"Fair enough,” Atreus gives a content nod with the honest, albeit verbose answer. “Have you always been a hacker? Did you have a different career beforehand?”

Tetsuya plainly shakes his head while still staring into his screen, “Nah, not really. I started messing around with code back when I was thirteen, but then I was just a dime-a-dozen script kiddie who can barely muster half-assed DDoS attacks – not that I actually did any, I just could if I wanted to. By the time I was in ninth grade, however, I was able to control a bunch of computers connected through my high school's network with really simple command prompt commands. It was really shocking how terribly insecure their infrastructure was, I could've fucked around with so many files that way and probably could've turned it into a service other students would've paid me for. But, again, I didn't actually go through with it.”

“Did you ever get a degree for this?”

“Nope. Just went straight to freelance stuff before I even graduated high school – mostly for web development – and my reputation slowly snowballed from there. Eventually web dev stuff fell off to the side and I found myself stress testing companies' network security. Guess you can say coding and hacking is my life's calling. It's hard for me to get tired of it, thanks to a semi-constant influx of new projects. If there's one type of job that does kinda bore me, it's cracking open Minerva-installed phones and similar things.”

“Sorry, man,” Devin interjects with a casual apology. “You know I wouldn't bug you about this if it weren't important, though.”

“Nah, I'm just bustin' your balls. It's really not that difficult, just time-consuming. But I guess I've always been a little bit spoiled by how every time a company approaches me for consultation or security testing, I always discover something new – some type of new protocol or whatever that I didn't know much about before. Programming is an endlessly evolving world, and it's always interesting to see where the new stuff goes and what clever minds can come up with.”

While Atreus doesn't particularly have any particularly favorable opinions on Tetsuya's habit of breaking away into ramblings, he respects the hacker's undying love for his profession and ability to speak so enthusiastically and positively about it. The gangster feels a pang of envy that Tetsuya was able to find his calling when he was such a young age, and turn it into a lucrative career.

“Also, Atreus,” Tetsuya suddenly speaks directly to the augmented man, “do you play Black Iron VR at all? Devin mentioned you have the game.”

“Uh, yeah, I do,” Atreus begins his unsure response. “But I sort of fell off it after the incident that took my arms. I had it since launch, and if I remember correctly, I put about eight hundred hours into it so far. I still try to pick it up once in a blue moon, but I've more or less just become too busy for it.”

Black Iron VR is one of the most popular virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and reaches a global audience. It first launched in 2029 in North America before slowly expanding to Europe and Asia afterward. It follows a traditional subscription-based payment format for its revenue. One of its most popular features is its incredibly in-depth character creation system, allowing players to sculpt their ideal avatar down to the most insignificant detail. It's not uncommon for people to spend anywhere from twenty minutes to three hours doing so.

The game boasts a gigantic fantasy world of over fifty thousand square miles – a significant growth from fifteen thousand at launch – of landscapes, villages, towns, and cities, all of which are carefully hand-created by the development staff, as opposed to the quick and painless method of procedural environment sculpting used by certain game development tool. In regards to content, players are given a seemingly unending list of things to in the game, including single-player or four-player squad missions, twelve to twenty-four trials, player-versus-player arenas, a massive list of monster hunts, dozens of minigames, guild management, resource farming, giant thirty-two-player raids, and more.

Its most enthralling feature is, as one can tell by the game's name, its remarkably detailed virtual reality experience, which includes support for a variety of motion capturing peripherals, including omni-directional treadmills, glove controllers, and haptic suits. It also has compatibility with both external and internal neural interfaces for hands-free gaming. The most dedicated players will find themselves spending up to six thousand dollars just to take full advantage of what Black Iron's VR experience has to offer.

“Ah, I feel you on that. Like I said, once I start my job for Automa, I'm not gonna have much time to play, either, and I have over four thousand hours clocked on that game – three characters at max level with max level equipment. I imagine you stopped playing after your incident because of physical rehab, right?”

“Yeah,” Atreus gives a halfhearted confirmation. “After I finished rehab, I had to make up for lost time and do a lot of odd jobs for the family, then I just was too exhausted to bother playing. Once I complete my bouncer stint at Crown, I should have some free time again.”

“By the way, what're the new raids for the season?” Devin interrupts with a question of his own, as he's the only other person in the room who's an active player of the game.

“Oh, they're fucking brutal, man,” Tetsuya responds with a sigh and light shake of his head. “The one I finished as you guys came in was just the Lich Emperor, and it was a god damn endurance test – coming up on ninety straight minutes we were fighting that bastard despite having guides to help us, and apparently the other two that came with the patch take even longer. There's absolutely no god damned way on this Earth you'll be able to beat these fuckers with randoms. You gotta play with other guild members who know what they're doing; you can't trust anyone else.”

“Do they drop good shit?”

“All three of them drop a guaranteed Cosmic Core,” the hacker responds with clear emphasis on how important that is. “That's pretty much reason enough to do all three of them. Though they do have their own set of blueprints for weapon and armor parts, too. But if you're high enough level to fight them, then they're likely not huge improvements, and the resources are better off going towards a Celestial set of some sort. If you have enough to make them anyway, they could fetch a good price in trade. I just checked the marketplace site and they go for four figures of platinum.”

“Shit, I'm always aching for more plat. Now's probably a good time to start farming for those blueprints and save up a little nest egg,” Devin strokes his chin, heavily considering trying to conjure up a small fortune of digital currency. As it has been since the dawn of online gaming, MMORPGs still encourage ways for players to become virtual entrepreneurs by getting their hands dirty and selling their rewards when less invested players can't be bothered to get it themselves. It's the free market in action, though on a much smaller scale.

After nearly another hour of patient waiting for some sign of progress with cracking Takiyama's phone open, Atreus and Devin have begun to slouch in their seats and resigned themselves to watching an old kung fu movie with their muffled yawns punctuating every couple of scenes. It's nearly 4 AM, and they can barely keep their eyes open. Tetsuya, on the other hand, still hasn't pried his own eyes away from his monitor just yet, and still punches away at his keyboard with audible clicks and clacks. However, he suddenly leans back in a relieving stretch and heaves an exasperated sigh while rubbing his eyes.

“Alright,” the hacker begins, “I think I have an idea of how much longer this'll take.”

“Soon, I hope?” Devin remarks with a clear absence of enthusiasm, and growing impatience.

“Not at fucking all,” Tetsuya immediately shoots down the idea as he brings his hands down from his face and blinks in rapid succession. “If I continue at the rate I've been going for the last hour and a half or so, this thing'll take a solid three or four days if I put in at least eight hours per day. I don't know who this Takiyama dude is, but he customized Minerva to be a real fuckin' pain in the ass right now. I seriously wonder how a person so good at coding is wasting their time being a chinpira in the Sanada-gumi instead of making bank doing security work like me. He probably could've gotten a spot in the Automa project coming up, too,” he airs his thoughts with a tinge of frustration, not just at the complexity of the security measures he has to break through, but at the implication that Takiyama could be a very gifted programmer wasting his potential.

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“So, is there a way to speed things up at all?” Atreus asks, looking somewhat worried at the prospect of waiting up to four days for a phone to be cracked.

“There is,” Tetsuya states matter-of-factly with a dramatic lift of his right index finger. “Watch,” he instructs as takes the same finger he lifted and brings it to his right temple. The begins to softly scratch at one specific spot until the skin lifts unnaturally. It picks at it enough for him to grab and peel off a small piece of circular flesh, revealing a tiny micro USB jack embedded into his own skull.

“Is that a neural connection?” the augmented gangster can't help but voice his surprise.

“Yup,” Tetsuya answers with a fast, confident nod. “This'll boost my speed by a pretty significant amount, because my hands-free neural interface 'typing' is a hell of a lot faster than my fingers are. Basically, I can hack in my head so fast, that my fingers can't even keep up. Pretty sick, huh?” he taps the neural jack in his head with a proud smirk. “This thing cost me a small fortune, though. Like, almost a year's worth of rent.”

“Why don't you just do that all the time?” Devin understandably asks.

“I can't. I get headaches after a few hours. So I just save it for the more difficult jobs, and busting through a Minerva-protected phone is definitely a difficult job,” he laments as he connects his neural interface to his computer. “I gotta slowly untangle each little packet of code that's tightly wrapped around the operating system, look for an exploit underneath, and if I don't find one, I have to stitch it back together, and that shit takes a lifetime, especially when it's so complex. Using my neural link will give me a burst of speed and cut down the needed time by a huge margin.”

“So if you use this every day, how much time are you going to save?” Atreus asks.

“I should be able to cut the estimated time down from three or four days to two. I might pass into three if something important interrupts my progress or it just ends up being more complex than I originally thought.”

“Guess we can call it a night and leave you to it, then.”

Tetsuya nods, “Yeah. I'll give Devin a call when I'm close to finishing. I can handle this just fine. It'll just take a bit of time. I can tell you guys are tired, so you might as well head home, because I'm for sure not going to finish tonight.”

“Well, alright then,” Devin says with a small shrug. “We'll get outta your hair.” The two yakuza waste no time making for the door so they can finally return home and get some much-anticipated rest.

“I'll see you later!” Tetsuya gives one last farewell from his chair.

“See ya, man,” Devin returns his own as the closes the door behind him after he and Atreus step out into the hallway. They both hear audible clicks of the many locks on the door snapping securely shut.

“Well, he's a character,” Atreus comments after the extended first meeting with Tetsuya.

“Yeah, but he's a good guy.”

“Let's get outta here. I'm exhausted,” the reluctant detective begins to walk back to the elevator, his friend following close behind.

Once outside, Devin takes out his phone to order a ride for his journey back to his apartment. “So what do you want to do tomorrow?” he asks as he navigates the Automa application.

“I'm not sure,” Atreus admits with a small sigh. “I'm trying to think of other ways to approach the investigation outside of just waiting for Takiyama's phone to be cracked. I didn't expect it would take multiple days.”

“Same here. Who would've thought the guy was apparently some sort of fuckin' programming whiz kid? Even Tetsu was annoyed by it.”

“We need to find more ground to cover while we wait for the phone, but I need to sleep on it first,” Atreus sleepily rubs his eyes. “We're still in a race against the police.”

Before long, a logo-covered self-driving vehicle pulls up to them, and Devin approaches it. He opens the door, but turns before he gets in.

“Do you wanna meet at the office later, around noon or so?”

“Yeah. I'll stop by, and maybe Ryuji can give us some advice.”

“Alright, cool. I'll see you later then,” Devin lethargically utters a farewell and immediately climbs into the car.

“Later,” Atreus gives his own farewell just before the vehicle's door shuts and it begins to pull away from the sidewalk.

With his apartment only a few buildings down, Atreus feels no need to take a taxi there and decides to walk home for the second night in a row. Yet again, the night sky is dotted with police drones flying about in designated areas of the city, and an ocean of vibrant neon lights illuminates the southern paths down the streets he crosses while on his way. He takes out his electronic cigarette for a few slow, relaxing puffs, taking in the subdued ambiance of his Oxfords hitting the sidewalk below him, the infrequent passing of vehicles, and the faint sounds of Kyoba nightlife.

He soon arrives at Yazawa Commons and dazedly trudges up the outdoor staircase to the second floor veranda. He passes several doors and dimly lit outdoor lights before he reaches his own apartment. He inputs the eight-number passcode to his deadbolt, which unlocks with a loud click. As he places his hand on his door lever, a short chime is heard from his pocket – he received a text message. He retrieves it with his free hand as he pushes his front door open with the other and walks inside. As he removes his shoes, he sees that the message is from Max.

[Hey, are you still awake?] she asks. Even through text, he can detect a hint of eagerness.

[Yeah. I just got home. But I won't be awake for much longer, I'm pretty exhausted,] he gives an honest reply. As much as he'd like to talk to her, he can't deny how desperately he craves sleep at the moment. [What are you up to right now?] he still pushes out a question to continue the conversation despite that, however, as he doesn't want to give the impression that he isn't interested. He begins to undress and place his dirty clothes in the laundry room as he waits for a response.

[Watching Godzilla, the original 1954 film,] she responds with an activity that he didn't expect. [I think it's aged pretty well, all things considered.]

[You like Godzilla?] he replies, pleasantly surprised. [I actually went to the 80th anniversary showing at the Komaki Starplex five years ago. I still have the physical ticket stub, framed.]

[Oh my god, I never pegged you for a Godzilla nerd,] Max's surprise is palpable. [That's a shocker, but in a good way. It's nice to know you have hobbies other than being a mysterious yakuza man. I really like the Heisei era.]

Atreus can't help but feel a tinge of embarrassment at his own short outburst of uncontrolled fanboyism. He feels lucky and relieved that she was receptive to it instead of turned off. Before he responds, he quickly collects a new set of clothes to change into after his shower, and enters his bathroom.

[Heisei era's my favorite too, mostly because of 'vs. Destroyah.'] Atreus replies as turns the water on. He proceeds with his shower, and for the first time in a long time, he takes advantage of his phone's waterproofing to continue his text conversation with Max while bathing, discussing a topic he's passionate about.

About fifteen minutes later, he finally emerges from the bathroom, now squeaky clean and in a fresh shirt and pair of underwear, and still keeping his eyes glued to his phone. With a free hand still vigorously rubbing a towel against his damp hair, he approaches his bed and sits on the edge of the mattress.

[You'd seriously want to live on the Mars colonies as they are right now?] Atreus asks. Somehow, their conversation had jumped through multiple topics in the duration of his shower. [I'd consider the opportunity too if it were presented to me, and I can also see the appeal of just a short-term stay, but they're still pretty small and barren. You'd get bored insanely quickly if you weren't working or actively exploring.]

[I'd be okay with working up there. Plus, I think there's appeal in being there early enough to be influential in the development of Martian civilization,] Max replies in a foresightful manner. [Also early enough to potentially find evidence of previous intelligent life, if there are any. You know there was a period where the moon could've sustained life for like 500 million years, right?]

[True, but 500 million years actually isn't enough for intelligent life to develop. It took like three billion years for single-cellular organisms on Earth to eventually evolve into mollusks,] Atreus sends a rather no-nonsense response to her idealized hypothesis.

[Fuck, man, what are you, a paleontologist?] she snarkily remarks at his know-it-all lecture.

[I'm just regurgitating stuff I read one time when I was bored. Anyways, I'm gonna head to bed now. I'll see you at work in the evening,] he finally decides to end the conversation so he can get some well-deserved sleep.

[Okay. Good night, I'll see you later,] Max bids him farewell.

Atreus places his phone on his nightstand and returns his towel to the bathroom. He comes back to bed and eagerly situates himself into a comfortable sleeping position before turning his lights off from the tablet next to his phone. It only takes mere moments for his heavy eyelids to shut from the weight of his mental exhaustion. He falls into a deep slumber while the subtly nagging reminder of his investigation pokes at the back of his head.