time to think up a third answer. "...Guns."
I could picture him narrowing his eyes in exasperation over the phone "The what?"
I immediately prepared to lecture him on everything Japanese cartoons had taught me. "It's a sword from french-slash-english legend, used by a certain Sir Lancelot of the Round Table. It's actually pretty funny, Rayfield just came out with a new type of Aerondight called 'Guinevere', which was-"
David cut me off with a shout. "Stop, stop! None of that matters, sure it came from pre-two thousand, but is it popular? I've never heard of it."
I paused. Man, and I'd wanted to get into the whole thing about how Lancelot cucked the shit out of King Arthur. And maybe sneak in a joke about Merlin the dick wizard in there somewhere. "Well… there's apparently only five of the things out right now, but celebrities eat that shit right up, don't they?"
"Come on, Raz. Just cause something's got corpos and glitter folk slobbering over it doesn't make it actually popular. You know what's real? Virtus. Iron. Chrome. And I'm not talking about whatever ivory hands they're cooking up in space. The street's the only place where anything's actually popular." Towards the end, David's tone of voice was downright conspiratorial.
"You're giving me the strange impression that you're trying to hawk me a BD right now." I shook my head and muttered.
"Hey, I don't need any side hustles anymore. 'Specially not for ennies." His headshot gives me a smug smile. "Projecting, maybe?"
I cackled. "I will have you know that my current net worth can be compared to the GDP of entire island nations!" So long as you included the automobile in my anima.
We kept joshing each other for a few minutes, before we eventually moved on to more interesting topics. Sometimes we'd talk about things we'd done or places we'd seen. In David's case, it was usually the latest big hit action BD movie, while in mine, it would be about the latest book I'd read, usually of reverse isekai fare.
A little bit into our conversation, however, my smile froze as cold brushed up my spine. "Hey. Gimme a sec. I heard something coming my way." I muttered, heaving myself off the ground. I still couldn't exactly run, but I could walk just fine. I muted my agent and tossed it into my pocket, before the circuits of [Sorairo Days] flickered into existence around me. "What am I looking at?" I muttered out loud.
Five orange outlines were highlighted in my vision through the walls of the room and beneath me, approaching carefully. It seemed like somebody heard me chatting and decided to pay a visit. They didn't move like practiced corp agents. Instead, they had a certain casual swagger characteristic of gangoons. I let them approach past the point where they could easily duck behind a corner, and then I opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony, Overture already drawn and [Reflex] already triggered.
I gave them a single glance that told me all I needed to know. Skullplates, red optics and scars all over the bodies, along with obvious cyberware and missing shirts. Maelstrom. A few already had iron drawn in the form of Pulsar submachine guns, so I don't feel particularly compelled to try talking things out, but I still gave them a chance. My voice was deep and my words slow. "Eeveening-" I called out, but iron was already being raised in my direction.
Oh well.
Two went down with ease, one hole being punched through a well-armored face and the other being put through a throat, decapitating the man. The Nova I just remembered I had wasn't meant to go through any sort of worthwhile armor, so I aimed for the weak, fleshy neck instead of the more armored face. The third one, red optics going wide, blurred their way out of a shot which threatened to do the same.
[+400 EXP]
[+350 EXP]
A Sandevistan again? No. Her body isn't moving fast enough for that, I don't think. A Kerenzikov, then. The first one I've seen. I disregard her for the moment, instead I direct my attention at the other two. I repeat my performance with the first two with numbers four and five.
[+350 EXP]
[+350 EXP]
It's at this point I take a pair of shots at the person in the center. I swing my guns from right to left, using my sense of timing to try and hit her while not making it obvious when or where I'm going to shoot.
This time, the startled stromer doesn't even manage to dodge, and shots drill into both of her shoulders, placed so that whether she juked left or right, she'd receive a bullet either way. The combined knockback sends her towards the ground, and I secure the kill with two bullets to the chin that she can't dodge while she's falling.
[+700 EXP]
Mantis blades popped out from her forearms, but the battle was already lost. [Reflex] relaxes, and I sigh out in my now seemingly normal voice. "-fellas."
I tilted my head to listen, keeping an ear out for any other sign of activity nearby. Hearing none, I returned to my storage room and shut the door. The circuits of [Sorairo Days] swept over them, digging into pockets and agents for a pittance of eurodollars that I happily gathered for myself.
I could loot them further, take their guns and ammunition and so on, but honestly, I really did not feel like adding to my inventory burden right about now. I fetched my agent again and sat down back at my original spot, before taking a breath. I let some cheer leak back into my voice as I unmuted myself. "Back. Now, I believe you were telling me about fighting all the way up Goldtower?"
"Uh… yeah, sure. But before I keep going... what was that just now?" David asked, sounding unsure.
"Couple of Maelstrom. Nothing major." I assured him.
"You need me to get off the holo for a sec?" A slight note of concern entered his voice.
"Nah. I took care of it." I declared with a grin.
"...If you say so, then." He muttered, sounding a bit put out. I tilted my head slightly, but didn't have a chance to ask what that was about before we returned to our chatter, so I dropped it from my mind.
----------------------------------------
On the third day, I received an unexpected visitor.
The door slowly slid open as I pulled at it with [Sorairo Days]. The strength of my stand-system hybrid wasn't much to write home about, but it could still pry open a disused door, so long as I was willing to wait and put in a good deal of effort.
From my place in the corner of the storage room, my eyes slowly widened as a small, wrinkly snout pushed through the gap and sniffed at the air. Slowly but surely, as the door was pulled further open, the rest of the wrinkly, hairless creature followed its nose into the room. Slitted eyes gleamed, reflecting the glow of my aura as it stared at me.
With the exception of rats, urban wildlife was nearly nonexistent in Night City. After a few diseases had swept through Night City using animals as a vector, a thorough purge had been enacted. With Night City being surrounded by desert, the wildlife had nowhere to retreat to. Dogs, birds and creatures of all kinds dwindled until they became rare, and then nonexistent, though apparently not all of them were entirely gone, judging by the cat reflecting my stare.
The catt and I watched each other carefully. Between us, a half-eaten packet of cat food was laid out on the floor.
…Don't judge me. Fish and tofu was a decent source of protein. Better than bugs, at any rate. I didn't care if pet food was subject to less quality control than stuff for humans, I was not eating worms and I was not eating locusts.
Our stand-off continued for a long while. On an unseen signal, the catte started forward, watching me closely for any reaction. When I gave none, the cattee crept closer, its nose pointed at the meal while its piercing eyes pointed at mine.
I barely even dared to breathe. I could see the light of my aura illuminate the kattee more and more as it came within a stone's throw, tilted its head down… and began to scarf down the rest of my lunch.
With supreme delicacy and control, my hands clenched around another packet of cat food and slowly pulled it open. I brought it out to my mouth and began to chew on it slowly, my eyes never leaving the kattee as it scronched-
Okay, Razzle. Come on. Quit letting your fucked up humor take the brainwheel. Whoop de do, it's a sign of some actually normal, natural life in this hellhole of a mafia state. No need to think like a deranged child.
I chewed through the rest of my meal, watching as our time together vanished along with the food from its packet. The thing clearly knew its way around plastic packaging, tearing it further open with its teeth and claws to get at fish and cold tofu deeper inside the packet, and lapping up the little bit of jelly in the corners.
The cat was scraggy, hairless, and covered in wrinkles, it still had the charming silhouette that all cats had. Towards the end of its meal, it lapped at its chops, looked up at me and let out a meow.
…Okay. Just once. And only once.
I had been inching closer, and by now my hand was suspended over the cat. I could see the light of my aura sparkling in its slitted pupils, and with utmost care I slowly brought my hand down… and I squished that cat.
I quietly marveled at the feeling of its little flaps of flab and wrinkles under my fingers as I stroked it from head to tail. I'd never pet a hairless cat before, and… well. I could certainly recommend the experience.
Unfortunately, keeping it was out of the question. Setting aside the fact that this was a creature with its own needs and wants, and that chances were it was too independent to stick around with little old me, I simply couldn't afford it.
Now, before somebody starts wondering how the hell could someone be a hired killer, loot every body I dropped for money and still not be able to afford a pet, let me make it clear, it had nothing to do with my ability to care for it. I could purchase pet food, rig up a litterbox and maybe even pick up some furniture for it to be active on, if I wanted to splurge my dosh a little.
Issue was, the purge of animals in Night City hadn't stopped at the city killing off every hint of wildlife it could find. Pet owners had been targeted too. As far as I knew, a pet owner's license was a thousand eurodollars a month. And the fine for being caught with a pet and without a license? Forty thousand eurodollars. To put that into perspective, my rent for my apartment in Megablock H11 cost about the same as owning a pet, and if I was caught with a cat in my apartment, the only way I'd be able to pay that fine would be by flipping the Caliburn.
That being said, nothing would stop me from naming it. After a quick sweep of [Analyze] to check for a previous name, I began to test some names I had in my head.
Jimmy was one idea. The cat looked like a 'Jimmy', but unfortunately, I had literally just killed a guy named Jimmy, so it would be too weird. And maybe could be counted as evidence in our fucked up legal system, not that anybody would need any. If I recalled correctly, the amount of time a person could be held for a crime without evidence went up to about a year.
Dazzle was another idea. That being said, I was somewhat uncomfortable with treating a living, breathing creature's identity as an extension of my own.
…In the end, I'd picked something appropriate for the crime-ridden city I'd found myself in. Something perfect for this pesky little scoundrel. "Slim." I declared with glee, continuing to stroke the cat. "That sounds like a good name for you, doesn't it? You wily whippersnapper, you." I whispered.
I felt something inside me melt at the low, rumbling purr emanating from it, my grin turning puerile.
It would be nearly half an hour before Slim vanished out the door, and I returned to the process of training. The corners of my mouth would refuse to turn downwards until much, much later.
----------------------------------------
It was on the fourth day that my breakthrough came. I was getting close to something resembling 'physical fitness', managing to do about a hundred pushups with the 'caaar inside me~' before stopping. I still felt weakened, but I could move normally, rather than shambling around as if I were some sort of discount zombie like I had been when I first hid myself in this storage room.
I'd hit 99 Strength halfway through the afternoon, according to the time on my agent. With the end so clearly in sight, I had thrown myself into exercising with vigor. Sweat was once again a thing of the past, and my aura shone brighter than ever before. The pain was still present, but either I was getting used to it, or my enhanced strength was letting me deal with the strain better. I was expecting the stat increase at any time now.
Aaany time now.
…
Minutes passed. I did my best not to count them. I failed.
…
[Strength: 99 > 100]
[Due to Strength passing 100, random Skill related to Strength will be gained]
[Active Skills Upgraded: Power Strike + Concentration + Iron Skin > Mortal Engine]
Mortal Engine
Level 11
Put everything you have into it. Align your will, your body and your soul, and pay the price. Suffer and strive. Fight and fumble. And maybe, just maybe, you'll step into the skin of the person you want to be.
Disables Health and Mana regen.
+ 79 Strength
+ 79 Vitality
+ Medium Armor Stack
I did not stop. I did not pause. Despite passing the line I'd set for myself, there was still distance to go, so I finished my goddamn reps, driving myself to exhaustion all the same. At the end of it, I hit the ground breathing heavily. "Yesssss…" I hissed out. Slowly I let the light of [Hamon] bleed away, feeling everything grow heavier and heavier. It felt like I was being crushed under my own weight, but despite the force pressing down on me, I'd never felt better.
I took a puff of a Bounceback, and let it enter my inventory along with all the other trash I'd accrued. As my health steadily climbed back to full, I let an exhausted yet delighted grin cover my face. Four days. Not quite ninety-six hours, but close.
I'd known it would come to an end eventually, but Christ did it feel liberating for it all to be over.
Except it wasn't, of course. I'd always be pushing myself to go further. Tomorrow will have more of this. That being said, at least I wasn't going to be doing this all day, every day. I'd cut back down to my more casual schedule.
I set my hands on the ground and pushed myself up to my knees, grimacing as the pressure intensified.
[Inventory Weight Limit Exceeded. Speed Lowered and Sprint Disabled.]
"I get that you have my best interests in mind, but I'm good." I muttered. "Now then…" I flexed by hand, before clenching it into a fist as I triggered my new skill.
[Mortal Engine] felt weird, compared to the rest of my skills. [Reflex] was like an elastic cord in my mind that I could only pull out for so long until snapped. [Hamon] was an inner warmth that flowed from my lungs and heart to the rest of my body. Before they'd been subsumed into one, [Power Strike] was like flexing muscles I'd never known I'd had, while [Concentration] and [Iron Skin] felt like I was dousing my mind and body with cool water. A bit like when I washed my hands.
[Mortal Engine] was something in between the effort of [Power Strike] and the calm of [Concentration] and [Iron Skin] All of a sudden, every part of my body was surging, but that force didn't seem to go in any particular direction. If I had to liken it to anything, it was like my inner body was composed of gears, and all of them were suddenly being put into overdrive, while my outer body kept it all contained with a solid shell.
I forced my feet under me and stood up, the task still harder than it normally was but not herculean. I looked at my arms, checking for any signs of a visible aura, and smiling with satisfaction when I didn't find any. I took my first step forward, testing my limits. I found that though I still couldn't exactly run, I could power walk without any issues. I thumped my chest with one arm and grinned when I felt like I'd rapped my knuckles on concrete.
Now… to figure out exactly what 'Medium Armor Stack' represented. I drew a Nova out of my inventory, not the one I regularly used, but rather one of many that I'd looted off of the various gangoons I'd taken out. I lifted it to my hand, took a breath, and pulled the trigger before I could think better of it.
[Health: 922/950]
I hissed as I flicked my hand, stinging pain jolting up my arm but quickly fading away. Under the light of my agent, I glanced at the raw wound in my palm, before turning my hand over. I smirked when I saw that it had failed to penetrate all the way through. I tossed it back into my inventory, the wound in my palm already gone, and brought out a Tactician.
[Health: 879/950]
This time, the wound was much more pronounced, going all the way through my hand and marking the wall. I grit my teeth as my hand dropped, a throbbing pain echoing throughout the entirety of my side as I waited for it to piece itself back together. Soon, ordinary feeling returned and I flexed my hand, now looking good as new. I cast my eye back to my health bar, still depleted and not raising in the slightest.
I chuffed, slightly. "Endbringer rules, then? The mass is what matters and not the shape?" I muttered, flicking my hand one last time to clear it of any lingering aches. I stared at my hand for a long while, checking for any scars or marks and finding none. I couldn't remember the last time that I bled, and this time was no exception. Sometimes I wondered what I'd see if I dug into myself with a knife, but as always I dismissed those thoughts with a wince, along with other thoughts about more… intensive testing of my durability.
My hand clenched around the door, and I wrenched it open in one smooth motion, more for the effect that anything else. The abandoned factory was dark as I stepped out of my room, flexing my neck and working out the kinks. The windows to the outside let in barely any light from the outside, which made sense, given that it was nighttime.
A motorcycle helmet was displaced into my hands without fanfare, and I slid it over my head. My outfit shifted to my disguise, and I prepared to make my way back to Westbrook. Offhandedly, I wondered what had happened about the bounty on my head.
I figured it was still there, but I still had no idea what the offer actually was. Had it risen? Shrunk? I wondered if anybody even cared, given that Regina had apparently needed to shut down her business because of suits crawling over the woodwork. Maybe Maelstrom were all too busy hiding their stuff to worry about little old me.
Then again, there would always be someone in Night City ready to do anything for the right amount of eddies. God knows I wasn't far off that mark. So long as I had a price on my head, the risk of someone taking a shot at me was never zero.
In any case, the sooner I was out of this decaying hellhole, the better. I slung my cargo bag over my shoulder with a huff, and left the warehouse without a single glance back.
----------------------------------------
Warren hated working mornings. No matter where he was or what he was doing, the pesky sun would always find its way into his goddamn optics. Even if he hid in the shade, it seemed like more often than not, some window or another would be perfectly positioned to fuck with one eye or another.
Picking up anti-dazzle seemed like the right way to go, except for the fact that finding any that played nice with his optics was like playing russian roulette, and the people who'd work on him without slitting his throat were anywhere between insane and incompetent. Finding optics with anti-dazzle preinstalled? Goddamn impossible. He was hoping that hitting the Militech convoy would have solved his problems, but apparently none of the bastards had invested in any half-decent chrome. Just his fucking luck.
If he'd known that 360 degree vision would be such a pain in the ass, he would have stuck with the usual two eyes. Or at least kept them all pointed in the same direction.
"U see the warehouse yet?" A message flickered up at his 11 o'clock. "Or is Drums still being hs usual self"
He sucked in a breath. "That depends." He wheezed out, then taking another pull of air. "Is F8. The one. We're looking. For?" He continued, taking the time to breath before every phrase.
At first he'd thought that being part of a chromesquad for a business that knew the value of cyberware would net him good cyberlungs. At least, that was what he'd assumed after taking a blast of fragmentation to the chest during the convoy hit, but the last three that he'd rotated through all had the same issues.
At this point, he was seriously considering telling the rippers he had access to that they could all go fuck themselves and just yanking a doc from one of the clinics nearby. Or maybe just going with what Norn09 did and getting an AI voice box. Then again, doing that would suggest that she was right, and he hated proving her right.
"You kno it is, smartass" The messages came in again. "Get inside and check it out already"
He snorted, before redirecting his attention to the third member of their little three-way. Drums had stopped a short distance back and was staring off to the side, fingering the massive hammer slung over his shoulder as he watched some distant fleshies aimlessly wandering about. Warren bit back a sigh.
Drums was the best backup he had, better than even a dozen chromed-out maniacs slapped together, and a hell of a lot easier to manage, too. But that didn't mean that he didn't get tired of having to babysit a goddamn three-fourth-borg, and it didn't help that Brick would get all pissy when Drums pasted new guys across the pavement. What the hell did Brick expect him to do? Hang a do-not-touch sign on the guy?
Fat fucking chance. He wasn't going anywhere near him if he could help it.
Warren kept his distance and clapped his hands. A mono-eye the size of his fist jerked in his direction, and Warren jabbed a finger at the warehouse shutter. He stepped out of the way as Drums lumbered over. He preemptively winced as the shirtless giant brought his hammer back and swung once, reducing the shutters to splinters.
Fucking hell, Brick was gonna jump up his ass about that too, wasn't he?
Drums looked over to him and gormlessly shot him a thumbs up. Warren threw one back anyways before stepping over a small pile of metal splinters and wrinkling his non-existent nose at the sight in front of him. Five borg bodies, laid out in a small group on the floor.
"Squad dead." He gasped out.
"Figures. Got a read on the sitch?" Norn09 messaged.
Warren didn't bother dignifying her question with a reply. Not yet. He stepped closer to the bodies, giving space for Drums to wander in. His Kiroshis went to work, scanning all over the interior of the warehouse, searching for clues. The standard scanners retrieved the data from their biomonitors, noting that they'd been dead for three days tops. There were no signs of anybody moving them about, so whoever had done this had taken them out here, in this warehouse.
Warren kept a few eyes on the area around him as bullet trajectory analysis made a few guesstimates, pointing out a cluster of origin points on the ground and another set on the second floor. "Keep. An eye. Out." He warned Drums, before unslinging his sniper rifle and stepping up to the second floor. He tossed a recon grenade into the open storage room. When nothing pinged in his vision, he stepped in and took a deep sniff.
His old nose would have been utterly useless here, but his new nasal filters caught everything hairs and cartilage wouldn't have. The faint, faint scent of gunpowder, and the smell of something… fishy. His face wrinkled, canned fish with tofu additives he was pretty sure. Disgusting. His frown deepened as each and every scan came back negative.
No discarded hairs, no dandruff, no nothing. Seems like whoever flatlined five of theirs had fucked off right after. Shit, and he was hoping they'd be able to bring back some good news, having something to identify the eezybeef bastard wouldn't have been as good as a body, but it would have been something at least.
It seemed like he'd have to get his target practice in later. He re-emerged out of the room and glanced down to where Drums was playing with one of the bodies, lifting up one of the arms and letting it drop limply to the ground. "Pretty birds." He heard the giant mutter to himself in a bassy, guttural growl.
Warren didn't get why the big borg was obsessed over fucking meat-things, especially something so vulnerable to bullets, but to each their own. Not like he was as bad as those fuckers playing make believe with bullshit names.
Ymir. Thor. Hell, he'd even heard a someone calling him 'Hoo-gin' or something behind his back, and Drums 'Jotun'. He'd looked up the meanings later, and put a bullet in the smartass the next day.
He'd heard enough bullshit already from chromeheads and freaks too stupid to pick up a gun calling him all kinds of names. Shitbird. Carrion fucker. No better than a fucking Scav. He hadn't gotten this far just so that some book-humper could disrespect him.
Warren let out a shaky breath as he let go of the railing he'd been tightly gripping. He sucked in a wheeze as he looked over to the bodies and narrowed his eyes as something caught his attention. His Kiroshi's zoomed in and he checked the bodies again, moving a finger over each as his Kiroshis scanned them once more.
A bullet to the dome and a decapitation, then another set of the same, with the chromed-up squad leader in the middle, with a pair of shots to the shoulders and then a pair to the head. No other wounds.
They were all in a group, and none of them had reached cover. Hell, he hadn't even seen signs of them scattering. And all the people with melee weapons were side-to-side with the gunner, even the chromed up squad leader. They'd never had a chance to move, which suggested…
"Netrunner. On our hands." He hissed out, for Norn09's benefit.
"What makes u think that?" She quickly fired back.
Warren hated explaining shit, but he liked pointing stuff out, so he obliged. "All. Together. Grouped up. Like you. Can do."
"It's called 'Cripple Movement', ignomous" Warren's face twitched and clicked. Fucking paranoid-ass codefreak bitch, the moment she showed herself he was going to- He let out a shuddering breath as he loosened his grip on the railing again. Then, he noticed something on his optic readouts.
"Fuck." He cursed, too quiet to be heard. "It's that. Fucking. Gun nut." He wheezed out, a little more loudly. ".42 cali. And. 9 mm."
"That fucking asshole again? Goddamnit, Brick is gonna shit one" Norn09 sent. "You sure?"
"Sure." He grunted. "Not just. Quickhack. He's. Got soft." There weren't many other explanations for it. He took in a breath and hissed. "Militech."
It fit. He had his own Militech skillsoft running on the thumb-sized Sandy lodged in his spine, and he knew for a fact that nobody made chipware for guns like Militech did. It was like having a drill sergeant in your skull, screaming at you about all sorts of shit, from how you ran to how you held your gun. Honestly, who the fuck cared if he slung his rifle on his shoulder? Shit was preem.
When you listened, though. Your gunplay just seemed to click. The headshots, the lockdown, it all slid together like pieces of a puzzle.
It took a moment for Norn09 to get back to him. "Fuuuuck, think some gonk fenced something they shouldn't have? Or maybe the army boys decided to sponsor our problems"
Warren snorted. That wasn't what Militech did. They were too big to pay attention to convoys going missing here or there in ways other than shoving an army at the problem. More likely option was that gonk had signed up, trading their freedom for a chrome leash. Not that it mattered to him. At this point, he was sick and tired of dealing with that asshole's aftermath. "That's for. Brick. To find. Out." Warren spat.