Akito didn’t know what he was expecting when he parked on the club’s helipad, but seeing the Faceless Demon covered in blood, slinging a sexual relief android over his shoulder and still with a woman on each arm was not among the options.
Akito contemplated his career choice as he watched the trio stop at the elevator to the helipad, and begin to talk amongst themselves.
It all began the day that Akito saved up enough money to buy himself and his younger brother from the orphanage that he was living in.
Of course, prior to that, Akito had relied on child labor in order to pay off those debts. Toiling in the mines was difficult work, with no promise of fair pay, or even any other benefits, but the protection was good, as you were labeled as a government asset.
Akito himself never understood why they used other humans, but the way the caretakers had explained it to him, human labor was more cost efficient, and the replacement parts for the machines they could be using cost a fortune.
The mines, or as the location had come to be called by the locals, “The Entrance,” was a source of Virizium, a naturally occurring compound that had been discovered in Asahi a century ago, and was one of the leading causes of the Great World War.
Starting from as young as he could remember, he had been taken by the caretakers of the orphanage to the Entrance to work off his own living expenses.
Of course, the same thing had occurred to his younger brother, Hirata, several years later, but at that time Akito had been too young to know better and fight against it.
He had always seen others go down and never come back up, either succumbing to the various gasses that filled the tunnels, or become food for the local fauna, but never considered it his own problem.
No, Akito was too quick for that. He never breathed for longer than necessary, and always made sure to steer clear of strange smelling passages.
As it turned out, it became Akito’s problem when Hirata tried to bite off more than he could chew. He had gotten an especially good haul of the ore that day, and was slightly encumbered when he encountered the energetically charged creatures that roamed the underground.
By the time Akito had caught up to his brother, Hirata had been maimed from the right knee down, and his haul had been stolen by a passerby as well.
Hirata had barely lived through the ordeal, and he was never the same person since. He used to be a kind, energetic child, but after losing his leg, he lost his smile as well.
Of course, the frequent checkups were among the worst of the problems plaguing the brothers at that time. It cost a veritable fortune to receive proper medical treatment, and Akito borrowed from someone he shouldn’t have.
In order to pay for the medical bills, Akito had taken out a loan with Shark Gedo, a known member of the yakuza that lent money to anyone and everyone, with the only catch being to cosign yourself to five years of servitude in the case that you couldn’t pay back your loan in a year.
Of course, Akito hadn’t been able to pay back the medical expenses, and Gedo had him start working for his branch of the Yakuza.
Despite what Gedo had done to Akito, the old man was quite fond of the young boy, and would never do him any wrong. He always gave Akito some friendly advice, ‘If you ever think that you want or need more wealth in life than what you need to live comfortably, just remember that greed and desire for evil purposes ruins good men.”
In return for being given a decent living, Akito fully committed himself to grunt work, even going as far as to take on difficult missions early in his career to pay back that same gratitude.
He had started as a lowly grunt to one of the older Yakuza groups: the Rising Dragons. Gedo’s faction was a prominent one, and, being the money-handlers of Chika, were respected and trusted to hold the other factions in check monetarily.
However, that took a turn when Gedo’s son, a man who went by the same name, murdered his father in cold blood, fueled by desire and greed, the very sins that the older Gedo had warned Akito about.
Gedo’s death had seen the end of the Rising Dragons, and the beginning of the Tengu faction, headed by the younger Gedo.
Akito hadn’t been at the gang’s hideout when the murder had occurred, but had instead been sent a posthumous message by Gedo’s Judgment account. The message contained detailed instructions about how to get himself a good job, and a trustworthy contact that would help Akito forge the necessary papers.
Now a glorified cab driver for Asahi’s rich and famous, Akito had been making a good living for himself, finally clawing out of debt for his brother’s medical expenses, and being able to start saving a college tuition for the boy.
Unfortunately, Akito hadn’t been able to stay away from danger despite leaving the Yakuza’s side. His client yesterday had been one of the planet’s most talked about gladiators in recent years.
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Akito himself hated the Metron Kingdom Colosseum, but he could see why people would have a gruesome fascination with the violence present there. The gladiators, or ‘paid killers,’ as Akito referred to them, always made headlines wherever they went.
The unstable bastards refused to be shackled by their country, and the countries would refuse to shackle them, afraid of losing a stimulus in their own economies.
This latest one had been a real piece of garbage as well. He had murdered Gazix, a hero amongst those of Chika. It wasn’t even just the fact that the Faceless Demon had murdered the symbol of hope and rebellion, no.
It was the fact that he did so in such an unsavory manner. Going as far as to trick a man’s senses by masking his silhouette and voice as Gazix’s own mother in AR was disgusting.
While most of the world was caught up in how he performed the action, the entire country, no, perhaps even the entire nation of the Luong Empire-!
“Akito, open the door!” Imperial Princess Akahime shouted through the window, and the chauffeur complied with the order, jumping in his seat at her voice.
He unlocked the palanquin, and watched the group slide into the back seats. As if it weren’t bad enough that Akito had to deal with a murderer in the Faceless Demon, and a diva in the Metronian Princess whom he just brought back to the Steel Palace, he now had to watch Princess Akahime, the symbol of fertility and pureness in Asahi, glue herself onto a foreign man in front of his eyes.
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We reached the Palace in record time, although I don’t know whether that had to do more with the skyways being completely empty, or Akito’s passionate driving.
Regardless, it was still before the virtual sun had yet to rise within the dome of Japan, and I was feeling tired as all hell.
“Why don’t you take an emergency stimulus pill from me, Master?” I had to struggle not to retort to the A.I.'s question, and instead asked a question of my own.
After the way you handled the whole antidepressant debacle, what makes you think I want to take any more shady medicine from you? There was silence as Judgment ran a program to try and come up with an answer.
“Because, Master, when you were taking the pills, you were performing at an enhanced level. I just needed you to become the person you always were, and not the one you were pretending to be. The energy supplement doesn’t affect your psyche or emotional stability either way, and is therefore safe to consume.”
I just stared dumbly at the open door of the palanquin while I processed the information that Judgment had given me.
Ah, fuck it. If Judgment really had wanted me dead, it could have done so at any other point in the unfortunate series of disasters that led to me being here in the first place. Give me a remote injection.
“With pleasure, Master.” Judgment replied, and I felt a small sting on my forehead where the Judgment panel was located. Starting from my head and travelling down my body, I was starting to feel warm. Hot even.
“Joshua! Don’t just stand there, get a move on!” Akahime called out from the Silver Palace’s Helipad, and I was quick to comply.
“Come on now, at least take the Starlords damned thing with you.” She sighed, and I turned around to see that I had forgotten Boss, the robot we had recovered from one of the four leaders of Tengu, Yatomura.
“I swear, you’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached to you.” Lucina said with a smile, and I rolled my eyes at her use of the antique idiom.
Picking up the sexual relief robot, I carried her piggy-back out of the palanquin and onto the landing pad. Despite the situation… I can’t help but to notice that this robot has quite the life-like parts attached to it.
“That’s not all, Master. That model, the V3NUS TOVA has several functions that set it apart from its competition, including-”
Thanks, but the last thing I need right now is more thoughts about this robot. Judgment remained silent about the matter, which I was thankful for as Akahime had started speaking to me.
“Alright, Joshua. I need you to concentrate here. We need to tell my father everything that we learned, and come up with a plan together that we can follow moving forward. Understood?”
“Of course, Akahime. Just let me get hacking on this robot and we can head to the throne room after that.” I readjusted the bot on my shoulder, and winced as a cold set of fingers pinched my ear.
“That’s not necessary, Master.” Despite where it came from, I recognized the voice from the daily interactions I had with it. However, before I could say anything, the voice continued.
“This V3NUS model, formerly tagged as, ‘Boss,’ has been integrated into the Judgment cloud and had its data bank uploaded into the cloud, while having my personality downloaded. As such, I can answer any questions you may have by accessing Bosses ‘memories’ during our Q&A session.”
“That’s pretty handy.”
“That’s insane!”
Despite being right next to each other, Lucina had a much calmer reaction than her Japanese counterpart. “You’re telling me that you could have uploaded your software into any doll, and we would’ve had a way to communicate with the system!?”
Akahime had lost her cool, but Judgment was impervious to the woman’s passion. “Yes, however, I never had a reason to before now. While I do like the feeling of having a body, this is not the correct kind.”
“What do you mean?” Lucina asked with a blank look on her face. Judgment turned to the Metronian Princess and eyed her up and down.
“I mean that the system’s research on the kind of woman that is perfect for Master has not concluded yet. Therefore, I cannot use this model when I am unsure of how much Master prefers this type of woman.”
Lucina and Akahime looked at me dumbfoundedly, and I shrugged. “Hey, it was the supercomputer’s idea, not mine.” Lucina sighed and Akahime began to blush.
Judgment, however, didn’t seem to mind any of that and continued, “As such, please continue to find more and more women for Master to sleep with. I use a variety of methods to test his level of attraction for each woman he encounters, so I would ask you to support me in this difficult endeavor.”
“Of course, please enjoy Master’s body to your heart’s content as well. Think of it as additional confirmation of my hypothesis. Thank you in advance.”
Just like that, the android hopped off my back, and limped into the throne room on its own power. Of course, it left me with a confused looking pair of princesses to attend to.