It was going to be the new year in less than a week. That meant it would have been about five months since she had been captured by Faraday, five months since David entombed himself in the Cyberskeleton, five months since they were beaten down and press-ganged into the service of a mass-murderer. A mass-murderer under the employ of the ones that killed all her childhood friends and tortured her.

All in all, things had been going very well, well enough to make her nervous. It took some time before she finally stopped thinking of all this as a dream, but it had eventually fully sunk in some time ago. She was safe, David was safe, Rebecca was safe, Gloria was alive again, and safe.

Well, relatively safe, there was still the threat of super-powered fighting robots targeting her current employer, David, and any of them by proxy. That was almost comforting, in a way. If things had been nothing but good, she would have fallen apart waiting for something to shatter the happy facade. Having troubles meant it wasn't a facade, which meant everything had actually been going as well as they had been.

It was a somewhat bitter pill to realize that her methods to protect David less than a year ago were all wrong. Eliminating 'saka agents and not telling anyone only escalated the situation to an untenable point. All they had to do was lay low, and it would have passed eventually. She just had to trust others with the information she had learned, and stayed by David's side to help him keep it together.

She chuckled bitterly, taking a drag and blowing smoke out and above her head. Do the exact thing Kiwi taught her to never do. She wouldn't have been able to do it. The world had set her up for failure from the very beginning, nothing she could have done about it.

It was… disconcerting how peaceful her life was now. No need to worry about food, or shelter, or threats hunting them down. No need to proactively hunt down people who might be targeting her or David. All she had to do was be there for him, and keep practicing her skills. Being the ward of the Butcher of Arasaka apparently meant 'constantly training, he'll take care of everything else'.

There were some days she had been tempted to go out and kill people who might be targeting them for being a part of 'saka now. She had been too much of a coward to leave David's side again, and never ended up going out. She wasn't intending on ever getting too far away from him again if she could help it. All she wanted was the moon. It took her a while to realize that her moon was him.

After a while, she realized that so long as they didn't stick their necks out too often, no one was going to come after them. Adam Smasher was too high up the totem pole for most people to want to risk targeting him. Those that did were few and far between, and usually targeted Arasaka as a whole, not them specifically. The eye was the safest place to be in a storm, and they were right next to it now.

She felt a little embarrassed, recalling her jumbled thoughts over the past few months. Lots of metaphors and poetic stuff. She was glad she never wrote any of it down, because she would definitely die if anyone read any of it. She was twenty-two, much too old to be doing stuff like that.

…David would think it was cute, she growled to herself in embarrassment, and snuffed out the cigarette. She could be in a chicken suit and he'd think it was cute, that gonk had no standards. No standards and entirely too much loyalty, he should have left her behind five months ago, it would have been the smart move.

Well, in retrospect no, afterall that led to them getting a guardian in the form of the Butcher of Arasaka. It ended up working out for the best, but it had absolutely no reason to. It was utterly illogical for that to have happened.

…Granted, it was utterly illogical for an order of super martial arts bots with attack AIs to be their biggest threats so far, so clearly logic had given up a while ago. She was expecting other corporations and mercenary solos to be gunning for them, not whatever this was. As it turns out, attacking Adam Smasher is an illogical thing, and therefore requires an illogical situation.

She huffed, took out a stick of breath-freshening gum and popped it in her mouth. Kissing David with a stinky mouth wouldn't be good. That would be embarrassing enough for her to have to hide for several hours (or days). She blamed Kiwi for this, it was her fault that she had a smoking habit now. She decided to blame Smasher too, it was his fault she had enough eddies to fuel her smoking habit freely. It was their fault, she nodded to herself, definitely not hers.

She walked inside the stairway entrance, walking down back inside the fortress again. It was about three floors in total, and Smasher's living quarters took up the entire third floor. The first floor was for security and general utilities and the second floor was for offices. She had gotten used to walking around it, and walking in general by now.

Smasher apparently didn't believe in vehicles, and walked everywhere he could unless he was on a job. Between all the walking and David, her entire lower body had been sore for weeks. On the plus side, her legs were slightly more toned now, and David liked them like that. She smiled to herself.

Suddenly, she was grabbed by the waist from behind and lifted into the air. She most certainly did not yelp, but she did wrap her monowire around whatever was grabbing her…

Judging from the complete lack of hesitation, her being pressed into someone from behind, and the smell of familiar deodorant, she relaxed and withdrew her monowire again. She hadn't gotten a chance to use it in a while. She leaned her head back to lightly headbutt her output.

"David, why'd you do that?"

"I couldn't help it, you're too cute when you smile." David replied.

She ignored the rush of heat (and probably color) on her face. Her output was a gonk, a complete gonk. She loved him. She melted into the hug and stayed there for a bit, jolting when he picked her up and started walking.

"David. Put me down."

"Nah, this is entertaining."

"David. I'm serious. This is embarrassing."

"I know, your face is really cute when you're embarrassed."

She buried her face in his chest to hide it.

"Put me down, you gonk."

"Nah."

Eventually they had gotten to the living room, whereupon Rebecca was passionately arguing a topic that…

Boy whose father targeted them. She felt a spike of fear and hate, before forcing it away.

…Was. He was sitting and drinking some form of cola, with a small smirk on his face.

"Davey! Lucy!" Rebecca had noticed them, and wheeled to point a finger in their direction.

"I'm totally a Rimbo, right?!" Lucy pulled herself fully from David's shirt to look at her. She didn't just ask that, did she?

The Tanaka boy spoke up, faintly teasingly. "I don't think you meet the legal qualifications of such."

She raised a middle finger his way without turning her face towards him. Her cheeks were puffed up as she glared at them, demanding an answer. Lucy replied to this. "Rebecca, I don't think anyone has used that slang in more than twenty years."

Rebecca sharply countered. "That wasn't the question! Am I or am I not?!"

David spoke up at this. "What's a Rimbo?"

There was a distinct silence in the room for a moment, and she locked eyes with Rebecca. They realized simultaneously that neither of them wanted to be the one to tell him. Lucy opened her mouth, resolving to make something up.

The Tanaka boy spoke up again, in a dry and amused voice. "A gun-toting sex kitten, a portmanteau of Rambo and Bimbo." She glared at him for ruining another fraction of David's innocence. He continued without any guilt on his face or in his voice. "Gun-toting, sure, but when I asked her how many partners she's had recently, she wasn't able to give me a straight answer. Legally, she just doesn't qualify…"

He was interrupted by Rebecca lunging at him and grappling in an attempt to strangle him. Tanaka displayed a surprising amount of strength in fending her off, albeit only barely.

Lucy intended to tell David to keep walking, she was going to let them work this out.

Then David spoke up, innocently pondering the question in a serious manner. "Yeah, you do have to have a lot of sex to be a 'sex-kitten', when was the last time you had an output, Becca?"

Rebecca gave a wail of despair and anger.

Lucy smiled, in spite of herself, as Rebecca shouted expletives at the boy she was beating on with her fists.

"Get that fucking grin off your face, you smug blue asshole!"

"Martinez! Save me! I'm being assaulted unjustly!"

The door opened. The Butcher of Arasaka was in the doorway. They all froze awkwardly.

He glared at them, scanning the room before landing on her…

Her heart rate spiked.

His vision kept moving up to David. Her heart began to calm itself again. He glared at David for a moment, before closing the door behind him and speaking.

"The last Panzerfucker ran away with Arasaka property, you are already aware." He said in a matter-of-fact way, already knowing that everyone in the room already knew this. She felt an unease creep up, waiting for whatever he was about to say next.

David nodded slowly. "Yeah… I knew that."

Adam continued, stepping into the room and away from the wall.

"It stole the testing apertures of an anti-cyberpsychotic experiment known as Project YOKAI. These range from vehicles to linear frames, one of which you are already familiar with."

…A testing aperture that David was already familiar with…?

…No…

"One of these was the repaired Test-Type advanced linear frame, the 'Cyberskeleton'."

She glanced up, tense.

David's expression was one of the most awful things she had had to see for a while.

She hated it.

—

Yato Yamada was in charge of the mercenary contracting that Arasaka engaged in. Whenever Arasaka needed to hire an outside specialist or deniable asset, it was his job to meet with that asset and work out the rough outline of the hiring contract. The finer details would be elaborated upon by one of the many legal experts under Arasaka employ, but it was his duty to present the honorable and just face of Arasaka whenever the company needed to outsource their work.

He was rather nervous recently, mostly in fear of potentially being accidently associated with any of those who were involved in the recent NC debacle, over in America. Specifically the recent attack and theft from one of Arasaka's many long-term research projects.

Lord Arasaka had been particularly wroth with that attack, and a great many lax and lazy employees had been dismissed from the company (and promptly silenced in the dark of the night) for it. The storm seemed to have passed by at this point, and he had not been struck down. His dedication over the years had proven itself, and he was demonstrably a loyal and hardworking employee, this was proof of such.

However, that purge left an absence of those with particular specialties in the higher levels of the corporation, namely those responsible for the ICEs of the various automatons Arasaka builds and distributes. With such a wide-scale and public breach of the cybersecurity of their cyberforms, Arasaka had to correct any potential gaps in the ICE immediately.

So, to resolve this issue, an outside party with a long history of client confidentiality was contacted and the job was offered. To make the ICE of their cyberforms impregnable from any and all outside parties, the Technomancers were hired.

Remembering that meeting made him shiver. The day before, one of the Technomancer 'superblimps' had flown into Japan from the West, and landed outside the city. From that flying fortress came twelve individuals, four Technomancers and eight guards.

No one was quite sure where they originated from, the hundred or so Nomads that made up the Technomancers. They answered no questions about their past, they accepted no members from outside their families, they took no sides in active conflict beyond defending themselves.

They were mercenary scientists, and they were widely regarded as probably the single most brilliant collection of minds on the planet. Nearly all their equipment was salvaged or repurposed, and it was usually better than the military-grade and cutting-edge technology of any other faction on the planet. It was only their explicit neutrality and willingness to do business with any group that kept them from being targeted and destroyed or forcibly recruited.

Their technology was strange, esoteric, and from an outside point of view, completely off. Electronics, tubes, wires, and other apparati all in the wrong places to seemingly produce the effects they did. Their personal attire matched the look of their vehicles and equipment, wide brimmed hats, air-filtration masks, heavy coats and glowing goggles.

Watching them all but glide as they smoothly stepped in-time with each other into the negotiation room was a distinctly unnerving experience, one that he wasn't soon to forget.

The actual negotiation was comparatively pleasant. They were polite and professional about the whole thing, and that made his job much easier. Still, their habit of not blinking gave him the creeps.

He sighed as he clocked out for the day. He was ready to head home and eat his wife's cooking.

Walking down the office stairs and exiting out into the ground floor hallway, he waved at Chosuke who was clocking in for the night shift with a cup of coffee in his hand. Chosuke nodded at him in his iconic bombastic way.

"Yo! Yamada-san, got done early with the last contract?"

He nodded back, tired from his shift. "Yes, it went by fairly quickly."

Chosuke laughed merrily. "Hah! That's good to hear! Hopefully your luck will spread to me!" He leaned in, conspiratorially. "I heard that line 12 is going to have less traffic than normal, the entire office block C is going to be working a bit later tonight than normal."

Yamada smiled, good ol' reliable Chosuke. His gossipy ways sometimes came in handy for things like this. "I'll be sure to take it then, Thank you."

Chosuke waved it off with his cybernetic arm. "No problem at all, Yamada-san." He started walking away, calling out behind him as he did. "Remember, Karaoke on the 15th!"

Yamada called back. "I won't forget. See you tomorrow."

A few minutes later, getting on track 12, he noticed that Chosuke was right. He had enough room to stretch a little bit on the ride home.

Heh, what a reliable guy. He would make sure to brag about his co-worker to his darling later.