She hadn't spoken with her uncle in years, she wasn't sure she wanted to, not yet at least. She didn't have a good read on him anymore, when she used to be able to read him like a book. Uncle was passionate, he was angry, and he cared about people he never talked to. Father never liked talking about him to her when he was alive, the most she'd usually get was a frown and distant look.
When she had finally met uncle, she had been surprised at just how open he was compared to everyone else around. The only one more open with her was Adam, and that's because he never tried to hide a thing. Uncle had still been treating her as a child at the time, but he was terrible at keeping his feelings a secret, even back then she was able to tell what he thought on anything they talked about.
Now though? She couldn't read him at all, which was concerning, because Michiko considered herself quite good at reading people.
So talking to him before she could get a read on him… that wasn't something she could afford to do.
Yet here she was, on the other side of the table from a relative she hadn't spoken to in decades, one she didn't know very well anymore.
The silence was a bit awkward. She resisted the urge to fidget in her chair. Her uncle didn't move from his expressionless stare.
Everyone in the world performs micro-movements to some degree. Small breaths, blinks, little motions of the limbs. Little tiny motions that confirmed to the world that they were still alive. Only the very oldest borgs lose these little motions, eventually they just completely forget how to, as they don't need to anymore. Adam was one such borg, and he was almost a hundred years old at this point. Old man Kagekaze was another, and he was around two decades older than Adam before he died. Zaburo wasn't one yet, he was a bit older than Adam, but had been a borg for less time overall, he still subconsciously remembered what it was like to be biological.
Her uncle wasn't a borg. He didn't have any micro-movements. It downright was unnerving the moment she noticed it.
She focused on everything else instead. Plain suited attire outside of a long leather jacket. Professionalism combined with an open statement and reminder of youthful rebellion? He was firmly in the professional world, but refused to play along with grandfather's policies? That sounded almost too simple.
No micro-movements, that told her he wanted to hide his reactions. Understandable given the cutthroat nature of the corporate world. That told her nothing useful.
His hair was slicked back and relatively short. Something that took a moment to prepare in the day, but not too long. He cared for his looks, but it was only a token effort. It was a style that was easy to maintain.
His face was shaved, but still bore a five-o'clock shadow. Again, he cared about his looks, but only to an extent. He shaved often enough to not have a beard but probably not everyday.
Shaded glasses, either he needed them to see and they were transition lenses, or they were smart-glasses sometimes used by corporate types. She herself had a pair, but she couldn't be sure that he was wearing such. Either way, a practical choice that wasn't cyberware, he didn't try to load up on chrome and didn't care if people knew that or not. Either that or it was a bluff to make people think he was weaker than he actually was.
She almost expressed frustration on just how little information she was getting here.
The door opened suddenly and a woman with red hair with shaved sides walked in, carrying two cups on a tray. Carefully, she set the cups down on the table, one in front of uncle and one in front of her, and walked out of the room.
"Thank you." She and uncle spoke in perfect unison. She glanced over to see his expression hadn't changed at all. She took the cup in both hands, and let her chemical analyzer work as she smelled the contents.
…black coffee, extra caffeine, no additives. It was safe.
She took a sip, something that her uncle mimicked slowly, still staring with that blank expression. Eventually, he spoke.
"That was Valerie. She used to work elsewhere before I decided I needed to keep a closer eye on her. She brings me coffee now."
She raised a brow at him. The topic was somewhat unexpected, but she could work with it. "May I ask why you needed her to change positions?" A simple, straightforward question. Depending on how he answered her, that could tell her much of his current personality and motives.
"Her mother was a loyal asset of the previous president Jugemu Jun." He answered simply, and took a drink of his mug.
"And you've been purging the tower of his assets." A direct accusation. Everyone knew that he was doing it, but plausible deniability was valuable.
"Correct. I wasn't sure of her loyalty, so I'm watching her for any sabotage. So far she has been clean."
She took a drink of the coffee to give her time to think through her uncle's response. He didn't even try to deny it, instead he openly admitted his actions and provided an immediate explanation and elaboration.
…He was being honest with her, as far as she could tell. His face was still unnervingly still and his movements minimized to only the bare essentials to drink. She narrowed her eyes a tad.
…She activated her sandevistan. She kept very still as she observed her uncle.
All at once, he seemed to come to life. Easy and steady breathing, the occasional blink, tiny micro-expressions appearing on his face. A tiny smirk flashed at her. His eyes seemed to twinkle in amusement.
Her sandevistan deactivated, and all at once her uncle returned to being a nonliving thing.
She took a drink of her coffee. "You have a kerenzikov." And a sandevistan-grade one too, which was deeply concerning.
A person was not meant to live at such speeds. Zaburo once described his own kerenzikov as 'a slow, quiet, and terribly lonely world'. His was not sandevistan grade in speed, it was a bit slower. She couldn't imagine what kind of world Yorinobu Arasaka was experiencing.
"It took you a moment, niece." Her uncle seemed to relax just a tad, having found whatever it was he was looking for in her behavior. He leaned back a tad, but his movements were still so unnervingly efficient.
"Has anyone ever told you how unsettling that is?" She begrudged at him.
"...Occasionally…" He said slowly, before changing the subject by tapping the folder on the table in front of him. He slid it over to her, and she took it in one hand. "Open it, I think you'll be interested in its contents."
She looked at it for a long moment, glancing at uncle to try and read him again, failing, and opening the folder with her thumb. It was surprisingly heavy.
Inside of the folder were dozens of memory shards, inside of little plastic pockets on the inside of the book-like folder. She narrowed her eyes at them before looking up at him again.
"Jugemu Jun has been serving Arasaka for many years now. I'm sure you know. Inside those shards are the collected memories of every mission and order he's ever given to Adam Smasher."
She froze and looked down at the folder again. Swallowing, she looked up again to glare at him.
"Why?" Specifically, why was he giving this to her?
"It's a bribe." He explained, taking a sip from his mug. Her heart skipped a beat. No one outside of DangerGal should know about her… resurgent affections…
For her uncle to know… She had a leak. Either there was a flaw in their datawalls, or… one of her girls was a double agent. Double agent against DangerGal specifically that was, not in general, some of them were already that.
Well, it might be possible for him to figure out based on her history with Adam and her one interaction with him in years, but she had been careful to hide her feelings when she tried talking to him last.
…Uncle lived at sandevistan speeds. He might have figured it out from that.
"It's a bribe to make sure our factions don't come into conflict." He continued to explain. "It's better for the both of us if intra-company sabotage was kept to an absolute minimum. In the best case scenario we can cooperate. This is a bribe to get that handled."
She narrowed her eyes. "You want a list of all those loyal to my faction." She guessed.
"Correct. I need to make sure I've purged every trace of Jugemu Jun's influence." He was being incredibly frank with her.
She thought about it for a moment. Glancing down at the folder and back up. "I want a list of those loyal to your faction too." She bargained, preparing for a long back and forth over the nature of what they could extract from one another.
"Acceptable, I'll have Valerie send it to you." He agreed.
She blinked.
He hadn't even tried to bargain. He just accepted it immediately.
…And in doing so made sure she couldn't ask for anything more. Shit.
She nodded to herself. Alright, she had been on the back-foot and off-balance this entire meeting, but the outcome was still pretty good overall. She could work with this.
"I'll get you a list. If any of them go dark, I'll know who to blame." she gave an unsubtle threat.
"I have no intention of weakening your faction." He promised through a stony visage. Michiko Arasaka wasn't sure if she could trust that.
The coffee was pretty good though, so there was that.
—
The bastard had gone and left town on a job.
He had left without telling her that he was leaving. She growled into her drink as she stared at that Gloria woman and the other girls she was with from the corner of her nightclub. The same place she normally waited on a certain someone to arrive from.. She was with Lucy, a DangerGal agent, and a Militech Blackwatch agent. It was an eclectic bunch for sure.
She had asked what they were doing here without the others. The DangerGal agent quickly (a woman named Juliet) explained that they were having a girl's night out. She could understand that, sometimes she needed girl time herself, away from the men for a night.
She asked them to tell Adam to come visit, she had 'important details to share' with him. That was true, but it wasn't really why she wanted him over. That had more to do with the little thing that was currently making sitting quietly a bit difficult. Lucy then explained that Adam wasn't in town.
He wasn't in town, he was in Japan, and probably wouldn't be back for a while. Rogue had retreated to her quiet corner shortly after learning that. The same corner that allowed her to watch most of the bar, and was quiet enough for her to get some work done while staying visible.
She growled into her drink again, frustrated by the tight things she was wearing under her clothes right now. The tight things that she had wanted a particular non-communicative asshole to take off her. It was exactly like the fucker.
'Wear something cute next time.' and then ditch town. Fucker. She could wear rags and they'd be cute. She went through all this extra effort and he bailed without a word. She bit her lip as she shifted in her seat, careful to not make a noise.
She looked away, turning her glare to the wall instead. They didn't do anything to deserve her ire, it was best to not glare in anyone's direction.
She contemplated for a moment. Before harshly tapping at her desk. Jameson brought over one of her tablets, and she hooked into it impatiently. Scanning through the logs of general news of the criminal underground of Night City that she had recorded specifically to share with the fucker that wasn't currently fucking her.
She paused and reviewed that thought again. She groaned in despair and let her face thump against the table.
…She had it bad for him, didn't she?
…She did.
Rogue, the Queen of Afterlife, kept her face planted for just a few moments more before pushing herself up and staring at the ceiling. She ignored the spike of distraction that the movement caused and evaluated her thoughts and actions over the past few weeks.
…
Yep. Absolutely shamelessly down bad. She knew the asshole barely cared about her. He wanted the information out of her, and the sex, he didn't care at all about her as a person. Sometimes, when she was too tired and sore to move, and he wrapped his arms around her, she thought that she might be able to change that.
She quickly banished that thought whenever she had it. It always came back.
Hell, he was only barely interested in the sex. She knew how men were, they were horny fuckers, it was something she used to her advantage many times. Adam was rich, powerful, dangerous, handsome, and mature. This combined to make him unfairly sexy. If he wanted to he could probably get a new supermodel in his bed every month until he died.
But he didn't. He was almost… chaste in that way. He was quick to plow her brains out when she had explicitly offered, but he didn't do a fucking thing to pursue her.
And from what her contacts (and he) had told her, he didn't do anything to pursue that one Tanaka woman before she died, or that Armstrong harlot over in the arena. He had just engaged when they sent the most obvious, blatant signals, and not a moment before.
It took Tanaka putting a fucking cock on him for him to notice her signals!
Adam Smasher, the asshole, was as dense as a fucking brick.
…And she was probably infatuated with that stupid, psychopathic, murderous brick.
God she had shit taste in men.
She stood up and immediately had to grab the table edge to not stumble. Breathing in once and then out again, she stood up fully and grabbed the tablet. She'd take it back to her room, get this tight thing off her, and get back to work.
Until he came back, then she'd get the asshole over here again.
…What if she left it on until he came back…?
No! Bad thought! That was stupid!
--
It felt quite strange to be on a 'girls night out'. It had been decades since Gloria had gotten to go on one last, as an inexperienced and headstrong streetgirl going out with a few of her friends for clubbing. The little she remembered of then was feeling embarrassed, by her revealing outfit and the glances she got (and thrilled at that second thing privately). Then after a few hours she went home and went to sleep in a dingy apartment.
Soon after she found a cute, cool-headed boy and tried her luck at flirting. Three years later David was born. Three years later Vincent had left, only visiting briefly with increasingly long durations of waiting in between.
She knew why he did. Like a stupid girl she thought that she could change it. Vincent tried to shoo her away at first, and she was too stubborn to leave him alone. He had never changed though, he couldn't, his own mind didn't let him. It was safer for her and D that he left, but that didn't stop the 'what ifs'.
Sometimes romances are more appealing because they can't work out?
What a load of shit.
…Ah, she shouldn't get into the habit of cursing.
"Like, what about this one?" A voice probably as mature as Gloria's own called out, breaking from her thoughts and dragging her back into a conversation that was entirely too embarrassing for her to handle. A woman looking to be in her thirties held up a thin little dress of vibrant blue and neon. Her bright green eyes laughed at her, and Gloria wanted to be elsewhere.
She looked at the dress in the woman's hands, looked down at her own body and made a mental comparison. She looked away and coughed into her hand. "I'm a bit too old to be wearing things like that Juliet." She tried to defend herself.
Juliet was one of the DangerGal agents that approached her when they visited their HQ some time back, and the woman was friendly, helpful, and willing to share an abundance of gossip. She also constantly looked like she was laughing at a joke no one else heard, a humorous gleam in her almost-glowing eyes.
"Cmon Glori! Don't worry about the 'mutton dressed as lamb' thing, It's going to look, like, great on you. Put it on?" The slightly older woman shook the dress in front of her. Gloria flushed a tad at how loud she was being. "Like, I already got one for Rucy and Meryl, so you gotta at least try it honey?" Her blonde cat-ears twitched rapidly on top of her head.
Gloria reluctantly took the all-too small dress and stared at it for a few moments with apprehension. Juliet took the opportunity to get behind her and shove her several times into a changing booth before closing the door with a cheery wave.
She stumbled for a moment before regaining her poise. Shaking her head at just how easily Juliet was able to bully her into 'like, having fun and stuff'. Slowly starting to strip off the fairly conservative attire she was in, she reviewed the night thus far.
…It was fun. Really fun. Earlier they had been at Afterlife for a bit, to meet up with Juliet's friend, Meryl. Ms. Rogue had come over to ask about Adam, but when they told her that he was out on business for a while, she frowned and left to a corner of the bar that she and Adam normally used for less-confidential talks.
…Gloria was fairly sure that Rogue and Adam were having sex. Which was nothing she was going to be flustered by, she was a grown woman, she knew where babies came from. For a while, she had been… tempted… by Adam's mocking advance.
But Rogue had been nothing but kind to her and her son. She didn't want to do that to the woman. That didn't stop the occasional daydream about the man who was practically David's father already.
Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like if that was true. Judging from the story of Michiko Arasaka, it would probably be just as tragic though. If a princess of Arasaka couldn't do it, what hope did she have? She was just a woman who tried her best to help her son.
It had been years before she had any time to do much of anything besides working. For a while she had thrown herself back into work. She was determined to help her son as best she could, even death couldn't stop this mama!
…She had been an EMT for years. She wasn't any stranger to death, or gore, or violence. She frowned and stopped in the process of removing her pants.
She panicked and froze in front of those cars. She had died right then.
Then, more than one year later, she was revived.
Then, seeing her friend's son bleeding out… She had zoned out again in shock. She wasn't any stranger to death. Why had she zoned out? She hadn't even zoned out before when doing her job, and Katsuo was far from the worst body she had ever seen.
It felt very wrong the moment she realized this. An inescapable feeling of realization just beyond her grasp. There was something wrong with her, and she didn't know what.
That scared her. She wasn't sure why.
"C'mon Glori! Put it on!" Juliet called out from the other side of the door.
"Give me a second!" She called back, taking a steeling breath and quickly putting the dress on, using the buttons to attach the straps. She looked in the mirror and immediately brought one hand up to rub on her other arm, feeling quite self-conscious about her appearance.
Swallowing down the nerves, she stepped out to see the other girls waiting for her. Lucy was in some kind of button-up shirt and skirt combination, and looking as apathetic as she always did. Although Gloria could see her hand tugging at the end of her outfit a tad.
Her son's output… wouldn't have been Gloria's first pick. She was gloomy, and dramatic, and occasionally smoked before she had started to badger the girl about stopping. She was a runner, and in most cases would be long gone by now.
But… she really loved her son, that much was obvious. Despite being jumpier than a streetrat on synthcoke, the girl was firmly glued to her son. She loved him enough to choose him over perceived safety. It was hard for her to disapprove of a girl that was that devoted to her boy.
She would have preferred Rebecca though, she was much more up-beat, and that positivity would've done her broody boy some good.
Meryl, Juliet's friend who was tagging along for this night out, was dressed in a sleek jacket-over-dress combination. It looked good on the dark-haired, half-Japanese woman. As with everything else, she looked utterly unphased by the situation.
Gloria wasn't quite sure about her yet. It was hard to read a woman who only seemed to have a single expression. But she had been nothing but polite thus far, and she was Juliet's friend, so she would give her the benefit of doubt.
"Oh my gosh, like you look great, Glori! Do a little spin girl!" The slightly older woman demanded jubilantly, waving her finger around to emphasize her point.
Gloria looked down and did a slow spin, feeling her face heat up as Juliet did a mock wolf-whistle. Juliet currently dressed in her own pure-white sweater that hugged her developed frame, and barely covered her shorts.
Lucy was giving a small smile at her in amusement. Meryl looked as blank as always.
Despite herself, Gloria couldn't help but smile. It had been a long time since she had a girls night out. She had been just as embarrassed then too.