Theoretically, Motoko could be in the right place at the right time to get the contract to kill Jenkins.
V
October 10, 2076
21:20 Hours
Lizzie's Bar
The kid was late.
V tapped her black fingernails against the table in the private room impatiently as the beat of Lizzie's music thumped persistently against her skin. She tried to ignore the pulsating headache beating against her cranium as stock price adjustments and her biometric stress alerts flowed continuously across the edge of her vision.
Suddenly her senses were filled with Arasaka alert whistles and a very unwelcome red box full of text over her vision.
-Arasaka Alert-
Employee: NC770416
You have (5) uncompleted assignments on your schedule for today.
You have (38) unread messages on your Arasaka intranet email account. How would you like to respond?
[Oldest unread message was sent approximately 13 minutes ago].
Friendly Warning: Failure to complete assigned tasks or read unread messages on time as specified on your employee contract will result in a reduction of your Arasaka employee rating and all the consequences thereof.
-Arasaka Alert-
V mentally snarled and ordered her Arasaka Aiko™ Agent to go mute itself for an hour so she could hear herself think. She badly wanted a drink, but Kusanagi specifically asked her to stay sober for this talk which really wasn't improving her already shitty mood.
V took some deep breaths and slowly regained her calm despite her inner turmoil. Heh, her life coach would be impressed.
Honestly, as much as the brat ticked her off with how hellishly annoying she could be at times, she always brought the goods when it mattered. V wouldn't wait at a club for a random Night City street kid if that wasn't the case. The Kang Tao gig with Jackie. The hidden NUSA Outpost. Even more stuff afterwards. V had to give credit where it was due and Motoko always delivered.
But it was still a Saturday for V which meant cleaning up after all the messes of her coworkers so they could enjoy their "weekend" (In Arasaka? That's a laugh) with a clean slate. Fridays and Saturdays were the busiest days for V and she really didn't appreciate losing her precious not-so-free-time waiting for Kusanagi to show up.
The brat better not be wasting her time!
She was about to break and demand a whiskey on the rocks when the kid finally arrived. The brat was huffing up a storm and leaning against a purple lit wall with one cybernetic arm like she ran the entire way here. Which was idiotic since it wasn't like she could get winded anymore. Was the kid doing it intentionally to disarm potential observers or did she genuinely forget?
V sipped her RealWater quietly as she observed the young borg walking quickly over to her table.
To the untrained eye, the kid looked totally harmless if you didn't know what to look for. But V was a veteran in detecting potential threats and could tell the kid's latest upgrade only made her even deadlier than she already was.
V would admit that when she first got the intelligence report on her desk with news that the young mercenary recently got a full body conversion surgery at an Arasaka affiliated clinic, she was shocked on many levels. She honestly didn't think the kid had the guts or wealth to go through with the decision of living the rest of her life as a biopod slipping into a collection of support bodies like outfits in a closet, but this wouldn't be the first time the kid surprised her.
Afterwards, while she would never admit to anyone under pain of death, she actually felt a little concerned for the kid. Regardless of her reasons, borgs were not well known for their mental stability. Living the rest of your life as a brain surviving in a cage of metal and wires wasn't for the faint of heart and she had no idea what Kusanagi was thinking going "full-metal" to begin with.
Of course, the kid beat the odds once again and was bright as rain the next time they met a few weeks later. Besides some new artificial joints, skin circuitry, and new not-so-hidden restricted cyberware addons, V couldn't sense any difference in Kusanagi's mannerisms. The teen was all sunshine and spunk, like she didn't just alter her life irrevocably. V felt like she was being pranked, but covertly obtained medical records from the clinic in question proved that the body transfer was no joke.
Arasaka Neotech Karada model 16. Purple hair and violet-red eyes. Standard human-like exterior. Not manufactured with any consultation from Raven Microcybernetics but built fully in house via an associate company based in Osaka. Obvious signs of post-surgery modifications which included mostly illegal and non-registered combat cyberware like a suspiciously familiar looking sandevistan and lots of hidden defense and offensive systems.
Pretty intense shit for a 15 year old girl to chip in.
On a slightly more worrying note, her observed mental stability despite the procedure and continued excellent work in her missions for Arasaka as an affiliated solo was also noted in several departments. For better and mostly for the worse, there was a growing number of eyes on the brat and V could do little to stop the spread of internal information.
Kusanagi marched up to V and without her characteristic smile for once which rang alarm bells in V's head. She looked around, as if making sure she wasn't being followed, and sat down on the table after passing through the glass door of the room. She pressed her finger against her lips and activated the room's privacy mode with her Shadow cyberdeck. The glass door quickly shut tight and the music of the club was instantly muted.
V's hackles were being raised with each step. Just what the hell was the kid bringing to her lap this time?
"What's going on kid? Why all the hush hush crap?" V impatiently started as she finished her water.
"V, we're chooms right?" Kusanagi asked nervously as her red-violet Kiroshi's peered into V's soul.
The alarm bells were ringing louder in her head and V was getting fed up.
"Yeah…?"
"Amigas forever? Comrades to the end? Battle sisters against the forces of chaos?" The girl continued imploringly.
V stopped tapping her fingers against the table to ponder what the kid was saying. "Yeah, yeah, I guess you could say we're…friends." V admitted grudgingly and the borg's eyes lit up in happiness.
"Cool! I mean, I kinda already knew but I just wanted to be sure since you always have your 'tough corpo bitch' mask on so sometimes it can be hard to tell…" Kusanagi rambled on.
"Wow hallelujah we're besties forever! Now that we established that, why are we meeting right now?" V impatiently growled out loud. Hell, every meeting with the brat is always so annoying!
Kusanagi played with her fingers nervously for a few seconds before finally replying.
"So you know how I've been doing more freelance work for Arasaka lately? Especially after my major…well…body upgrade?"
"I reviewed the reports, so yes." V raised an eyebrow in curiosity. Where was this going?
"Well, I recently got contacted by someone…in Special Operations. The division that encompasses counter-intelligence - the department you work at - for a possible mission! I also want to note that I haven't accepted it yet!" The girl finally let out in a rush.
Wait. What?
V's eyes opened up in surprise - she had no knowledge about anyone in the hierarchy immediate to her looking around for outside help. "No shit? I didn't hear about this. Who's your contact?" V shook the ice in her glass in genuine wonder.
V was so used to compartmentalizing her interactions with Kusanagi and her work life as distinct realities that this sudden merger of worlds was throwing her off her game.
Kusanagi winced and slowly pulled out a datashard from her pocket and slid it over to V. "...It was Susan Abernathy. She's the client. Well, potential client as I want to reiterate firmly that I haven't accepted the gig yet. Like at all."
V blinked in silence. Why would…? Something was up and her guts were telling her that something really bad happened and she didn't like it.
"So, you're telling me that the very recently promoted Arasaka Director of Special Operations, my boss's boss, contacted you, a teenage solo, about a possible mission for her." She stated cooly, just to make sure she didn't miss anything.
"Honestly, when you put it like that it does sound like something from a young adult novel, doesn't it? Heh…heh." Kusanagi poked her fingers together in embarrassment.
The borg was dawdling. She didn't want to tell V something and it was pissing the operative off.
"So, out with it. Who does she want dead and why didn't she want to contact anyone from my department to handle it?" V asked bluntly because she already determined she wouldn't like the answer no matter what.
"Weeelllll, she kinda wants your boss Jenkins dead. Like turbo dead. Blood splattered over his employee of the month awards dead. I've been spying on him lately in person and on the net and it looks like office politics shit. He's plotting against her after she got the position he wanted and she wants to strike first."
Motoko sipped her own water. "She's prepping her own hitsquad but sought me out first to see what rates I would accept before committing to anything - If I accept the gig, I'm assuming we would start price negotiations."
V really didn't know how to react to that and she simply stared at the teenage borg in silence.
"She also offered a bonus if I covertly killed everyone in your department, including you. She wants to rebuild the entire Night City C.I. business unit from the ground up so I guess she wants all the old guard 'gone' if you know what I mean."
"..."
"I'm pretty sure she doesn't know we're friends because wooow talk about awkward. Like you have no idea how hard I had to control my facial expressions when she explained the assignment to me."
"..."
"V, I have concerns about your work environment as it seems super toxic to me." The kid added very unhelpfully.
"..."
"I never considered accepting the bonus!" Kusanagi almost shouted in self defense as she crossed her arms over her chest.
V's vision was starting to blur slightly and her biomonitor stress alerts were suddenly popping in her vision despite her earlier mute command. Probably not a good sign.
"But you considered eliminating Jenkins." She eventually muttered in reply.
"...Yeah I did. But it didn't feel right doing something that would have such a large impact on your life without asking for your input first." Kusanagi explained slowly.
V stared at Kusanagi in disbelief.
"A-Are…you asking me for my fucking blessing before murdering my superior?!"
"What, you like Jenkins?" That wasn't the point kid!
V stared at the kid in incomprehension of the sheer absurdity of the situation.
"Is this weird? This is weird, isn't it. V, I don't know how to make this conversation less weird." The flustered borg continued in confusion.
"I can't believe this is happening…" V cradled her pounding head and groaned in misery. "My entire fucking life revolves around Arasaka. If I say yes and you kill Jenkins, I lose my main anchor in the company and Abernathy will still want me gone. If I say no and you don't take the gig, she'll just hire someone else. Either way I'm fucked sideways…"
"...Would just quitting your job be so bad? No offense V but your job kinda sucks ass." Kusanagi added unhelpfully. Kind of a theme with the kid.
V held her head and took deep breaths as her life collapsed around her.
"Oh! You can join Section 9 instead! I promise you'll love it! And it would even give you an alibi! I have an AV that I recently unofficially 'acquired' from Militech and I could use it to 'headhunt' you from your office! Yeah, some of my contacts in Arasaka might get annoyed but you corpos kidnap each other all the time so it's no biggie! You'll be out of danger and then I can kill Jenkins with no guilt and then later, when Abernathy inevitably tries to flatline me too to cover up loose ends, I'll just ghost her too! Two dead suits and you'll be laughing in the background the whole time! Oh man, Jackie will be so happy when he hears the news!" The kid went on with growing enthusiasm.
This fucking kid I swear…
I have no idea what Seras' plans are for V and her future potential firing from Arasaka so this is just one possible scenario. It takes place about a year from the latest chapter so I went ahead and made some assumptions about future events.
Karada is the Japanese word for "body". Motoko removed the tracking bugs from her full transfer body but does a good enough job on her gigs that Arasaka is mostly willing to look the other way. She's only a freelance worker and sometimes it's advantageous for different Arasaka departments to have her do missions for them without the whole company being aware of her whereabouts.