Night City Legends Do Burn Cities

by Dantegrey

Night City, the City of Dreams, is also filled to the brim with nightmares. A solo from Heywood aiming for the heavens, a former corpo-rat with big ambitions, a panzerboy who knew the worst of the cyber psychosis, bound together in the Street, start the road to the Afterlife. Biz as usual in Night City.

1. Metal War Life Path

A legend of Night City caved my skull in, I don't know if I should felt flattered or annoyed as fuck.

I think I will go with annoyed.

Asshole Smasher and his merry crew of Arasaka slovuch, carpet-bombed my ass, along the rest of my humanitarian convoy during the Metal Wars, and once they blasted up to pieces, they walked down the crater and zeroed anyone they found that was fortunate enough to survive the initial bombing.

My convoy was part of a NUSA humanitarian convoy en route to South California, we were supposedly out of the combat zones, heck, by 2070, NUSA had practically all taken, except Texas and parts of northern California. We were a small armored convoy, barely three basilisks, and ATC, bringing civilians, food, and medicines to the refugee camps.

Why the fuck did Smasher bombed us as if we have stuffit his entire family with a chrome dildo?. Even to this day, I have no idea.

They bombed our asses, and once the dust settled, they walked in, all pretty and in Arasaka colors, and zeroed anyone fortunate enough to survive the initial bombing. My co-pilot at the Basilisk and I decided to go in a blaze of glory, taking as many of those assholes as we could, earning time for the civilians to pick up the last working junk vehicle that we had, and delta the fuck out of there.

Fuck, it worked, we managed to gain enough time, but on the negative side, Smasher ripped the head of my co-pilot out of her shoulders, and proceed to cave my skull with it. That sounds gruesome and a dick move of epic proportions?. Da, it is. But it was even worse.

Basilisk pilots are connected through the data slot of the tank. A lone pilot will have its brain melted due to the sensory overload, but with a second pilot, the data is halved, but the neural connection is fucking intimate. It's a terrific and powerful bond, sharing your mind, fully, with a person.

Anastasia and I were the children of the avalanche of immigrants of 2045 from the collapsing URSS to the NUSA. Our families set up shop in Montana, and when the NUSA came drafting meat for the war in 2069, we were a couple of barely out of our teenager years gonks that ate the propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

The last I saw of Anastasia, of a person that was closer to me than anyone has ever been, was her deformed face slamming against my cyber optics, repeatedly, until my OS surrendered and shut me down due to the massive trauma all over my chrome.

To make the entire thing even more insulting, the Treaty was signed a day later.

With my systems down, I was a broken and bruised metalhead in the middle of a broken and ravaged crater, in the middle of bumfuck, on the Badlands. I am very surprised that I did not end up quartered like a pig by the Wraith gangers ripperdocs. But a Nomad clan seeking some nice salvage found my sorry ass. My systems were down, but what little flesh I have remaining was determined to survive.

The Bakkers picked me up from the wreckage, fixed me up as best as they can, and took me in. I will be forever grateful for them, if only for investing preem eddies in fixing a broken husk-like me. My cybered up ass is pretty draga, preem eddies much be invested to keep my chrome up and running. Out of Giri, I run with them for a year, taking the more suicidal, and risky jobs that the Bakkers had, making sure that they got back the eddies that they have invested in me.

But the truth was that I was running a counter-clock race.

When I lost Anastasia when I lost our Basilisk, our GRN8845Y, callsign Blackwall, something inside of me broke, and I was tethering the abyss of cyber psychosis.

I felt my mind slipping into madness, into a comfortable dark that was filled to the brim with the screams of the meatbags around me, meatbags that did not understand, that they were weak and pathetic, that smell blue and red, that emitted primitive sounds that were ridiculed.

You can get the idea.

So.

Before I did something irreversible, I stuffed myself with psychoblockers and other chems that will allow me to act, relatively, like a normal person, and after saying my goodbyes, and explaining the situation to the Bakkers, I left my armored truck there, and pick up a wasted jalopy to drive my sorry ass to Night City.

My plan was pretty simple, if I am going to go down in madness, I will go down swinging, aiming to the heavens, and with a bit of luck, I will slap a bitch on the downswing.

After a year running with the Bakkers, I have never set up a foot in the shadows of NC, but I have more than enough data of the in and out of the city thanks to Bakker's fixers and ripperdoc. Most of the gigs that I have done for the Bakkers came from them, and they gave me enough shards with enough detes about the prominent gangs of the city to know who was who on the streets.

Considering my Russian blood, I took almost personal offense to the Neo-soviet getup of the Scavengers.

Not that the rest of the gangs were much better, but at last, I could tolerate the 6th Street; though they seem to have lost their guardian ways; the Valentinos are pretty funny, the Mox, I like, the Animals deserved a facepalm, the Voodoo boys were a sick joke, the Maelstroms were bipolar the best of days, and several other minor factions that left me at a loss of words about what the fuck is wrong with Night City.

In a nutshell, the place was fucked up in biblical proportions, but for my intents and purposes, it was blood perfect.

You see, most of the gangers around, fuck, even in the edge runners crews, chrome such as mine is pretty rare. That was, possibly, the best thing about being in the NUSA, they cybered up us as much as they could, not giving a fuck about the consequences.

Cyberimplants and I were old friends, even before the NUSA put enough chrome in me to almost turn me into a vending machine. I got my first chrome on my fifteenth birthday when a robot hound chews my right arm, and I have to cut it before the gangrene killed me. By my eighteen, my body was already 10 percent chrome and wires.

The NUSA only augmented what was already there.

By the end of the Metal Wars, and after my time with the Bakkers, 2072 I believe, my internal files from that time are a bit jumbled, I was 80 percent metal and wires, the poster boy of cyber psychosis, just at the side of Slovuch Smasher and his merry crew of Arasaka gonks. Only people like Shaitan, who went full borg by 2020 I believed, had even more chrome on their balls than I did.

Steeping into the streets of Night City, I only need 90 eddies to buy a gun from a vending machine.

Niet, I am not being facetious, the Slaught-O-Matic pistol is available in all Budget Arms vending machines in Night City. It's a cheap, plastic, pinkie abomination that should burn, and you can not reload it, but it sure came in handy when there is no other iron at hand.

The entire clip went into the head of the first Scav ganger that I found, then I plugged into his OS through his data slot, dig through his OS files and brain data to see where was the nearest scav butcher house, pick up whatever iron was the corpse packing, and went my merry way.

Walk into the Scavenger gang slaughter shops, kill everything around, collect everything shiny that my deranged brain found interesting, reload, repack, plug into whatever databases they have around to see where to go next.

Rinse and repeat.

Never really cared much about the numbers that I crunched those days. Da, days. I spent around five days running a carnage on the Scavenger numbers; and, well, anyone that was with them at those slaughterhouses; killing them by the spades, and finally succumbing to the accumulation of damages and cascade errors of my OS, when the MAX-TAC found and neutralize me.

Oddly enough, they took a liking to me and even offered me a job.

That's it, as soon as my OS and cybered up brain started to get down of its psychotic high. I mean, I was listening blue and green, chewing old Samurai songs, going around with a wall-crushing erection, the ardent desire to have kinky sex with my Basilisk, sniffing data streams, and in general, flying so high that I could colonize Mars on my own.

Either I had a very odd reaction to the Black Lace, and several other drugs that I wolfed down before I start rampaging, or I have picked up enough neuro virus from the Scav slaughterhouses that even madness was a foreign concept to me at this point. My OS and meat brain must have a chemical composition so demented that even cyber psychosis flies past it.

In the standard rehabilitation procedure in the MAX-TAC for psychos like me, they put us into long sessions of psychotherapy through Brain Dances, or, more commonly know, psychoshrinks, that break down our psychosis and glue the pieces together as best as they could. Once such a procedure is gone, the candidate went through several more chemical and drug treatments to quell the worst of the psychosis, and, if the candidate passed the test with flying colors, they even add some extra chrome.

Of course, none of that is free, and by the moment that you walk out of the rehabilitation, they dress you up on the gorgeous black gear of the MAX-TAC, and sent you to deal with other psychocyborgs like you or another situation that demands a tremendous amount of violence.

The agents of the MAX-TAC are all former cyberpsychos, or NCPD agents cybered up to the eleven and sent to deal with what the usual NCPD can not. Technically speaking, they are the apex predators of Night City. Only those at the peak of the corporation's security or the military had such a chrome to toss to their enemies.

Thanks to the NUSA efforts during the Metal War, I was a cybered-up monster, the Bakkers did what they could, but it was only after the NCPD put their hands on me, that they fix whatever was very wrong with me.

Well, or at least they tried.

If anything, I am tremendously grateful to the BD psychoshrinks of the MAX-TAC, they made me human again, mostly, and that is something that I could never repay. In part because I am an edgerunner now, and that means that I am on the other side of the law by definition. But that a tale for later.

MAX-TAC is a one-way-only profession, most of the cyborg squad is made of former psychos, and those who are not psychos, tend to burn pretty quickly. Once an agent has reached the point of no return, is either a mercy bullet to the brain or a very discrete spot at Megabuilding H9 where the NCPD had a retirement home.

Anyhow, I spent five years with the MAX-TAC. Being one of the most efficient agents that they have on their payroll, but from my perspective, I felt like one of those robohounds that I ambushed at reprogrammed to gain some eddies back at Montana.

Being a netrunner is not on my resume. Still, to be the best Panzerboy possible for the NUSA, good coding skills are a must. If only to prevent the OS of the vehicles from crashing down, or to have a malfunction due to the data overload of the vehicle poured into the neuroconnector. Such skills, gaining from the aforementioned hound-tipping in Montana, had come in handy more than once.

Do not take me for a slovuch that has no Giri, but even if the MAX-TAC foot the eddies for the chrome, I felt more like a very well trained and cared for attack dog than a human being, and that was precisely the entire point of the year of psychotherapy that they made me endure. I came back from cyber psychosis, only to have a nice, and shiny, new leash on my neck.

Ah, and the ton of shit that we have to endure from the media, and the street rumors. One would think that people should be a bit more grateful for those that deal with the worst of the worst, but more often than not, the NCPD high command did not see as, as much better than the gonks that we flatline.

Everything good has an end, and in my case, such end came when I zeroed a corpo psycho with a shotgun, in the middle of Corpo Plaza.

Such an event in itself would have been Monday for the squad, unfortunately, not an hour later, the entire precinct shit their pants, when the detes about the guy that I have just flatlined with a shotgun was not a psycho.

The corpo was a brain potato, addicted to the BD, and someone has slipped him a BD with enough neuro virus to kill any OS in his brain, making him go beyond crazy, and mix the BD setting; a violent one, it seems; with his hallucinations. An explosive mix that made him look completely out of mind, and thanks to the chrome that the guy had, a psycho alert was issued and I was the poor gonk that took it.

Again, if the slovuch was a low-level corpo, well, bad luck, but the thing is that I have flatlined a top Corpo, a slovuch from Arasaka called Kaoru Fujioka. A pure breed Japanese Arasaka corporate zeroed by a lowly gaijin?. Da, that can only end well. With full knowledge that the NCPD will deliver my head in a silver platter to the Arasaka doors before even trying to defend me, I delta the fuck out of the precinct, literally burning all the files and detes that they had about me on their databases, and got lost in Night City.

The obvious bet would be the No-Tell Motel, and for three days, I paid my stance there with paper eddies, and squeeze all eddies that I could from the Net, before deleting all of my skeletons, and disappearing as if I have never existed. It was for the best, without any clue about who the heck I was, and with all the data of my career in MAX-TAC turned into scrap data, or directly ashes, I was a corpse walking down the streets.

Thanks to the beautiful Kiroshi optics that I had, a Mark III model that was preem as fuck, my face was impossible to capture by cameras, but I was a very recognizable gonk, due to how I was four inches down of the seven feet tall mark, and broad as a bodybuilder. I was the size of an Arasaka bodyguard, but without looking like sumo reject.

On the fourth day, I went to a fellow Russian, Nina Kraviz, a globally acclaimed ripperdoc, and paid her upfront most of my eddies, to craft me an entirely new skeleton in the Net, some very needed facial surgery, and tune-up my chrome.

Good thing that my optics prevent me to cry like a small child, otherwise, when I saw my hard-earned eddies disappear to pay for the job, I would have cried entire rivers. Still, Nina outdid herself, and the man that walked out of her store only shared a passing resemblance with the agent of MAX-TAC. Altering my facial features and hair was not all that complicated, it's most synth flesh anyways, but only a true artist like her could give my very chromed-up ass, the most humane aspect possible.

Speaking of which, I found very disturbing how much effort did she put into making me a complete stud, and I mean the whole nine yards. Nymph pheromones, Mister Studd implants, Grower implant, vibronubs, sculpted synth abs, the face features of a former VR star back in the Neo-Soviet. Do not get me wrong, It was preem, the good shit, right there, but at the same time, it was way too rich for my blood.

Fortunately, Kraviz admitted that she has taken things a bit too far, that she took the chance to sculpt one of her dream men, and before she realized it, she had practically turned me into the wet dream of lots of Russian teenagers back in 2030. As I said, I would have cried rivers at the bill, not to mention that the upkeep of such fine biomods is going to be draga, and I was unemployed, and possibly hunted down by Arasaka.

Nova. Fucking Nova.

With a small wad of eddies at my name, I deposit them in my new skeleton and walked into a more affordable corner of Night City. Heywood was a hotpot of cultures, with the Valentinos and the 6th street fighting for dominance. Among the gangs of NC, I found the Valentinos, the Mox, and the 6th Street the more tolerable, so, If I was going to be one of the masses now, I preferred to live somewhere where I could be comfortable.

So started the first week of the life of Jardani Jovonovich.

I took the name of my grandpa, a Belarus pakhan of the Organiskaya, it was a bit on the nose, but the man has been dead for more than a century now, and he never abandoned Belarus.

Of course, the first day that I decided to have a warm meal, to ate something and enjoy it, not just chunking as they taught us at NUSA, a couple of Animals wanted to make a show of dominance in the bar where I was having a meal. The famous Coyote Cojo.

Animals are a gang that does not have a base district so to speak. The Valentinos are a Heywood-based gang, the Voodoo Boys practically rule Pacifica, and the Maelstroms are on Watson. But the Animals are a bit more chaotic than that, they supposedly have no turf of their own, but according to the NCPD data vault, they are set up shop in Pacifica, and are waging war against the Voodoo boys.

Good riddance to bad trash, I would say.

Anyhow, the duo of Animals were high on something, maybe a body booster drug, they are addicted to all of them, and strutted down the bar like they owned the place, grunting in an almost feral manner, and flexing their enhanced body, looking for a fight. It was pretty common for the Animals to walk in, seek out a fight, and then trash everything they put their grubby paws on. These guys are addicted to fighting, and thanks to their many augmentations, and extensive training in fighting styles, they are very good at it.

One of the locals, a choomba called Jackie Welles, tried to ease the things with the meat bags before the things got even more ugly. They have already threatened Pepe, the barman, and have left him with a black eye. Jackie was a gato, I give him that, the lad had the charm that made the Valentinos infamous, and he had the brawn to back it up, but in front of the two pieces of meat with eyes, Jackie was severely outgunned.

El Coyote Cojo was the restaurant of Mama Welles, the ma of Jackie, and possibly the most respected and well-liked old lady of Heywood. Even the most hardcore Valentino respected the woman. However, for the high as a kite Animals, the bar was just an excuse for a good fight, and Jackie fitted the criteria pretty nicely, even if Jackie was a charming choomba, this time, charm meant shit for the Animals.

They never saw me coming.

Among the cybernetic melee arms that you see on the streets, my favorite is the Gorilla Arms. Sure, the Monowhip or the Mantis Blade is the most common choice, due to how lethal they could be even with little training, but for me, the simplicity and eloquence of the Gorilla Arms were the way to go.

The first punch went for the back of the neck of the Animal on the left. The mods of my arms delivered a haymaker, charged to the brim with kinetic and electric energy, no matter how reinforced bone and muscle the gonk had, I can pierce the armor of tanks with that punch. The meaty and resounding impact echoed on the bar before the gonk was sent flying against a wall and imprint his face on the plastic and metallic fake wood.

When the other Animal turned around, I was already on him, slipping an uppercut inside of his hastily and clumsily raised guard. My chrome fist carried more than enough force to shatter his jaw and make him raise a foot from the floor, before collapsing like a marionette with his strings cut.

With some remaining sparks and smoke whispers of my cooling cybernetic weapons, I huffed at the two k.o-ed gonks and went back to my meal.

It was a preem meal.

My actions had consequences, and I found myself sharing a drink with Jackie. A bunch of Valentinos took care of the downed Animals, not that I care much about the fate of those two gonks. The former Valentino ganger was quite impressed with my chrome, and was curious about where have I managed to chrome myself like that.

It was obvious that he was fishing for data about the new predator that has suddenly prowled out of nowhere in Jackie's corners of the woods, but at the same time, Jackie was genially grateful. The solo knew that things were about to get ugly, and even if he was no slouch, the two Animals had his best in sheer punching class. Not to mention that a shot out in the middle of the restaurant of his mom was not a good idea.

To answer all of those questions, I have memorized my new skeleton back and forth, and I could recite it in my sleep. Oddly enough, it was not all that different from what should have been my life, if I wasn't declared KIA after the carpet bombing of Arasaka on my ass, more than half a decade ago.

Metal War veteran of the NUSA forces from Montana, but instead of the pilot, I was one of the paratroopers, AV insertion on Injun country. Go in, wreak everybody's gonk, and delta the fuck out, with the maximum possible number of enemies zeroed, and maximum collateral damage to their infrastructure. I have driven enough of those ops to be able to do the talk without missing a beat, fuck, I have been a paratrooper when the NUSA was hard-pressed on numbers.

Honorably discharged; I did flip the bird to high command when Anastasia and I charged Slovuch Smasher and his crew to save the civilians of the convo; run with a Nomad clan; true, the Bakkers, even if they joined the Snake nation and lost their identity; and ditch them when they went with the Snake nation, looking for a new start of sorts in NC.

Like any sane choomba with two neurons to rub together, Jackie trusted by verifying, and my skeleton held the scrutiny. Worth every single eddy that I put on that skeleton, although my wallet is still crying.

Out of one of his "feelings", Jackie took me out in several gigs all over Heywood and offered me side biz as part of the mechanics of his garage. I was a panzerboy, and despite my very clear disgust with the NUSA, I had to admit that the choombas at Bootcamp did train us the best they could. My specialty was AV and hover tanks, but that does not mean that I can not rig a machine like the best of them, and Jackie appreciated another greasy monkey around the garage.

Since I tasted Mama Welles food, I became addicted to it, and every time I had two eddies to rub together I went to the Coyote to have a good meal. It helped that I was a friend of Jackie and that when I was around the Coyote, everyone stood on their better manners. My street cred was nothing to write home about, but enough to kept the locals of Heywood wary of crossing the chrome wall that hanged with Mama's kid. As a funny detail, they left the imprint of the Animal that I punched onto a wall, as proof of my feat.

If the data analysis on the NCPD were accurate, I was the equivalent of a big fish on a small pond. Heywood was preem, but hardly the top shelf of the edgerunner community, though, my street cred was hardly enough to have Rogue calling me for a gig.

Speaking of fixers, I found it tremendously hilarious that one of the leaders of the Valentinos, a gang that formed intending to seduce attractive females, was a man of the cloth. Alas, Padre; true name: Sebastian Ibarra; was an individual that I did not want to cross at all. He was the top Fixer of Heywood, and one of the leaders of the Valentinos, the man talked some serious biz.

Jackie was a former Valentino, going solo after a while, but the contacts stood, and the choomba had weight on the gang. That was my introduction to the gigs that Padre had for fodder like me.

It never stops to amuse me that I have gone from being a cop, to be a criminal, but biz is biz, and I had bills to pay. The job that Kraviz did on my chrome ass was not cheap, and to kept it at peak condition, I have to put a lot of eddies only for maintenance.

It was a vicious circle, I need eddies to kept my chrome at its peak, and I need peak chrome to put eddies on my wallet.

After a risky gig, where I took a bullet for Jackie; literally, the chrome of the choomba had nothing on mine; he invited me to his home. It warmed my artificial hearts for sure, and if I was already addicted to Mama's cooking at the Coyote, once I got a taste of her home cooking, my Kiroshi lost fluids in sheer emotion.

Mama and Jackie laughed their asses off when I almost had an orgasm at the homemade pirozhki and shaslik that she made, just for me. Jackie never let me live it down, but the food was so fucking good, almost the same as the one that I had when I was a child at the URSS ghetto in Montana.

Since I became the usual choomba of Jackie for any gig, Mama took a liking to call me one of her niños, and I will lie if I said that I disliked it. I am possibly the last of my family. One of the many casualties of the Metal War. Having a good woman like Mama Welles as a mother figure sounds nova to me.

In the spring of 2077, three jobs cemented my "infamy" on the streets of Night City, and that paved the way for the absolute clusterfuck that turned Night City upside down.

The first gig came as a joke.

The Valentinos are a gang that took pride in their seduction skills, their main objective was to seduce the most attractive women of the city, and four times a year they meet to compare conquests. That being said, no one in their sane minds believed that the Valentinos are a bunch of posers with no bite. The gang had the brawn to back up their words. They have the honor and are bound by a code of brotherhood, along with their belief in God y la Santa Madre.

The thing is, that Jackie and I tended to hang a lot with the Valentinos; without chippin' in with them; and by some convoluted reasons, the joy-toys under the Valentinos umbrella sang my praises.

I was a far better pimp than their pimps, even if I was not their pimp.

Da, that throw me for a loop as well.

Out of giri with Jackie and the Valentinos for the gigs that they gave to me, whenever dolls with the inks of the Valentinos were in a pinch in front of me, I gave them a hand. Be it with a problematic client, some muscle trying to piss on the wrong pot, another gang trying to make a stand through the lasses, whatever. I have rescued, bandaged, and driven around more than one joy-toy of the Valentinos when shit hit the fan. That's why they like me so much.

Some of the Valentinos dared me to try to pull that one of the Mox, and I laughed it off, joking about how I liked my chrome balls where they were, spasibo.

But Jackie had other ideas, wanting to get our cred on the street to raise and put a fast one on me. Jackie set up a small gig with the bouncer of the Lizzie's, the bar/BD junction that the Moxes owned, Rita Wheeler. Hiring me as an extra bouncer for the night where a bunch of infamous metalgangers was having a blast on the Lizzie's.

Rita was a gorgeous lady, a bit too much street flavored on mannerism and attitude for my tastes, but she is beautiful nonetheless, and we do have things in common. Both of us are called porky; from the word porcupine; by our choombas, due to our love for weaponry, and both of us had a no-nonsense attitude.

Seeing no harm in Stuffit with such a hot lady, Rita and I had a wild night, ending up in the No-Tell Motel, and having sex for six hours straight at the end of the night.

What we both did not know until it was too late, was that Rita was, unwillingly, recording the entire thing as a braindance through her neuro-implants. One of the netrunners of the Mox sent up an update for her OS, hiding the braindance subroutine inside of the update. The subroutine activated when the biomonitor of Rita detected a spike in her arousal, and thanks to my Nymph perfume bio mod, it happened the moment that we have the first drinks at the Lizzie's and continued the party from thereon.

Fourteen hours of drinking, fucking, dancing, and wild partying in general.

The biggest BD seller of the Moxes for weeks.

Jackie was laughing his ass off, hiding behind a very amused Mama, before I strangled the slovuch. The Valentinos named me honorable Valentino for such a conquest, not to mention that now I was a total choomba in the eyes of the Moxes, with more than one of their members making cue to have a taste of the hammer that has nailed Rita so hard, and so good, that her BD has gone viral on the Net.

And that's the origin of my handle.

Hammer.

One can argue that with the Mox being made mostly of self-sufficient joy toys and dolls, hyper-endowed studs like me are dime a dozen. And that will be true if it wasn't for the fact that the kind of biomods that I was packing was the brainchild of a word acclaimed ripperdoc that sculpted me to be a complete monster on the shack and the hunk of her dreams. I swear to god that, that was Niet my intention when I walked on Kraviz's ripperdoc store. I just wanted a new identity, not to be turned into the pornstar of the century.

The second gig was a good deed that did not go unpunished.

Padre was the main fixer of Heywood, but he was not the only one, albeit, most of the other fixers were just facemen, sub-fixers working to expand and maintain the bigger fixer network. But in NC, there always hundreds of things that could go very wrong, and lots of choombas, over whom life has shitted on, did not have the eddies to pay a fixer to look out for someone to fix their problems.

It was the case with Pepe Najarro, the barman of the Coyote Cojo.

You know, usually is the barman that listened to the problems of others, but in this case, it was the opposite, and I found myself listening to the problems of Pepe. The man was a good man, an honest, hard-working man who was running double shifts at the Coyote for his family. But even then, he took an edge from a small shitstain called Kirk, which was a small fixer of Heywood.

Honestly?. A minute is all that it took to set things clear with Kirk.

Ten seconds to reach the spot where he usually hangs at the Coyote, two seconds to knock out the flabby excuse of a bodyguard, one second to pick up my custom RT-46 Burya, another to push the barrel against the shocked face of Kirk, and the rest of the minute, to make Kirk crystal clear that he was no longer welcome in the hood, and that if something happened to Pepe or any of the other victims of his loan shark business, I will hunt him, and force-feed his balls to him.

Of course, Kirk boasts about having the cartels on his corner was hot hair, but the chubby thing that he called bodyguard had the contacts among the local street thugs to reunite a small crew and try to flatline me.

That went as well as you can expect. Waste of protein, the lot of them. Unfortunately, among the bunch of gonks, there was one that was the protegee of the local Animal fight ring, and I earned the eternal animosity of the Animals of Heywood with that one. From time to time, the boldest, or stupidest, among them, seek me out to try to flatline me, to get a rep with the local alpha Animal.

Well, those fights are always a good training, so silver linings, I suppose.

The third gig was helping another lost soul to start a new life on Night City.

An old friend of Jackie, a lass that grew on the corporate-owned Charter Hill, here, on Night City, and that worked for Arasaka Counter Intelligence. A street kid that grew to be one of the Arasaka goons, hardly a novelty tale, but Arasaka was incredibly elitist and racist. The CEO of Arasaka, Saburo, was a megalomaniac racist that has been around for nearly a hundred and half years, and to rose in Arasaka, being a Gaijin, a stranger, you must be quite the monster.

Jackie and I were having dinner at the Coyote, when Jackie called the woman, by Jackie's expression I can see that something was not well, but V was a friend of Jackie, not mine, and so, I got back to my dinner.

"Esa Chamba la va a matar", cursed Jackie once the call ended.

Jackie had the custom of speak Latino lingo here and there, it was something that most of the Valentinos did, along with the slang of the streets and the common English that was the de facto language of Night City. Oddly enough, when I uploaded my Linguasoft with as many languages as I could, something did not zip well on my OS, and more often than not, I did something similar to what Jackie does but in Russian.

"Problems?", I asked my friend.

"Nah, the usual chinga with the corpo-rats", shrugged Jackie. "V is under a lot of stress lately, chica is getting poked from all sides".

"Corpse business as usual then", I shrugged back.

We continued having dinner on the Coyote, perhaps due to my remaining flesh being upgraded into peak human, I need to eat a lot of food. Fortunately, I also had my stomach replaced, so I do not need to take a dump, due to how my enhanced stomach turned anything that I ate into fuel.

It was a slow night in Night City, we have ended up a small recovery gig; nothing serious, go to an alleyway, beat the shit out of a bunch of brain potato gonks, and recover the brain shards that they have stolen from the Mox; and the two of us were just having dinner and drinks.

Jackie called V again, worried about the woman. Something during the previous conversation must have not sat well with Jackie, and when people are involved, Jackie was a pretty well judge of character, almost a Gibson. If Jackie said that someone had something odd, the gato was usually on the right.

Nursing my beer, I let Jackie talk with V, mentally making my own "grocery" list. I had a small apartment at the H1 megabuilding. Nothing to write home about, at some point in the future, with a bit more eddies, I will move to a better Megabuilding, more concretely, the H2 at Wellsprings that is patrolled by NCPD and Militech drones and droids. It was the place where the MAX-TAC had their little retirement home.

If you live in a place that is protected by the NCPD and Militech, then certain safety is assured, as long as you are a good neighbor, and discrete as hell. Megabuildings are, basically, cities inside of cities, and I knew some Netrunners that have not exited their buildings in years, having all their needs covered by the multiple businesses that exist inside of the megabuildings.

"You in the mood for some drinks at the Lizzie's, ese?", called Jackie to me after he ended up his call with V. I emptied my drink before answering.

"Biz, I take".

"Sounds serious, chica needs someone of trust for a gig", nodded Jackie. "She will be on the Lizzie's in an hour".

"All biz is nova", I relaxed my neck and shoulders. "I ghost you, or should I pick up my best bodyguard drapes?".

Jackie pondered it for a bit, as we rose from the table where we have been dining. A quick net transaction later and I deposit the eddies at the Coyote account. I lost a small bet with Jackie during the gig, and I promised that I will pay for dinner.

"Go Fantasma", said Jackie as he took the driver's seat of his car. "V does not know you, and the chica is spooked about something. Just in case she had chew something that she can not swallow".

"Your call, Komrade", I ride shotgun, "you know the girl".

It did not take us much to reach Lizzie's. Even if it was in another district. By the time that we reached the bar/Braindance club/Stripclub/nightclub of the Mox gang, we were ten minutes early, leaving the car of Jackie at the "VIP" parking that the club has. After what happened with Rita, and several other gigs that Jackie and I have done for the Mox, they gave us a VIP pass to the Lizzie's.

We have discussed the strategy during the small trip to the club. I will move to the main entrance, where V will be entering, and I will ghost the meeting between the two of them. Just in case something goes wrong. Thanks to the military-grade camo cloak that I have, I can be very discrete, and I will be covering the meeting spot from the nearby corner after I follow V inside of the club. At the same time, Jackie gave me the barebones of the woman.

Valeria "V" Weyland, no relation to Boa-Boa Weyland. Born and raised in Charter Hills, ran the streets, and finally managed to snatch a spot at Arasaka, becoming one of their counter-intelligence agents, but never forgotten her street roots. Tough as nails chica. In Jackie's words.

Jackie got comfortable on the corner of the club, and I walked to the front door. Rita smiled at me when she saw me appearing from the inside. With the VIP pass, it was common for us to enter the club from the parking downstairs instead of the floor room. Armed with her usual bat, and a couple of Liberty pistols, Rita was one of the iconic symbols of the Moxes. She proudly displayed her alliance with the Moxes gang colors tattooed on her chest.

Rita pouted a little that I have not come for a booty call, but biz is biz, and I took pride in being a professional. That being said, we make out for an entire minute, much to the amusement, and slight envy; according to my Bodylinguasoft scan; of Rita's fellow Moxer at the doors.

Rita and I were not in a relationship, I was not her input, but we do have a good relationship, and some stuffit to the side was always on the cards when we had the time, and the mood.

Once I became an edgerunner, forming a small crew with Jackie, I adopted three simple rules.

Be polite, be efficient, and always have a plan.

After the make-out session, I talk life with the two girls, waiting for the arrival of the corpo-rat friend of Jackie. My Kiroshi blinked when the lass parked a bloody AV in the middle of the basket court in front of the Lizzie.

Three guys were playing basketball and had to run out of the descending Arasaka AV before it flattened them. The Aerodyne was a seriously customized AV-4 with all the Arasaka markings, from the corpo symbol to the identity colors and marks. That was quite the draga AV. I was quite envious, I wanted one of those for myself.

The AV landed, and an amazonian redhead woman stepped out of the vehicle.

That must be V, dressed in the corpo threads of Arasaka, the woman filed the suit quite nicely, fuck, she was gorgeous. The suit hugged her voluptuous curves, and her vibrant red hair, styled to the side that was the boga these days, only made her elegant features stood more. Her eyes; optics like mine; were of nice green color.

In an impressive show of dominance, she put the fear of God into the three guys that were almost flattened by the AV, when they protested at her for the stunt that she had pulled with the Aerodyne. A bit crude, but the ball the face, and the strike to the throat were the marks of a professional. This girl's career has included flatlined someone for sure. Dangerous. And hot as hell.

I should stop being attracted to rimbos. I really should.

By the time the AV landed, I was already cloaked, so, when V came to the entrance of the bar, she did not notice my presence. That was the first signal that something was wrong with her. Being a counterintelligence agent of the top dogs of the city, she should be way warier, but I assume that she was in a hurry, or distressed, and did not expect military-grade camo gallivanting the slums.

Ten seconds after Valerie entered, I slipped inside as well, with a final squeeze to Rita's ass, whispering in her ear how she was "perfectly tight" before she swung her bat and cursed me. Her fellow bouncer laughter accompanied me to the inside. It did not take me long to find V making her way into the club, passing through other partygoers, and moving directly to the reserved spot where Jackie was waiting.

Hiding in a corner; filtering the surroundings to focus on the conversation between V and Jackie, I scanned the place and marked any possible hostiles. My OS was top-notch, so it did not take me so much effort to cover all those angles at the same time. Mine was technically not in the market yet Raven Mycrocyber Mk.4 that I found in a Scav slaughterhouse when Jackie and I were killing a Scav that has ripped open the wrong doll. A literal buried treasure.

V and Jackie talked, and V shared a shard with Jackie. The gig, I assumed, but judging from the conversation, that was a shitty gig, or at least, a gig that had way too many risks. Jackie and V disagreed, and I had to be with Jackie in this one. It's no secret that I hold beef with Arasaka, they have fucked up my life several times already, and if I can give them a black eye during any gig, all for the better.

A red beep in my eyes informed me of the presence of two newcomers. Da, suits, they are completely out of place and wearing the colors of Arasaka. In the time that it took them to reach the spot where my choomba was, I have already scanned them.

They carried nice chrome and irons, but they are not a menace. Even the henchmen were way under my weight category, and the other was just a face. His chrome was not oriented for combat. Loading up my combat protocols and heating my chrome, I moved behind them.

The Arasaka spokesperson was delivering the speech to V. V's access to the Arasaka resources has been; the words of the corpo-rat; revoked, and his cyberware was being terminated, which means that she was about to have a shutdown.

"Jackie, I am about to put on a show, follow my lead". I sent a quick text to Jackie, that knew that I was there, and could see my position on his HUD due to our comlink.

My gorilla arm went for the neck of the henchmen, and before the guy could react, I have crushed his neck, and spine, almost severing his head off his shoulders. The Arasaka remaining goon was taken by surprise by that and was about to turn when the loud sound of an RT-Burya cocking and whizzing a charge reached his ears, along the cold barrel of the gun on the back of his head.

"Good night Komrade", my Russian accent was a bit exaggerated, but it was all part of the show. "How much for the little Hooynany, and the metalhead?".

"What?", the anger was palatable on the voice of the suit, but my OS has already cut through his ICE and prevented him to call the Arasaka cavalry. It will not hold for long, but it will be long enough.

"How much for the slut and the suit?", I repeated increasing the pressure on his head. "My Komrades and I are always looking up new meat, and the girl is prime meat with some nice chrome on her pretty ass".

"Putos Scavengers", grumbled Jackie, almost growling and with the hand already on his gun.

"Zacroy rot, Valentino puto", I growled back, but I was smiling at Jackie, out of the sight of the Arasaka corpo-rat. "Biz is biz".

"They are not for sale", the gonk was mentally slamming the cavalry button, but with his OS under my cyberdeck attack, he had nothing. Still, it was just a matter of time.

"Preem then, Zopa!", I cheerfully commented. "Free meat for the Scavengers!". I ended the conversation, and I cold-cocked the back of the head of the suit with enough force to crack his reinforced skull…and dent the bottom of the handle of my gun. Nova.

"Sometimes you scare me, Hammer", shook his head, Jackie, moving to the side of V, that was in the middle of a seizure from cyberware failure.

"Spacibo, I always wanted to be an actor", I laughed back, cleaning up any valuables from the suits. I took the shard from the head of the corpse of the henchmen, plug it into mine, and read the files that V has brought.

Not bad, quite the good info on the objective, her entire skeleton bare to the world to see. Storing the file for later perusal, info is info, after all, I plug out the shard and put it back on the head of the goon.

"I will put the bodies on the AV and sent it back to the Arasaka HQ", I informed Jackie that was helping a zapped V to recover her bearings. "The gonk will believe that V was taken by the Scavs, and tore apart for pieces and meat. She will be free from any more Arasaka corpo hounds".

"Do you hear that chica?", chuckled Jackie. "Welcome to your new life".

V glare, between pain, shock, and no little fear, was clearly, not very amused with the entire situation.

Well, welcome to the edge girl, hope you enjoy your stay.