Xeah
Once I had finally managed to calm down, we got to work on getting the riot foam off of my legs and back, though it took some time as we had to break off chunks of it or melt it off of me with fire and heat. So that was fun.
Once that was over however my fear had given way to rage. This was much harder for me to keep under control, especially because I knew I could just kill Saburo and be done with it, leaving his head as an example for everyone else.
Of course, I was trying not to escalate the situation beyond my ability to deal with, partially because I was now wanting to leave this reality behind much more than I had before. Simply killing everyone involved would bring everyone else down on me or my friends like a pack of starving wolves.
Before, I had thought about keeping the general canon somewhat intact, but now I didn't give two shits whether it burned to the ground. So of course, you can probably see why I was having a hard time keeping myself from just dropping a live grenade in front of Saburo and the rest of his Corpo family, even with the trouble that'd bring. That little voice in my head telling me to open an unprotected portal in Saburo's office that led to the surface of the sun was becoming really hard to ignore. It only had to be for a second to incinerate the old fuck. It wouldn't even be hard.
Jackie was the voice of reason in all this, telling me that it was probably a better idea to get our friends out of Night City before making a run at The Emperor of Arasaka. Thinking of keeping those close to me safe helped me remember how much I wanted to keep my morals intact.
As for getting people out, Jackie went and talked to his mom for a few minutes, before coming back with news that she wasn't going to be leaving Night City, but she would give Padre a call for some of the big hitters from the Valentinos to hang by the Coyote for a bit. I just hoped she'd stay safe.
By the time he got back with that news I'd already liberated a hoodie, a bandana to wrap around my face, and a pair of shades to cover up my eyes, all of this coming from a clothing store that was currently closed. I was seriously glad I had chosen portals instead of something else.
Jackie didn't comment on my acquisitions, though he did a double-take at how fast I'd gotten everything. I figured that since he'd seen my face and not immediately tried to turn me in, it was okay to trust him enough to reveal my portals.
When I opened a portal from his living room to V's apartment, Jackie just stared at it for a solid minute, before turning to me.
"I kinda wish we'd known earlier. Could've gotten so many smuggling gigs." At that, I could only give a sheepish smile and a shrug while from the other side of the portal, V's head whipped around to stare back at us.
"Uhhh…" Was the only thing she could say to the two of us as I stepped through, with Jackie hesitantly following behind me, letting out a shudder.
"That's some freaky stuff, hermanita. Still, you'd have made a great smuggler." Jackie reiterated to me.
"What the fuck? Jackie? Xeah? What the hell?" V asked disbelievingly.
Explaining what had happened to V took a solid twenty minutes, with half of that being spent on calming her down enough to listen. The other half just made her both angry and resigned, which was understandable since it'd only been about five or so months since she'd left the Bakkers. Having to leave your home behind twice in one year is not a good thing to experience.
"So what you're tellin' me is that I could have 'Saka hit squads knocking down my door any minute now?" The female merc asked as she shoved some clothes into a bag, along with her pistol, some ammo, and some hygiene products.
"Yeah. We're gonna check on Misty and Vik next to see if they're willing to leave NC for a bit. T-bug too. After that, I'm going to try and fix this. I don't know how, but I'm gonna try." I stated as calmly as I could. Just being in the city at this point made me nervous.
Another idea was forming in my head, but I wasn't sure about it. It mostly involved hitting as many Arasaka locations as I could as quickly as possible, then letting the resulting chaos erupt. The thought process here was that if they were scrambling to recover, they wouldn't have the time or resources to keep going after us. Would it start the Fifth Corporate War? Probably. Did I care? Kind of? It wrapped back around to the moral issues I had with escalating that far.
"I want to be mad at you, Xeah. I really do. I mean, fuck, I just got the place set up the way I like it!" V snapped a bit after closing up her bag. I winced, mostly because I knew that if I hadn't gotten involved with V and Jackie, neither of them would be in this mess. Before I could apologize however, she continued.
"It's not your fault though… It's Arasaka that pulled this shit. Just… Fuck." She finished with a sigh. Jackie patted her on the back, his own bag full of necessities slung over his shoulder.
"We'll get through this, chica. We'll give ol' Saburo a kick in the cojones, eh Xeah?" The ex-tino glanced at me as he spoke, a commiserating smile on his face.
"Yeah. I'm not sure how I'll do it, but if it means keeping you all safe, then I'll do it!" I realized at that moment, saying those words, that even if I escalated, I didn't have to remain at that level afterward. It still worried me, having that much power at my fingertips, but something seemed to settle just a bit more comfortably in my mind. Not quite acceptance, but more along the lines of less reluctance.
V gave the two of us a small smile, before looking around the apartment with a melancholic expression on her face. She then took a breath, before letting it back out.
"Alright, let's go get Misty."
It didn't take much to convince Misty to come with us as she had thought about going to Nepal in the past, and me mentioning my place in the Himalayas gave her the perfect excuse to leave for a little while. Vik however decided to stay, using his connections to stay off Arasaka's radar. That his clinic was already kept relatively secret by Misty's Esoterica meant that he didn't really have much of a reason to leave.
As for T-bug, when we got to her apartment she was already gone, and Jackie said he'd received a single text back from her saying that she had left Night City, and probably wouldn't be back for some time. It was entirely automated, and when I checked on her through a mini-portal, I found that she was already on a flight leaving town. She'd be fine.
Going back to my secret work site was bittersweet, if I'm being honest. There were tools and parts strewn about from when I'd been working on my various projects. The travel suit I'd built was held up by a makeshift armor stand I'd put together from welded pipes and rebar. All the designs I'd put together were still sitting on my work table I'd liberated upon first settling in. It was a good place. Quiet, hidden, and fairly safe. But I'd also been staying there for almost a month now.
I ended up having to liberate a couple extra beds that night, which after working that day, preparing to move back into my apartment, escaping Arasaka, having my identity revealed to Jackie, and getting my friends out of Night city, was utterly exhausting.
I don't think I even removed my shoes before hitting the bed I'd set up for myself.
The next morning was spent by liberating a whole bunch of foodstuffs for the four of us. It turned out that Jackie had been given a recipe shard by his mom, and he was taking to cooking with particular enthusiasm. Misty was taking a short walk outside the cave, while V just looked at some of the things I'd been working on, particularly the travel suit.
When breakfast was finally ready and my work table was cleared away so that we could eat, we began tossing ideas back and forth. By we, I mostly mean Jackie, V, and I, because Misty seemed entirely out of her depth when it came to ideas to get Arasaka and any other megacorps to back off.
Most of our ideas revolved around hitting Arasaka hard enough to leave them scrambling to recover before Militech or some other megacorporation could take notice. Hiding wasn't an option, since they could just keep coming after us with impunity. Killing Saburo was out, too. Simply killing him was deemed more symbolic than anything else. It would definitely hurt Arasaka, but it wouldn't cripple them. There were just too many parts to the megacorporation, and even killing off the entire family might only cause its stock price to drop ten, maybe twenty percent at most, before it would inevitably recover. It might not remain the top dog, but they'd still be more than capable of retaliating.
We talked about hitting research facilities, but that meant hitting a high-security data center to get the locations. I could do it, but that would mean either hiring another netrunner since T-bug had bailed all on her own, or pulling her out of whatever hole she'd be hiding in.
The opposite side of that coin was just going to another megacorporation like Militech and offering to smash the sites they knew about. That ran into the problem of remaining anonymous. Again, I could do it, but only to a certain extent.
The next idea that came up was one that had already been mentioned. Opening a portal to the sun for every location where there was an Arasaka Tower. Upon looking up a few things, I learned that there were some experts who had hypothesized about what would happen if a house-sized piece of the sun was brought to earth. The general consensus ranged from instant death of everyone in the room to apocalyptic levels of death. I argued that the piece I would bring wouldn't be bigger than a human head, but Jackie and V shot me down. Spoilsports. It'd only be several minor thermonuclear blasts brought from the radiative layer… The experts in the video said there wouldn't even be any radiation afterward… There would barely be enough of the sun there to blow up the top half of every Arasaka tower from Tokyo, to New York, to Moscow. I think. I'm not a true expert on explosives. Smaller pieces mean less boom, right? Right? Fuck I hate guessing at these things, and who knows if the 'experts' were accurate.
Misty was a little unsettled by the realization that I was quite literally a pocket apocalypse. Pocket nuke doesn't do it justice I'm afraid. I ended up giving her a few promises that I'd try not to 'crack the world like an egg' but… I'm pretty sure she was looking at me in a new light. One that didn't have any room for the Xeah she'd previously known.
It wasn't a good feeling, but I'd push through. After all, that's what friends do, right? We push through so that those close to us can live good lives.
Moving on, the last idea I had was to just wait for Yorinobu to swipe the engram of Johnny Silverhand, then off Saburo when he came to take it back. I knew that Konpeki Plaza had several blindspots in the suite that Yorinobu stayed in, so I could probably peek in every now and then using a mini-portal. If I swiped the engram myself, then during the chaos of Yorinobu's takeover, I could give it to Rogue in exchange for hooking up V and Jackie with Panam, who would likely need some friends after Nash was killed, since in that scenario, I'd be slipping her a note that said Nash was raffen shiv. I could probably work in some general obfuscation of their identities too, so that nobody'd go after them.
That last idea relied a lot on hope. Hope that Yorinobu would swipe the engram. Hope that Saburo would go to Night City instead of just nuking it with his weaponized carrier. Hope that Rogue would take the deal I'd offer her. Hope that Panam would trust the word of a stranger over the word of someone she'd worked with. It may have been a fool's hope, but Jackie, V, and even Misty seemed to like that idea a bit better than the others that had been put forward.
The canon storyline may have been fucked, but I could at least try to give a few people a happy ending before I left… Right?
Arasaka Asset Reclamation Team Liason #[REDACTED] - Location Undisclosed
The report from the most senior operative at the scene was something that others might have laughed at, if it weren't so glaringly obvious that they were trying to cover for the absolute clusterfuck that operation had become. While it wasn't their fault the operation failed considering the footage available to us, the operative's arrogance, zealotry, or sheer stupidity meant that allowing them or their team to remain close to the operation was an exercise in incompetence.
Saying the Asset wouldn't get far, when it was clear to anyone who so much as glanced at the footage that the Asset had gone to ground, was almost infuriating enough to request for the operative's termination. Not only was the Asset gone, but their associates were as well. By the time Arasaka infiltrators reached the few that remained, they were either too well defended or too obscure to be deemed a cost-effective option.
Asset Fens would likely not surface for quite some time, though if and when they did, they would most certainly be prepared to go to war with Arasaka. Preliminary observations of the masks brought back showed only minor effects, but that they were there at all along with the portal footage caused analysts to assume the worst case scenario.
Since we weren't all burning in nuclear fire at the moment or in an equally nightmarish scenario, those who knew of the situation were of the belief that any retaliation would be more subtle, or that there wouldn't be any retaliation at all.
As for any further attempts to recapture the Asset, sonic weapons were deemed somewhat effective, as was the riot foam, before the target escaped via a portal. It was recommended by myself and a few others that any further attempts should focus primarily on disorientation before capture via enhanced-strength restraints.
As to whether or not any further attempts could be made, that would depend entirely on if and when the Asset surfaced in the future.
For the moment, all that was ordered was the further monitoring of the situation, and to inform Arasaka executives if there were any developments. Other than that, business would proceed as if it were just another day.
Jackie Welles
You ever realize there's a side to someone you didn't know was there before? Like, you knew someone could do something crazy, but you never really knew how crazy. At first, I figured portals were the end of it. Just point A to point B type shit.
Xeah had gotten… Kind of dark if I had to be honest. I mean, sure, she'd absolutely flatline a gonk when it comes right down to it, but the fact that she could talk about actively attacking Ara-fuckin'-saka? That she could actually do it? That was somethin' else, lemme tell ya.
Knowin' that she was the most wanted girl in NC didn't really change much though. It wasn't surprising that she was more violent than usual either. Girl had her hackles up and her claws out, and rightfully so, after being attacked in her own home and being forced to reveal what she looked like to me. Real shame, that. Has all those looks and can't show any of 'em off.
It was a good thing that she was willing to go along with the less aggressive plan. That showed that even despite the naivety of the idea, and with how she was currently a little bit unstable, she was still there underneath it all. I was a little worried about Misty though. She wasn't used to this sort of rough lifestyle. Maybe I could ask Xeah to send us somewhere for Misty to visit for a short while. Keep up the idea that there was still a life to live after all this, ya know?
V on the other hand was clearly just rollin' with the punches. Not much else that could be done in this situation, but V was doin' okay. A little rattled maybe, but not bad enough to push Xeah away.
The suit of armor Xeah had made concerned me. That many symbols, that much metal? Either Xeah was going to war, or somethin' else was goin' on. Ah whatever, I might as well ask.
"By the way, Xeah. What's with the suit of armor?" I inquire, keeping my tone casual.
She was quiet for a couple of seconds, before takin' a deep breath.
"It's for when I travel to another reality." She replied, though she had tensed up a bit.
… Sure, why not? It's not like things can get even more insane, right?
Dios mio, I shouldn't have said that.