Big Mike’s wasn’t too far away. The restaurant was a small affair, though that tended to be the case these days. As I stepped into it, the neon lighting of the city shone through the windows, lighting it up better than the flickering overheads ever could.

Big Mike himself, according to the tag on his chest, sat behind the counter with a bored look on his face. And indeed, he was quite large. The name fit the man, though I couldn’t help but wonder when exactly he started calling himself Big Mike. The joint was almost empty, not that it was much of a surprise. This place was on the outskirts of Bukicho, and Ichiban was far more of an attraction.

Big Mike's food looked and smelled pretty good, and the burgers themselves were interesting. It was the size of a pizza, but a burger. A few customers sat in their booths eating. Most were in groups looking to be corpo drones from the slack-jawed brain-dead look in their eyes. There were two… colorful people though.

One, a man, looked terrified as he gaped at his surroundings like a newborn. I made a mental note not to approach him. He looked the type to pull a gun at any second, and the dilated twitching of his eyes was less than reassuring. Dark Ether by the looks of his nearly black veins. Real nasty shit. Expensive too… if he didn’t look so jumpy I might’ve considered cleaning his pockets.

The other was probably the person Carone set me up with. It was a woman; a real tall one at that. Her muscles had muscles, and the aura of a barbarian seemed to fit her. Maybe that image was more so thanks to how she tore into the slices of burger with reckless abandon, not caring as bits of food went everywhere.

She had a mop of fiery hair, and half of her head was covered in circuitry. Every time she opened her mouth to take a bite of the burger, two long fangs glinted eerily in the ambient neon of the street of the world. Her body was covered in Light Tattoos, though I couldn’t exactly tell what they were supposed to be. They glowed red and shifted and twirled as if powered by her heartbeat.

Her left arm was also chrome, though it looked slightly off. My eyes tracked up to a seam halfway up her bulging biceps. Wires were connected up through a port in her arm to the metal arm. A gauntlet, maybe? A flash of neon caught her right hand as she reached for another, showcasing four little notches. Ticklers, perhaps.

Her skin, bulging as it was, had the slightly warped effect of subdermal armor. She wore a crop top, showcasing her six-pack. To be fair, I would also showcase my six-pack if I had one. My stomach was barely even bones though… Maybe I should start eating more. Silage really didn’t do anything but barely keep me alive. Ah, the eternal desire for money.

I moved over and slid into the seat across from her after setting my backpack down. “Carone sent me.”

She gulped down the rest of the slice before her face cracked into a grin, fully revealing the metal fangs. I got the feeling it wasn’t an intimidation tactic, but rather simply forgetting she had them. “I was wondering who would show up… wasn’t expecting you to be so… small?”

“Thanks?” Was that even a compliment? And yet it feels slightly demeaning in a way. “He didn’t tell me much.”

She nodded her head as she waved at Big Mike. “Want a burger? You’re all skin and bones, and there ain’t a better burger than Big Mike's. He may look like he eats half his product, but he can make a damn fine burger.”

“I just ate.” Was she really an Edgerunner? She seemed… not like I was picturing. I mean, she looked like an Edgerunner, but her demeanor was just… Well, I thought Edgerunners would be, I don't know, edgy. “What’s the gig?”

“Straight to business! I like it! Unless I’m eating… I’ll make an exception.” She said magnanimously. “How ‘bout introductions first? Mesa Moonlit.” She stuck out a beefy hand. The hand with the Ticklers…

Still, I don’t want to irritate my employer. And she was supposedly an Edgerunner, so I didn’t want to irritate her doubly so. Angry Edgerunner was a quick way to end up in a dumpster. “Shiro.” I took her offered hand, feeling my bones crunch against each other as her massive paw covered mine. “So, Mesa-

“Call me Iris. Everyone else does.” That… didn’t make sense. How does someone get Iris from Mesa Moonlet? Also, what was that last name? Moonlet? Maybe a fake name?

My annoyance started to spike. It's like she was actively avoiding talking about the gig. “Iris, then. What did you wan-”

“Order up.” Big Mike dropped by with a tray holding one of the burger pizzas. He nearly knocked me over the head as he turned and walked back. The guy was beefy, and not in the same way as Iris.

“Thanks, Big Mike!” Iris happily called as she munched on a new slice. “What were you saying, skinny?”

I looked out the window at the passing traffic. Deep breaths, Shiro. It wasn’t worth getting in a losing fight with a chromed-out Edgerunner. Or a guy that looked as if he could tank a shotgun through pure blubber. “The gig. What is it?”

“Oh! I need your help. Investigation and stuff. Normally I wouldn’t trust someone so small, but Carone said you were acceptable. That’s high praise coming from the fire fanatic.” She said in between mouthfuls. She had somehow managed to eat a fourth already.

I glanced around superstitiously. It was usually a very bad idea to badmouth a fixer. “R-right. What is it you need me to do though?”

Iris pulled a data slate and tossed it to me. “A choom of mine was… incapacitated. I wanna find the guys that did it. Simple, right?”

I looked down at the data slate. There was a single line of text - a location - as well as an image of a guy covered in bullet wounds. “Is this… it?”

“‘Course! That’s why I need you! I tried to do it myself, but uh… well, I’m good at smashing faces, not other shit. So, think you can do it? Six hundred Rayn and you shouldn’t have to use those boney arms of yours to fight.” She smiled as if she didn’t just insult me again. I got the feeling it wasn’t a corpo ‘I insulted you but then gaslighted you’ type thing; more just optional synapses.

“I’ll see what I can do?” There was barely anything to run on.

She gulped down the last burger. “Nova! Where do we start?”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I frowned at the woman. “We?”

“Chek chek, choom. You do the fancy investigation bits, and I do the face-smashing parts. Seamless teamwork at its finest.” Iris had a stupid grin on her face. Maybe that was just my thoughts on her IQ bleeding out. Seriously, how the hell did she survive as an Edgerunner? Or maybe being an Edgerunner required your brain to be missing parts.

“I usually work alone-”

“I’m glad we came to an agreement. So, where do we start?” There was a bit more steel in her voice this time around. Considering she could bend me in half, I was finding myself less opposed to a teammate.

I sighed deeply as I pulled into the Trend Motel. It was a rotting mess of a place, but it was apparently the scene of the crime. I was half expecting the place to fall down at any moment as I parked my bike out in the parking lot. There were neon lights of very… intimate actions scattered around the place. Fuckin’ Aythryn City.

Insight triggered, and I looked up to see Iris standing out front. How did she beat me? I could’ve sworn I left before she did, and she ordered another burger… To be fair, I went and bought some investigatory stuff. Most of my Rayn went out the window once more, but I would double it if I did this right. That, and my bike has been having trouble recently… maybe I should get it fixed, or look at it myself. Who knows, Tech might be of some help.

Two hundred of my Rayn had been spent on a better backdoor program, so I could now access more of the Blue Crusade’s files. The rest had been spent on various things I could potentially use. Oh, the joy of being broke once more…

I decided to just do my best and ignore her presence as I walked up to her. Then I moved on by and headed for the stairs. Fucking stairs. I really need to do some cardio at some point. It was beginning to get ridiculous. Seriously, for a city as technologically advanced as this, why were all the elevators broken? Tech might be the best Skill purely so I could fix the elevators.

Iris clomped up the stairs behind me, not showing the least bit of drain as we stopped on the fourth floor. Yes, clomped. With how much muscle and chrome she had, it was a surprise she wasn’t falling through the floor. If only they could make elevators as resilient as floors… to be fair though, this place’s tech was cheap. I had yet to even see a camera.

“So! How does this work? You walk in and then get all “My senses are tingling!” Or is there some secret to investigating?” Iris asked me as I found our motel room. The door handle had been blown off. Someone definitely made a violent entry.

“'Course not.” It was far closer than I would like to admit. Insight truly carried me.

I stepped into the room. It had a nice-sized hole straight out into a four-story drop of a back alley. It looked like a borg had full body charged straight through the wall.

That was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of destruction. Bullet holes littered the walls as if a group had committed to spraying and praying. At least one shotgun and maybe a couple of SMGs on the spread pattern. “Your choom, are they partial to a shotgun?”

Iris walked in behind me, crushing a fallen bottle underfoot. “Nope! He’s partial to a-”

“Sword?” I asked as I saw trails of blood flung cleanly as if launched by a blade. Similar things weren’t too uncommon with the katana-toting Jade Fangs. Some of them thought it looked cool to flick blood off a sword, though this looked as if it just happened in the course of the fight. It was especially common the few times I had been in the Underground.

“Wow! You really are good at this! Flame face didn’t throw me a single-celled organism!” Iris laughed to herself as she leaned against the doorframe, causing it to creak ever so slightly.

I set my bag down and slid on gloves so as not to contaminate the scene too much. It didn’t matter in this case, but it was a good habit to get into. This way I wouldn’t leave prints or anything in case an actual investigator, or worse - an inquisitor, rolled in. Would be really awkward to have the Blue Crusade raid my cargo container on suspected murder charges.

The spent bullets were the first thing I looked for. I grabbed every shell, casing, and bullet I could find and tossed them into my bag. I even found the remnants of a flashbang under a cushion. Tech proved to be helpful as I spotted familiar markings of hand tools, suggesting it was handmade rather than factory. That caused me to look a bit more at it until I spotted a bat mark near the bottom of the thing. Creator’s signature maybe?

I moved around the room, careful not to disturb it too much as I took in the details. From what it looks like, Iris’s choom had been casually chilling when the attackers came in. They probably hit hard and fast based on the flashbang and door.

Still, as expected of the choom of an Edgerunner, he exacted a toll of blood for the attempted hit. There were chunks of flesh and blood everywhere, and most of them looked to be from the sword rather than the attacker's guns. “What’s your choom's job?”

“Inquisitor.” Right, the sword makes more sense now. Inquisitors were basically the detective variant of a Crusader. Still incredibly lethal with the longswords the group favors. Why wasn’t this place crawling with the Blue Crusade though? They usually take hits on their own very seriously.

And why the flashbang if they were going up against an Inquisitor? There is no way a power house such as that was even stalled by the flashbang. He definitely had some kind of flash suppressant or something.

I glanced around the room, but didn’t find any luggage. Probably using this place as a meet up then. Or he was just dirt poor- not if he was an Inquistor. “You know why he was here?”

“I think he was meeting a contact.” She shrugged. “I dunno. He just showed up at my door half dead.”

Oh? He didn’t head to a hospital? Or even go back to the Blue Crusade HQ? Very interesting. Maybe he was suspecting his coworkers?

I looked around a bit more, but didn’t find anything too important. Just bullets and shells. Whoever was here seriously lit this place up. “It's a wonder they didn’t call in cleaners yet.”

“I threatened to crack the owner’s skull if he did.” She said casually. “You figure out who did it yet?”

A sigh left me as I shot her an icy look. “These things take time. I can’t just walk in and instantly know what happened.”

Insight was tingling though. I was definitely missing something… I looked around with a finer comb, checking everything again. The blood trails in particular caught my eye. It was weird that half hand prints were on the drawers as if someone was trying to get into them.

I looked a little closer into the drawer, and noticed a small recording device was taped up into it. Set by the choom maybe? Or the contact. Still recording, so it couldn’t have been set up that long ago. I turned it off and pulled the chip. “When did your choom show up?”

“I dunno. Maybe six hours ago?”

Damn, Carone moved quickly. Well, it was good for me. These blokes don’t just heal instantly, so they probably headed to a Medech or hospital after this... probably a medech. Hospital trips were damn expensive these days.

Hm… first things first, I should look into the bat mark on the flashbang. It was obviously homemade, so I might be able to get an approximate area of operation. “I got what I needed. I’m going back to my place to go over the evidence.”

“Nova! Where at?” The woman asked as she popped off the wall.

That wasn’t an invitation. “I live in a cargo container. You won’t fit.” Probably.

“Then I’ll just sit outside.” She was like a dog! Just wouldn’t give up. The Rayn though! It was worth it Shiro! Just work through the pain of having her follow you like a puppy. A very dangerous chrome puppy. A potentially psychotic death puppy.