"Neighbor, what a surprise! How can I help you?"
``Are you fucking kidding me?´´ Lucy thought, wanting to say it out loud, but not daring to, at the friendly question from her annoying half-naked neighbor. Looking inside the noisy apartment, where background music mixed with the sound of a fight between a "huge" dog and a crow that were running uncontrollably around the room, colliding with walls and furniture.
And about the music... if it wasn't the radio, it was live with all kinds of instruments: guitar, drums, and even the most annoying for Lucy, a damn grand piano that every time her neighbor played it, made the walls of her apartment tremble, and all of this at any time, whether it was night or day.
Lucy could see the other cause of the noise, also half-naked, coming out of the bathroom without shame or embarrassment through the open door, dressed only in the bottom of her underwear and a towel over her shoulders covering her breasts.
Shouting, "For fuck's sake, stop it already!" When even she was annoyed by the noise and the behavior of her pets.
Drawing the attention of the distracted Lucy, "So... neighbor, what are you doing here? It's always a pleasure to see you, but... you're interrupting something... you know?" When her neighbor smilingly asked her, as he took a pack of cigarettes from a piece of cabinet near the door and lit a cigarette with an old zippo with a deformed ace, as if it had been shot.
Centering the scattered Lucy when the Zippo closed, having stared at her neighbor's muscular and tattooed body. Clearing her throat, when she saw him smirk for that, before airing his grievances to his annoying and... sexy neighbor. "Of course I know! You know the noi-"
But being interrupted by a sudden...
"Oi, Sora, did you bring breakfast?"
"Yeah, I got some pancakes from Tom's, the ones you like, before coming back last night. They're in the fridge."
Hearing an enthusiastic and sincere "Yee!!" from her neighbor as she crossed again in Lucy's field of vision, semi-naked, heading towards the small kitchen, which was basically a fridge and a microwave.
Lucy also saw a pure smile grow on her neighbor's face as he watched his girlfriend happy for a few pancakes while smoking, before turning back to the white-haired who was looking at him "So, what did you want?"
But they were interrupted again by another "Oi, Sora?"
"What..."
"Thank you!"
"Heh, you don't need to say it..." Turning once more time to Lucy, "So what up, neighbor...?"
Lucy stared at her neighbor without speaking, after witnessing the cute conversation of the couple... Annoying her.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" she said finally snapping. "Do you know the noise you make, damn it!? Turn down the damn volume of your music, your damn pets and your damn noises of horny monkeys... do you hear me!?"
With that, Lucy turned around and walked away from the door, annoyed and somewhat envious of the happy couple who, from the looks of the apartment, Lucy thought of as two spoiled brats playing at having a casual life living in Japantown.
"What bug bit her?" asked Judy, still half-naked, resting her arm on Sora's robotic shoulder, the two of them watching the back, perhaps a little lower, of the attractive, angry neighbor, as Judy ate a cold pancake with blueberry bits and chocolate chips.
"No idea," Sora replied, without understanding what had upset her. "But if the noise fucks her up so much.... she should have said please" Sora said growing a villain's grin, as he carry Judy into his arms. "Are you ready to continue where we left off?"
"I would love to but... I have to go to the workshop, I can't be late again..." Judy said giving Sora a soft kiss on the nose and trying to get off.... but
"I don't care" Sora wouldn't let her, biting her ear as he pulled her against the wall next to Lucy's apartment.
---
In the apartment next door...
Lucy slumped onto the round bed in her lonely apartment after her tantrum, letting out a frustrated and exhausted sigh.
She had spent the entire night doing easy gigs like Merc, such as investigating whether someone was cheating on their partner or parents worried about what their partying child was up to - nothing dangerous or lucrative. But with each passing day, she knew less and less about Kiwi, the only person she knew in the city, and not wanting to draw attention to herself they were the way Lucy had found to earn Eddis, along with her escapes on the Subway
But finally, she had earned enough to rent and maintain a new apartment. She was very excited about this change, as the apartment she had rented was much better than most of the apartments in the Mega-Buildings, and from the rooftop, she could see the take-offs from Night City's Spacesport, which made Lucy daydream when she saw them.
However, there was a catch that shattered her excitement: her noisy neighbors. They never stopped annoying her in different ways, whether it was with loud music, their pets, or themselves...
`But still, "Ahmm... I shouldn't have been so hard'" Lucy said/thought before putting on her usual Bd, which she used to escape from this city that she hated... but just as she was about to activate the Bd, she heard something on the wall next to her neighbors that stopped her.
"Pak..." A thump
"Pak-Pak..." Then a couple...
"Pak-Pak-Pak...Pak-Pak-Pak-Pak-Pak-Pak-Pak-Pak" Followed by a constant and continuous pounding, accompanied by muffled moans through the walls...
"Are you fucking kidding me!" Making Lucy express her disbelief for the third time in a few minutes, unable to believe the shameless neighbors who seemed to be doing it on purpose.
Lucy decided to put on her headphones to try and ignore them and evade herself, but the noise was still too much, and her thoughts returned to the perverted couple next door, at first with resentment... then envy... and as the loud noises continued, Lucy began to recall the semi-naked body of her neighbor, unknowingly joining in with the pulsating beats against the wall... with her own on her bed.
---
25 minutes later
"Sora you bastard, you're going to pay for this one!" Judy said looking angry, but with a satisfied smile on her face, having to get dressed in a hurry now being late to the workshop of "Iron Beast'' the company she and Sora had created.
With more orders and more work every day, especially for Judy as Ceo of the company, even with meetings with representatives of major corporations wanting to invest in the company or outright wanting to buy Sora and Judy's share.
"Are you going to stop by the workshop later?" asked Judy as she put on skinny jeans with silver studs on the shins that highlighted her slender figure and gave her a rocker touch, short black heeled boots that added a sophisticated air to her outfit, a short leather jacket and a tight white top covering her arms giving a contrast between elegant and daring. Overall creating Judy's new style as Ceo, with a unique blend of different influences from Street Kid, Biker and Neokitch.
"I don't think so," said Sora, lying on the bed smoking again, watching Judy dress, appreciating the changes in her over the past three years.
Judy had put her first tattoos like a fire truck, the letter of Heat Waves on her arm or Luna's caricature drawing with her paws on the lower part of her abdomen, keeping the haircut the nanobots gave her, ending with her characteristic shaved side, but since she wasn't with the Mox, she didn't dye it green and fuchsia... instead, she dyed it dark blue at the base, which gradually lightened towards the tips, ending in a bright light blue. Never looking more beautiful for Sora.
"Aoi wants to see me, so I'm going to take advantage that Red-Oni(Hehe) is not in the mornings to go see her and maybe I sleep a little there... yesterday I finished late, then I have to stop by the bar, I have to see my favorite Ice queen, she owes me the eddis from the last job."
"Tch ok, but stop by to say hi to Ainara too when you go to see Aoi, I see Peter every day but I haven't seen her.... for 2 weeks now..."
"Tch(x2).... Okay...!"
"Don't cry! They are literally side by side.... I'm leaving, I love you!" Said Judy walking out the door
"Yeah sure, you say that, but look who you send to do your dirty work!" With Sora quickly replying before the door closed.
"You're a Merc, aren't you?, you should be used to it!" But Judy couldn't restrain herself from answering despite her haste, poking her head around the door frame.
"Ha-ha very funny, me too, by the way!"
"I know" Judy replied smiling before the door closed, with Luna following her, a gray and white tabby cat with the shape of Ocelot. Judy's pet and bodyguard and she wasn't the only one.
---
After a few minutes, Sora got dressed as well and went towards the garage with Eco behind him and the crow happy on his shoulder, while turning every now and then towards Eco, as if he was bragging about his position on his creator's shoulder, getting a reaction in Eco that pulled his fangs to Fool or F.o.o.l. The aerial surveillance system that Sora had created after the events of 3 years ago, with the intention of always knowing where the people he cared about were.
Which consisted not of a single crow, flying around the city, but 30 of them flying 24/7 having several charging points installed by Sora on rooftops all over the city. Controlled by the same peculiar Ai, an altered copy of Eco's, creating the F.O.O.L system (Flying Operators of Observation and Logistics).
A monitoring network that any fixer in the city would kill for and from which Sora pulled some Eddis when something worthwhile dropped, keeping the rest of the stuff the Fool system discovered in case it was needed.
When they reached the garage door and entered "WT-" Sora found an empty garage, with a note on his black helmet [I told you you'd pay for it! Pd; XxXxXx] missing Judy's gray helmet.
With Sora wanting to scream " HERESY!" out loud in the most dramatic way at the heinous crime of stealing his true and only true love, his Kusanagi Yaiba, while clenching his fist in the air promising retaliation, but giving him laziness and instead just picturing it in his head to end up looking at Eco and Fool and saying annoyed; "We're going to have to go on the subway. " Thinking maybe 'I should buy me another Airb...' due to the increasingly common thefts of his Yaiba.... 'or maybe a car'....
'or maybe...' Sora thought, looking up at the blue sky of Night City as he walked out of the garage.
---
Meanwhile in Night City
"Uooohhhh!" Judy enjoyed riding the Yaiba motorcycle that Sora had not only restored in these 3 years but had also improved in every way, such as...
[This is Ncpd stop the vehicle immediately! This is an order!]
Being able to see the two cops in the patrol car as the unknown driver that they had given the stop for the speed at which she was driving and from which they could not scan her IDn, gave them the middle finger before touching the screen of her motorcycle.
Increasing its speed, when she activated the guidance system that gave most of the control of the motorcycle to the on-board computer, leaving the patrol car and its occupants watching how the motorcycle and its driver drove away dodging the traffic at full speed without them being able to do anything.
---
Sora, for his part, wasn't having such a good time
["Next stop District Zero, Corporate Center."]
Squeezed in the crowd of people trying to get to their jobs or teenagers going to their private academies during rush hour. Suddenly, the man in front of Sora sneezed directly into his face, barely giving Sora time to cover it with his black arm "Agh gross... fuck!" Sora muttered as he shook his head and his arm with drool on it.
The man who sneezed apologized to Sora without giving it much thought, ending Sora's little patience, ordering Eco, who lifted his paw over the man's pants squirting coolant that stank from being exposed to the air.
Sora moved to a less saturated area of the wagon, away from the crowd and the stench. Putting on some black and silver open rings on the tops of his ears. But just as he was about to turn them on, Sora's nanobots filtered a conversation through all the noise, being able to hear two teenagers watching him.
"It's him, I'm telling you," one of them said.
"There's no way it's him, I'll bet you anything. It looks like him, but he's missing the ponytail, if you're so sure let Netwatch know," replied the other.
"Are you crazy?! I would never do that to me Jackie!... besides it's true it's impossible that it's him, but don't tell me he doesn't look like?"
"Who knows?, you can barely see the features in the silhouettes he uses.... but, yes, it does look like!"
Both of them looking at the wallpaper of one of the girls' pad, which had the image of a white silhouette playing the piano.
Sora overhearing the conversation ''They're just teenagers, it's nothing to worry about'' thought aloud in his head, calming the being that had leaked the conversation, paranoid that they would be discovered. Still, Sora pulled up the hood of his coat and stood with his back to them, looking out the window, still paying for the events of 3 years ago.
Touching the back of his head, missing the ponytail he had cut off. With Judy not being the only one who had changed in these 3 years, with Sora growing taller and ending up a bit paler, due to his change to a nocturnal life, working at night.
A few days after the incident of the city hacking and the sudden repair of the Blackwall. Netwatch officially accused the anonymous author known as Jackie Blackhand as the prime suspect in the city hacking, keeping the events of the Blackwall hidden from the masses.
Even so, after Netwatch's accusation and capture order, the white figure of Sora playing the piano, appeared in all the news of the city again and much of the world... something that didn't please "Mama Hanako" who forced Sora to keep a low profile during these 3 years, even as Co-creator of Iron Beast, leaving the public relations and the company's image to Judy and the main shareholder Hanako Arasaka with her Iron Beast following her wherever she went.
Which led Sora to live more as the Merc "Okami" than as ''Sora'' in these 3 years.
As he remembered all that and the girls kept looking at him and whispering. Sora ignored them and turned on the rings in his ears, tuning in to 107.3 Morro Rock Radio, but just as Kerry Eurodyne's last song was starting to play, it cut out, to leave Maximum Mike's gravelly voice with his crazy theories and conspiracies show, that always interrupted when a good song was playing.
[All right, listen up, people. I've got a public service announcement. It's about the scourge of our age, that Chrome Nightmare that you know as cyberpsychosis. It seems we can't go a day without some boosted lunatic tearing through a crowd of bystanders. The story we've always head is that it's a psychological condition, a kind of dissociative violence. But is there more to it?]
[What if cyberpsychosis is intentional?]
[An old friend of had this theory… that he thought the biggest manufacturers had got together a long time ago and agreed on a baseline failure rate for certain devices. Bad code, intentionally inserted into the mind-machine interfaces, to slowly drive people up the wall, a kind of human-planned obsolescence.]
[They figured, what's the best defense against a nutjob with a 23 inch telescoping blade in his forearm? Heh, a 26 inch telescoping blade in yours. I can't say he's not onto something.]
[Every time Net64 News runs a story on a massacre, some Arasaka exec buys himself a new yacht. Can that be all though? It's no secret that incidents of violent cyberpsychosis...have skyrocketed in recent decades, despite improvements in manufacturing and design. But there is something new in the lastest generation of cyberware. Get ready for this, kids- it's...]
`the Blackwall.´ [the Blackwall.]
Said Sora in his head at the same time as Mike on the radio, not that Sora knew, it was just that Mike always used it as one of the reasons behind his conspiracy theories, as a scapegoat for everything wrong with the world. Which was usually 'the Blackwall' or some other corporation like Arasaka, Militech or Biotechnica.
The worst thing is that, on occasion, Sora was sure that Mike was right.
[You aren't a 'runner yourself or a code-jokey, you might not know, but the Blackwall isn't some mystical border floating somewhere in the deep Net. It's actually complex hardware-software infrastructure designed to keep AIs from accessing your gear, among other things. Maybe it doesn't work as well as NetWatch says. Maybe the madness of the deep Net leaks over to our side from the Blackwall from time to time...drive some poor choomba right over the edge. And it's possible it doesn't really exist anyway. Maybe it's just something the media came up with.]
As Sora listened intently to Mike's words, he felt a slight brush against his leg and noticed Eco sitting behind him, looking up at him with a pleading expression.
Knowing what Eco was asking for, Sora smiled at him as the light blue circle around his pupil lit up white, using his whitecode. Sharing his hearing sense to Eco, who, although he could turn on the radio if he wanted to, when Sora used this method with him, became one of Eco´s favorite thing.
A bit like Sora, who although he could connect to any frequency he saw, with his nanobots, he still used the rings in his ears to listen to the radio.
[Look, I'm not saying there aren't attacks. I've seen a few myself. What I am saying is there's a million reasons why one human might wanna butcher another. Hell, we've been doing it for millions of years, even without cyberware. Well, let me tell you, listeners, with cyberware it's easier than ever.]
With the two listening to Mike's monologue....
[Now, let's move on to our next topic - the mysterious unmanned motorcycle that's been spotted around Night City. Some eyewitnesses claim it's a Yaiba Kusanagi, but heavily armored, and that it only appears at night. Some off-duty NCPD officers even reported a high-speed chase with the phantom bike, but they were unable to catch it.]
That made Sora look intensely at Eco, while the latter looked away... avoiding his guilt
[What could be the explanation for this strange occurrence? Some say it's a new prototype being tested by one of the big corps, while others speculate it's some kind of AI-controlled vehicle. But there are those who believe it's something much more sinister - a harbinger of doom, or perhaps even a ghostly apparition.]
'No, no, none of those..., well almost one' thought Sora as he listening to Max's crazy theories, having the culprit in front of him.
[And finally, as we approach the anniversary of the death of Richard Night, I have to mention one of my favorite conspiracy theories - that Night's death was not what it seemed. As you may recall, Night was found dead in his penthouse with several gunshot wounds, leading many to assume that Richard's luck had run out and one of his many enemies had finally caught up with him.]
[However, there are those who claim that the forensic evidence tells a different story. According to a friend of mine who claims to have seen a copy of the infamous forensic report, that disappeared off the face of the earth along with the forensic who did it, the gunshot wounds were postmortem - which means that Night was already dead when he was shot. And that's not all - my friend also claims that the report suggests that Night's brain was fried, as if he had been hit by some kind of high-energy pulse.]
[So, what really happened to Richard Night? Was he murdered, or did he take his own life? And if he was killed, who was behind it? These are questions that may never be answered, but one thing is certain - the truth is out there, somewhere, waiting to be uncovered.]
While Sora and Eco were still listening to Mike, the train stopped with most of the teenagers getting off at the stop for the private academies in District Zero where there were no public high schools, causing Sora to lower his hood now that the train was a little quieter.
[That's all the time we have for today, folks. Keep your eyes and ears open, and stay safe out there. This is Maximum-
But as the train started moving again and Mike finally said goodbye, Sora sensed a weak malware in his systems, so weak that it would go unnoticed by most. Lighting up his eyes and, in the next instant, appeared within the Cyberspace of his body in front of the isolated malware.
Arc was lying on the ground as if asleep. He opened one of his eyes and asked, "Are we under attack?" Being answered by two ""No"" from Sora and his Soulcode coming out of him, both reading the code of the weak malware and letting it free....
"Are you sure?" Arc asked, not liking the idea of letting a Malware free no matter how weak it was....
"Yeah, it's okay..." Said Sora smiling after reading the use of the malware.
With his Soulcode replying as he logged back into Sora "It's just...."
-
Back on the Subway.
Feeling the chip ejecting from his neck, Sora slowed his time, illuminating the nanobots in the tattoo on his spine, which assisted and backed up his nervous system, entering the world where every move he made left a trail behind him, grabbing the chip with one hand and with the other, the wrist of the white-haired woman who was about to grab it.
Getting back to normal, as he pulled her wrist and spun her around, making her crash into the window in front of Sora with her back, and immobilizing her by placing his knee between her legs.
Mike, signing off.]
"Ho! Neighbor, what a surprise!" wiping the smile off his affable comment, as he coldly asked "What do you think you're doing?" staring at Lucy immobilized in front of him.