The hideout of the 'faithful' Voodoo Boys was not quite what David was expecting.
Tucked away within the various ruined rooms of a building that used to be a luxury hotel, a twisting maze of makeshift barricades line hall after hall, forcing intruders to walk along a set pathway into the lines of defensive fire. The walls were occasionally reinforced with steel beams crudely nailed into place with aluminum latches, and every now and then opened up to reveal a section where the entire wall had broken away, revealing the open sky.
The first three floors of the building were completely blocked off from the outside, instead the entrance to the location was a narrow steel walkway that ran from a fourth-floor balcony to a neighboring building. It was held in place by four stronger looking fellows as he walked across it, ensuring that it remained stable. It wasn't secured by any permanent means, clearly intended to be tossed off to the ground below in the case of a direct assault on their veritable fortress.
Leading him deeper into the fortress of the faithful was the girl (with the incredible ass) who led the small group of VB when he first encountered them two days ago. She introduced herself as 'Milly', so that's what he knew her by. She had sent him the location and met him outside, waving off the guys who were on guard duty there. Rebecca and Lucy were still back at Smasher's Land (Smashland?), after a long and tiring debate over the topic of who should go.
They got the Arasaka Internal Security to step in for his patrols, but there wasn't really anyone who could take over for Lucy and Rebecca's jobs like that, not on short notice at the very least. So he went alone in exchange for a promise to run away as soon as things got hairy. He intended to, he had literally nothing to gain from sticking around if the gangers betrayed him, and was more than fast enough to escape everyone short of someone else with his level of chrome.
Considering that he now worked for Arasaka (indirectly, at least) and Smasher himself got him his chrome, he was fairly certain that no one in NC actually could match his speed. He wasn't about to say that with one-hundred percent certainty, but he was willing to bet a decent chunk of eddies on the idea.
As he was led through the improvised castle, he noticed the slightly startled and somewhat hesitant looks being sent his way. Not in an aggressive way, but looks like they weren't quite sure what to do with their hands as he walked past. It was a very strange feeling to notice that his presence had an effect on people. It was also strange to realize the fact that he had a reputation beyond 'skilled edgerunner' now.
He was the apprentice of Adam Smasher. That mattered to quite a few people. He supposed he hadn't internalized it quite yet. He had nothing to distract himself from their reactions here, nothing else to think about, no one else to speak to. Just himself in an unfamiliar place being given reactions by people he's never interacted with before.
He refocused on his walking, vision refocusing on the present. He noticed his gaze had wandered right at Milly's rear again while he had drifted off. He startled, a bit and focused on anything else.
There, the walls, that was a good thing for him to look at.
…
Actually, he noticed that the wires and electronics began to grow thicker as they descended into the lower floors. Apparently the basement level was where they kept both their 'command' room as well as their netrunning infrastructure. He figured that made sense, they probably kept plenty of rations and water down there to survive in the case that someone with charges blew up the surface and collapsed it on them. Long enough to figure out a way to leave at least.
Err… At least he hoped they did. It would be pretty bad if the guys he promised to help turned out ot be that incompetent.
"We're almost at the head room." Milly explained as he followed behind her, dragging him from his thoughts. She had a perky, upbeat sort of tone about her. She was clearly pretty happy that he had agreed to help out, although to be frank he wasn't quite sure what he'd be doing yet. Aside from killing lots of gangers that is, he supposed.
…Actually, how many gangers is he going to have to kill anyways? He might as well ask.
"Hey Milly?"
"Yes?"
"How many of 'the heretics' are there?"
"Oh, about a hundred and twenty."
"...that's all? I thought I was going to have to flatline way more than that."
"Oh no, that's just the actual members, they have about ten times that in hired guns."
…ah, that made more sense. David looked down at his shotgun again, and counted the magazines he had. Twelve shots and twelve magazines on his belt…
"How many of 'the faithful' are there?"
"...about sixty, with about five times that in hired guns."
David did a quick calculation. Assuming they all had the same number of shots that he had…
"...I don't have enough ammo to get them all." He admitted, just a little bit ashamed that he thought this would be a one-day operation. It always has been when he had Smasher at his back, so he supposed he was just used to these things being quick nowadays. Milly stopped, and turned to stare at him for a long moment. He began to fidget, slightly uncomfortable at her searching look. Eventually she spoke.
"...That was a really chilled thing you just said."
She quickly turned and kept walking, a little bit more skip in her step. He was a bit confused what she meant by that, but moved to follow.
Eventually they ended up at a doorway down, and she flashed him a quick smile as she threw open the door.
"He's here!" She shouted into the room.
Inside was the bottommost floor of the former hotel, repurposed into something entirely different. Perhaps at one point it was a parking garage for the hotel staff, a large concrete room with entrances sealed by stacks of ruined cars, filled with sturdy pillars that held up the weight of the hotel above. Set in long rows, between each of these central pillars, were netrunning chair after netrunning chair, connected to thick cables that coiled across the floor in semi-neat lines as they made their way to what he presumed were generators and a central net-mainframe of sorts.
In the middle of these rows of netrunning chairs were tables with chairs surrounding them. Upon the tables were all manner of things, mostly cybernetic components, weapons and ammo, datapads, and snacks. There were solidly more than a few dozen people in the room, but definitely not more than seventy-five from his initial scan.
David had heard before that all members of the VB were Haitian, and that seemed to hold true. He was the lightest-skinned person in the room by a large margin. On the walls and everywhere over the pillars were the decorated symbols of the VB, blue and white skulls and lines. They had a new addition to them though, a background of a yellow sun.
There was another detail that he failed to mention, just from how absolutely embarrassing it was.
There was merchandise all over the place. Merchandise of Smasher, of him, of Lucy, of Rebecca. Everywhere he looked he saw at least one piece of paraphernalia dedicated to one of them within his line of sight. He wanted to die on the spot. Arasaka could always revive him afterwards, he didn't need to be alive for this moment. There was a fucking shrine on the far backwall, it had candles and everything.
…Was that a picture of him on a bodypillow? The woman holding it flinched at his gaze, and ducked her face.
"""PRAISE!""" A great call came out from everyone else in the room.
He was never going to get used to this. He did not want to get used to it.
Milly started walking, so he followed, nervous under the gazes of so many people. In the background to his right he heard people listening to one of Smasher's songs and arguing over the meaning within the lyrics. To his left he heard a discussion on how they were going to attack the heretics next. To his front he saw…
A man sitting at a table, forearm raised in front of him. There was a panel that slid back, revealing a cavity in his arm. The cavity was currently filled with spaghetti and meatballs. He had a fork raised with his other hand and was eating the meal in his forearm.
That… he almost called that useless before he started considering the benefits of having a convenient pocketspace in his arm. He would never lose any small fiddly things again, he could store an extra magazine of ammo, he could hide chips in there…
The man with spaghetti in his arm might be a genius, David decided. Then that man's arm beeped loudly, and he opened up his (huge) bicep to reveal what looked to be a tiny oven, in the middle of which was a roasted chunk of meat. The man grabbed the meat using the skewer it was on and blew on it to cool it down. He started eating it with his spaghetti.
…A fucking visionary. David liked the guy immediately.
On his other side was another man, he was fiddling with some sort of device in his hands. He had four such hands, two more extending from his shoulders. The man was tapping impatiently with one of his hands. He was asking the other man something. He had a visor over his eyes, or maybe he had no eyes at all.
There was a woman at the table as well, she was looking at a screen that displayed a map. Occasionally she would make a note of something on another screen, typing away with chromed arms. She was wearing a heavy long-coat that reminded him of Adam's old duster that he wore on occasion.
…Were these three the overall leaders of the 'faithful' faction? They didn't exactly look like what he was expecting. To be honest, he wasn't sure what he was expecting at all, thinking about it. As they approached, Milly spoke up, waving at the woman in the long coat.
"Here he is, ma!"
The woman looked up, and David could see the resemblance now that he had been pointed out to him. The woman nodded, looking quite serious.
"I can see that, thank you Milly." She stood up fully, and went about cracking every bone in her torso with a set of efficient twists, a veritable symphony of snaps and pops ensued. The man with four arms spoke up at that.
"You know I can get you a cybernetic upgrade that would prevent your joints from locking up like that."
The woman responded. "Knowing you, you'd put dumb shit in at the same time."
The man grinned and replied in mock-offense. "I would never put something dumb in, you're being so cruel and mean to me right now."
The woman rolled her eyes. "You deserve it."
The man dramatically flinched back, and turned to look at David. He spoke with a humorous inflection in his voice. "Alright kid, here's the scenario, it's the far-off year of 2020, and anyone can get any cybernetic upgrade they want."
David wasn't sure where he was going with this, or why the woman (apparently Milly's mother?) was groaning and pinching her nose.
…wait, did he say 'far-off year of 2020?'. That was decades ago. The man continued before he could mention that.
"So would you get a cybernetic upgrade that lets you integrate yourself into a bathroom glory hole wall?"
David took a moment to process that.
"What? Fucking no, why would I do that?" The man very quickly replied.
"Because! It's the far-off year of 2020 and anyone can get any kind of cybernetic upgrade they want!"
"That's not an explanation! Also no, that's a bad… that's not even an upgrade!" David felt himself being pulled into the back and forth. The man was about to continue before the woman smacked his head, comically sending him crashing into the table. The man didn't seem actually hurt, but he was certainly pretending he was with exaggerated groans of pain.
"Shut up Haden. Please ignore him, Mr. Martinez, if he wasn't so competent I would have thrown him out by now."
"Love you babe~"
She smacked his head again.
A tap on his shoulder, the massive man with spaghetti in his arm was silently offering him a skewer of meat, his other shoulder now opened and revealed to be a second micro-oven. David raised a hand.
"Ah, thanks but I ate before I came here." The large man nodded and offered it to Milly, who accepted it with a happy 'thanks Brons' and started munching away. David turned away and back to the woman, who was rubbing a hand on her forehead.
"I asked you two to make a good impression, make us look respectable, look at what you're doing. Goddamnit." She said that quietly, he probably wasn't supposed to hear that.
She straightened up, and tried to display herself with dignity after the actions of her apparent subordinates(?).
"Right, Mr. Martinez, thank you for agreeing to help us in our hour of need. We are the faithful of the Golden Flame Avatar, Adam Smasher, and I am high priestess Samentha."
"Our current object is the purgation of the heretics who rejected the good word, and thereafter eternal servitude to He who Passed the Walls."
"What do you need of us to aid you in aiding us?"
…Alright, he could work with this. David went back to Adam's teachings mentally. Step one, identify the greatest threats to your VIPs.
"Well, if you can tell me your situation, we can start planning."
Samentha nodded, removed her jacket and turned to the screen on the wall behind her to pull something up. David's eyes, of no accord of his own, drifted downwards before jolting back up and locking on the screen. He felt his face tinge the slightest bit red, even as much as he tried to hide it.
Goddamn, her ass was fantastic too! He hoped that she put her jacket back on, because her pants were entirely too tight.
To his left, the visored man gave him a shit-eating grin, a single 'ok' sign, and three thumbs up.
David resolved to kiss Lucy twice as much when he got back.
—
The initial plan was set. The hired guns of the faithful were to make a lot of noise in front of a heretic controlled building. The building in question contained quite a bit of useful stuff, namely booster drugs and extra guns. The hired guns were not supposed to actually risk themselves in this engagement, just distract the security to give David a window of time to get in and start hitting their backline.
He liked that plan, basic enough for everyone to know exactly what they were doing, and it played to his strengths. They had gotten knowledge of this building from some informants that Samentha had, because after the VB split they immediately set about moving everything that each faction could get their hands on to new locations, to prevent the other faction from knowing where their shit was.
It made a certain amount of sense he supposed, but hauling those net-running chairs must have been hell. Those things were big and delicate and heavy.
…Also, he lived in a fortress now, it kicked ass. Castles were fucking cool, and Adam had a pretty good collection of files about them. He had been getting into them recently, as a hobby.
He waited behind the concrete rubble for them to start firing at the entrance. After he heard the guns firing, he waited a short time before a second set of guns started firing back. Now was his time to move.
He activated his sandy, and moved, staying low to the ground and behind cover as much as possible.
They weren't looking at him, good. He moved to the building's second entrance to see that the guards that were supposed to be there had moved off to the new frontline.
He ducked behind cover again, and sent a message to Milly. He waited for a few moments.
The cameras around that entrance short-circuited, and he activated his sandy again.
He moved forwards, kicking open the door to see two more guards that were moving in slow motion to react to him. He drew his knife and stabbed it into their eye-sockets, one after another. They both fell, he closed the door behind him and propped the bodies up against it.
He began ascending to the top of the building, he was going to work his way down, room by room.
He saw a guy on the stairway, he activated his sandy, moved forwards, and stabbed him in the brain too. The more bullets he could conserve in their early stage, the better. Not because he didn't have enough bullets, but more because he didn't want to alert anyone via the noise yet.
He supposed he could be throwing the knife too, but if he fucked up the throw and didn't kill them in one go then he would be forced to use his gun anyways. Much safer to just stab them at this point.
He kept moving up until he emerged on the roof. He stabbed the guard at the stairway in the throat, no need for sandy that time. He saw a line of snipers on the roof, pointed down at his allies for this job.
He activated his sandy, and shot eight times. He waited for his sandy to end.
Eight snipers suddenly turned into corpses. The entire building had just heard shotgun fire from their rifle-filled rooftops.
Alright, time for the fun part of the job to begin. He cracked his neck both ways, stretched his arms and legs, and rolled his shoulders. He activated his sandevistan, and jumped down to the next floor doorway on the staircase.
He kicked the door open, and started firing.
—
It was pretty late by the time he got back to the fortress. He went inside to see an unexpected face.
Katsuo was at the central table, typing at a screen, a six pack of soda in front of him. He looked up as David entered and raised a hand in greeting. David walked over to the table and took a seat opposite of him.
"Katsuo, whatcha doing here?"
"Apparently I do good work." Katsuo preened under the words, rubbing his nails on his chest pridefully. His smile dropped as he groaned. "Apparently the reward for good work is more work. I've been assigned to act as the PR Liaison from this area to the main HQ."
Katsuo offered him a drink, David took it and cracked it open as Katsuo spoke. He took a sip and considered it for a moment.
"PR Liaison?"
"I act as the go-between for a particular company asset and HQ."
David glared at him, he knew what a PR Liaison was, you ass. Judging from his sarcastic smirk, he knew that David knew that too. David snorted and replied.
"...we're in the same city. Hell, can't we just call if that's needed?"
"That's what I said." Katsuo groaned and rested his face on his hand.
David snorted, and took a sip.
"So what have you been doing, down in gang territory?" Katsuo asked, and cracked open his own drink. He took a sip while waiting for a reply.
"Apparently the Voodoo Boys had a civil war, and the side that likes Smasher wants me to help them kill the side that doesn't." David explained.
"...Gangs can have civil wars? Wouldn't they just become two separate gangs at that point?"
David hummed. "I suppose it depends on what the gang's overall organization is like, if it's a central authority gang versus a dispersed authority gang."
"Ah, makes sense I supp…" Katsuo trailed off as he started getting a call. He went ahead and put it on speaker and he answered. David stayed quiet, he'd leave if it was a personal matter, but if it was just business then whatever. It had become something of a tradition for them to put their calls on speaker when they had their chats, and then throw good-natured insults about the caller if it was spam or something.
"Katsuo Tanaka, PR Liasion?" The voice on the other side sounded official, business then he supposed.
"That is correct." Katsuo put on a professional air.
"Are you in a secure location?"
Katsuo paused at that, and exchanged a glance with David. He replied. "Yes, my location is secure."
The voice continued gravely. "You are not to reveal the following information to any non-Arasaka employee, or any Arasaka employee of D-level authority or lower. Do you understand?"
David and Katsuo straightened up at this. What the fuck was going on? Katuso replied.
"Yes I understand."
The following news shocked them both.
"There has been an attack on Arasaka Tower. Your mother, Chiri Tanaka, was among the Dead-10 casualties."