Mr. Wick was next to Vik one second and the then he was right beside me. Even with my cybereyes, and my stats, I didn't see the intervening steps. His hand was already on my shoulder, and even though I mostly trusted him, I almost had a heart attack.

"Okay?" His tone was slightly less flat, as if there were maybe the beginnings of concern there. Imagine that, John Wick caring about anyone other than Helen, Daisy or the Unnamed Dog. Perhaps all reality was flipping over on its collective head.

"I'm fine. What, a little hack is gonna keep me down? Nah." I could see the difference in his eyes, he had opted for colorless irises. Probably thinking it made it hard to tell where he was looking. A tactical rather than aesthetic choice, very Wickian.

Raynor slid over to us, "Hoss, good to see you up and about. What happened? Vik told us you were bushwacked by a "netrunner" what ever that is." Which made me wonder how much cyberwarfare played a part where Raynor was from. It should have been too alien a concept to him.

"Yeah." I shared my experience with them and gave them my impressions of the event. Mr. Wick's face tightened up even more than usual, and Raynor was downright fuming.

"So anyone can get hornswoggled by these varmints?" He growled out a few expletives.

"Pretty much. As long as you have cyberware." I nodded. "When we get back home, I'll see if Megan can dig up something on the rats that tagged me. We'll pay them a visit." I didn't need to express how that visit was going to proceed. Then I realized what I'd just opened them up to. "Don't worry, Vik's security suite is top notch, and we can improve it further with some effort from a netrunner or two of our own."

Mr. Wick grunted, he understood. Raynor looked momentarily sour, but shrugged it off.

"Enough about this, right now. Tell me what you got chipped with." I grinned trying to dispel the angry edge the guys had started to build. I was already pissed enough for the three of us. Raynor showed me his palms, "Same grip as you got." He tapped by his eyes, "Got the Kiroshi optics, good for zooming in and seeing through some walls. Kept them looking natural. Plus I chipped the ports and neural processor like yours." Patted his chest, "Muscle enhancements and bone lacing." He just waved his hands over his whole body, "Dermal Plating." He clenched his fist, "Should pack quite a punch, even outside the armor." He looked over at Mr. Wick, probably curios what his compatriot got loaded with.

Wick started reciting his goodies like a laundry list, "Eyes and Grip. Sandy. Kerenzikov. Better neural processor and ports. Faster now." He grinned for a microsecond. I saw it, I swear it was just there Officer! A faster more deadly John Wick, had just been born.

I started to move around, testing my stability. "Good deal. I'll pay up Vik, then we need to go take care of the Fuel station. Get that knocked out. We'll go hunting for Scavs or Maelstrom afterwards to test everything out." I started over to Vik, and they stepped back to let me by, though I got the sense they weren't going to let me out of their sight for a while.

"What do I owe you Vik?" He glanced up at me from where he was watching the bout on his monitor. I could see he running a few thoughts he wasn't sure I'd like through his head. "Two million even. Though with how much I made off the chrome you brought in from the Scavs, I'm willing to call it even." Nice try, Old Man.

"Nope. I'll pay. Told you I wouldn't feel right profiting off of that mess. I meant it." I wired over the eddies. I was certain the chrome was worth every bit of it. There was no way in hell I was going to short Vik.

He grumbled, "Good doing biz with you, but don't be too good. Tends to be bad for your health." He waved us out and went back to watching the match. We stopped off to check on Misty, and inform her of what happened. She took it hard when I almost flatlined in her chair. It certainly wasn't her fault and I let her know it.

"Ryan Fate seems to have it out for you. Be careful." She blurted that out, like she didn't want to say but had to. Given the Company and their bullshit, why couldn't a personification of Fate be real? Probably mean as fuck. Her expression clearly indicated that Misty believed there was a actual force working against me, and I trusted her intuition.

"I'll be as careful as I can be, in this messed up place." I gave her a jaunty wave as we stepped into the street. For a second, I watched people doing people things in the crowds. Looking for anything out of place, as if I'd know. "Alright, Raynor go collect the boys. I'll pull the truck around. Mr. Wick keep an eye on the folks nearby, see if any express a little too much interest in us." Orders were just spilling out of me, as if I'd been giving them my whole life. For a moment, I though about apologizing, but then it clicked. Things were starting to come together in my head. I had power, I was in charge. We might be friends, but I had to lead. I had to take responsibility for our actions. And if I was the one who was responsible, then I better give the best damn orders I could. I fuck up, they might die. I sure as fuck didn't want anyone else to die on my watch. I didn't want another incident where my friends had to give their lives to keep me going.

Raynor grabbed the boys while Mr. Wick and I headed to the truck. For a wonder nothing had gone wrong with the troops, and I continue to ruminate on my thoughts.

Hell, it might already be too late to course correct. Maybe my more scattered approach, my softer touch has already sent the wrong message and slapped a big juicy target on all of us. No, that was just an excuse, it was time for me to sack up and lead. It was a hard world and it only respected the powerful, the cunning and the ruthless.

While getting into the truck I took a moment to go over my status. Some of my abilities had grown like Regrowth, Nature's Blessing and Cleanse because I used them all the time. Many hadn't changed at all, or very little, since I had no use for them in my day to day activities. I did get a few new skills like Administration and Leadership, also Mechanics and Engineering. Nice, those should be helpful, even if I planned to have Jaina handle most of those kinds of tasks.

I was sitting on 15,786 XP. That was a lot of levels, that I had let just sit there. Sure, It would be good to be able to bring a new Class up to par with the others, but that not why I hadn't used them. I plain forgotten about it, the whole system always slipped out of my thoughts when I didn't focus on it. My mind simply glossed it all over like it was trying desperately to avoid these issues. Was it really an internal problem or was it some kind of sabotage?

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My Company Points were sitting at 8,000 which seemed off until I remembered my subscriptions' payments had probably already pulled their due away. 125,627 Tree points. I'd have to start figuring out how best to utilize those. Another case of me plumb forgetting about something until I needed it. I still had 16 free points. I used six to bring my Reflex stat up to 10. Then 3 points each to Cool, Intelligence and Will to round them out at 10. Last point went to Psi Resonance to, you guessed it, bring it up to 10. I liked symmetry, sue me.

That was a lot of changes really fast and they crashed into me hard. It was a good thing I hadn't started the truck yet or I might have mowed down a bunch of people before crashing into a wall. I twitched and jerked and spasmed all about the cabin, until it started to calm down. Fuck. This was probably the other reason I had been avoiding leveling, it sucked ass. I waved off Mr. Wick and explained it to him. He gave me a flatter than normal stare. Shit, that will curl your nose hairs.

Once I had regained control of myself I drove around to pick up the fellas. The troops looked like they had all had a great time. Some of them so much so that they could barely stand up straight. I threw Regrowth on them until the staggering stopped. I'd ignore their less than dignified reactions to the spell. Heh. The reek of tons of alcohol had me hitting them with a few rounds of Cleanse as well. Whew, they had a good time indeed.

I messaged the Probes we had brought with us to meet at our destination. With all that sorted out we headed toward the Fuel Station, I had another task to finish.

We arrived at the CHOOH2 Station, and immediately began to dig through all the left over junk from the previous owners. It seemed that more than a few folks had been using this place as a makeshift dump for a while now. There were old cars, appliances and all manner of electronics and metal scraps. Thankfully the amount of organic waste was relatively small. Though the odd unidentifiable corpse here and there was disturbing, we were coming to accept that Night City was just that kind of place. What's another ended story in this place?

While a couple of Probes began to dig down to establish the Outpost, the rest had started setting up a War Pylon and a Forge, up here, to begin disassembling all the clutter into usable materials, while scanning anything and everything that looked remotely useful.

I had been thinking about how to proceed once this Outpost was done. I was leaning towards using the new theme token here and establishing this as a front line base for my eventual takeover of the city. Whoever was sent with the new base should be able to hold this territory, especially with support from New Lordaeron until there was time to reinforce them. Hopefully, they would be combat ready, though I suppose it wasn't really a problem if they weren't, as long as they were trainable. Raynor had done a great job with the boys.

I found myself liking this idea more and more as I pondered it. An full fledged underground base, to be the central hub of our future Night City operations. We could establish food and material harvesting here, and build up a force to protect the area. Now I was no General or military history buff, but that sounded like a workable strategy in my head. I ran it by Raynor and Mr. Wick and they didn't see any major flaws, unless the Corpos caught on quickly and bombed the fuck out of the neighborhood. I didn't see how they'd figure it out, with the Pylons' cloaking keeping us all under the radar. Still, it would be stupidly foolish to underestimate them.

My mind turned the idea over, and I realized that it was better to assume the enemy knew your plans and had every advantage rather than thinking we were the shit and untouchable.

Hmm. I needed someone more than poor overworked Raynor. He was great, don't get me wrong, but I got the impression he was more a small squad leader. Great with tactics, but not so much with grand strategy. Mr. Wick was all about individual performance, so not the greatest help in this situation either. I needed a General, a Colonel, or even a Major to help plan all this out. Someone better at grasping the bigger picture than I was, before I made a stupid mistake.

While waiting for the Probes to make progress, I had fixed up a few of the monitor and let everybody find something to distract them between running drills with Raynor and Mr. Wick. I also lost myself in working on a small scooter. It was useless to us at the moment, but I just couldn't bring myself to leave it as simple scrap.

Hours later, I had just gotten the scooter running, when I got the notice for quest competition. 4000 company Points and the new Theme Token. I was so excited. Who would they be? What could they do?

[ Do you wish to use Theme token? Y/N ]

"Yes."

[ Rolling result... ]

[ You have obtained faction, Astra Militarum; Death Korps of Krieg, 999th Mixed Operations Regiment ] (See below Author's Note 1)

[ Please note that while this faction is extremely hazardous to utilize, we have established your relationship as one that they will obey without question. This identity will however cause significant difficulties with your current build. It also has the potential to dramatically impact your personality. ] (See below Author's Note 2)

[ The Company offers you a one time deal, you may exchange this theme for 2 Hero tokens and 10,000 Company Points. ]

What the hell? A deal. Interesting. Let's roll that around for a minute. While the name was quite ominous, they sounded like an actually Military force. Which was something I felt we desperately needed. While a another couple of Heroes would be great, I don't think they would change the course of this situation as effectively as an actually military focused faction. While it was warning me about affecting my personality, perhaps that wasn't a bad thing. In the long run, wasn't my current personality a problem? Maybe it was worth taking a chance this would be a helpful change. Without risk, rewards can become elusive.

I lost track of time, while I went back and forth in my head. After getting more and more frustrated, I finally just threw my hands up. Ah, fuck it!

"Nah, no deal." (See below Author's Note 3)

[ So be it. ]

A silvery cube appeared before me. I grabbed it. While focusing on the cube my BTC was able to give me an idea of what the building would look like and how large it was.

Damn! 300 yards cubed.

I descended, on a newly finished lift, into the depths of our new Outpost to see how it had been arranged. At the bottom of the lift, some 700 plus feet below the surface, the Probes had carved out a plain square chamber. The only break in the smoothed stone were some small Psicrystals used for both lighting and to extend the reach of the Psifield. There were two exits to the north, two to the south, and one to the east. One exit to the north led towards the Japantown Outpost, the other to a large chamber containing a couple of forges and several robotic facilities along with a War Pylon to power everything. One exit to the south led to the new Outpost in Santa Domingo, the other a chamber with beds, chairs, and the appliances needed for living comfortably. The one to the east would link up with the tunnel heading back to New Lordaeron.

I got the Probes to stop digging tunnels, for the moment, so that they could dig down deeper to the west and then establish a 500 yard cubed chamber. That would take them a while. I decided to pass the time with a meal and then informed the fellas I be getting some rest down below.

"We'll keep an eye on things, Hoss. Get some shuteye." Raynor gave me a jaunty salute. He'd been watching some slop about the NCPD with Mr. Wick.

Mr. Wick grunted, "Sleep." Before turning back to whatever they were watching. How they could tolerate any of the brain rotting programs on the local programming confounded me. Eh, to each their own.

I laid down and soon was dreaming of vast armies grinding my foes into dust. It had been quite awhile since I'd slept so well.