The Corpo
The sting of fear and humiliation had dulled by the time she entered the megabuilding elevator, and as the metal box began its descent, she allowed herself a breath of relief as the realization she wasn't going to be torn to pieces today began settling in.
Oh she was still very, very, frustrated at being outplayed so completely and overwhelmingly-
But staying angry at the cyborg who facilitated her survival was a stupid fucking idea, especially with his ridiculously deep connections.
Sure, she was a corporate employee, but she wasn't high enough in the chain of command to possess that kind of arrogant self importance.
Yet.
Still, the realization that he had been humoring her for the entirety of their conversation stung her pride like a bitch.
Valerie slapped her cheeks and inhaled sharply "Look on the bright side, V." Her previously controlled voice took on its more natural rasp now "Just means your contact is more useful now."
Right. That was a far more comf- productive way of looking at things.
Sighing with an emotion she couldn't even identify anymore, she rang up her loaned driver, and prepared for what came next.
---
The Arasaka Tower didn't look nearly as foreboding as it did when she arrived in the morning, and the expectant looks of the sharks she begrudgingly called colleagues only threatened to add a pep to her step as she walked into Counterintel's HQ.
Most of the fuckers didn't even pretend they weren't just waiting to see the show as she 'inevitably' crashed and burned.
"Ms. V." Her assistant greeted her with a perfectly professional expression on his face, though his posture made him seem unusually eager "Mr. Jenkins requested you visit his office as soon as you came back."
"Is that so." Valerie looked the grasping little shit over, somehow managing to keep the cruel smirk from worming its way onto her face "Thanks, Smith."
"Of course, Ms. V." The man inclined his head and stepped back, not even bothering to hide his own smirk now.
'I'll deal with you later.' She decided and left him behind, patiently passing through all the security checks as she waited to be admitted to Jenkins' office.
The moment the security AI cleared her, and she walked into the dark room, Arthur Jenkins' face twisted in irritation "V." He said, the psychopaths usually cold tone far more irritable "Where the fuck have you been?"
"Doing damage control." She didn't quite snap back but just barely so, before tacking on a quick "Sir."
"Damage control?" Jenkins expected outburst ceased as his eyebrows rose, his gaze turning evaluating for a quiet few moments before he indicated for the chair across his office desk "Sit."
Making sure to wrestle her emotions under control, she did as she was told and took a seat, just barely managing to stop her vision from swimming as her body relaxed at the much needed comfort.
"Explain." Jenkins ordered harshly.
Nodding curtly, she began "Our operation with the Maelstrom-Tyger gang war-"
"Your." Jenkins corrected "Operation."
How she managed to keep herself from gritting her teeth, she had no idea.
"As you say, sir." She agreed dully "My operation with the gang war didn't go as planned, and I saw fit to do some emergency field work to salvage the situation."
"And." Jenkins' eyes narrowed, before his frustration bubbled up again and he waved for her to hurry it up "Speak V. You wouldn't be so smug if you didn't have something for me."
"I managed to get a meeting with the victorious Tyger Claw." She said simply, not rising to his bait "And he agreed to cooperate with Counterintel, and have me act as the liaison."
The CO didn't immediately answer, merely staring at her for a long moment before frowning "And what happens when he learns about our actions against him? Hm? Have you considered that?"
"Oh he already knew, sir. His Mother's work, apparently." She half-chirped, much to her internal horror.
Showing no reaction to her mockery, Jenkins pinched the bridge of his nose "And just how did you manage to convince Jugo Okada to agree to this?"
'By being ridiculously lucky.' Her mind supplied "He seemed to appreciate my audacity, sir." Is what she said instead.
Jenkins' eye twitched, and he made a point of looking her over with a mocking leer "Yes, I'm sure the man was transfixed by what he saw."
'Don't punch your boss' face off, V. Don't you fucking do it.'
"And you are sure?" Jenkins pressed "That he isn't just playing along?"
"He'll not retaliate, that much is certain." She answered, knowing for a fact that the man was indeed just playing along "As for actively working for us, that might take me some doing."
If he caught her previous exaggeration, he didn't show it and instead just grunted in irritation "Fine." It sounded like it physically hurt him to force the words out "I'm leaving it to you to resolve the entire situation. Make sure the Tyger Claws don't lose their territory in Watson, and ensure their cooperation, any other projects can wait. This takes priority."
Finally, she felt the spark of triumph she desired, and she quickly nodded in acceptance.
"Dismissed." Jenkins waved her out with a scowl, and as she stood and turned to leave, he spoke up again "And V. Watch your step."
For some reason, the usually ominous warning didn't feel all that threatening this time.
Valerie left the CO's office feeling like she had just gotten a second wind, the victorious smirk she had been suppressing finally spreading on her face and immediately informing the rest of the scum she was still firmly above them.
She delighted in each and every one of their supposedly subtle reactions.
And all the more so when she walked up to her office, and saw an uncomfortable Smith currently sweating like a pig and now shivering under her glare.
"Smith." She said and the man gulped "We are still on gang war duty, and I want a full and thorough report on every. single. incident. happening out there, the moment it happens."
The man paled "B-but-"
Seeing her threatening glare, he clicked his mouth shut.
"I don't care if you have to sleep in this god damn cubicle. Smith." She leaned in, whisper-hissing the words out "But if I find one mistake in your reports, I will have your head. Understood?"
The man's back straightened like a rod and he nodded in defeat "Yes, ma'am."
"Good man." She smirked, patting his shoulder briefly before promptly forgetting he existed and sitting down at her personal desk.
The moment the glass doors shut she slumped in her seat "Fuuuuck." She groaned, simply staring into the ceiling with thoroughly exhausted eyes.
She didn't allow herself to dose off though, and forcefully sat up before activating her personal computer, inputting her credentials and starting an obscured internal inquest on one Neville Werner.
She might have dodged the executioner's axe today, but she wasn't stupid enough to stay indebted to the cyborg that made it possible. He seemed the type to take punctuality very seriously.
And who knew, if she gave him enough to work with she might just happen to have a day where she wasn't feeling like her blood was on fire sometime before new year's.
A girl could dream, right?
Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
Thankfully, by the time V and Jugo managed to come to an agreement-
Well, I call it an agreement but it was more or less something like this:
V said 'let's not murder each other' and Jugo responded with 'Aight.' before immediately calling for a celebration of the new alliance and effectively forcing the dead on her feet woman to down multiple shots of his strongest sake.
That was until she finally snapped and glared him into getting on with it.
And knowing the madman, that pretty much sold it for him.
In any case, while the two of them were doing their negotiations, I busied myself with far more important work and managed to finish my examination of Jugo's Sandevistan in full by the time they were done.
To my satisfaction, my prototype was very efficient even while working with a fleshling's less than robust nervous system, and while there was some strain from Jugo pulling on it a bit too much in his fight he stopped just before it started doing permanent damage.
Though as much as I'd like to call it wisdom on his end, it was probably just dumb luck he lost consciousness at the last possible moment.
The little shit had the temerity to pout at me when I told him he couldn't pull that much usage from the sandy more than once a month if he didn't want to slowly start going stupid.
Not that there was much hope for him to begin with.
He did agree though.
As for how I managed to make a Tyger Claw Captain do something as suicidal as replacing his spine with a prototype Sandevistan model?
I fucking didn't, that's how!
Before the whole mess with Totentanz, I ran the idea of someone desperate enough for momentary power testing it out for me and the man immediately decided he was going to do it, because fuck caution and good sense apparently!
And once the idea got into his head there was no convincing him otherwise, so I made peace with potentially having to scoop his fried brain off the ground and installed the damned thing after quintuple checking everything.
This was the first time I almost felt guilty for accepting payment for an implant.
To my complete and utter lack of surprise though, the Bellator Mk0.1 worked to specifications.
Despite some of the base inefficiencies the prototype suffered from due to its nature as one, the shift in focus from just overloading the active perception to the subconscious reflexive parts of the brain turned out to be the superior design path.
The reflex to cyberware integration just seemed to click better than some of the lesser models I disassembled and pushed the man's reaction and movement speeds to well beyond peak human limits while providing far less strain on the whole system in the process.
Still, even as I very cautiously began considering a variant for my own use, a stray thought just wouldn't stop bugging me.
No matter how many times I watched, and re-watched the fight between Jugo and Powerpump I couldn't shake the odd impression that Jugo was moving far faster than even my most optimistic projections should have theoretically permitted.
Now I knew for a fact I was far more intelligent than the vast majority of people, but I sure as shit wasn't intelligent enough to create a device capable of altering the flow of time on accident.
Which is how I found myself spending a good three hours playing, and re-playing the fight while doing downright autistic levels of mathematical calculations to make sure I wasn't just seeing shit.
To make a very long story short, I wasn't.
And to make things even more confusing, the fact his muscles, shrapnel wounds notwithstanding, weren't shredded into tiny bits from the sheer strain of movement also went unexplained.
This inevitably led me to one simple conclusion.
The unknown increase to specifications came from the user, and not from the implant.
It was the only reasonable explanation I could come up with, as I knew the implant itself from inside out and any other hypothesis I could come up with I had just spent hours disproving.
"Think, Michael, think." I muttered, tapping my fingers on my work table.
Before I felt a thought shove itself to the forefront of my mind and refuse to leave "Cyberdecks." I exhaled in realization "They allow one to transfer their consciousness to the net, but no matter how rapid someone's nervous response is, avoiding at least some lag between brain and ICON should be mathematically impossible..."
"Unless." I couldn't help but grin as I slammed my hands onto the workshop table "There is more to the human mind than I had ever imagined."
And to think I took it all for granted for all these years.
Oh I needed to start running tests, so, so many tests! I needed to time my connection to the net and compare it with distance, and somehow record my own brain signals while doing it...
Did the corpos know about this?
The sudden thought felt like a bucket of cold water tossed on my head, but I didn't let it drown my growing sense of wonderment.
It was almost impossible that they didn't possess some kind of understanding of the implications all of this carried, but something told me their imagination was as ever, limited.
To me, in this moment though?
The possibilities seemed endless.
I didn't even notice it as my fingers clutched on their own, scraping holes in my table as they vibrated rapidly.
Suddenly, I took in a sharp breath, and stepped back, rising my hands in front of my face and slowly making them stop their erratic movements.
"Yeah..." I sighed as the rampant signals moving through all of my implants slowed to their normal state "Best take it slow for now."
And just as well, as I noticed a message had appeared on my Agent minutes ago, telling me of Senko's two surviving goons who had come and left a few hard drives in my waiting room before leaving as quickly as they could.
But I wasn't looking to replace one thought spiral with another, and instead checked the time only to find it was already three in the afternoon, and I was supposed to go fetch Rebecca's crew soon anyways.
I hadn't taken three whole steps out of my private workshop before said shortstack burst into my clinic, practically vibrating with energy "You ready, Mike?" She chirped as she saw me.
"Just about." I shook my head with amusement "What's got you so excited?"
"I miss my chooms, duh." She winked.
"And your brother?" I half-teased.
Her expression soured briefly "Yeah... We should probably pick the gonk up on the way."
"Wait, really?" I paused in surprise.
"I'm not sure if the asshole even left the safehouse." She crossed her arms and grumbled "Probably did just to waste his money on joytoys."
"Rebecca." I couldn't help the teasing smirk "Are you... worried, for Pilar?"
"What? No I'm not!" She retorted, but I could hear the briefest hint of hesitation "I'm just making sure he doesn't die from some weird fungus like a gonk. Only I get to kill him." She finished with a haughty nod.
"Riiight." My smirk only widened, as I gave her 'I totally trust you for real' look.
To which her face gained a slight hue and she looked away "'Fuckin gonk."
I just chuckled and shook my head, leaving her to pretend sulk as long as she wanted while I went and got the van ready.
She lasted a whole five seconds.
---
The drive back to the safehouse I arranged was surprisingly quiet, as in despite driving straight into Maelstrom territory, we barley even saw the cyberized gonks, and those that we did see looked like fresh recruits with weapons that could generously be called scrap.
Despite my increasing (and quite healthy, thank you very much) sense of paranoia, no sudden attack came as we waited for Pilar to extract his ass from the maze of rust, and I inevitably ended up checking both the area and the net to see what was going on.
An act which I regretted quite a bit as apparently, even gangoons weren't complete fucking gonks and most of them were laying low during daytime to not draw the increased NCPD presence onto their heads.
It would seem I was the real gonk all along.
Thankfully I was not left to consider my woes for too long, as the guest of honor finally made his appearance, and... honestly I wasn't sure what else I should have expected.
The gangly man looked half asleep, and like he hadn't taken a bath in a good two weeks, his unwashed clothes covered in stains of food and drink.
Rebecca's grimace at that moment said enough to write a book.
"Jesus fucking Christ." I couldn't help but mutter.
"Yeah..." She sighed.
We both exited the van at the same time, and watched his approach with growing horror.
Pilar gave us both a wave "Yo, 'Becca, 'Becca's input."
"Pilar." I nodded, and tossed him a beer bottle "Having fun?"
"Oh yeah." He grinned, catching it easily "My main man got me some preem BDs a few days in, and I've been..." He smirks in a rather... satisfied manner "Enjoying myself."
"Come the fuck on bro." Rebecca groaned in disgust "At least take a damn bath."
"Meh." He shrugged "Sounds like effort." And tossed his drink back.
I took one tiny sniff of the air and immediately regretted it as the man reeked.
Decision thus made, I left Rebecca to rage at her gonk of a brother and went for the back of my van.
Seconds later, I returned with a hose in my hand, and my large can of blood cleaner in the other.
I made sure my approach was audible as Rebecca and Pilar got into one of their usual rows, and as I stepped on a bit of rusted scrap, the both of them looked at me.
Rebecca grinned.
Pilar paled.
"C-come on, Mike." He raised his hands "We're chooms, right?"
"Sorry Pilar." My cruel grin matched Rebecca's "But you aren't getting into my van like that."
There was panic in his eyes now "I'll go grab a quick shower right now! Just put that thing down."
My grin widened, and just as the tiniest shred of hope appeared in his eyes I answered.
"No."
And pressed down on the trigger.
-------
Be cleansed in stone!
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