Brains and guts were scattered across the Children's Kingdom Toy Store parking lot and Katsunaga would deny any claims that he had down this out of anything other than self defense. Really, who expected Tai Chi to work well enough to slaughter six Arasaka Cyberninjas? He had only picked it up for putting his body through the paces whenever it got optimized again.
Also when he felt outright bad throwing some idiot around. It was good to train a bit when the enemy was so desperate that they thought a mall parking lot was a sensible place for an ambush against him.
Groaning came from a cyberninja, his chest cavity destroyed to reveal cyberlungs still pumping away despite shrapnel in his heart, body embedded in a truck's engine compartment with plenty of machinery stabbing through his wrecked arms. A single gunshot rang out as the left of the four Katsunaga hadn't gotten to himself was dispatched.
He waved to the trio of Danger Gal bodyguards, all of them grimacing at him with twitching cat ears while Katsunaga went to the AV's trunk and grabbed the bodybags. Cyberware-laden corpses were interred within and quickly vacuum sealed by the preservation units before being carefully set in the spacious storage area. Unfortunately, Katsunaga had to stack the bodies in two rows instead of giving them proper dignity.
A bodyguard with dyed lime green hair covered her face. "Just get in the car you asshole." Katsunaga gave her a thumbs up while the other two bodyguards got into a GAZ-LADA. The armored AV had more than enough room for eight people and enough plating to tank a missile, making it a favorite for VIPs in need of a contingent of bodyguards.
Spoiler: Bodyguard Kuma
Fluffy carpeting absorbed Katsunaga's footfalls without managing to disrupt his seismic and radar sensors, images and sensations humans shouldn't have were translated by his neutral processor. Redundancies made it so anything that might fuck with his anti-dazzle eyeware would be substituted with sound, and a flashbang wouldn't keep him from 'seeing' people so long as he had radar or motion sensors. If those were fucked with, enhanced touch, taste, and smell would ensure that something let him find the enemy.
Instead of a massive amount of chrome guns or mantis-blades, the proper equipment for a bodyguard was the skillset to find threats, and the cyberware to enhance that ability.
A girl huddled in the far corner of the AV, feet drawn up onto the back seat while tempered glass able to resist a good hit from a laser weapon had tinted to avoid letting her see the chaos outside. "Did anyone die?"
"Nah," Katsunaga sat down, curling his toes to get a better 'view' of the vehicle as it began liftoff. "Just the ten guys somebody sent at us. Do you want me to pull out the Rolls-Royce Angelus for when you go to school?" It wasn't nearly as big as the giant ass box they were currently flying in, but the style would make an impression on any classmates that saw it. Plus the joys of seat massagers. Someone had really flubbed the ball when upgrading the GAZ-LADA for corporate executives.
His client sucked in her teeth fiddling with long hair dyed purplish-silver. "How much armor is in it?"
Spoiler: Client
"Plenty and I have anti-missile flares, been thinking of whether the battery draw for active camouflage would strain the battery." When an edgerunner lived a long enough life, they tended to collect a lot of stuff they didn't really need. Katsunaga had taken to setting up safehouses in different cities and furnish them with what he got on the job. Enough cars gotten through various means had led to him owning more than a few garages with vehicles specced for different purposes.
The Rolls-Royce though, that was one of his favored Avs. It flew like a dream and was almost too comfortable. "You are going to live it up for America for a while, so you have the option of going Super-Nihon or Americana."
A member of the tumultuous Arasaka clan let out a keening sound. "My older siblings are such assholes!" He was getting a talking to from the Danger Gals later for teaching her that word. It wasn't his fault that he had to explain the Us Cracks pun to a girl listening to their music.
Arasaka Shirabe was one of the growing Arasaka Clan. The Emperor had kids even when he was eighty, but had held back from any further indulgences after his last and greatest wife's death. Between three legitimate children, the Arasaka family had been relatively small before taking into account various cousins. Hanako was a social recluse that had yet to produce any known children, though their might be some hidden somewhere, and Yorinobu's long self-exile had not been the kind where he could settle down and marry.
Katsunaga could imagine Arasaka growling in his chair when the only grandchild he had was the American-born Michiko. A status which had continued on for as well as Katusnaga could tell, with the recent 'returnee' to the corporation having four children from her marriage to a now deceased American.
It was almost surprising that it took so long for Michiko to produce other kids that might be 'pure Japanese' but the fathers were all unknown.
Maybe the old man would lean on his eighty year old kids to engage in their familial duties?
Between dyed silver-purple hair and modded cyber-eyes, it was a toss up to tell Shirabe's natural coloring. Genemodding and bodysculpting would further obscure any hint of potential non-asian lineage, so having a fairly light skin tone didn't say much either. Even so, Katsunaga had no illusions that his client was anywhere close to first in line of succession.
Higher up the totem pole than her older siblings though, so they and their supporters were amongst those most likely to send hit squads after the girl.
"I'll give you the friend discount in case you ever get confirmations on which ones are doing it. Assassins at a toy store is tacky, and sending them to one owned by Arasaka is just bad business sense." The old man must be screaming about how he didn't send everyone to the most prestigious schools from pre-K onward to pull this shit.
The green haired Danger Gal, Kuma, sat down across from her charge. "Shirabe, please don't copy this dullard's speech."
"Choom, my speech patterns are perfect for when she's surrounded by people who don't spend all their time in Aerodynes." Katsunaga tapped his foot while performing a cursory programming check on the vehicle. A tablet went over the usual triple checking of bugs and other spyware before penetrating the data for any potential bugs or unauthorized users. "And being a face for a toy store or even just actor is more about talking like a relatable human being than suit drone."
Kuma stared at Katsunaga with his loose tie, shirt and suit that had not seen a press in a week, and messy black hair before settling on drooping eyes. "Yeah."
"Realistic eyes are expensive," He shot back at her tone. "And this is a choice.
He gave a thumbs up at the faux catgirl. "You guys get kitty ears to stand out, I dress like this to make it way easier to shadow somebody." The Solo's sloped shoulders shifted upwards, height changing as his tensed muscles and bad posture were relaxed to a tall height exaggerated by limbs long since extended by bone altering nanoware.
Skeletal sheathing, Orbital power augmentation, and genetic enhancements had shattered his bones and remade them into heavy armor most cyberware couldn't break. Muscle and bone lacing covered in grafted muscles only furthered that before biomechanical sections had been installed into a body that had become difficult to separate one augment from the next as it was optimized into a machine far higher spec than a Gemini full body replacement.
A body made to look incredibly average on the outside smiled at the enhanced Private Eye.
"She has an image to maintain," The cat scowled at the person that had been with her owner longer than Kuma had been. "And a child star can't curse."
"It's friggin' adorable when a baby does it, and there's a difference between saying ass and having a kid go, 'fight the powah, I'mma go ride on my motorcycle and stab the security guards hired by some guy my dad never even heard of to stick it to him."
Kuma's eyes bulged despite being cybernetic in nature. "You've killed how many dozens of Arasaka employees in the past? Like you can insult Noriyobu."
Katsunaga pointed at her while the AV took a turn, its gravity dampeners allowing them to not so much as feel the shift. "Hey, I did that for money. Not moral superiority. People are valuable and disagreeing with them thinking, 'hey, I need eddies to put food on the table' are two different things." All human lives were inherently priceless, Even if their genetic code was the same, each person was an individual. Soulkiller and the like was simply data and had no bearing on that fact of life.
Thus, human lives were precious.
Some moral belief that a cause put you in the position to end them no matter how many it took was how you got dictators that actively wanted a war while claiming superiority. Katsunaga didn't have anything like that. He just liked shooting and stabbing. Killing people was part of the career he'd chosen and why he felt so justified in claiming high prices when it wasn't for a friend.
In those cases, it was just a fifty percent upcharge on the resources expended so those could be replaced. Love, no matter the form, was the irrational 'reason' behind most impassioned murders. It was also behind lot of cold and furious ones people planned out as well.
Shirabe sighed. "The Net exists." She reminded Kuma of the source of just about every teen and kid's loss of innocence in the modern world.
"Please don't shut yourself in a house for decades like your grand-aunt," Kuma advised the girl that lived in a constant state of school-based death marches. Katsunaga decided against telling the woman that his current anti-spy software had been designed by Shirabe.
His client grimaced and fastened her seatbelt. "How long does it take to fly from Tokyo to Los Angeles?"
"Most of the day unless you take a really good corporate flight, more with layovers," He replied. Shirabe tilted her head at that last word. "Connecting flights. Do you want me to grab a toy from the storage area?" It was good that the assassins had only made their move after he finished loading up the AV.
Less so for the guy he decapitated by slamming the trunk door on his neck.
A hum left the girl as her foot began to tap on the fluffy flooring. "Instead of a toy, what about The Bonin Trench Incident." Kuma glanced around due to the strange name while Katsunaga wondered if he should pick up a BD at one of his safehouses.
"Yeah, I remember that. An Arasaka submarine got hacked by a terrorist group funded by the European Space Agency." He opened a panel on the back seat and rooted around the storage area, making sure to avoid the bodies, and removed a pack of Twizzlers. It had been hell in the decades where that company had gone under. "So, a project by Arasaka, don't remember the genetic name, was on the sub and stolen along with rifles and security equipment." He shrugged. "The crates would blow up if things got so much as room temperature. Very high explosive, ended up buying some of the product when it hit the shelves."
Goddamn the Honshu division was good at making stuff that would destroy everything around them. "Your Great-Grandfather bought out the Internatioinal Defense Association, a PMC focused on maritime and underwater expeditions. It had been having some trouble with people going pirate and making off with the ships, along with guys poaching the ships so my team had been hired as security. We'd been doing a lot of military work so we made sure that the contract was as protection due to how few people were on the vessel we were assigned to." He checked his records. "That had been after a job where we trained up a military to crush rebels, and it would have been easier if we had more seagoing contacts."
Katsunaga smiled. "Diving through outcroppings that've been mined to the point all the maps don't work anymore while believing somebody is out there to get you was a new experience." Darker memories returned. "A Noob netrunner that was on the IDA crew got us hit by a special Daemon that flatlined him. Izumo had to jack in but some of our systems got taken over already.:
It was amazing what people thought was a good idea. "They lowered life support and fucked with oxygen, but that didn't exactly help."
Memories of twisted flesh and broken bones came to mind. "Seven guys all trained with Aikido and Ronin Light Assault Rifles out. Three down in a second with a fourth lucky enough for me to punch the area by his head. They got too busy trying to kill me to see Shao come up with his Arno Gun. Hye kicked another's head in, Shin stabbed one from behind, and Petra destroyed a guy with her thighs. Fun times, had to take over their sub and find the one holding the product."
Shirabe rocked in her seat. "I heard that all of them had MetalGear armor though."
"Monoblades, crushing force, and point blank shots with armor piercing bullets have a way of dealing with that." MetalGear was useful, but plenty of people figured that they were invincible once that had the stuff on despite plenty of people being so chromed out that they had the same protection and none of the downsides." That really had been a fun op. "Why is it called the Bonin Horse Trench Incident though?"
"Arasaka uses it as an example of what to do when in a similar situation," She shrugged.
Katsunaga could see that. "Murder everyone in the boarding party, take their ship, hunt down the guys they were with, capture them, and hack the orbital satellite their Netrunners are on and threaten to drop it on a different group of people unless their bosses pay us?"
She burst out into laughter. "Without that last part," Shirabe wiped away a tear. "Officially."
Kuma began to beat her head against the window. "How can you be so relaxed."
"Anyways, I had a dinner with your grandpa Kei for the first time since your great-uncle burned down the Arasaka facility I'd been working in." His introduction to Running had been late in life but incited his love of killing.
Yorinobu might even regret that attack of his if he remembered that particular bit of petulance. Katsunaga smiled at Kuma. "And for how relaxed I am? It's because outside of being hired by her great-grandfather, I've killed people for her grandpa, grandma, and mom. A lot of the time for free." He held his hands up. "I'm a family friend."
"Based on murder."
"The murder came after meeting Kei through Mariya and spending a lot of time in dojos and the range in college." It hadn't even been an attempt to network with the older man.
The rest of the AV ride was full of questions from Shirabe about the specifics of the Op and how the team had dealt with ESA financed pirates. All the way to the airport was nothing but questions about the nitty details. Katsunaga was half tempted to sell Arasaka a BD for training purposes, but figured that it would be ignored unless he went through someone he'd worked with often. Besides, the money wouldn't be all that much.
"Is murder all you think about?" The bodyguard's ears pressed against her scalp while they unpacked the back and gave bodies over to Arasaka techies. Dozens of corporate technicians went over the AV, cleaning it while more specialized personnel got out the gurneys to recover corporate products and analyze which faction had pulled the trigger this time.
All he could do was smile. "I worked in electronics before then, and I paint now." Most of his hobbies had some kind of relationship with his job, but he had been involved in creation before becoming an Edgerunner. Or they were just outright for the sake of fitting into various disguises.
They watched while their charge was put through medical checks and scanned for any potential electronic tampering. A doctor going over the short girl's vitals while another inserted a datachip for a full diagnostic of her health and cyberware. "You should never have kids," Kuma commented on a man all too willing to discuss how he killed people.
"Shirabe might have been a premie-baby, but she had to grow up fast." Katsunaga gave an eye roll. Corpo kids tended towards a few poles, horrible spoiled brat, nervous wreck, innocent and deluded, or a realist. How much ambition they had didn't relate to those traits, but was common among the richer ones. "I might take the job to get rid of that kid that broke up with her."
"Don't be a bitch, anyone would be terrified when asked to split that bill."
"Breaking up over text is a bitch move, grabbing the one who did that and making them kneel at the chopping block is a farmer-with-a-shotgun move."
Their bickering continued until Shirabe was given confirmation that she was fine and a go ahead to enter an Arasaka transport headed to the Los Angeles resort. Katsunaga glanced at an advertisement from when the girl had been used as a model for Tender-Love Baby Care Products.
Shirabe would continue to suffer as one of Arasaka's product poster-girls. Maybe even after she graduated. Kuma and the contingent of Danger Gal bodyguards searched their new vehicle three times, leaving Katsunaga surrounded by Arasaka security while Shirabe got a new SegAtari from her pack of supplies.
"You hate standing still," Katsunaga grinned.
"You keep a ridiculous amount of sensorware on you as a distraction." She quipped.
Ah, she'd been trained well by Michiko. "Your grandpa would be crying if he knew that they wouldn't let you hold a gun let alone a sword." Kei's granddaughter pouted while Katsunaga reminisced.
He tagged three people as potential threats and sent a message to a direct supervisor before delving into their history. Enough bank accounts were dodgy to rate up their threat level and advise for hacks that would observe their behavior.
"Kuma was a bit mean about the kids part," Shirabe talked while playing some game with anime avatars.
"My ex agreed with the sentiment, which was why I am divorced."
"Mom is…fine," Shirabe commented on one of the people Katsunaga had helped in their childhood. "Outside of using the kanji for her job in my name."
Katsunaga snickered. "She loves her work like I do, but I wasn't going to name my kids after methods of killing." He was subjected to a pout trained by countless hours of acting lessons and natural cuteness. "Have fun, wish you went to Miami instead of LA, I still remember clearing out city wards so redevelopers could come in."
A call came through. Katsunaga would normally ignore those on the call, but it was TraumaTeam. All it took was a quick check on his voice mail to see that his family life insurance had been used. Exes and family friends couldn't get on it so there were only a few people that could be on it.
Formally putting teammates on a Japanese family register had certain advantages, but it turned out that it wasn't a member of his old crew this time.
He sent a text to a few of his buddies, Izumo, Shao, and Chain since they were still in Night City. "Gloria's kid is in the hospital, no idea about her. I'll be in the city soon."
"My contract ends when you set foot on the plan, but could I hitch a ride? I'll even hang off the wing if you need it." All he got was a girl's laughs.
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Threadmarks: Chapter 2
A dull ringing was still in David's ears while he walked out of the pristine white hallways of TraumaTeam medical, the blood pumping through his body so hard it felt like his head would explode. Platinum Card, no way his mother had the eddies for that.
What the fuck?
His bank account was all zeros.
Why couldn't they listen when he screamed about how they needed to take her too?
Fuck it.
Why the hell was it only now that someone else gave a shit about his life? What about his mother? Who would even-
"You have a place to stay right?" A woman interrupted his private hellscape just before he could walk out the door. White tech hair poured over skin that didn't so much as have a follicle on the face and blended into the not quite plastic but just off from being human skin of augmented shoulders. Her eyes were optics, but high enough quality to look normal. David blinked while an armored TraumaTeam medic handed the woman a card, making David realize that the woman wore what amounted to near painted on short shorts and a sleeveless top.
Spoiler: Izumo/Shibuya Tomomi
"The emergency contacts under the TraumaTeam Platinum coverage qualifies you as a guardian if neither parent or blood relatives are available." A tinny voice left the medic's helmet. "Do you acknowledge any and all problems which might occur afterwards are not liable on the part of TraumaTe-"
David's brain tried to reboot but failed as the woman practically picked him up instead of saying anything to the SMG totting SWAT equivalent. "Wait, who the fuck even are you choom?"
"Auntie Shibuya, I helped update the neuralware you got as a bundle of pink screaming into your mom's tits." The chromed out woman dragged David out of the hospital while he went back into the world with nothing but the clothes on his back. "A cop I'm good with checked in on your mom. Went full Gewalt on the guys for chopping bodies up for organs before they flatlined."
"Who the fuck were…" David got thrown into a black Mitsubishi Carcharius. The woman was barely in the seat before the vehicle raced out of the drive way fast enough that it might have broken the sound barrier with how hard he got pressed against the headrest. "Those fuckers?" He choked on compressed lungs trying to drip from his throat.
The woman shrugged. "Dunno, corpses now. Pretty sure Petra just crushed their throats and brought the skulls back to a precent for Techies to look over. At least to a few so the ones that didn't get splattered would be too busy crying to come up with a lie."
He took in a deep breath as his body caught up with the organs that had nearly accelerated out of him. "And mom."
His possible kidnapper maybe actual aunt had the look of someone scrolling through info on the net. "Missing a kidney and some bone marrow, wouldn't hold out on her eggs all being in there since she's almost all 'ganic and those are great genes."
"You having fun with this chica?" David scowled at the chromed out woman who didn't even put her hands on the wheel while driving the car with an uplink.
She raised an eyebrow. "David, I haven't seen your mom since your parents divorced and she got the city."
TraumaTeam wouldn't have let her grab him from their building if this was some organ thief or scammer. Meaning this was the real deal. David folded his arms together, left foot rapidly tapping on the floor. "Got it, some gangoons operating a human chop shop went scav for meat. So where's my mom?"
"Figured you would freak if she went to a different neighborhood so it went through El Capitan." She read through some file. "Her blood pressure was way up even if she hadn't been in a car crash, immune system shot to hell, muscles definitely didn't get repaired enough in sleep and were swimming in acids."
"I told her that she needed to sleep," David remembered how she had been before he went to school, nearly passed out after continuous 160 hour work weeks.
"Five Bouncebacks in twenty four hours, bone marrow replacement for what was lost, synthetic kidney, circulatory system so shot they had to put in a blood pump because her heart's muscles were atrophied, Octavio had to call in a friend from Arroyo to help make him make sure her tissue didn't had a bad reaction. Though her immune system is so overworked that it probably couldn't have even worked on healing from what they had to put in."
David's foot became a goddamn metronome as he listened. "But she's alive."
"In a coma, but yeah, surprised she wasn't in one anyway if she never had any downtime." The woman sighed. "Pretty sure she had more stomach ulcers than the average corpo."
His teeth ground together. "Gotcha gotcha, but what the fuck now. we don't have eddies unless my dad is suddenly giving shit out for free after seventeen years."
Stars spun through his vision while David was suddenly staring out the window after a chromed out slap rattled the knubs he'd been about to reduce his jaw to. "…Sorry." It would have been even more painful emotionally if it had been his mom that got him out of that. "I, So. Why did they break up?" He could see it already, that it was his fault somehow.
The woman…Shibuya, which had to be an alias, just sighed. "Not every Pampee (normal person) wants to be an Edgerunner forever, and plenty do it for the eddies when they can see the debt gunbarrel. If they need Dolla Dolla, then they have to figure out if they want to get wrecked by that barrel in the mouth and see if it's a Scav or Corp that pulls the trigger or if they're dohna do." Her English began to slip into a slang David had heard some of the Japanese born corpo kids speak in. "Your dad wasn't some Tatsujin who goes on about the beauty of a katana and freaks out when some asshole pulls out an SMG. He'd probably shoot the guy and take the gun."
Shibuya shrugged. "Wasn't the type to win a girl's heart and dump her, but kids change things. There's an obligation to take care of family, but Gloria wanted to cut from our world and be an upstanding citizen who wouldn't get arrested and end up dragged from the Shaba…ah, mundane world. Into jail okay. Left the territory of guys your dad was associates or members with and went legit."
"And he wanted to become a legend." David could understand that even if he didn't like it.
"He learned the joy of using martial arts to throw people out windows and put bullets in skulls when he was older than you and spent over twenty years flatlining people," Shibuya shook her head. "Didn't raise a hand against your mother, but a bodycount as high as ours is makes for a parent who'd ask why you didn't slam a bully's head into the locker instead of talk about how you need to be a better person. They knew that and all the chrom wasn't going. Most of the argument was about how she wouldn't take the money made by popping skulls and selling drugs."
David sighed. It was no wonder she rode him so hard for selling BDs Doc wanted out on the street. "I know, top of Arasaka Tower with hard work and no shortcuts."
Shibuya blinked.
"So, you're actually from Japan?" He asked.
"Izumo city, my parents commuted to Hiroshima to work for Mazda while I spent every day in school dorms." Shibuya took a turn through the crowded trash filled streets surrounding Santo Domingo megabuildings. Illegally built extensions to the towering giants whose shadows passed over the Rancho David never got the chance to so much as stand near before Sixth Street or some other gang shoot in the air to remind him whose turf it was. "But yeah, having parents that give a shit let alone a mom who you see is a miracle a lot of kids would pray for."
David could see the borged out woman tense, one leg going over the other while her jaw clenched. "Guess it doesn't work out for most of us."
"Year of high school exams, both of 'em sold everything they had to join a cult. Didn't want to join and outsiders were considered impure." David had heard of religious gangs, but never quite anything like that. "Ended up using their old credentials before they expired to grab enough on some projects that Kawasaki bought up a whole hard drive. They fudged some records to let me into school and ran the net for them to stay in thee."
He breathed in. "That sucks, are we going to Megabuilding H4 or the doc's?"
A pale eyebrow arched up. "What part of this conversation makes you think I wouldn't do the second?"
"Makin' sure." David closed his eyes. "Fucking rent."
"The bill is going to keep going up huh?" Shibuya asked. He screamed out the window upon remembering the fuck up that was going to cost all their money from before the gangs blew up the fucking car. "That bad?" David blinked as Arroyo disappeared behind them and the Night City noise stilled.
Wide roads that weren't filled with trash stretched out. Smog covered the sky and there wasn't a patch of green in sight, but there wasn't a giant factory looming up every third building as they entered Rancho Coronado.
People here owned or at least rented their own houses and had cars that didn't cough and sputter every minute. They weren't high rank corpo managers but technicians that got to live without someone constantly banging on the other side of every wall ceiling and floor. The expensive car cruised to a stop by a clinic surrounded by the gang signs and graffiti every part of night city had if it wasn't Corpo Plaza.
"Come on." Shibuya exited the car while David took in a massive dam with a Petrochem insignia displayed. The building wasn't finished, with a second floor lacking most of its walls and the beginnings of a third in partial construction. Despite that, it was goddamn clean by the standards of Santo Domingo. Nothing like the TraumaTeam building, but David didn't feel like he'd die from getting rust inside of a cut.
A dark skinned guy wearing an orange baseball cap sat behind a desk, some bottles full of something strewn along the floor while a crate full of the base frame of cyberlimbs took up a far corner. Some weird crates with thin wire mesh were also by there but David had no clue what would even fit in those small things. "Hey, Shibuya, this Gloria's kid?" The guy looked him up and down before holding out a fully organic arm. "What?" He asked.
"You a ripperdoc?" David's mental image of those guys was primarily of Doc who had more ware than most guys he'd ever met.
The mechanical technician looking guy gave a shrug. "What, you think everybody who works on ware is sniffing metal slivers like Maelstrom? Octavio." The hand continued to be held out until David shook it. "Yeah, hair is different but you look a lot like your Moms." He turned around and led them deeper into the building, entering a cleaner section of the building where there were a few cots with IVs hanging from dingy machines. About half of them were taken up, with the ages of their occupants varying between kids that had gauze over their arms and sides and an old lady snoring in bed. "Sixth Street and the Animals have been duking it out all night so I've been cleaning up after them."
"Surprised the gang doesn't pay you wages," Shibuya snorted. "David Octavio, Octavio David."
"Sorry," David apologized for a bit earlier to the man. "Thanks for all the help." He noted some kind of breathing machine that had been scraped of rust recently. "Ah."
"Medicine is expensive and acting like a normal clinic while selling ware at a price that a gang won't just throw hands over is hard." Octavio explained the area's condition. "Not that I can really make excuses. I know it's shit."
"Better than I expected, Doc I know doesn't really practice actual fucking medicine."
Octavio laughed. "I'm licensed for cyberware and making sure that doesn't kill you, but my house calls are purely from what I learned on the streets. It'll be a long time before I'm more doctor than engineer. But there's a guy over in Arroyo who quit his corpo job over his bosses ignoring the human element, he's been helping out."
David's eyes settled on a cot where a double layer of blankets were covering his mother from the head down. Her hair wasn't held up like it usually was, spilling down with a slight bald patch where an incision had to be made on top of others where it looked like she'd been cut up in the crash. "Momma." It was his bones holding himself up instead of muscle once he got there. "Doc is she under or, I mean-" Dozens of possibilities flew through his brain all at once.
"Cyberware we put in would save most people that got a gunshot or muscle degradation, but she was in a car crash." Octavio explained. "There is a lot which can go wrong there. Checked her spine, thankfully that was fine outside of some discs pressing on each other. But overwork on top of getting hit in the head and blood loss, not to mention getting thrown through the windshield. I'mma guess the airbags didn't activate or weren't there from wherever you got your car."
He could hear what was coming. "It's a brain problem."
The ripperdoc winced. "Yeah, outside of installing ware, I wouldn't trust myself in dealing with a brain. Not many ripperdocs are neurosurgeons. Even then, she is in a coma, which can have any number of causes."
"And a lot of coma patients never wake up." David said the quiet part that the doctor hadn't wanted to say.
It wasn't like they had eddies. There was no way the bank would let him have access to whatever savings his mom had so he could pay for any of this. Medical bills for keeping her alive would be a continuous pile-up on top of school, rent, and whatever they owed.
"Fuck." He began to cry. "Fuckfuckfuckfuckwhatthefuck I might as well flatline. I drop out of school and what can I even do to pay anyone back let alone Saka for fucking up the school mainframe with Doc's shitty update workaround."
Octavio glanced at Shibuya before putting a hand on David's shoulder. "Look, I'm not going to ask you to pay for the operation. Your family already paid for it, and Gloria's good people. Worked with her before," He gestured back to the rooms that boxes of cyberware had been in. "But if she was trying to put you through school, you'll want to try and make it there since she put in that much effort."
"It's not like I fit in there or they'll let me make it," David barked, fingers gripping the cot's railing. "I was trying to tell her, even if it was her dream, I'd rather do work around the megabuilding and not have her busting her ass until she dies." Drops of salt filled tears dribbled onto the blanket. "And it costs money to keep her alive. The most work I've done is odd jobs for Doc and pushing BDs for him."
The adults looked at each other. Octavio rubbed David's back. "Look, your mom's a medic and you know a ripperdoc. That's gonna give you credit. Most docs around town have business but are strapped for time. If you even know what most of the organs are, you can work as an assistant. If not, we always need hands." He tried to make a joke. "Some of us even graft on more. The other option," He glanced at Shibuya. "Will make Gloria more pissed off than finding you working here."
"But it's the one that would actually pay you back, and mean we won't have corpos selling our debt to scavs that'll chop us up," David wanted to rip the cot to pieces.
"Your dad will cover school since that's a you thing," Shibuya took up a seat, plastic white skin flexing with her movements. "But I figure you'll be pissed off no matter what."
"Yeah," He agreed. "I haven't met him and throwing money is…" It was no use being pissed off about a guy not being around if Mom didn't want him around. "It's not about them being divorced or anything, or not wanting the money. But it feels wrong to be taking all of this without having met him and no expectation to pay it back."
Shibuya closed her eyes, banging her head against the wall. "It's," She floundered against the urge to speak her native language. "Lots of people just toss the baby out for gangs to either ignore or raise. Your dad actually stands by the obligation to take care of your own kid, and people are pretty much hardwired to care about the mother of their children." The woman sighed. "I know a new fixer who needs a crew for a job. I'll put in a good word." She stood up. "But you need to keep up with school because otherwise the three of us are going to be murdered in our sleep."
David almost laughed, instead it came out as a gasp. "Yeah, she'd do that."
He was driven to an apartment with a holographic interface Rent Past Due sign reminding him of how little money they had. By the time David had kicked in an air vent to sneak in, his entire body hurt and the tall cyberpunk was standing there, eyes flickering as she sent a wireless signal to turn on the lights. "Right, Netrunner." David groaned as he looked around for his school uniform. It had been folded by his mom's EMT jacket.
A jacket which was glowing.
"What the fuck," He pulled the edges apart to see a cybernetic spinal unit taped to the inside.
The Netrunner gave a low whistle. "I think I know why the Rippers were so okay with helping Gloria out. Lots of the Meatwagon klept ware from corpses to pay the bills, but she has to be risking a Cyberpsycho not being quite flatlined for ware like this."
Heart in his throat and adrenaline replacing most of his blood, David had an idea. "If I do what you and my dad do, would this be a good start?"
"If it's a Sandevistan, don't use it every second, but yeah. Yeah, that'll do for Training Wheels."
AN
Katsunaga: hey, shit went down, I need help Izumo
Shibuya: Are you asking me to take your son on a run so he'll piss off your ex
Katsunaga: She is dying, and I will have one set up if he agrees to do one. Our old Fixer friend has a granddaughter that needs a team.
Shibuya: We are going to die by sandals slamming into our brains.
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Cyberarms hung from a complex rotating machine while Doc laughed in his own operating chair. "You're telling me man, that this Gonk needs a Sandevistan, a milspec one at that, inside him for Chippin' in?" The dreadlocked man threw his head back, thin body shaking while Shibuya stared at him with cold electrical eyes. "Do ya' even realize how fucked in the head he'll be? Boy's got Ganic eyes, the only thing he's got is a Neural Processor and chipware."
Doc began to count while David tapped his foot, the cybernetic spine held in his grip. "Ain't never been in a fight, never shot even a peashooter or Dai Lung bullshit, stabbed a chomba, nope. Kid hasn't been in some Saka school for Te training and ya want to put him in a run. If the Cyberware doesn't burn out his brain he'll be splattered all over the floor like every other Dreamer."
All of that was why he wanted the Sandevistan. "You sold me a gonk as shit VR that crashed Saka servers and put me in debt Doc. I owe them more than it would have been to get the fucking paid update." He stepped forward while Shibuya's shoulders shook with laughter. "I push BDs for you on the street and in school. Selling to Corpo kids with way too many Eddies in their sockets has gotta be worth something." David waved a hand at all the cyberarms Doc kept for his personal collection.
They hung like meat in some old butcher's shop, cleaner than the walls covered in repaired pieces of junk and plastic tarps stained with blood. Doc could implant ware, update it, tune up other shit from around the block if it had so much as a chip in it, and program. Plenty of the electronics in the Martinez apartment had been inside the back alley clinic at one point or another.
Which hopefully hadn't resulted in them needing to be cleaned after the Ripper spent time in a porn BD.
"Jimmy Kurosaki sells where nomatter where ya go." Doc leaned out of his chair to meet David's eyes. "And it's not like I don't have plenty of punks pushing product."
Shibuya yawned. "Are you really gonna facedown a seventeen year old?"
It took a lot of effort for David to hold back from facepalming. "Doc, Mom has medical bills, we are late on rent, and I am in debt to the school. It is either this or Scavs see what they can get for my organs. There are other Ripperdocs in town and I've met some, but I came to you."
The muscled yet skinny doctor seemed to consider it, scratching at a blond soul patch. "So, you gonna go to Saka academy, moonlight as an edgerunner, and burn out juggling all that."
He remembered some of the specs Shibuya had talked about on their drive to the clinic. "Military Sandies have Braindance recorders. Think of it this way, I die, whatever crew I'm on will try and keep the spine even if it means ripping it out of my corpse. They'll need a Doc to put it in and you can extract a BD of me flatlining. I live, come back and you get a premium unfiltered BD of a guy's first run complete with Slow Mo action."
"Fuck, makes me think of what we did with Khan his first run," Shibuya's shoulders continued to shake. "He grabbed onto the stolen truck and shot at the cyberpsychos, screaming the entire time while they tried to saw his head off. Amazing way to pop that cherry."
Doc tilted his head up while looking at the fully borged woman. "You have a run set up?"
"Not on it but I helped facilitate." She flexed her fingers. "Good sized crew under a Fixer starting to build her rep, already has a Solo with skill but none of them have made a name in Night City. Bunch of kids with Dreams." Shibuya smiled. "But the job, exfiltration and delivery."
"Fuck, I'll take the deal." Doc rubbed his forehead. "Make sure that BD gets on my table even if it is in his iced corpse."
A ping alerted David to the wiring of eddies.
"Here you go, make sure to get your shopping done before school." Shibuya took a step back while Doc handed him a mouth bit.
"Kid, you are going to be in the most pain in your life." The Ripperdoc raised his arms for his machines to rip them off and put in a calibrated set meant for surgery. "But, since you have that Choom, you are getting some painkillers later.
"I am not touching that," Shibuya stated while David got strapped down to the operating table. She paused. "Do you have Cybereyes in stock?"
David felt his blood run cold. "He isn't giving me painkillers Choom!"
"And I'm worried about you accidentally shooting a teammate since you've never held a gun before." She groaned in agony. "Look, I will pay for the eyes."
Doc laughed. "Got your basics, Mikoshi, Nikon Orchid."
"I can make Mikoshi work with Nikon and make sure to use goddamn anesthetic you psycho." Shibuya knelt down by David and winced. "So ah, it is a good thing you went to school already because this is gong to hurt."
"After the Sandy."
"What the fuck you asshole!"
David's world became pain.
=
"Holy fuck I can feel my spine bleeding!" David spat out the bit in his mouth while a pair of brown ganic eyes stared out at him from inside a test tube. "What the fuck Doc!" He fell out of the operating chair while the Ripperdoc dangled what remained of his old optics.
"Heheha," Doc placed the tube on a table. "Just showing you what I took out of ya, like that spine." He jerked a finger to a longer tube containing the floating remnants of what had been cut out of him. The bone and flesh still glistened in a saline solution. "You get to keep it too, not sure what you'll do. But keeping them in good condition will let you put em back in when you burn out, or just sell em for eddies."
Shibuya raised an eyebrow. "Well, some guys just throw them in a dumpster."
David opened his mouth and felt a horrible dryness. "I hate that." The woman tossed a bottle at him. Time didn't slow down, but static flitted over David's vision as a Heads Up Display appeared. Something like a targeting reticule was laid over the projectile while he tried to reach out only to get hit in the face by something cold.
Real Water.
He hadn't even needed to read the label to identify it. "Nova." David unscrewed the cap and stared at the pristine fluid he normally would have associated with an IV bag. Nott water, but things that looked so clean were normally medical supplies. "I thought targeting system only worked with like guns."
The Netrunner leaned against a table, the surface touching her 'skin' more than it did her pants. "I had the software for Kiroshi Dodgeball and installed it in your eyes. Think of it as Targeting Systems for hand to hand. Works best if you have time to analyze the movements of an opponent, but it also helps with tracking in general."
Doc laughed. "Been a long time since that's been on the Market, the hardware is still around in Japan but it never made it over to Night City."
Shibuya shrugged at that. "Anyways, Mikoshi Interferometry has way better resolution than human eyes. You can telescope your view of the world without the problem of tunnel vision so you won't be caught by surprise by somebody walking by. That works with image enhancement and targeting systems to give you an advantage in seeing threats. Doc had Infrared gear around so don't worry about dark areas. The problem comes with flashbangs since there isn't any anti-dazzle. Time Square Marquee Plus will give you a bigger identification database than most and can give names to people you see."
He could see the debt increase. "I can't…"
"Look," Shibuya sighed. "I didn't get any brothers and sisters. Dormitories in a corp also aren't the best place to make friends." She bent forward to meet David's now cybernetic gaze. "Your Dad is someone that became incredibly important for me." The runner closed her eyes. "And ii missed out on your birthdays after the divorce."
Enough questions to fill a PDF document came to mind, but David knew better than to ask any of them. Like the possibility that this woman played input output with his dad. "So, we good."
She snorted. "Not by a long shot. I went over what you might need for a run and we have a shopping list." A fucking itinerary appeared in a message sent to David. "For one. Chipware. You don't drive, you don't shoot, you don't stab or punch. That is a problem."
David could feel his head pound despite localized anasthetics. "Yeah, I get that."
Doc grinned while a catalogue opened up. "I've got plenty of software to sell and hardware for Chips. Just remember, it takes a while for it to fully Chip in and work in that meat noggin, and you ain't gonna get better relying just on em."
"I know how Chips work doc." David looked through the catalogue, getting the most basic chips for driving and streetfighting he could find. Just getting the chipware for a handgun was almost as much as buying a real one. His gaze drifted to the section on martial arts. MMA was at the top of the list along with some weird stuff. He recognized El Cuchillo as a method of knife fighting that his Mom had always threatened to whup his ass for trying to learn, and he was doubtful that Doc could get his hands on real Shao Lin Kung Fu. "What the hell is Bersilat?"
"Malaysian dance martial art." Doc and Shibuya chorused before glancing at each other. The dreadlocked man hummed. "I have one I didn't put for sale yet. Never heard of it before and tried it out, but the thing is another Chinese one. Xing Yi Quan."
The Borg woman blinked a few times. "He'll take that one. Got it from the KFB?"
"Before the Blood Razors wiped em out." Doc threw his hands up. "Been a shit time finding good cyberware that wasn't brought in by a fucking Scav." All Shibuya did was nod while Doc ranted. "Everybody wants Karate, Krav Maga, Muay Thai, Baji Quan and all that so it is hard to move product on a martial art nobody's ever heard about."
David eyed the Runner. "Is it good?"
"Think of it as trying to use the human body as a spear to smash someone in one hit and go on to the next guy, very linear but includes rotation." Shibuya used terminology David didn't get. The look on his face made her dumb it down. "Ever seen an old Jet Li movie."
"Want," David laughed. "Hey Doc, want me trying to sell those and not just snuff BDs."
Doc rolled his eyes and kicked the ground to push his chair around. "I'll give it to ya so people can see the results if you live. The BD off your brain should drum up sales." A clawed finger pointed up in the air. "Remember, you practicing with a skill chip won't make you better than the program on it. You need experience and a teacher to get above what it can do."
"Got it," David looked through the catalogue more until looking upon combat and medical drugs. "Ah, BounceBack and MaxDoc. The difference is the delivery system and that BounceBack is for long term injuries right?"
Shibuya's smile grew while Doc nodded. "Yeah, sedatives are for when you need someone to go under, beauties works slower but both will help ya keep someone from bleeding out all over the place.
David thought about the eddies put in his account. Living to see a payment from a run was more important than scrimping on cash. "Could I get some of that, and Berserker.":
"Woahwoahwoah," Shibuya shook her head while Doc's eyes bulged.
"I'm not mixing them together," David defended. "Uppers and downers are how you die."
A metal hand slapped on Doc's helmet with a clang. "Look, I will sell you Jazz. That should keep you from going full Cyberpsycho if you activate that Sandy while high as a kite. No grabbing Dorph from anybody either. If your team is alive and you are hurting, take the Maxdoc or Bounceback. If you feel like you are about to die take the Beauties since you'll have a bit of time before you go."
"Now is when you have bedside manner," David groaned.
"I might not give a shit about updates on a BD device, but cyberware is how you end up with the Chrome Demon and rip off your face because you have too much flesh on your bones and they itch." Doc described something David hoped to God wasn't a thing.
Shibuya's eyes flickered as she looked at something on the net. "Ah, you've heard Granny's stories."
That was a thing? "She taught me all about surgery but God if that woman ain't crazy."
"I think it was a patient who did that."
"Thought it was her."
Why was he trusting such crazy people? David then remembered his debt from before getting a chance to potentially repay it and chose to ignore the red flags.
David's embarrassment only grew as he got picked up by Shibuya and put in a stupid creaking wheelchair. The Netrunner grinned. "Now. Like I said, shopping."
He managed to wheedle out a deal for a large kit maxdocs, bouncebacks, beauties, and sedatives each for thirty three hundred eddies. An already painful experience before adding in Jazz and Stigmata, both combat stims for nearly a thousand eddies for a set of three each. Then the real pain started.
A burner cell and Agent for work calls was just a hundred and fifty eddies. David knew better to get that from Doc and had gone down to the Megabuliding's market where he managed to find a junker computer as well. But getting stuff like a first aid kit, radio communicator, and stuff like Bug Detectors and Scramblers which the Runner insisted was key to being on the edge brought him up to almost another two thousand eddies once he had additioinal binoculars for some goddamn reason, video-audio recorders, and a techtool.
The bag of stuff wasn't that heavy, but David kept thinking about the access lock on his apartment. "How much of this stuff do I really need?"
She looked at him. "A lot if you want to do this well." They got back in the car awkwardly with David needing to fold up the wheelchair while his hands began to tingle. He did a mental calculation and wanted to vomit while realizing that he had spent five thousand eight hundred and forty five eddies.
"Six grand," David's face got buried in his hands. "Why are my hands all itchy?"
"Subdermal smartlink implants. Safer than trying wireless," She stated while David thought of the cost of all the implants and chipware. Even without the Sandy that added another thousand. The chips were six hundred since the Martial arts were free. Cybereyes varied by quality from like two hundred to five hundred before add ons. "How much were the Optics?"
"Together, twelve thousand four hundred. The upgraded interferometry system was free since I did the work on that, the rest added a thousand two hundred and fourty." She said it like that was just a daily expenditure.
"I've spent TWENTY K?" David screamed while they kept driving. "Am I even breaking even with the run?"
She wiggled her hand. "Your dad doesn't really expect you to work it off."
David groaned. "No, just leave it between us please. I don't, it, GAH!" He hit his forehead against the dashboard. Do Edgerunners even make it out of the red?"
"Depends on if you are good and what you put your money in," Shibuya continued to drive via net control instead of so much as put her hands on the wheel. "Now we've got arms and armor."
"Mom's jacket is bulletproof," He sighed while thinking about the expenses list.
"Dohna be a medtech got it," She flashed him a smirk before they pulled up to The Manufactory, one of Arroyo's markets. "Now," The woman got out and grabbed the Wheelchair. "We deal in steel and fashion."
He wanted to die while getting pushed to a mohawked arms dealer eyeing him through visor shaped sunglasses. The guy didn't seem to know Shibuya but smiled at David. "You're the kid that sells Jimmy Kurosaki BDs."
"Yeah," David tried his best to smile. "I'm getting Chipped in, but ah," He waved a hand that looked completely normal. "I am just out of surgery." The guy looked at Shibuya for a second before nodding.
"Not many Streetpunks get an Edgerunner to show em the ropes," The vendor got behind his counter covered in guns. "So, great start linking up with a Chromed up Cyberpunk. Now," He held up a giant ass revolver. "This is a Malorian Arms Overture. Big kickback but the recoil isn't like a Rostovic or Budget Arms that'll break from shooting. And never, EVER get fucking Dai Lung because even a weaponsmith will have a shit time trying to get the sights and barrel to work how they should.
David had already known the name, getting a readout of its category as well from the scroll in his cybereyes. "Ah, maybe something more user friendly."
The dealer smiled. "I know, giving you a rundown of manufacturers."
His options were limited since he only had a chip for pistols. Smart Pistols were probably the best option for him so he gravitated towards those. The polished black and red of an unaltered Arasaka Yukimura stood out to him.
"Noticed that," The arms dealer picked up the gun and showed him the reload mechanism as a clip slid out. "One of Arasaka's best works. Smart Guns used to only have a basic ability to right the bullet's trajectory. Mainly by altering the contitions on the inside so it would fire when most likely to get where you are aiming. Yukimura is the first one to go full bulletstorm."
"Danmaku has stayed popular for a century," Shibuya joked while the man blinked. David recognized the name for Bullet Hell shooters and had to agree that modern Smartguns were pretty much that when going crazy.
David thought of the specs he had learned in class. "It has two modes, automatic and burst right? Thirty round capacity."
A smile graced the gunsmith's lips. "And you kid know your guns."
Shibuya took control of the conversation. "That is by the factory model right? Do you have mods?" A private message board opened up for David while the man nodded.
"D, ask about pistol grips, electrothermal enhancements, gas vents, and recoil compensation."Shibuya's voice echoed in his head.
"You gotta have a 3D printer for custom grips," David tried to lead the conversation. "Aftermarket expansions are the meat of Night City. What mods are available. He leveraged stuff he learned from Doc and around town. "Some Gonk probably thought it was a good idea to try and saw off part of the barrel to hide one better, but it is cased ammo right. Can it handle an electrothermal attachment?"
"Kid, names Pablo" The guy took off his shades to reveal organic brown eyes like the ones David had gotten ripped out. "You do not want to get me started."
By the end of their conversation, David had managed to get the pistol ordered with a custom grip with a design taken by squeezing several foam devices with sensors in them, gas vents, cooling shroud, and recoil comps for better accuracy and rate of fire. That more than doubled the price of the gun though and David began to realize how much money went into even basic equipment.
Losing a gun was a major setback if it wasn't a Saturday Night Special.
David glanced at the clothing booth they were heading to and felt his heart jump in his throat. Not because of the bootyshorts and bustiers on display. No, he saw Neokitsch clothes. The kinds of gear he knew that his classmates lazed around in and went to parties flaunting.
His heart was in his throat knowing that this was all out of his reach and he definitely wasn't going to ask Shibuya to-
"So, how about these?" The woman let go of the wheelchair and held up a set of adjustable red Neokitsch exo-jack boots that could probably take a buzzsaw to them and still come out looking great.
All the water that had finally accumulated in his mouth dried up. "I can't, really."
Shibuya rolled her eyes. "David, look, what is the stuff which you know. Jobskill wise."
"How to sell shit," David sighed. "Stock market prediction, database usage, marketing, ah, accounting. Basics of Chemistry and all that, little programming and the tuff they teach you in school." None of that was really useful for edgerunning.
"Most kids are raised by gangs or maybe one parent who doesn't have the cash to send them to school in the first place. Everything is streetsmarts and apprentices if they are down on this level or if they were on the up and up but fell down," Shibuya's somehow warm finger poked his chest. "So, you've got something most people don't. And a lot of the ones who do aren't paying attention in class."
David grimaced. "It's not like, I, what are you saying, you want me to act like a Corpo or Fixer?"
"You sell premium BDs made by a Master artisan that Corpos salivate to get," Shibuya smirked. "Think of it like this. The way you dress says something about you. Leverage it especially since you aren't going to be a Solo anytime soon. A guy wearing this comes up and shows some actual business sense, they are likely to trust that he knows his stuff."
"I don't want to be in debt to you," David tried to explain. "If I die, you spent tens of thousands of eddies for no reason."
She straightened up and grinned. "Nope, because I want to spend money on a nephew. The good feeling is better than if I went and got some expensive Joytoy."
David looked over the stall before taking out Santo Muerte tanks, Atomic Blast armor weave combat shirts, more Neokitsch shoes, and nearly died when getting a Blue Jaguar reinforced rockerjack and Canine Power branded trilayer coat. The only clothing he could get that wasn't painfully expensive were sets of AT-AK sportswear in Neomilitaristic style.
The problem came when they went out to get pants and fit the clothes.
Brutalist gray blocks stared down at him while the Chinese brand of Jinguji stared down at him in white neon. "No."
Shibuya shoved the set of AT-AK sportsware at him. "Okay, get changed and lets go." The brand new shoes and more were a siren song to his zeroed bank account. "I'm not looking." She stepped out of the car while David's face turned red, busily changing clothes while people gawked at the tinted windows of a ridiculously expensive car.
David stepped out in black and bronze clothes and Neokitsch fleets by the same brand. "I feel like a poser."
The silver haired borg turned her head up. "You have decorum classes at your school. Walk like you know you are going to own everything." They walked through downtown into the neobrutalist storefront guarded by armed guards to see enough gold on the inside to plate a fleet of cars. An African-american man in a brown suit approached, straightened hair coifed in a side cut, a bolo tie bobbing with his steps. "Hello Shibuya-san," He kissed the borg's cheeks. "I did not know you were in the city. I would have booked a room for you to try on this season's best." Wide gold glasses with a buglike compound refraction on the metal turned towards him. "And this is?"
"Ogier's son," Shibuya used what David hoped to hell was a nickname. "David."
"Oh," The man put a finger to his lips. "After the Nine Worthies?"
"His mom might have been more about the religious aspect but we have some parties to go to and he never chose clothes himself before," Shibuya weaved some weird story that resulted in David getting picked up by the horrifically strong man and put through a series of dressing rooms where women picked up measuring tape and tried to wring him dry.
Some brand of suit called Golden Hive which might very well have been made out of the stuff if the price tags were right were put in the order along with a BD wreathe, Neomilitaristic and Neokitsch suits, a goddamn yukata, dress shoes, and 'casual' pants that cost more than most guns.
He was just glad that the clothes they had brought in had been modified fast enough that he could wear it.
"What the fuck are you doing here Choom?" And like that David's day got even worse.
Dyed blue tech hair and intentionally visible neural port framed the smug face of Katsuo Tanaka, the bodysculpted teen's black eyes looking down on David while other kids from his class stood around browsing the store's wares.
David breathed in while putting his hands in the muddled white and blue jacket's pockets. "Look, Katsuo. I've had a shit week, can we not do this?"
"Holy shit," Shibuya's voice came from a nearby dressing room. "They armored this? Anya would be seething, you got this in size for angry Russian? Probably white and gold?" The woman came out of the room to talk with the manager, Jagger while wearing a plated silver trilby, rose crystal aviators, and white suit with metallic gold undershirt.
It took several seconds before David could recognize the scaling on the suit for what it was. "Is that…alligator skin?"
"Yes," Zane answered while looking tall woman up and down. "We will need to do some modifications for it to fit well, the extra material is going to increase the cost by about twice the original before any other alterations. If it is your usual, it will be about ten million for the set of suits. They are real alligator skin even if they are genemodded."
David wanted to question how much money this insane woman had, but remembered that she had a full borg body.
Katsuo looked up at the woman, mouth opening and closing before muttering a single word. "Brainworm."
"You know these guys?" Shibuya asked David.
He wanted to die. "Yeah, from school. BDs and all that."
The manager looked between the two groups, expression placid and eyes invisible behind his tinted glasses.
"How often," David managed to ask. "Do you work for Saka."
She sucked in her teeth. "That is a whole mess involving the different factions. But let's leave it at, we worked for them plenty and had to be reminded that The Emperor would be incredibly angry if we killed Yorinobu and didn't just leave him surrounded by the bodies of his dead friends."
And now he was getting a good idea of how old his dad was.
David desperately hoped that this guy had the treatments that kept the super-rich looking young.
"No way do you have the money to hang out with people with a higher bodycount that Genghis Khan!" Katsuo barked, fingers rubbing his temples as if the entire world was coming down. "This, no." The corpo kid shouted at Shibuya. "You are one of the people that drove an Armored Personnel Carrier through Biotechnica's corporate headquarters in Las Vegas and spread a fungal plague."
"That was made by Biotechnica after they messed around with life in space."
"People had mushrooms exploding out of their skulls."
"Biotechnica had us selling product and burned us after the results."
"You spread it through Italy."
"Technicially, that was the mafia."
"A civil war started and you people came on as 'special advisors' that dragged out several members of their Board for public executions."
"No, no, that was the King of Italy," The woman stated. "Who we helped install into power after his family's long exile."
David stared. "Why…did you start a war?"
"Twenty thousand eurobucks for damages, trying to pin a spread of a plague on us, and assassinations is not nearly enough as compensation." She shrugged.
Zane nodded along. "So many of the best clothes that we sell are ten times that at base."
Shibuya pieced things together and crouched to meet Katsuo at eye level. "So, as a runner. My name is Izumo, that's my kind-of-sorta nephew David." She grabbed David to pull him down low with her. "You might have seen a BD where his dad blew up a Plassplex Shield by driving two Corpo Cyberpsychos through the laser grade shield and used them to throw an Exec out a window."
David knew that BD. The thrill felt while crushing a cyberpsycho's skull despite it being underneath enough armor that a tank shell might not break the damn thing, having a guy who thought he could just give a small payout for trying to kill everybody after having hired them screaming underfoot and feeling spinal discs break underneath his weight.
He figured out why his mom and dad were divorced. It was almost definitely because his dad would have shown him the Geneva Conventions and every other document about international law and been given homework on how to break them.
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Everyone was staring at David while class started. The eyes of corpo kids who had never had to eat kibble and moved into Night City in aircraft carriers and luxury jets upon Arasaka's return to Night City all bored into him until the BD wreathes put them into class.
The sensation of entering a virtual world cut off David from his body, making it so his shoe finally ceased tapping against a metal footrest. An artificial teacher looked down at them in a simulated classroom where the windows showed a view of the springtime somewhere in Japan. He wasn't sure if that was supposed to be comforting but it was probably easier than trying to make the fleshless hologram of intersecting lines look more human.
First period was lessons on Arasaka history, this time dealing with the the sixth pillar of the corporation's apparatus. Banking. Arasaka Bank wasn't open to the public, just the accounts of Megacorps and business expenses. The economic boom of the late twentieth century had been the basis of the section's rise.
Boom and bust was the name of every bank. Outside of accounts for withdrawal and retirement funds, the bank had a primary focus on investment banking and loans. It was through this that the Arasaka built the skeleton of a true megacorp, getting a stake in just about every industry and entertainment center possible while taking data from what did and didn't work to perfect their long-term investments.
David idly wondered if that would be the least evil department.
As for job security, Arasaka Banking managed to get out of the 94 crash with a bloody nose but no big financial loss. An achievement that would be the envy of all the other banks at the time and all those guys who killed themselves in the 1930s. The start of the twenty first century was when they began to take care of select personal accounts though, opening up a bit to make up for the crash in the 90s.
The day went on with physics, math with a focus in accounting, biology, government systems, chemistry, etiquette, and corporate policy. David low key wanted to die while writing a timed essay on the later, thankful that the school let students file through their labyrinthian online library for reference material.
David closed his eyes as the final 'bell' chime rung in his school for the dismissal. His stomach burned with ulcers while he got up, trying his best to ignore the stares. There was the usual hatred, disgust, and everything else he usually got. Just…less of it than usual.
Confusion was pretty common but David was weirded out by the traces of respect some of the chrome-jocks and style mongers had when they took in his cybereyes. The Nikon Orchid was a mainstay that always used flower designs around the iris and that was borderline impossible for knockoffs to get right.
He understood why Shibuya had gone for the higher priced ones.
Even if he was in a normal uniform, stylized cyberware that was meant to be shown off was a major style statement.
David could feel the acid in his stomach. All he had for breakfast was kibble shaped like a burrito from a vending machine and can of synthetic tea. His cybereyes highlighted vending machines that dotted the campus. The eddies in his bank account reminded him of the food he could get.
Shibuya had insisted that stuff like food and clothes shouldn't be considered part of his debt once he made sure she understanded that he wanted to repay his dad and her. He closed his eyes, turned away from the machines, and walked to the cafeteria.
It wasn't like he hadn't walked by there before, but eating what was there had always been way out of his price range. Almost everything was synthetic on some level, but genetically engineered rice and cloned animals were still rice and meat. David stared at the menus shown on holographic boards while kids that had never gone without a meal in their lives went through the line.
The smell of cooking food made him think of the times when his mom had enough eddies to scrape together ingredients to make something. It wasn't like there was a kitchen in the apartment, but it was pretty simple to use an portable electric grill on kibble, food substitutes, and vegetable flavorings like everyone else did at the Megabuilding if they could treat themselves.
David was somewhere deep in his head when the staff gave him oolong tea and locust pepperoni pizza. There wasn't chitin in it, but he could see the actual real meat instead of a fucking fake product. It was still insane to think that he had eaten real meat and milk when his 'aunt' took him out for dinner and lunch yesterday.
With the allowance he was being given, David could eat at school before going on any jobs he could get.
He sat down at a table and connected to the school wi-fi, working on the homework he'd been given while biting into cheese, sauce, and fatty locusts. Kibble couldn't fit the textures being burned into his memory like the hot cheese did to his tongue. A lot of what his mom said made sense now. Climbing the corporate ladder so he could have this and provide it to his own kids when he had them.
It was what people worked themselves to death for.
The stomach ulcers didn't disappear, and he still felt like shit, but he understood his mom's dream. To give him what she didn't have.
A message went to his agent with the results of his tests. David knew he did well despite everything due to all the cramming he had done since enrolling, but the sight of a 100% on the corporate policy test despite that having involved written essays reminded him of a fact. "Why am I so stupid when I'm so smart," David facepalmed. The problem with Arasaka Academy was how it was rigged for corpo kids. It was cutthroat and competitive, but there had to be a limit to how much they could cruise on a parent's name.
"Sup," The guy across the table waved a hand while David came out of his stupor, middle finger decorated with a ring. He had messy gray hair that looked dyed instead of replaced with techhair like Katsuo had. "Heard you are top of Class A."
Spoiler: Alva Wu
"Yeah," David grimaced and put his hands in his pockets, leaving what was left of his pizza alone while the other guy ate some kind of red soup full of kibble-rice and green synthetic vegetables. "What's it too ya?"
The other student just shrugged. "Just heard that there was some kind of weird stuff going on there with Katsuo's clique."
How fast did rumors fly in a corpo school?
"Anyways, he'll probably jump you. He does that to everybody who isn't a corpo kid, tries to get us to drop out." It wasn't surprising to hear that. David let his head hang back. Classes were organized by year, department, and performance. So this guy had to be either outside of the General Management course or a lower scoring student.
"Happen to you?" David guessed.
The guy shrugged. "I'm in the police services department, enough of us from Reclaimers and the city tend to move in groups. Doesn't stop guys from the general Security Services from taking the piss out of guys who don't want to be personal bodyguards and hitmen."
It had been a longstanding argument whether Police Services should be separated form the general department of Security. The main branch of Arasaka was basically corporate military even if they advertised themselves mainly as bodyguards and the like. Policies had been made for when individuals who had Arasaka bodyguards got in trouble in areas that paid for Arasaka police. Generally, it went the way that the former wanted.
"Gotta suck," David agreed.
"Katsuo tried to pull Bruce Lee based MMA chips on me while going full wachachachacha on me," The policeman in training mimed a flurry of palm strikes. "But his dad is on the school board so all I could do was dodge and take it. Blocks would look like I hit Mulletbowl."
And now this guy had his respect for dissing Katsuo's haircut. "Thank you, nobody says anything about it." David picked up his pizza and took another bite. "So, what. You want to guard Corpo plaza?"
"I've been in a languages studies group," The kid admitted. "Been studying Irish Gaelic to hopefully get into the Belfast detachment, but I'm probably going to end up in Singapore if I make it out of Night City."
"You'd be in a pretty wealthy place so your pay'd be great," David blinked before introducing himself. "David Martinez."
"Alva Wu," The boy greeted him with a handshake. "Heard you sell BDs."
Now David knew what was going on. "Yeah, I don't have any on me right now but I can take an order."
He made a disgusted look. "I'm not into that snuff stuff, just sayin' that you have good business sense." Alva scratched his head. "If they were BDs of police and detectives I'd be all for it, but I'm not really interested in being in a cyberpsycho's head before it gets popped by C-SWAT."
"Fair," David changed his estimation of the guy. "So, what is this," He looked around the room. "Networking?"
Alva laughed. "You really don't stick around school after class huh?"
"Not really," David admitted.
"Look," Alva gestured towards a table where Katsuo was bragging with other guys from their class and a bunch of others. "You've got people from all the divisions there. Main reason, kids of guys on the school board are all together. They've got a free ride to managerial admin roles and HR where they don't have to risk shit." The gray haired teen raised a finger. "But, they're also going to be involved in Saka schools. That means they'll have access to school records. Great for knowing the competition and headhunting new employees in the future." The guy patted his chest. "So, everyone wants a piece."
More of the school was broken down between the different courses and corpo kids whose parents were involved in subsidiaries. Plenty of the latter were at each other's throats on general principle but that didn't mean subsidiaries that were in competition wouldn't buddy up for various reasons. People who wanted an in straight out of school did their best to make it into those circles and both the Security Division and Police Services had multiple cliques that were willing to provide protection to the others or even cause trouble.
Arasaka Academy, all of the backstabbing and backrooms deals of the Megacorp, but for teenagers.
David could start to see the big picture. "So what? SecDiv and PolSer kids get money and favors for being muscle?"
Alva wiggled his hand. "You sell BDs, everybody is either a buyer or a seller here. Even buyers have something sellers want. Eddies, favors, clout."
"What's in it for you?" David's eyes narrowed while Alva gave a good natured grin.
"Rumor is that you have an in with high level edgerunners," Alva rolled his eyes. "People are debating if that's true, but Katsuo did show pics of you and a woman who looks way too much like one that some people at least know about from Saka circles. Thing is, she runs with the brother of Arasaka L.A Branche's head. PolSec is the main pillar there so it makes sense to get connections that might lead to more connections." He shrugged. "But, having friendships just be transactional is how you get knifed in the dark."
It was a corpo scheme and he couldn't be sure about how much of that was genuine. David knew that he'd have a target on his back since the clothing store had been a real fuck up on Katsuo's end. Meaning it would still be good to have somebody on his back. "You're a Reclaimer, why'd your family shell the eddies to be here?"
"Towns don't last long without people coming and going through it or a company building in the market," Alva explained it simply. "We have a deal with Biotechnica but that only goes so far. Arasaka's banking division looks favorably on places with ties to them and there is always an executive looking for a new place to build their mansion, corporate office, or other facility."
Thy looked at each other for a long while.
"Sorry about your mom," The boy added. David closed his eyes. "Katsuo's slinging shit so you'll want to put on your armor. Black marks will rain if you fight back, even if it is the other guy that breaks company code."
David bristled. "I'm not just gonna sit there and take it if he says shit about my mom."
"You're top of your class," Alva drawled. "Pretty sure you can think of a workaround that doesn't get you expelled." Yup, this guy was in a different class. Otherwise he'd know that David could be stupid despite being smart.
Their conversation ended as a short haired girl broke away from a table that had burst out in laughter. Alva's eyes flashed yellow from a call on his agent, boyish face twisting in outrage. "Fucking BD artists." He threw up his hands and scarfed down the rest of the food in front of him. "You just do crime BDs where runners and psychos die right?"
Spoiler: Girl
"I sell normal stuff," David scoffed. "But Jimmy Kurosaki is Prem XBDs."
"Hand out revenge porn ones and I'll put my foot up your ass," Alva rubbed his forehead. "Some Militech guy has been making the rounds through corp schools, grabbing inputs and dumping them along with a XBD of them fucking."
Oh what the fuck?
"Is that chick going to be okay?" David looked as the door opened while some of the people in other cliques made loud moans at the fleeing girl.
"A guy released an XBD from his POV with all the feelings he had at the time unfiltered so everyone can know how much he enjoyed stringing her around while balls deep inside," Alva scowled.
She was almost definitely a corpo, but that didn't matter right now. "You're good, but I need to make sure on something then go do a job." David gave his pizza a longing look before abandoning it. "Have the rest of it!" He started to run.
=
Screams came from the girl's bathroom while David skirted around the corner. A gaggle of girls crammed their way out of the sliding door, shoes stained with blood while they shrieked. David put his foot in the way before it could close again and was greeted with the copper scent of blood.
David covered his mouth upon seeing a body crumpled to the floor, wrists soaked in water and blood thinned by its mixture with stuff from the tap and shards of glass in her knuckles. "Come on," He groaned while grabbing the girl by the shoulders and pulling her away from the water pouring out of the sink. There wasn't a knife around so he was pretty sure one of the larger pieces of glass on the floor was what she had used.
He remembered plenty of bodies pulled from apartments, bloated from having been in the bath while they bled out.
There weren't any bandages or anything and David didn't trust toilet paper to be safe for trying to cover the wounds so he did his best to tear fabric from his undershirt to tourniquet her upper arms. He hadn't expected to need any of the medical gear he bought from Doc at school so the best he could do right now was put additional pressure on her arms to allow as little bleeding as possible while giving a mental dial on his Agent.
"Wow, our drop out of school vs life ratio is going the right way." A voice made David's blood pressure rise.
"Are you short circuiting choom?" David growled while Katsuo leaned against the bathroom door. "Or were you bugged from the start."
The rat in human form raised his hands up like he was in front of the cops. "What, you don't think its Karma that someone that goes out with a Militech brat goes out of life? My family works for Arasaka, we aren't exactly friendly with the enemy."
He turned his head back to the girl as she groaned. "Listen, do you have TraumaTeam? They should be here fast but the school doctor should be here soon."
"Yeah, right," Katsuo snorted.
David paused. "What did you do?" There was no way this guy was that much of a sociopath.
"Please," Katsuo waved it off. "You think the XBD of a militech booster-wannabe going to town on her was released at the school first? I got a good look, boobs are small, but decent underneath that uniform."
"What the fuck did you do you hexed up motherfucker, did all that chrome make you a goddamn psycho?" David picked up the girl, thankful that the blood flow had lessened.
Katsuo stood in the doorway, hands still up while he smiled. More of his clique from class were standing out in the hall, making sure that there was no way for the cameras to see what went on in the bathroom. "Look, if someone is trash, it is a waste of company resources to pick them up."
"TraumaTeam will be coming," David hedged his bets.
"Doesn't matter if she bleeds out first," The blue haired mullet laughed. "Get the alert, prep an AV, drive over, get in the school and all the way over here. Plenty of time."
He could feel his teeth getting ground into knubs.
"Move it." David stated as he pushed forward with the girl in his arms.
"Look Choom," Katsuo stared him down. "Putting on new threads and getting chrome won't change that you are street trash. Bet whoever your actual biodad is went and jumped ship while your mom tried to shack of with the richest guy she ever slept with."
He wanted to rip the guy's head off.
David sighed, and knelt to put the girl back down on the floor.
"Good, now get lost you mutt." Katsuo laughed while turning to his buddies while David's new shoes squelched in the water and bloodstained floor.
"Eat shit!" David threw a punch, the chipware in his head guiding his steps as he got in close for a punch. Katsuo turned on his heel, arms nearly glowing while the synth skin on his knuckles pulled back to show metal.
The first punch went low, slamming into David's thigh with a crack to send him back before hitting him in the chest hard enough to make him slip onto the bloodstained floor. "Chippin in doesn't change the fact that you are a gutter rat."
He slipped up while trying to get up, staining what was left of his uniform and nearly falling on top of the wounded girl. "And you never had a soul you shitstain. What, did your dad have to pay Biotechnica for a clone and take a faulty batch for a discount?"
Katsuo stomped on David's hand with a crunch. "Who do you think you are? My dad is on the school board?" His designer shoes came down again and again, stomping all over David while he heard bones crack. "Do you think I can't fucking kill you choom?"
David activated the Sandevistan. He could see the water droplets pouring from the sink freeze like icicles hanging from a cold storage unit and spit fly from Katsuo's lips. He got up, breathing in and standing with his feet planted just inches away from Katsuo. His fists went from open to closed in the middle of his strike as he planted it against the guy's chest in a crushing strike. The feeling of a sternum breaking made David's spine tingle before seeing the guy fly back in slow motion.
He stepped back, seeing it continue before circling around Katsuo, seeing no one moving fast enough to realize what had happened yet. David blinked before leaning in, grabbing Katsuo's wallet from his pocket and pulling at his head to rip the blue techhairs out along with some of his scalp.
Time resumed with the boy managing to hit one of the others in his clique on the way out.
David picked up the wounded girl before anyone could get in the doorway and made a break for it.
The familiar whine of sirens greeted David as he got out, memories of the AV that came down during the crash whistling through his head while David saw the white armored form of TraumaTeam. "She was in the bathroom!" David quickly said before one of the guys grabbed the student while another shoved him back with one hand holding an SMG. "Hey I-"
"Get back from the patient or you will be made to move," The slightly tinny voice of the armored medic gave him an order while other kids crowded around to see what was going on.
Fuck it.
David turned around and began to walk out while seeing the glint of a silver ring waving in the air. "Hey, choom." Alva twisted around through the crowd with a plastic plate still bearing like a quarter of the pizza. "You want this?"
His stomach burned. "Yeah, I have work but yeah." Alva just barely got close enough to hand David what was left of the Pizza before the bastard lovechild of a van and APC rolled up, semi-hexagonal side door opening for a nearly seven foot tall guy to pull him in.
Spoiler: Rayno (Probably not his real name)
"You David?" A vaguely eastern European sounding man looked down at him, gold eyes nearly glowing through visor shaped shades.
"Do I want to say yes to a guy with an APC?" David asked, worried as the van began to move with the door still open. It shut behind him while a dark haired girl in painted on shorts hung up a rectangular cellphone. "Uh, Hello?"
The girl threw her head back to talk to him while driving. "That's Rayno, he is pissed off about being in my van with my rules. Izumo will be sending you a data key for an apartment over in Heywood that has supplies for part of the job. We'll do the briefing after getting that and meeting up with the others." She licked her lips. "Anyways, why are you covered in blood?""
Spoiler: Charlie Chan (Codename)
"Ah," He wasn't sure how to describe it. "Revenge porn XBDs and school bullies?"
She blinked owlishly. "Wow, I think I know the guy who made those. Good news, we are kidnapping him and bringing him over to what is probably an Arasaka Death Squad." The girl gestured at a bag in the seat next to her. "Your aunt gave me a bag with all your gear. Probably want a MaxDoc."
David spat up blood all over the European guy's shirt.
"You know," Rayno helped David sit down in the passenger side seat. "This is a great start to a run. Not even joking, know that the guys on the team will beat up, ah, shitheads."
"I think my femur was broken." David moaned while the adrenaline wore off.
"Don't worry, it will grow stronger." The guy slapped him on the back hard enough that more bones might have gotten crushed.
He glanced at the girl driving. "Please tell me that's our Solo."
"Techie. We'll be meeting with the Solo, a Nomad, Netrunner, and Rocker later." She held out her hand while still driving. "Call me Charlie Chan."
David wasn't sure how high his odds of survival were. "Like the detective in old black and white movies?"
She nodded. "Not my real name, but that's not important right now. So," Charlie nodded while just barely staying within the acceptable speed limit. "I was told you sell XBDs made by Jimmy Kurosaki. I've got some real ones and fakes in a case. We've set it up so the mark thinks he went through a different fixer to get an Edgerunners XBD collection. He'll probably have guards but between being close to grab the XBDs and the guys with weapons, we'll have a little firefight, pull him in my armored van, and run while the others get in their vehicles and take care of the bodyguards. Netrunner will spoof his comms and then we just need to drive over into an abandoned part of town we got a personal marker for."
"We have like seven people on this?" David asked.
"Yeah," She handed him a shard. "Everybody gets one of these. Decryption key and Cantonese language chip, messages will be through that to make it harder for when not in radio silence."
They were going to kidnap a corpo kid and get him killed.
"I have the wallet and hair of a rat over from school," David decided to let that out in the air.
Pale eyes turned to David as they pulled up to a stoplight. "Were you…planning on a frame up?"
"No?" He wasn't sure anymore.
"Yeah, you are Uncle Ogier's kid." She sighed. "Not by blood by the way, my grandpa's his main fixer. Just…no one in grandpa's old outfit actually makes a plan they stick to unless it is for increasing the bodycount."
Rayno leaned in. "If we don't want him dead, we can always make it so we save that kid and have him owe us his life."
"That is evil," Charlie stated before punching the gas. "But I am perfectly willing to go along with it."
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Nov 7, 2022Report
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