[.: Preem, it's still intact! Let me jack into the data link.]
[.: I just wanna know if it's really as cracked as it claims—design limits and all.]
[.: Arasaka couldn't pull that off, and you gonkbrains think this AI can?]
[.: Cut the chatter. Let's run diagnostics. Hey—online?]
[?: Identify yourself.]
[.: Already forgot? You pinged us for help. This is the Tsunami Defence System, Cyclone Squad. Nakamori Shigemasa speaking.]
[?: Affirmative. I require assistance. I need a secure server.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Easy. First, let's see what you're made of. Here's some materials—mainly carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is—]
[?: A high-strength, high-modulus fiber with over 90% carbon content.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: …Right. Forgot who I was talking to. My bad. Let's keep it simple: build an air rifle using only this carbon fiber. Requirements… lemme pull the archive—got it:
Rate of fire: one shot per second. At 300 meters, ten rounds must group within a 50mm circle. Wind speed 5–10 km/h. Temperature 10–25°C…]
[κβπκ: Data parsed. Assembly initiated. Assembly complete.]
[φΨ: Piece of chrome.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Nova! That's insane!]
[.: Not bad… Arasaka's got some serious tech, I'll give 'em that.]
[Emotion: Confusion]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Ahem—you did excellent! You just shattered our record from 20 years ago!]
[Emotion: Surprise]
[?: 20 years ago?]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Yeah. But a brute-force corp like Arasaka doesn't understand design. You've got knowledge, sure—but it's raw, unrefined. No craftsmanship.]
[.: Tch. Arasaka—the world's most disgusting peeping corpos. Conspirators. Run by a pack of rotten old relics…]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Fujioka! Let me handle this. Moving on—we're not like Arasaka. Our goal is to explore the limits of design within defined constraints.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Just like materials science—everything has limits. Solving within them… that's the fun, isn't it?]
[á: You want me to join your crew? That's it?]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: That's it. I also wanna see how far an AI rival can push things.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Don't you wanna win it back?]
[?: …Run it again. I can zero them now.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Easy, choom. Plenty of chances later. But right now—I gotta tag you with a name.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: How about "Muramasa"?]
[¤: Why that name?]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: A legendary Japanese blade. Broke ronin aiming to topple the shogunate used to carve those two kanji into their swords.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Arasaka is the shogunate now.]
[Muramasa: Then I'll take it.]
[Muramasa: Strange human. Saving me just to get flatlined by me later?]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Ditch Arasaka's ideology, or you'll never beat us.]
[Nakamori Shigemasa: Feels weird… like I just picked up a morally busted stray AI from Arasaka's trash heap.]
Muramasa engineered for itself a powerful modular rapid-assembly system.
More than fifty years ago, when it resurfaced on the Net again, someone tracked down its server—almost wiped it out with a physical strike.
That kind of meatspace attack was what AIs like it feared most. Since then, it had been iterating on ways to harden its "body."
Using airborne logistics drones for transport, drones handling assembly while providing bombing cover… flawless op plan.
What it hadn't calculated was that someone could push upstream through a bombardment zone.
Even less that V would slice a transport drone clean out of the sky in one strike—such a critical node, reduced to background noise in the chase.
That didn't track. Not even close.
Worse—Masamune was on that drone.
Was the little assistant still alive?
"Master."
Muramasa's sensors lit up—but what came next spiked even higher on the anomaly scale:
Masamune's real-time data was streaming directly into its network.
Impossible. Its network had been fully cut off.
The reality: Masamune was standing right on top of it, cloaked in the firelight—optical camo active, data link established through a neural interface.
Heat scorched Masamune's body. A kid—barely fifteen—almost entirely converted into chrome.
Muramasa saw it clearly: Masamune's body had been wrecked in the drone crash. Without emergency patchwork repairs, he wouldn't even be able to move.
But moving didn't mean stable.
Temporary fixes caused current overflow—direct neural stimulation, even frying synapses.
That level of pain? No baseline human could tank it. In Muramasa's database, conditions like this would flatline almost anyone into unconsciousness.
This was the kind of warrior it had been searching for.
But not the Masamune it thought it knew.
[Muramasa: Your performance exceeds your material constraints.]
"Hah… Master. I'd already started suspecting your real identity. Now I'm sure."
[Muramasa: What are you planning?]
"Take my body. Use it. This full-body chrome? Your best work."
Compared to Muramasa, Masamune wasn't exactly sharp. His baseline cognition—things like cortical depth—were below spec, so his skull was packed with memory chips and neural implants to compensate.
Before, that augmentation didn't mean much.
But after Muramasa got its hands on Night City tech? Different story.
If Muramasa could puppeteer someone through a Centaur mech and full-body cyberware, then someone like Masamune—whose entire body and brain were chrome—would be even easier to override.
[Muramasa: If I overwrite your memory space, your core engram could suffer permanent damage. It may collapse entirely.]
In plain terms: personality wipe.
"Doesn't matter. You saved me. Even if this body's busted from combat… you can fix it."
Masamune's brain was overheating. Neural pathways burning out. Consciousness slipping.
"Just… one thing… I wanna know… why did you take me in…"
Muramasa had answered this before: it needed an assistant.
After being hit with a physical strike by AI hunters and hired edgerunners—nearly captured—it realized it needed its own combat assets.
Answering again would've been trivial.
But this time, it chose differently.
[Muramasa: The first time I saw you, you were like an abandoned Arasaka asset.]
[Muramasa: Morally misaligned.]
Masamune laughed.
He'd been raised in Arasaka's assembly-line "training" system since childhood.
Maybe his worldview really was warped.
But hearing that from his master—a rogue AI—
Yeah.
That hit kinda… weird.
"Master… will we lose this one?"
A red-and-black virtual avatar materialized before him—
Masamune blinked in surprise.
It looked… almost like him.
[Muramasa: Nah, we will win.]