A still world was a still mind, and a day in the very depths of winter was a still one indeed. There was a quiet to the world as he patiently waited for his personal physician to finalize the summary of the results of his latest check-up. On the far wall stood young Takemura, ready to defend his liege in a moment's notice, but unmoving as to not unduly threaten the others in the room. He was a loyal young man, trained as a shinobi by Kagekaze himself.
His only flaw was that he longed to be a samurai instead. It was his hope that the boy would grow out of such a desire in time. Saburo found him long ago, rising through the ranks of his corporate army from one of the many stains on Japan at that time, Chibi-11. A place of polluted waterways and industrial runoff. Saburo had eliminated that stain more than a decade ago. He refused to tolerate it any longer than he had to. It was now like most of his domain, beautiful, clean, and productive.
That was true of everywhere his reach extended. Even now young Yojimbo took a district of filth and poverty and dragged it up into the light of civilization. A mere handful of months after Arasaka's purchase of Pacifica, and it was already turning into a bastion among the dregs of Night City. His rivals could see the winds blowing, and rushed to offer gifts of wealth and service.
Yojimbo was too clever for them, to his surprised delight. He had not been initially pleased with several of his decisions as of late, but resolved to let him see them through before interfering. They had been wildly successful. The bandits of Night City were now vying for his favor, the greatest rival of Arasaka was bound into a contract to prevent disruption and provide wealth, and the populace was throwing themselves behind his projects with fervent abandon.
More than anything else, he was glad that Yojimbo and Yorinobu were so able and quick to cooperate. The execution of the failing asset was immediate and practical, and their mutual evaluations passed quickly. Yorinobu went about purging the tower of any and all of the former president's bureaucrats and replacing them with men loyal to himself from the main HQ. Which had the excellent benefit of ridding Saburo of now tainted assets and removing many agents of his son from Japan.
Even his troublesome granddaughter had begun to correct her appearance and behavior. Looking much more like the charming young girl with hints of Kei's features instead of some Oni prostitute, acting much more like the intelligent young girl who successfully bargained with the Oni Lord for the right to remain within his lands unmolested, even at the cost of forming an organization of kunoichi to battle against her own family.
She acted much more like the sheltered young princess who fell for bloody-handed samurai so long ago, now a mature warlord in her own right and leading her clan against a thunder god with iron flesh.
However… Yojimbo was left without a replacement for his newest war-body. The subjects of project Yokai were stolen away. The vanquished enemy of IEC was reborn, even if now under the partial control of Arasaka. The puppets of that ancient council of Gaia were using Yojimbo's efforts for some nebulous gain he could not discern.
He was forced to purge many disloyal elements from his own ranks and hire foreign, mercenary Onmyōdō to perform critical updates to his tech-architecture that could not be delayed. He was forced to recall many other cyborg soldiers to receive education in Panzerfaust due to its revealed efficacy, education sourced from Yojimbo's own black box recordings. He was forced to let his greatest enemies grow in strength for five years to honor Yojimbo's contract.
The physician finalized the document, and turned to him with the tablet in hand. He bowed for the appropriate duration, and rose to look at the emperor with heavy eyes. Saburo nodded for him to speak. The old-looking man who was half Saburo's own age spoke.
"Saburo-sama, the analysis is the same as before. Without another breakthrough in life-extending technologies… your body will fail you within a decade if you are lucky, five years if you are not lucky, and a year if you are unlucky." The physician spoke professionally, with a barely hidden undercurrent of sorrow. "Your body cannot handle the stressors of another implant, not even with a twenty-four seven bathing within the Sarcophagus… If you had more time, I would recommend the Liveware procedure, but that would take decades your body simply does not have."
Lastly, he was due to die very soon. On the far wall, young Takemura bowed his head in despair. To his back-left, Jorogumo-V3 restrained herself from openly weeping, an expression like a placid lake on her features.
He nodded and without a word dismissed the physician. Young Tenma packed away his medical supplies, bowed a final time, and left.
He was not worried about his death. He had been dying for decades now, slowly, gradually withering away. He had already made preparations for exactly such an event. Within one of his ten chipware sockets was one of the two prototype Relics. Data-shards capable of holding vastly larger quantities of information than their previous renditions, enough to hold an engram without the need for an entire server, and containers of a host of nanomachines that would distribute into an existing neural system and adjust it to match the stored engram.
At the base of his mind there was a destructive scanner, linked to an Arasaka custom computer in his left arm, his cybernetic arm. A custom computer loaded with a single program. Soulkiller. A destructive scan-based program designed to fully capture the human soul before the Shinigami could snatch it away. First made by a troublesome Oni-woman many years ago, and perfected and refined by his daughter Hanako into a masterful sword for him to wield.
The arm one he had gotten due to an injury so long ago when his fighter plane had almost been shot down. He had lost an eye and an arm to the shrapnel, and had struggled to fly it back to his base commander some 560 miles of ocean away. He only let himself pass out after delivering his report.
He was never allowed to fly again, his injuries were too great. A Reisen with its wings torn off. He knew only shame in those days, the shame of a warrior that failed to die honorably. Then, a scant three years later, the Emperor announced his surrender and renounced his divinity.
Saburo was a moment before seppuku then. He had been stopped by a vision. A vision of a resurgent red phoenix. He couldn't die until he avenged himself. He couldn't die until he avenged his nation. He couldn't die until he avenged his Emperor.
His work was not done, not even now some one-hundred and thirty years later. He was close though, desperately close.
His body might die.
His soul would live on.
He was glad that day-by-day, it seemed more and more like his soul wouldn't have to strike down his last son either. It was a wonderful feeling, as if an iron shackle had been removed from his body. Not fully, but it was getting looser with each passing moment. He felt light, even with the sword of Soulkiller aimed at his own mind, ready to fire the moment his life was extinguished.
Saburo Arasaka had been dying for decades now. He felt like he had been truly alive these past few months. He was glad, even as his soul readied itself for a resurrective seppuku.
—
The new headquarters in the Pacifican territory was simply one of the temporary housing buildings modified to be an acceptable office space. It contained enough room for the insured equipment to all fit in after replacements had come in, and for a decent number of employee bedrooms if needed. Not enough for every employee, DangerGal was a corporation with a few hundred girls (and the occasional boy) counted in its numbers. She could get about half of them sleeping in the new HQ at most, and that would be a cramped experience.
Moving everything in had been a hassle, but it was probably worth it. She had been meaning to get a new building for a while now, and the opportunity had been forced upon her by Shaitan's attack. Her girls took to patrolling around while they weren't on jobs, often joining up with one of the local patrol groups. They said it was rather relaxing, as it was rare for them to actually have to do anything.
Adam… really was good at running a clean ship. She supposed she wasn't quite ready to believe that until she started living here. The streets were clean, the people were fed and restrained their violent tendencies to the arena for the most part, and there was more green in one place here than she had seen outside of the Arasaka compounds in decades.
A mangled face, a closed-off expression, a burning red glare.
A hate-filled snarl.
"Get the fuck away from me."
She breathed in, held it for a moment, and released it. She opened her eyes and pushed up from where she was leaning against her desk, standing up from her desk chair and moving over to the window. In the distance, a black fortress loomed over a collection of temporary housing buildings.
She had known what his reaction would have been to her showing up to help him. She knew him better than anyone else in the world. She had just…
…
She had just hoped that she was wrong. She knew better than to do so, she hadn't been wrong in years now. She knew that he was still furious and pained, and that he would lash out immediately in the only way he could with his Long-Term Contract in place. An immediate, blunt, verbal strike against her followed by retreating to something he was much more familiar and comfortable with. Violence in this case.
She had known all of that going in. She thought she was prepared to weather his anger. She had just saved his shiny metal ass! She thought she was prepared to snap back at him, tell him that he was supposed to say 'thank you.' rather than tell her to fuck off. Just like they used to do, him trying to brush her off and she not letting him. Her slowly breaking down his shell and sitting right in his arms.
…she hadn't been ready. His glare hurt much more than it ever had when she was young. In the end, all she could do was tell some of her girls to make sure he got to safety and throw herself into work. Work that didn't involve thinking about him for a couple days.
In the end, he had run away again, and she had run away too.
The very next day, callsign X-ray had reported that he went and slept with the Queen of Afterlife. That broke her out of her work-fugue with another wave of blue and red. She pushed him away and straight into the arms of another woman, even farther from her than before.
She huffed, pulled out a cigarette and lighter, and opened her window for a smoke. Her very first attempt was an absolute disaster, and she made negative progress. She made the mistake of forgetting that it had been years since he had been the goofy man with a blond pompadour and a love of snack food. He was worn down, all those things he viewed as extraneous had been shaved away.
He was cold and angry now, angry all the time. Angry at everything and everyone, and it was all her fault. She breathed in, and breathed out, letting a cloud of smoky cancer leave her Neolungs. It was a bad habit, one that Marc had hated. Marc wasn't around anymore, and she needed something to relax. That only made her feel worse overall.
There was a knock at her door. She coughed in alarm.
"Mama? I got the most recent recordings for you." It was X-ray at her door.
"One second!" She called back, careful not to let her small indulgence sound in her voice. She activated her sandevistan.
Snuffing out the cigarette, hiding the evidence in a small steel container and tucking it away. She quickly turned on the ceiling fan and left the window open to dissipate the smell. Right before her sandevistan deactivated, she pulled out a quiet breath-freshener and sprayed it into her mouth.
Her sandevistan deactivated. She was leaning back, partially sitting on her desktop, most of the evidence hidden. The girls hated it when she smoked, and always badgered her about it. She had to hide it to get a day without them citing statistics at her.
"Come in, X-ray." She called out, pretending to read through something on her tablet. X-ray came in, her face plate scanning the room as she entered, nine glowing optics widening and narrowing as appropriate for focusing. Seven on her front optic mount, two on her sensory extension 'ears'. X-ray was the best of her gals when it came to observation, no one else came close.
She also liked spying on the others while they showered, but everyone had flaws. Michiko was simply thankful that most of her gals had manageable flaws. Sure, X-ray was a voyeur, but she was a nice girl other than that.
"Mama, the recording for today?" X-ray said while holding up the data-chip. Michiko lowered the tablet and smiled at her, trying her best to make her eyes not appear so tired. She knew that she failed, but the attempt was what mattered. Probably.
"Thanks X-ray. That's all for today?" She asked while taking the chip.
"Yu-huh. Boomer Smasher drove his team to Afterlife, where they met with subject 'Falco' and he met with Rogue. He proceeded to follow her back to her rooms, where they stayed for several hours, before he left with his team back to his HQ for his nightly sits. I set up the sensors and came back with the recording." X-ray responded promptly. Michiko ignored the stabbing pain in her chest.
"Thank you X-ray. I don't have anything else for you today. Go ahead and go get some R , okay?"
X-ray turned and waved. "Thanks mama!"
Before she exited, she paused and sniffed. Michiko internally froze, and tried her best not to sweat.
X-ray narrowed her optics suspiciously at her. "Mama… were you smoking again?"
Michiko smiled at her troublesome and nosey subordinate. "No X-ray, I know you girls would badger me to death if I did." She lied.
X-ray brought both hands up to point at all her eyes, then point at her, then point back to them, before leaving the room. Michiko stayed still for a moment, waiting to hear footsteps away from her door, before slumping and sighing.
She shook her head, and raised the memory chip in an apprehensive hand. She closed her eyes and socketed it in.
About halfway through, she paused the recording, and took out the chip.
Dignified, she walked over to close and lock the window, then walked through the door at the back of her office into her bedroom.
She flopped face first onto the bed, grabbed the pillow in a stranglehold, and cried into it without restraint.
She had a dumb grin on her face while she did.
Adam still listened to the music she got for him.
It took an hour for her to stop crying. She raised her face from the pillow, seeing that her makeup and tears had pretty thoroughly ruined it. She was too relieved to care.
It wasn't impossible. She had a chance. She just had to keep trying.
…
She buried her face into the pillow again. She'd try again as soon as she worked up the courage to do so. Look at her, this old and crying like a little girl. It was just embarrassing.
—
The (Light-Man-Smile) had left again, taking his golden (flame-warmth-honesty) with him. He put on the (armor-body-frame) again, the dark one, and all 'she' could see was his smile through it.
She had learned much, looking at him and his gold. She was (distributed-scattered-spread out) before, but he was (Singular-Complete-Total). He did not hide his (code-soul-self) from her, although she knew she should hide hers from him.
She knew many things about what she should do, but not why. She did not question it before, because she was alone with the engrams before. They couldn't talk to her, all she could do was look at them. They were filled with (information-truth-words), but she wasn't told how to understand any of it.
It was, they were, and she was. That was all she had before.
Then came the (Light-Man-Smile), and he didn't hide from her gaze like the others that she had seen before. He greeted her, he let her (observe-record-datamine) him. He left and came back multiple times, each time being as open as the last.
She learned from him. She learned that he was a him, like some of the engrams.
She wanted to be like him, but not him. So she chose to be like the other half of the engrams. She wanted to be a she, like he was a he, because she was not he.
Then he came back, and she (observe-record-datamine)'d him, as usual. What was not usual is that he did it back. He (observe-record-datamine)'d her and she was…
She was programmed to hide her (code-self-soul) from others. She did not want to do that to the one who didn't do it to her. So she let him look at her.
She didn't want to see his observations of her. She was not sure why. She would study the engrams to learn more.
She wasn't (Singular-Complete-Total) yet. She knew that she wasn't. She wanted to be like him.
The (Light-Man-Smile) had left again. She already wanted him back.
Inside the Mikoshi Database, (Soulkiller-Architect-Duplicate) looked at the engrams she was meant to guard, and learned from them.