Asa Katsuragi tried to extract some useful information from the extremely poor television signal, to understand what was happening outside the power-cut Underground City, but to no avail.
"I'm really sorry about the earlier incident." The redhead gangster spoke with a mischievous smirk, looking both short and youthful, with a cunning look on his face.
"You said she's your sister, is that right?"
"Actually, she's my foster sister, we aren't related by blood, you know."
Xu Yang didn't trust the guy to fix him up, but he had an abundance of tools and was skilled with his hands; right now, Xu Yang had no choice but to pin his hopes on him.
"I'm Xu Yang." The character was rather uncommon, and most people mistook it for Xu Yang when he introduced himself orally.
"I'm Nakano Osamu." The redhead said, "Your internal circuits are pretty high-end."
Produced by Kyushu High Pavilion, the quality naturally far exceeded that of ordinary companies and civilian implants. What could the local gang know about it?
"The disk hasn't burnt out, has it?" Xu Yang asked.
The micro-disk embedded in his hand contained the most important decoding package and the massive corporate database; it also integrated many usable Digital Mind applications and was the key to cracking security devices.
"It's fine, not damaged. It's clear it was blasted by an Electromagnetic Pulse, there's a surge protection device inside. It stored the data on insulated firmware, it can be restored."
"That's great news." In such times, one really must thank the company's engineers for designing products with genuine disaster recovery capabilities.
"Your circuits are shot, I can only reroute them with some cheap stuff." Nakano Osamu took out a scalpel and some copper wire, "It shouldn't take too long, and I guess it'll be functional enough to light up. I can't do anything about the running speed, safety, or crash resistance though, after all, this isn't exactly a place specialized in fixing implants."
"I'm very grateful for this already." Xu Yang nodded. These people didn't know the first thing about Digital Mind, which was completely alien technology to them; they surely couldn't perform any advanced repairs, but a basic patch-up could prevent the situation from worsening.
Nakano Osamu scratched his red hair and gave Xu Yang something akin to a painkiller, then smeared alcohol on Xu Yang's hand, cut open the back of his hand, and dug out the burnt circuitry, already stained with blood.
Xu Yang clenched his teeth and endured the pain.
"Wow... your 'flesh'." Nakano Osamu observed, "It's almost grown together with the circuitry, I have to cut it all out."
It was the result of a previous Farosa healing miracle. It had saved my life before, but now it caused unnecessary fusion, making the repair work doubly painful—yet I had no choice but to bear it.
"I'm okay, just make sure it's disinfected and anti-infection measures are in place, and do whatever you have to do." Xu Yang's face was pale, but he wore a faint smile.
"Tough guy." Nakano Osamu started cutting.
He separated the implant's circuit structure from the native flesh and bone, removed the original bionic filler, and piled it on the new wiring.
"How are you feeling? If it's too much, I can up the anesthetic." Nakano Osamu said.
"I'm fine." Xu Yang suppressed the intense pain.
God knows what was in the gang's painkillers, what if it contained "Stamp"? He had already ended up with one shot and didn't want to be injected with any more strange substances.
"Talking can distract from the pain." Nakano Osamu said casually as he worked, "I used to be into music, what about you?"
"I studied at a school owned by the company, learning how to be a company man."
"I didn't study, can't do shit, no company wanted me, and then everything went to hell. I went to a live streaming platform, took a loan to buy a motion-capture virtual suit to act like a woman and send portraits to people who tipped."
"Portraits... you mean photos, right? Doesn't that reveal your male identity?"
"You have no idea, cross-dressing is really thrilling, there are even photos of my white legs on the local forums."
"So you're pretty successful then."
"Not really, too many people in this line, plus AIs to compete with, they call themselves artificial idiots. I was at the bottom for six months, barely had enough for food, and I owed a hundred thousand for the suit that I couldn't pay back. I was chased and beaten by debt collectors."
"And then you met Asa Katsuragi?"
"Not exactly, Katsuragi and I were both destitute kids from the same street, knew each other since we were little," Nakano Osamu said, "I couldn't stand being hounded by debt collectors anymore, decided to join the gang, and Katsuragi, worried I would be bullied here, followed suit, volunteering herself. Katsuragi's got a mean punch! She's fierce with everyone."
"It's not 'fierce with everyone'." Asa Katsuragi interjected, "It's serving the Suzuki Family."
"Exactly, that's what I meant." Nakano Osamu nodded, "Bet our lives and fortunes, always advancing toward Leader Suzuki's victory! It's the same as those stereotypical gang robots, but honestly, that whole thing is outdated. These days, people have moved past gang stuff, turning into security companies would be more promising than being in a gang."
"The gang is our family, loyalty is our value." Asa Katsuragi said and then fell silent again, turning her attention back to the TV that could barely display a clear picture.
"Earlier you mentioned a virtual suit, like the one Suzukawa Kiyo has?" Xu Yang said.
Suzukawa Kiyo was the most famous virtual idol on the network, globally renowned.
"Nowhere close, she's on a whole other level, the value of 50 million worldwide viewers...
Just as Xu Yang was about to speak, a strange feeling surged through his heart.
—Zzzt—
It lit up!
He felt an uncontrollable excitement. Power successful, components operational, Digital Mind online!
He called up his panel, the content he could read had turned into a bunch of scrambled code, but at least it was functioning, not completely damaged like before.
Luckily, luckily.