"Tell them the story, Jackie, of how you almost lost all your savings!" Mama Welles called out from the kitchen over the sound of sizzling SCOP and vegetables. The vegetables were bought for this special occasion, specifically by Jackie to try and appease his mother's justifiable fury over him spending so much money.
"But I got it back! And now, the lesson is learned without consequence." He called back, jokingly. He was sitting in the small room that served as both a dining room and living room, one arm around his girlfriend, a woman with a short mess of pale blonde hair and dark shadowed eyes. She was smiling in good humor and fiddling with a pack of cards.
"You got lucky! Where would you be if you hadn't?!" She fired back, grabbing the sizzling pan in pan-holders and bringing it over to the table, followed by a stack of five plates and utensils. Jackie grinned and countered.
"Ah, but I did get lucky, and that's all that matters now! Besides, I got to see an NC legend use my bike to break a bus full of guns. Who else gets to say that?" His mother harrumphed in response, and smiled over to the other two in the room. A man and woman sitting on the couch that had been scooted up to the central coffee table.
The man had brown hair that had been cut short, and sides shaved down more than the top. A layer of stubbled covered his lower face, and his right ear was pierced. The woman sat upon his lap, his arms wrapped around her belly keeping her in place. She had dark red hair that was shaved on the side and flopped over. Her optic lines crossed over the highest point on her cheek and then swooped upwards across the side of her head, coming from dark eyeshadow around her bright optics. The man was grinning in lighthearted amusement, the woman looked disgruntled but resigned.
"C'mon Jackie, stop wasting time here, tell us what went down." The man said, head leaned forwards and resting in the crook of the woman's neck. She grunted and closed her eyes, leaning her own head back to rest on his slightly. Two jackets of the same type and brand were off to the side, hanging over the back of the couch.
"I'm getting to it, I'm getting to it." Jackie responded, grabbing a forkful of vegetables and SCOP and taking a quick bite. He almost yelped as he forgot the temperature, and quickly swallowed it down. "Okay, I'll tell you as it cools." His mother, Mama Welles, was not sympathetic to his plight, judging from her expression.
Jackie began his story, both hands raised and palms facing downwards. "Alright, so there I was with my baby." He paused to kiss his girlfriend on the forehead. "I had driven it out to Pacifica, you know, to see how it was. She was a dream as I drove her, even with all the issues you noticed Vic."
The man named Victor nodded assuredly.
"So I brought her down to the Smashbowl right, one of the safest places in the city. No one causes trouble unless they want Smasher to come down and kill them. I figured it was all good."
He paused her, and reached for the fork. Mama Welles smacked his hand, which he shook in exaggerated pain.
"So I waved to the guards they got there, mostly Animals. They don't get up to much if you don't, they like fighting each other more, you know? So I was waving and they were waving back, when all of a sudden a bus pulled up. This was shady already, the only cars in Pacifica are corpo, right Val?"
"I don't work in that department Jackie." Valerie replied.
He didn't respond, and simply stared expressionless. She groaned, keeping her eyes closed, and spoke again.
"Yes, only Arasaka-owned vehicles are currently permitted to drive in the Pacifica region outside of the Arena parking space.
Jackie nodded, and continued. "So I was suspicious immediately, but it was only when I saw irons poking out the windows that I jumped behind my bike. They fired for a minute, and flatlined all the guys I was just talking with."
"They started to rev up the engine to drive off again, and I thought, 'thank god, they're professionals.' They didn't go for poor little me and my baby." Victor and Valerie chuckled at the joke. Misty looked relieved, and Mama Welles kept glaring at her son for the slightly grim joke. Jackie continued. "When all of a sudden, I'm falling sideways, my bike is gone, and the bus flies ten or twenty feet to the side before falling and bursting into flame."
Jackie gestures to himself with both hands. "I look up from my hands and knees, and I see none other than Adam Smasher posing like an olympic athlete who just hit a world record in shot put. I push myself up, and he's holding a shotgun at the burning bus."
"He glances back at me, and I think for sure I'm a goner. No! He asked me a question, you wanna guess what it was?!" He pointed, to which Victor responded. "If you were single?".
Jackie scoffs and partially lifts up Misty by the waist, who yelps a bit. "You wish choom! No, he asks me "How much?"."
Jackie pauses, sets Misty down, and makes an exaggerated face looking around the room. "I think to myself, is he talking to me? How much what?! He gets annoyed, and asks again. 'Meatbag! How much for the bike?"
Jackie leans back and holds up a finger in mock realization. "He was talking to me! He called me a meatbag! I didn't see any other bags of premium meat around!" He grins and does a mock flex. "I'm too dumbfounded by all of this, I reply honestly! Twenty thousand!"
Jackie leans back and huffs in disbelief. "Next thing I know I'm getting twenty thousand eddies deposited in my account from an unknown account. He used my brand new bike to beat a band of bus-bound gangsters into scrap, and paid me for it."
Jackie shakes an accusing finger at Valerie, who now has her eyes open and staring at him with a brow raised. "You didn't tell me Adam Smasher was like that! I would have expected him to leave without a word, any other corpo would have I bet."
She grinned slightly. "Please Jackie, it was only twenty thousand. I make five times that a year." Jackie scoffed and waved a hand. Victor shook his head and looked at Jackie.
"Rich people, huh?" He said with an expression of faux-annoyance. "Only twenty k, she says."
Misty chimed up. "Got no respect for the little people, no respect at all I say."
Jackie joined back in. "I say! I say!"
Mama Welles was about to say something before everyone in the room received a message. Everyone except Valerie that was. They all went silent. Valerie furrowed her brow and sat up straighter.
"...Hey, what was that?"
Victor suddenly shot up. Standing her up as he did, he immediately went for their jackets as everyone else in the room got up too. "Everyone into the car. We need to get to Arasaka Tower."
Jackie nodded, and pulled Misty and his mother along, grabbing all the guns in the house as they moved. Valerie grabbed his arm, and glared worriedly. "Victor, tell me whats going on."
Victor looked her in the eye, and grabbed both of her shoulders. "Someone just placed a bounty on every member of Arasaka in Night City, and sent it to everyone they could."
Her eyes widened, and she started running for the garage and car too. She flinched, and steadied herself, sending a glance back at Victor. It took him a second to realize, fumbling he grabbed a tiny pink remote from his pocket and turned it off. Valerie stood up straight again and made her way to the car.
"...She had that in the whole time?" Jackie asked, from the side. Victor nodded.
"What the hell man, this is my mother's house." Jackie deadpanned.
It was about that point in which everything went dark, and everyone with unshielded chrome dropped to the floor.
The EMPs had gone off.
—
Abbey Hyena was born in twenty thirty-four. She grew up on the Night City streets, briefly joined the Animals to get off her feet and get a name, and then left to become a Solo of moderate success. She might be the baddest bitch in Night City, but she didn't have the best track record when it came to jobs. The fighting part was easy! It was the talking and the clients that were bullshit.
Those cunts always tried to cheat her out of her hard earned eddies! So what if the package was a little beat up? She had gotten it to you! Be grateful and stop trying to cheat her, you bastards! She grumbled all the way back into her Pacifica apartment block. It was her second-favorite part of the city, even if she had to encourage the former residents to fuck off with a fat cheque.
She opened her door to see her sanctuary. Her bed in the corner, her shelves opposite to it, a desk with a computer and chair, a door that led into a bathroom. It had everything she needed, including her favorite part. She dropped her duffel bag, and flopped forwards on her bed, crashing against the body pillows there.
All three body pillows of Adam Smasher she owned.
One in his early days, blonde 'Elvis' Gemini, strong and smiling and wonderful. One of his Night Parade days, his Dragoon frame stripped of armor revealing the network of strong myomer muscles beneath. One of his current days, salt and pepper sweptback hair, grim and matured. The goods were just barely concealed from her curious eyes by strategically placed hands and bent legs.
They were all so perfect, she couldn't possibly choose between the three! She breathed in deeply, face still buried in the crotch-space of NP Adam. Without conscious command, her tail began to wag. This was the best, second only to how she imagined the real thing would be like. How would he smell? How would he taste? She wanted to know.
She reluctantly pushed up from her love-pile of pillows, and looked out the window to the Smasher Palace. It was her second-favorite sight in the whole city. She sighed, one day she would be in there, with him.
…one day he would be in her, she gulped and promised to herself. Her tail wagged harder at the thought. When she got big enough, when she was good enough, she'd march right up to him and demand to work under him!
…under him…
It took a minute to shake herself from the daze, wiping away the bit of drool. She got up and went to shower, reminding herself to wash her Adam's off tonight. She only had two changes of the same outfit, but that was fine, she washed them everytime she changed. She washed herself off quickly to not waste too much water, and started toweling off. She had to go slow around her ears, they were sensitive.
She imagined what his hands would feel like on them. Her tail wagged.
She looked around her room again. All her wonderful portraits and posters of Adam. On her desk, all his cute little figurines and statuettes. Under her bed, a lockbox containing her most precious possessions. Little scraps of his armor paneling and spent ammo casings, lost against particularly worthy opponents and hunted down by her after the fact.
She was a little worried, for when their fateful meeting would occur. What if he didn't like girls with long black hair or tanned brown skin? What if he likes short girls with small boobs?
What if he hated her tail and ears? She hugged the body pillow worriedly. She would have to cut them off immediately. She hoped he liked them. She played with the collar around her neck, the little eclipse symbol on it, proof of her private love. She huffed, and grabbed a bag of kibble from the floor, munching on it worriedly, careful not to get any of her Adams dirty or messy from it.
She grabbed her 'Zeus Powerkeg' 3-liter Mug, and brought it up to take deep gulps of water from it. As she did, she received a message. Grunting, she set the mug down on her knee and read through it. Bag of half-empty kibble in her lap.
…
She stood up, and grabbed her guns and duffel bag of ammo.
She was going out tonight. In the distance, multiple explosions rang out.
The baddest bitch of Night City was on the hunt for any fucker who went after her (future) man.
She ignored all the lights going off around her. Her eyes could see in the dark just fine.
—
In a Maelstrom den in their newly claimed Badlands territory, sat a group of men around an open fire, listening to a radio tuned to cause auditory feedback in their internal chrome. That part completed the song, and no-chrome chucklefucks couldn't possibly get it. They all called it 'bland' or 'painful to listen to'. Shows what they knew about music, that was to say, absolutely fucking nothing.
Things had been going real fucking well for Maelstrom these past few months, and all they had to do was follow a bit behind Adam Smasher's recent rampages and reap the rewards. One of their biggest rivals wiped off the map, a shit ton of netrunning gear in pacifica looted from the knockoffs (who were also dead), a fuck load of gear and territory in the badlands taken from the scav-knockoffs (who, again, were also dead now).
All the chrome picked out of their stashes and bodies alone was a fortune, even if they only got some of it. All of that fortune went right into chroming up the lads, the ones with some fucking sense and loyalty. Hell, even Brick got his act somewhat together, his wiring wasn't quite so shit anymore, and he got his ugly chimp face covered in metal plating. All in all, a massive improvement to his own sore optics.
Fucking Brick, he should have gotten a plate to cover his face welded on years ago.
He got a message, and judging from the reactions of the boys, they got it too.
He considered it for a moment.
One of the dumber boys spoke up.
"Well shit, we should hop right fucking on this! We can just drive by the academy an-"
The dead meat was cut off by the fact that he had just shot him with a big fucking bullet. The boom was nice to listen to. The dead meat collapsed, and the live boys flinched back at the sudden gunshot.
"That's fucking retarded, dumbass."
The boys were looking at him now. Did he really have to explain fucking everything to these bozos?
"All of our territory is in Night City. Arasaka is a global fucking corp. What the fuck do you think is going to happen immediately after this little rumble?" He paused for a half second. "That's right, Maelstrom gets the heavy fucking artillery called down on it, proportional to all of our boys who decided to take the fucking bait."
He glowered at them, optics glowing hateful red.
"We are staying right fucking here, and letting this bullshit pass. Then, once this shit is over, we move in and take what we can swallow. It's been working fucking wonders so far, and we're not going to screw this shit up for a fucking day-trading scam. Got it?"
They were about to nod dumbly. Then each and every one of them collapse suddenly, breaking out into micro-seizures. The radio turned off, and so did every other electronic in the area.
Fucking EMPs. Fucking fuckers, he told them to get the shielding installed. Goddamn retards he has to wrestle into being functional. He glared at their spasming forms for a moment, before turning back to the fire.
Explosions in the distance, disrupting the peace and quiet.
It was going to be a long fucking night. Joy.
—
All across Night City, the same message was distributed. From poorest to richest, from corporate to streetrat. Everyone save the employees of Arasaka received the same message, and a digital token of authenticity.
Then, one minute after the message was distributed, a massive explosion occurred in every major utility facility, and no less than twelve EMPs were let off in a gridlike fashion all around the city.
—
If you are receiving this message, then you are neither an employee of Arasaka, or a relative of an employee of Arasaka.
I am Shaitan. I am placing an open bounty. For the next twenty-four hours, the following cash-value rewards are available to everyone in Night City. These rewards are for the verified death of an employee of Arasaka, or a relative of an employee. The Switzerland national bank has agreed to handle the distribution of the wealth to claimants on my behalf. You must have unedited video and audio evidence of your act to claim the reward.
For the death of a relative of an employee of Arasaka : one-thousand eurodollars.
For the death of an employee of Arasaka : ten-thousand eurodollars.
For the death of a security employee of Arasaka : twenty-five thousand eurodollars.
For the death of a cyborg employee of Arasaka : fifty thousand eurodollars.
For the death of an executive of Arasaka : one-hundred thousand eurodollars.
For the death of the president of Arasaka NC : five hundred thousand eurodollars.
For the death of Adam Smasher : One million eurodollars.
The following is a NFT'd seal of authenticity, proving the cooperation of the Switzerland national bank in claiming this bounty.
Remember, there are more of you than there are of them.
May the Red Sun set in Night City.