It's About Saving Yourself Ch 24

Ooooooff. This past week was rough.

BUT! I got the chapter finished. Which is the important bit. Polls ended, but I'll touch that on a Writing update. Probably tomorrow.

For now, have chapter. Let me know how I did, what you liked and didn't and what I could have done better.

Pretty please with a cherry on top.

And sprinkles.

You can't not now, I added sprinkles.

Have chapter.

=][=

Takeshi rode in the back of the Behemoth, got his rifle out of his arms locker, loaded it, and racked the slide of his HJSH-18 Masamune, feeling the pre-battle jitters trying to make his hands shake, but the stabilizers on his wrists stopped that from affecting him.

“So what? Is it a Maelstrom chapterhouse or something?” Asked James, resetting the connection to his L-69 Zhuo. “It’s not often we get called in for a security intervention.”

“No.” Hirano said, grimly pushing up his glasses. A purely aesthetic choice, as they all had top-of-the-line optics. “It’s a five-strong band of Edgerunners.”

“We’re being called in to deal with five Cyberpunks? Whose cereal did you piss in that we were given the shit detail?” Asked Kiyo, her arms whipping open to reveal her Daikon NT-Ninja Mantis Blades, the edge of the pitch-black blades catching the illumination from the overhead light and glinting malevolently. She scowled, snapped the left blade back into her forearm, then cranked the other back in manually. “Stupid fiddly piece of shit.”

“This isn’t some random punk!” Snapped Annah, the squad’s Netrunner, she flicked her fingers toward them, the eyes of the whole squad glowing blue as a profile overlaid itself on their AR. It showed a tall, broadly built man in grey cargo pants and an urban camo jacket, said camo ruined by high-visibility strips that ran across the jacket, he wore a ballistic helmet and a titanium gasmask with a glowing green skull painted onto it, his right eye glowing an intimidating red. “This is Redeye, an Edgerunner that’s been making waves for the last ten months. He is armed and extremely dangerous, is suspected to utilize a military-grade Sandevistan, favors a modified DB-2 Testera as a statement of skill, he has killed dozens of Cyberpunks and operatives who were significantly better armed, even so, he is an expert marksman and is known to have used every class of weapon as the situation demands it.”

Four more profiles opened next to his, three showing women, and a blank one showing a question mark. One profile became larger, showing a small Mox gangster with stark white chemskin and bright pink tattoos. “Rebecca, a violent and murderous psychopath, perpetually heavily armed and on a hair-trigger for violence, rap sheet longer than Kiyo’s black book.”

“Oi! Fuck you!”

“Has customized gorilla arms of unknown manufacture, suspected to be a stolen prototype.” The picture changed to show the slip of a girl holding a pink and lime-green M2067 Defender, a weapon she absolutely shouldn’t have been able to lift, let alone use. “Do not take her on alone.”

The picture minimized and the other two women expanded. “Kiwi and Lucyna Kushinada, no information remains of the former, Arasaka Intel believes she successfully scrubbed all information of her past from Night City’s CitiNet. The latter is an escaped Arasaka asset. Both are expert Netrunners and combat hackers. Not believed to be a significant threat beyond their hacking, if encountered, close the distance and neutralize them at short-range.”

Both profiles minimized and the blank one took their place. “One more Netrunner that nobody has been able to find any information on whatsoever. Known to be extremely dangerous, has routinely defeated military-grade ICE, and is known to use Redeye as a remote terminal for combat hacks. The moment we arrive the clock will be ticking. According to the building’s security, Redeye and Rebecca are deep in the building, I’ll keep the Netrunners busy, neutralize the targets quickly, then find and stop the Netrunners.”

“So, what you’re saying is, this might actually be a fight!?” Kiyo said with a bloodthirsty grin.

“Don’t get cocky rookie.” Hirano growled.

“Not at all sir.” Kiyo answered, her grin growing.

Takeshi sighed and checked to make sure his monowire unspooled without trouble. He almost felt sorry for the poor bastards they were about to kill. Twelve operatives, eight implanted with an Arasaka Rokurokubi Sandevistan, three armed with an Arasaka Oni Berserk system, and an Arasaka trained Netrunner, all armed with personalized kit and the best implants Arasaka could provide. Platoons worth of ‘elite’ gangsters had fallen to less.

“Any idea what they are doing in the client’s building?” James asked.

Hirano shook his head. “Too many possibilities, Rocklin Augmentics has everything from standard market augmentics to NUSA and Japanese government contracts. We are not there to spy on them,” Hirano smirked, “but do remember to take a good look all around, you never know what corner the enemy will be hiding in.”

The squad chuckled good naturedly before most of them settled back into a grim silence.

Kiyo and Joseph sang something or another by Us Cracks.

“Arriving in forty-two seconds!” Annah announced, her eyes glowing gold.

The armored truck rolled to a ponderous stop, Hisashi standing and motioning them to the back before the vehicle had stopped moving. “Go! Go! Go!”

The squad filed out of the Behemoth in good order, Annah staying behind, jacked into the mobile Netrunning chair and console that took up most of the Behemoth, giving her the clear hardware advantage over the target’s Netrunners.

The building was a bog-standard concrete box with minimal windows, its door sliding open at their approach, welcoming them into a bog-standard sterile-white building with cliché but serviceable corporate furniture.

A nav point appeared on his AR display along with a route to lead the squad through the office’s layout. They moved in as pairs, watching each other’s back with surgical precision as they filed into the office building, walking past the odd office worker that had been too scared to evacuate. The hallway was cramped, barely wide enough to fit two of them side by side without scratching the walls.

The hallway moved onto a large open area full of cubicles with seven-foot-tall walls.

Takeshi reached out and sank his fingers effortlessly into the cubicle, he mentally switched on his communicator. “The cubicle walls are drywall.”

[You heard him,] Hirano said on the comms, [check your fire and try to keep damage to the structure at a minimum. Any payout for skirmish insurance will come out of our bonus. Spread out and make the best of the concealment.]

Takeshi did as ordered, moving from cubicle to cubicle at a crouch, not fully trusting the ultrasonic mapping and clearing each one and watching the ghostly outlines of his team through the drywall around him. He did not like the way the cubicles naturally funneled them into a corridor, serving to highlight him as he moved forward, but at least that particular blade cut both ways and the targets would face the same issue.

[Woah, these bitches are vicious.] Annah said suddenly, sounding surprised. [I’ve found the building’s security system; it’s been digitally sabotaged. I’-] Annah’s voice shorted out into static.

“Annah? Annah come in.” Hirano demanded.

Her tense response came in between bouts of static. [These bitches ar…overclocking t…can’t spare the bandwidth t…suppor…find them!]

“Alright boys and girls, you heard the lady.” Hirano said, keeping his movements steady but nonetheless moving faster.

“Whatever you say boss!” Kiyo said, deploying her Mantis Blades and activating her Sandevistan, and was gone in a black and red flash.

“Kiyo, do not break formation!” Hirano snapped far too late.

There was a burst of babble on the comm, before their comms system relayed Kiyo’s words, slowed down so they were intelligible. [You heard the lady, boss! We need to find these bastards quickly!]

“Do not engage alone! Kiyo! Confirm!”

A burst of babble began and was cut off by static. The comms system dutifully relayed. [Taste my steel you bas—!]

Played at normal speed, there was a gasp directly preceding the static.

“Double time!” Hirano snapped, and they all rushed forward, Takeshi readying his Sandevistan’s trigger. They had no choice but to trust the ultrasonic imaging mapping every room and cubicle before they reached it, allowing them to rush to Kiyo’s transponder location the branch manager’s office, it had a roughly Kiyo-sized hole through the wall directly next to the open door, ultrasonic imaging painted two blurry silhouettes in the room, one of them with a FFI tag, Kiyo’s vitals becoming ever more erratic.

Takeshi and James rushed forward as the rest of the team spread out into a shallow arc to make the best kill-zone possible under the circumstances, the two of them charged in, Takeshi through the door as James jumped in through Kiyo’s hole, and despite his years of experience on the job, what he saw once he reached Kiyo’s last known location made him pause, he caught the slightest whiff of vomit on the back of his throat before his Biomonitor released a stimulant cocktail that suppressed nausea.

Kiyo hung limply and twitched occasionally, her eyes rolling in their sockets as she gurgled and sputtered.

Redeye’s right hand was almost wrist deep inside of her head, having punched in through the back of her reinforced skull. Redeye stood calmly and regally in a stance that should have been awkward and comical as he had planted a foot on the back of Kiyo’s suspended neck. The mercenary looked up, meeting Takeshi’s eye, then stomped down, driving Kiyo face first to the floor hard enough to crack it, his fist exiting her skull with a disgusting, wet squelch and an eruption of blood and reinforced bone shards.

“Say nothing.” Redeye said in a quiet, reserved, almost conversational tone. “Listen, with outmost care.” He crushed the handful of Kiyo’s grey matter he was holding into paste in his metallic hand. “Your following actions will decide whether or not your families ever see you again.”

A small, svelte figure stepped out of a door on the wall behind the mercenary, holding a tray full of small red cubes. “Hey Red! This asshole had actual cheese in his…” The Edgerunner, Rebecca, said almost unintelligibly past a mouthful of cheese, and realized they weren’t alone. She blinked then scowled. “Well shit.”

She swallowed noisily and the tray fell to the floor, scattering cubes of cheese everywhere as she whipped a pink and lime-green light machine gun forward. “TASTE THE MOON, COCK SUCKEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS!”

Takeshi and James sank into a world of slowed time, Rebecca’s serpent quick movement turning into a slow crawl.

Redeye moved like greased lightning, his quad-barrel shotgun flashing. Takeshi felt a single titanic impact that shattered the ceramic plate of his vest and lightly dented his frontal subdermal armor. He wasn’t chipped with a military grade Sandevistan like the rest of them, he had something a cut above!

Takeshi, James, Hirano, and the rest of the Sandevistan equipped squad returned fire, rounds slamming through the walls with only the occasional round being impeded by load-bearing reinforcement. Redeye moved like a snake, moving in a blisteringly quick zig zag that Takeshi had trouble keeping up with or predicting, seemingly unaffected by the L-69 and other smart weapon rounds that veered to slam into his chest and side. He and his companion both disappeared behind the branch manager’s desk, its model number flashed on Takeshi’s HUD, and he internally cursed as that particular desk was an Arasaka product and reinforced to withstand anything lighter than heavy machinegun fire.

“Target’s hardened against standard projectiles, switching to armor piercing.” Takeshi said, switching his Masamune for the JKE-X2 Kenshin he carried everywhere. A cylinder was lobbed out from behind the desk, Takeshi pushed to the side, his right arm automatically tracking the grenade, once James and him both were past the minimum distance indication where the grenade’s explosion would no longer affect them past their subdermals and hardened systems, he fired.

The chaff grenade’s dangerous explosive radius was much smaller than almost every other variant, but the quickly expanding cloud of aluminum and other metal slivers effectively made Smart weapons useless. James cursed and discarded the L-69 for his RT-46 Burya.

[Get out of there.] Hirano snapped. [Fuck the bonus, we’ll take the fucker out with grenades.]

Rebecca and Redeye were out of sight, as the rest of their squad fired at the desk to keep the mercenaries pinned, Takeshi dropped a Flashbang and James an EMP grenade.

He certainly did not expect Redeye to dash out from behind the desk, and he was absolutely surprised when the auto-tracking in his arm failed to keep up with the Edgerunner’s movement, both his and James’ shots missed the mercenary by inches, the fire of the rest of the squad tracking behind him, then cutting off when he was too close to avoid hitting him and James.

Redeye reached the grenades practically unopposed, scooping up one in each hand and throwing them back out the door.

Jame’s Burya finished recharging the rail, Redeye’s head twitched back, the slight movement saving his life as the tungsten spikes the Burya fired passed him by close enough to scorch burning lines on the Edgerunner’s gasmask. Takeshi took advantage of the man’s awkward stance and got three hits center-mass, but his machine-pistol lacked the sheer stopping power of a Burya, Redeye took the hits on his ceramic plate and likely subdermals, and kept moving, Takeshi’s second burst hitting only air as Redeye charged at James, he was able to get inside James’ guard just in time to shift the enormous soviet revolver aside so the shot only carved a line on the side of his helmet.

Takeshi put a burst into Redeye’s side, then had to dodge backwards as 7.62 X 51 mm projectiles bounced off his chest, neck, and head. The cranial impact causing static on his HUD and AR display. He settled the holographic sight of his Kenshin between the woman’s eyes, then lost the pistol as tungsten flechettes tore his right arm off at the elbow. He turned and saw Redeye standing over James’s headless corpse, letting James’ Burya fall to the floor and drawing another one from his jacket.

[Takeshi, get out of there!] Hirano roared over the comms.

Takeshi deployed and fired the projectile system on his left arm in one smooth motion, Redeye threw himself to the floor, the miniature rocket flying over him through the drywall of the office, and down the office building, giving Takeshi the time to run out through the hole in the wall Kiyo had made, and saw that someone had thrown the two grenades deep into the cubicle room.

He caught the Militech Ticon that was thrown at him, the miniature missile from his projectile system exploding somewhere near the outer walls of the building. He slid to a stop next to Hirano, aiming the railgun pistol at Kiyo’s hole and the door, he saw that the three members of the squad with the Berserk system were trading fire at a glacial pace with the woman behind the desk. He fired the moment he saw a shadow cross his vision.

And missed, as by the time his enhanced reflexes squeezed the trigger, Redeye had already moved past.

He was among them, tackling and carrying Joseph through a cubicle. Takeshi jumped to his feet to pursue, but his HUD shorted out and his legs stopped working. He barely managed to get his arm out in time to stop himself falling face-first to the floor. Had he lost too much blood? His pain editor wasn’t giving him warnings yet, and his monitor systems weren’t throwing out the serious warnings.

And that’s when he realized Hirano was throwing up, Mike was bent over backwards and dancing in place as his Sandevistan electrocuted him.

Redeye stepped out of the cubicle he’d put Joseph through, Akemi, the fastest in the squad, had been waiting for him, she adjusted minutely to put the barrels of her Achilles next to his head and squeezed the trigger, only for her rifle to spark and do nothing at all. She did not wait, dropping the weapon and throwing herself to the side, barely avoiding a shot that would have exploded her head. Redeye smoothly transitioned his Burya to bear against Hirano and put a round through the squad leader’s stomach, Hirano’s return fire failing to manifest.

Akemi, Hirano, Jacob and Mike, the surviving members of the squad who had Sandevistans and could still move, deployed mantis blades or clenched their titanium phalanges and rushed forward. Takeshi tried to join them, but his internal temperature rose to unsafe levels as all of his hardware ran overclocked and all of his cooling systems shut down.

How!? Annah was still grappling with the Netrunners!

And that’s when it hit him.

Annah had never said how many Netrunners she’d been fighting. She’s only said that ‘these bitches’ were vicious.

‘Bitches.’

The women, Lucyna and Kiwi.

The third Netrunner in Redeye’s crew had been allowed to run rampant, he or she had cracked through the squad’s ICE and was now sabotaging them. And with Annah still busy battling the other two Netrunners, she hadn’t been able to counteract the hidden Netrunner’s hack.

His Sandevistan overheated and shut down, and he went from seeing his squad rushing to the lone, lightning-fast Mercenary, to an indistinct group of grey, black, and red blurs. There was mad cackling filling the air, discernible over the rattle of machine gun fire.

One by one, blurs fell, the first was Akemi, staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes, her heart having been torn out of her chest by flechettes.

The second was Hirano, the wound to his stomach had slowed him down enough for Redeye to tear his lower jaw out and use it to stab through his temple.

The third was Jacob, missing the entire right side of his face.

The last blur kept up the fight for several seconds, an eternity in the world of slowed time, but Mike too fell.

An instant after that, the three men implanted with Berserk died seemingly simultaneously as their heads were exploded by a point-blank Burya shot to the back of their skulls. Dead before they could have done anything.

Takeshi’s pain editor failed, and his vision whited out. The stump of his right arm was agony, he couldn’t breathe, his frontal dermal plating was pressing on his lungs every time he tried to suck in a breath. His legs were on fire, his stomach roiling, his head was killing him, he felt cold but his body wasn’t shivering.

An impact to his side made his world spin. He forced himself to focus his eyes, to try and raise his projectile system.

Redeye stood above him, a monolith, a vengeful reaper, a wrathful god incapable of mercy.

He sent the impulse to fire, and the projectile system did nothing, then retracted into his arm.

“Get yourself off the ground!” Redeye snarled, reaching down and lifting Takeshi by the front of his jacket. “Fight back!” He roared and threw Takeshi, who stumbled back two steps and tripped on the corpse of one of his friends, unable to keep his balance past the white-hot pain his body was in, he instinctively turned into the fall. He tried to stand up, to run, to crawl away from the vengeful reaper. But another kick to his side put him on his back. Redye’s single cyclopean eye glared judgement down at him and found Takeshi wanting, “Tell your leader!” the skull-faced man raised his right, metallic fist. “You need more men!”

The fist descended, there was a crunch of collapsing bone and metal, a burst of pain and light, and his vision turned to static.

David sat up with a gasp, palpating at his face where the merciless hand had caved it in.

Once he calmed down, he scowled at his BD wreath, then chose an image capture to print out. Really wishing there was a better way to figure out how to push these than watching them.

Jimmy Kurosaki’s newest and hottest series; The Chronicles of Redeye, quickly catching up to his Edgerunners series for number of episodes but far outstripping it in sales. This episode titled ‘Dance of Death.’

Because Alex didn’t have enough things to lord over David.

Infuriatingly, David was largely left alone now in school thanks largely to Alex. After Saori Urawa and Ana Tsutsumi came back to class, both of them were quick to inform everyone who would listen that they’d been saved by ‘An Edgerunner, a Shinigami with a green skull for a face and a red eye.’

Shortly after that, JK had begun The Chronicles of Redeye, with the two girls Alex rescued not only frequently seeking him out to see if there was a new release but championing the XBD series to their friend’s group. And a little after that, Alex killed Flaco, disbanded the gang David had just managed to join, and as far as anyone knew, taken him away to kill and stuff in a corner for some reason.

It had been just public enough that word of it got back to the students of Arasaka Academy, when asked how he’d ‘survived’ meeting Redeye. David told them that he’d fought the mercenary, who left him beaten within an inch of his life in a dumpster.

This made him a badass in the eyes of his classmates, who were now too afraid to fuck with him because he’d ‘stood up to Redeye and lived to tell of it.’

As angry as he was over that, David would take advantage and enjoy the peace and relative quiet while it lasted.

Now David had more scratch than he’d ever had in his life. And he knew exactly what he needed to do.

He’d gotten it figured out with Doc. Once David had enough money, he’d chip in something nova, he’d pick up a big iron, and he’d make this city fucking remember him.

But for that he needed eddies.

He needed a lot of eddies.

Hence his current activity. Printing out a still from the Brain Dance and sticking it on a small number of the XBD disks and selling them as ‘limited edition’ while charging a fuck-load of scratch for them. The dumbasses at school who got these bought two copies, one ‘for the collection’ and the other to open and use.

Idiots, the lot of them. But that was fine, he had much better uses for their money than they did.

He got a call from Doc. David scowled at it, but Doc was where he got the XBDs to push at school, so he answered. “Whatcha want, Doc?”

David scoffed. “I’m kinda busy Doc, I’ll be coming over in a couple days anyway.”

[No. You come right the fuck now.] Doc demanded, sounding surprisingly serious. [Someone important here to see you.]

“Doc, I wouldn’t go right now if you told me Jimmy Kurosaki showed up and asked to see me.”

[Funny how that is, cause that’s exactly fucking what’s up. Come right now, or you’re cut off.] Doc ended the call.

David scowled. The idea that the Jimmy Kurosaki was there to see him was ludicrous, who knows what the hell Doc was up to. But he couldn’t afford to get cut off, not when he was nowhere near having the scratch to get good chrome.

Not to mention, Doc was the only Ripper Doc David could be mostly certain wouldn’t rat him out to Alex.

David hid all of the evidence of his pushing XBDs, then headed out. Mom wouldn’t be out from work for another few hours. And Alex was probably off getting even more awesome cyber-ware after he single handedly took down a squad of Arasaka Ninjas!

He stewed all the way to Doc’s, deep in 6th Street territory. He stepped through the door, scratching the back of his head. “Alright I’m here, what the hell do you wa—”

“Oh! Good!” Said Jimmy Fuckmothering Kurosaki with a genial smile. “Just the young man I hoped to meet!”

David’s mouth fell open.

“There, I got ‘im to show up, now leave me the fuck alone alright?” Doc said and slipped a VR headset back down over his eyes.

“But of course!” Jimmy Kurosaki said, strutting toward David who was still trying to pick his jaw up off the floor. “Mister Martinez, may I call you David? David, it is so good to meet you!”

“Buh.” David said.

“Indeed!” Jimmy Kurosaki exclaimed, guiding him out the door. “But enough with the pleasantries, to business!”

“Buh?” David asked.

“Quite! You see, I find myself in the unusual role of a collector of sorts! Now, while most in my income bracket delight in collecting a number of things, I find that, rather awkwardly, that which I wish to collect can often not be obtained purely through monetary exchange.”

“B-Buh?”

“Well, rather embarrassingly, I find myself collecting Brain Dances centered around one particular figure!” Jimmy Kurosaki said. “And rumor is that you have a rather…peculiar and unique experience which I wish to add to my collection. Now, as to monetary compensation as is only fair, does three thousand Eurodollars sound fair for the scroll I wish to obtain from you?”

“Buh!?” David coughed.

“Ah! You are right! Too miserly a sum for something so unique. Does nine thousand sound better?”

“BUH!?” David nearly fainted.

“Oh, you drive a hard bargain indeed. Twelve thousand, and not an enny more!”

David put a hand to the nearest wall to steady himself.

“Okay, okay.” Jimmy Kurosaki said, putting the back of his hand to his forehead. “Fifteen thousand.”

David wheezed.

=][=

Rebecca sighed as she finished cleaning her gun and began reassembling Moon Saw, her Alex-made moon-powered bright pink and lime-green machine gun.

Alex had gone into a very long and boring lecture about Rebecca’s Moon Gun, and the only bit that stuck was the bit about it weighing what it would weigh on the moon.

So her so-smart-he-was-dumb best friend had wasted a whole bunch of time to explain her gun was Moon-powered. The face he’d made when she summarized for him had been pretty funny.

Unfortunately, Rebecca’s adopted older-little brother was in the middle of one of his ‘I’m being super smart about how stupid I’m being’ episodes.

Older-little, because while he was younger than her by three years, the guy just had supreme ‘older bro’ energy. She hadn’t quite made the jump to calling him ‘bro’ yet, maybe soon, when they got to wherever they were going whenever they finished doing all the jobs for their shadowy conspiracy bosses.

She finished reassembling Moon Saw and pressed the moon weight button. Her gun started humming and she was able to pick it up without trouble.

“But I have to!” Alex said, somehow managing to be all intense and shit while lying down on Vik’s operating chair.

“Kid, the only thing you’ll do is get yourself killed!” Vik shouted.

“Al, listen to Vik.” Lucy said. “You’ve kept track of your symptoms. You know it’s dangerous to get more.”

“I know!” Alex snarled. “But I can’t allow what happened today to repeat! I almost lost ‘Becca!”

“Alex…we almost lost you.” Lucy said, squeezing Al’s meat arm and making him deflate.

Rebecca grimaced, Al had looked all invincible and shit after they killed the Arasaka Ninjas and their Netrunner. Striding out of the office building they’d attacked like he owned the place.

The moment the back of Falco’s car closed, he’d collapsed and wheezed that he needed to see Vik. As it turned out, Al had gotten shot.

Like…like a lot.

His armorjack had taken most of it, but some of the shit he got shot with still managed to break through, and he didn’t have enough chrome to just laugh at gunfire.

So Vik had gotten all the lead and smartammo out of him, and cloned him a new set of intestines, and part of his liver. And everything was okay!

Until Al woke up and said he needed a bunch more chrome because they almost lost the fight against the Ninjas.

“Al, maybe we can just expand the crew a little? Get another frontliner?” Lucy asked.

Al shook his head. “No, not this late in the game. I wouldn’t be able to properly vet them, and if they learn what we’re doing? We can’t take the risk of sabotage. We’ve made too many enemies. There are too many who would profit from or enjoy our downfall.” He put his hand on Lucy’s stomach. “I need to keep you all safe, until we can leave.”

Oh! And Lucy’s cyber-ware malfunctioned and now she had a crotch-spawn growing in her belly. Rebecca hoped the kid inherited Lucy’s looks with Alex’s badass. But it seemed that knowing he was a dad was making Alex’s paternal instincts go haywire, cause he wanted to essentially ‘borg out so he could keep Rebecca, Kiwi, and most importantly Lucy safe.

Which…didn’t seem right. If he ‘borged out, then would he still be able to go out drinking? Would his farts smell of car oil? Would he start to look for electric sheep to eat?

Or, more pressingly, would he go the way of Maine, or any dozen poor fucks who took on too much chrome too quickly?

Well, Rebecca would not stand for it!

She set Moon Saw down walked over to the three as their argument got more heated, jumped, and landed on Alex’s chest and stomach making him grunt,  and pointing imperiously down at his nose she said. “Okay listen up fuck-wad!”

“No I didn’t just spend several hours stitching up his insides, why do you ask?” Vik muttered while glaring which…okay yeah, she could have probably landed somewhere else.

But that was quitter talk! So she continued like she hadn’t heard the Ripper. “Ain’t nobody but nobody gets to tell me I’m a dancel in distress but me!”

“I think you meant ‘damsel.’” Lucy said.

Rebecca shifted the Finger of Imperiousness to Lucy’s nose. “You shut up!” She brought it forward again to point at Al. “You wanna ‘borg out and die a cyberpsycho? Do it on your own time! But you’re not allowed to while I still like keeping you around asshole! You don’t get to use me as an excuse to trade away your meat so you can cosplay as a maelstrom fuck!”

She knelt on his chest so she could get properly face-to-face with him, his eyes wide and confused, which was kinda adorbs, but she couldn’t allow that to distract her!

“So what I almost died!? Bitch I’m an Edgerunner! I don’t follow you into danger thinking it’s gonna be all puppies and ice-cream! I have your back, you have mine, we have Lucy’s and Kiwi’s, they have ours! I don’t fucking need you to keep me safe you manly-wannabe fuck! We keep each other safe! And if I get zeroed? Guess what? That’s cause I wasn’t good enough! Ain’t got shit to do with you! You are not my nanny! So, get your head out of your ass before I rip it off and shove it up your ass! Capiche!?”

Alex blinked up at her. “Huh?”

Rebecca turned to Vik. “VIK! I wanna smack some sense into him, how hard can I hit him without making his injuries worse!?”

Vik sighed. “You already made his injuries worse.” Oh! Whoops. “But keep it to his upper chest and head, do what you can not to touch his stomach and pelvic region, and you should be fine.”

“Please don’t beat me up.” Al said beneath her. “I’ll cry.”

“Then stop being stupid before I beat the stupid out of you!”

“But I—”

The Finger of Imperiousness returned. “You try and ‘borg out, I will rip your dick off and turn it into a jizz turret attached to the top of your head! You don’t get to go psycho! Now when the whole reason we’re doing this is your happily ever-fucking-after! Keep your eye on the prize muff-face! You’re gonna be a dad! How the fuck are you gonna do dad things if you’re literally made of metal!?”

Alex blinked, his face paling.

“Exactly! You may thank me for my wisdom!” Rebecca said. Then smacked Al on the forehead. “The next words out of your mouth better be ‘why gee thank you Rebecca! You’re the bestest ever and I’m glad you talked the stupid out of me!’”

“I don’t talk like that.” Al said.

Rebecca considered, then shrugged. “Good enough. You still planning to borg out, or do I gotta smack you about?”

Al sighed. “You’re all heart, Rebecca.”

“Damn right I am.” Rebecca said, hopped off Alex, picked up Lucy much to the taller woman’s surprise, and plopped her fat ass on Alex’s crotch, then pushed her back so she was laying on top of him. “Now you two do all that lovey dovey bullshit inputs and outpouts do. Call each other stupid shit. Have some make-up sex to get over your fight. And give me a call when we have the next job. Capiche? Good, fuck all of you, I’m gonna go drinking.”

“Don’t actually start having sex in my clinic.” She heard Vik say as she walked out.

All in a day’s work. It was good to put on the big sister undies every now and then.

She’d say pants, but the day Rebecca didn’t show off her thighs would be a cold day in hell, seriously, they were a work of art.

Now, shouting the stupid out of Al had been fun and all, but now she was worked up and needed something to happen. She decided to start walking and hopefully find some Scavs to happen to.

She would miss it here, but she had a feeling she would find something to do wherever Alex was taking them. She just needed to make certain her best bud got there in mostly one piece.