Rogue watched as Reilly started chatting up with several Mercs. She started out nervous and a little intimidated, but the new blood fixer eased in quick. Cracking jokes and buying drinks.
Rogue silently watched all that. Reilly had talent as a fixer. The only thing Reilly needed to do was live long enough to have that talent bloom.
[Rogue, Ma'am?]
The voice of the bouncer for tonight rang inside Rogue's head. Holo call that she always had opened in case the bouncer needed to tell her something urgent.
This time, however, the bouncer looked nervous. Scared, actually.
[What is it?]
[There's… there's 6 people…? Umm… here. They- they say that they were sent here by Reilly Kudokawa.]
Rogue poured a drink and downed it. That sounded like them.
Rogue cleared her throat and answered.
[Let them in. They're with me. I asked them to come.]
[I… yes, Ma'am.]
Rogue stood back up again. She had half the club panic thanks to her jokes, so she better clarify that none of them were in trouble.
Yet.
"Alright, boys! This time the Baba Yagas are actually coming, but they're with me! So don't be scared!"
Sasha saw Maine downing shots after Rogue gave everyone in the club a fright.
She couldn't help but laugh at her team leader trying to calm down his panicking heart.
To be quite fair, everyone here was coming down from a scare. Sasha could still feel her heart bump against her ribs.
Every merc here had taken at least one unsavoury gig, done something that certainly landed them on someone's shit list.
And if they had enough eddies to hire NC's newest boogeymen, then… well, shit.
One unlucky bastard would be dragged out into the shadows, and the lucky rest wouldn't even realise one of them went missing inside the club.
It sounded like an exaggeration, but there was enough news about corpo executives disappearing from high-security buildings and ending up as corpses inside rusty cars under bridges and highways.
And the video going around for the past week… Sasha saw it, Maine saw it, everyone on the Edgerunner crew saw it.
Majority of the video was obstructed by the close up plating of the Baba Yagas, but through the gaps between arms and legs one thing was clear - at least one of them was capable of swinging cars around with one arm like it was made of Styrofoam. A kick to a car caused the vehicle to spin and roll into the air.
Who was even capable of doing that? Sasha had thought.
Then she saw the giant futuristic walking armour's silhouette darkened by the flames in the background.
That gave her the creeps.
Though to be fair, that gave everyone the creeps. The way that suit of armour slowly turned around, acting like it just didn't slaughter several gangs while they were still in their car.
It was all over the news, people thinking it was Adam Smasher returning as a merc for hire.
Until they found out it wasn't. It was someone completely new. That's when every news media got interested.
Sasha tried finding info about them, but to her avail barely anything could be found.
It was as if they really were boogeymen, only known by their name.
"Alright, boys! This time the Baba Yagas are actually coming, but they're with me! So don't be scared!"
The Edgerunner crew heard Rogue once again shout at the top of her loung for an announcement.
Few of the mercs in the club laughed. They all got fooled by her once. No way in hell were they getting fooled again.
"For fuck's sakes, give us a break…" Sasha heard Maine mutter under his breath as he groaned. Dorio chuckled at her output's exasperation.
"Hey, maybe they really are coming."
"And what, they're going to take us away, dragging us to hell while they make us scream?" Rebecca asked as she rested her arms behind her head.
"Who knows, if we're lucky enough we'll be watching them in action."
"And if we're not, maybe we'll be the targets."
Sasha and Pilar giggled at Rebecca and Dorio going back and forth.
Sasha had heard high satisfaction rating by the clients.
Boy, did they work fast and dilligently. Roughly two weeks have passed and they had done enough gigs to be considered children's cautionary tales.
"Oh fuck." The Edgerunner crew heard their leader mutter. Sasha managed to catch the eyes behind Maine's sunglasses. Widened with small pupils.
That's when they all saw them.
Every merc in the club had stopped talking and stared at the new guests striding through.
They were taller than anyone here, all 6 heavily suited up and barely showing skin. Faces covered with helmets. If they had faces, they looked more like full'borgs than humans in armour. The one in front, presumably the leader, wore what looked like Skull with the cranium completely covering where the eyes should be.
Their weight caused the floor to rumble slightly with each step, fast rhythm vibrating throughout the club.
Everyone was silent, too scared to even talk lest the 6 Spartans all turned their heads towards that one in particular.
"Fuck me," Dorio muttered. "They really are monsters."
"You sure they're the Baba Yaga?"
"Their bodies match the silhouettes in the video. It has to be them."
"Hey boys!" They heard from one of the tables outside. It was Reilly, the newest fixer in Afterlife, waving at them like they were chooms.
What surprised the rest of the guests was how the 6 would respond. Either awkwardly raising a hand in return, or waving back in a playful manner.
That… unsurprisingly unsettled the mercs more.
They all headed towards Rogue, just as Rogue had announced. But the size of them meant that only one or two could fit in, the rest was simply standing outside and leaning on the walls.
"… Do you really think that Rogue called them here?" Rebecca whispered over the table. The VIP section meant that most of their talks would stay in this room, but with how quiet the club sounded it felt like any sound an octave higher would be picked up by those giants.
"Why else would they be here? It'll be weirder if they weren't allowed in the Afterlife, after all they managed to do." Dorio answered, voice just as hushed as Rebecca.
"I… I guess so."
Sasha focused on the merc wearing all black armour. Contrary to the other 5, they were the only one without any extra colours for highlights.
With how big they were, it was a wonder how they could sneak into highly secured locations and sneak back out.
But as curious as she was, she was just as scared to find out.
"First off, welcome to Afterlife. The fact that you could walk in here means that you're in the big leagues now."
Rogue greeted the Spartan in front like she greeted every other newcomer mercs. Normally the moment she said this they would be grinning ear to ear. Maine and his crew on the other side (still staring at Fire Team Baba Yaga along with other mercs) certainly did.
The metal titan didn't respond. It was like they were golems.
Rogue narrowed her eyes, trying to skim off their body movement.
She couldn't get any reads off of them, and it frustrated her even more.
"You have a job for us, I presume." That's when that… eyeless skull spoke. It caught Rogue off guard in two ways. The fact that it was so sudden, with no body movement to announce that it was going to speak. And then there was also… the voice. Distorted. It sounded less like a voice and just amalgamations of vibrations imitating the tone of one to make words and string them into sentences.
Rogue blinked.
"Yes. I can tell you're solely here for a biz." Rogue placed a shard on the table. Which Agent Locusts looked down at.
"Have a seat, I'll give you the details." People inside the VIP section had to scoot over even more when Locust decided to comply. The seat sank in thanks to the weight of the Gen 3 Rakshasa variant Mjolnir.
"Drinks?" Rogue offered, trying to at least establish some… human contact with the Baba Yagas.
"We don't drink." A polite decline, yet something that made them look less alive.
Agent Locust grabbed the shard, holding it up to briefly see the shape. To Rogue, it looked like he could read the data off the shard just by looking.
Agent Locust turned to the rest of his crew.
"Ram." The distorted voice ordered, to which one of the bulkier ones stepped up to grab the shard, taking a heavily modified laptop and an equally upgraded cyberdeck from the underside of it's shoulder armour. It plugged wires between the two and inserted the shard into the cyberdeck.
The other Spartans started gathering around the screen as Rogue narrowed her eyes.
How paranoid were they to go for something like this?
"It's a MegaCorp gig. Client's Arasaka. They asked me to make a team to steal some valuable assets from Militech. A prototype of their latest weapon system. You see, Militech has what they call Special Projects Department, a group responsible for the development of technological ideas considered too exotic, sensitive, potentially dangerous. Arasaka caught wind of one of these exotic ideas, and would like an espiona-"
The merc the leader had referred to as Ram started laughing as he watched the screen. Like his namesake, Ram made sounds resembling cries of a sheep.
Well, Rogue thought. At least they acted like they had human emotions. A very wrong reason and very weird timing notwithstanding.
The other 5 were looking at Spartan Ram. To them, it was obvious why he was laughing.
Exotic, she says. Something that looked like what UNSC used 60 years ago before throwing away in favor of newer, better models.
"… ahem, so anyways. Militech had transported one of those very special development projects to Night City. We don't know if Night City is a pit stop, or a potential testing ground. It doesn't matter. What matter's is that it's here, and Arasaka wants it in the hands of the Night City's Arasaka's facility. The rest of the details, including the number of securities and the building layout is in that shard."
Agent Locust turned his head back to Rogue. The Queen of Fixers wanted to make some sort of eye contact- to read the merc's response, to establish some sort of proper fixer-merc relationship, to make sure that she can at least stare this metal motherfucker down in some ways to tell her she's not to be messed with.
The lack of eyes visible meant that it failed. But Rogue didn't falter.
And neither did Agent Locust.
"You want us to go in quiet, or loud and hard?"
"Do whatever you want, it doesn't matter. All we want is for you guys to take that new project, and deliver to the designated location."
That was all Agent Locust needed to know. He stood up, and the rest of the Spartans gave way.
It was time to leave, and do their jobs.
"Wait." Rogue opened her mouth as Agent Locust but a footstep away from getting out of the VIP section. "What's your name? I know your team is called Baba Yaga. But I'd like to know of who I was directly talking to."
Agent Locust turned around.
"Agent Locust. At your service."
Ram closed his laptop and packed up as he also stood up, leaving the VIP section with Locust and forming the 6 man band again.
Collectively footprints were heard throughout the club as they disappeared around the corner.
Rogue picked up her glass, still half full with whiskey.
Hmph. She swiveled the glass and saw the drink swirl.
At my service my ass, she barely had any control of that conversation.