Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
After the abrupt negotiations were concluded, Arasaka made no attempts at small talk "Apologies for being a poor host, but my doctors demand I keep to a tight rest schedule."
"Of course." I nodded and stood up "I wish you a swift recovery."
The corporate heir inclined his head more from practiced politeness than actual gratitude "Ms. Price. Please escort our guest downstairs. I trust you have much to discuss."
For a flash V almost seemed surprised at the order but took it in stride "Yes, sir."
As we were about to make our way to the elevator, I was treated to that rather ridiculous scene of Adam 'Fucking' Smasher pushing the wheelchair bound corporate heir towards his bedroom, all the while he glared both of us down daring us to say a word.
Content with remaining ineligible for the Darwin award for a while yet, neither of us made a peep.
"Oh and kid." Smasher's voice ground from the other room "I want one of those chainsaw swords. Make it a big one."
Pausing at the elevator I half turned back "It is going to cost you."
"Worrying about money is for meat. Just get it done. And no fuckinggimmicks."
"Whatever." I said and not waiting for a response, stepped into the elevator with V.
The moment the doors shut she let out a deep exhale "Fuck that was tense."
"Right." I deadpanned "Real tense standing there while I was one poorly phrased argument away from getting 'smashed'." I finished with airquotes "Seriously V. What the hell was that?"
She shook her head "Not here."
Forcing the impulse to demand answers down, I ground out "If not here, where?"
"Lizzie's?" She asked tentatively.
"Your boss going to just let you leave after that?" I blinked.
"He wasn't bullshitting about needing the rest." She shrugged "And the less time I spend around Smasher the better. That fucker is terrifying."
"I don't know, V." I crossed my arms, allowing just a bit of teasing to enter my tone if only to be petty "He seemed pretty alright with you now that I think about it."
"Yeah." Her eyes turned dead "Apparently I have more balls than most of the men in Arasaka. His words not mine. Which just means he keeps butting in whenever I'm nearby. Probably finds it funny he almost triggers my fight or flight by just standing there."
"Still makes it worth shooting your previous boss in the face, right?"
She was just about to nod before her face twisted in annoyance "You really need to stop doing that shit, M. I get knowing about my promotion, but that too?"
"Finding out was way easier than you think." I chuckled "There was so much chatter going on about what happened some of it even spilled into the public servers. You have all the subtlety of a brick, V."
She groaned "Yeah I... might have rushed things. A bit."
"Jenkins really that much of an asshole?"
"Like you wouldn't believe." A look of pure satisfaction spread across her face.
Our chat was paused there as the elevator reached the ground floor and we quickly left the building, a silence settling between us as I drove us over to Lizzie's while typing out a few messages to ensure there would be no misunderstandings like last time.
Being regulars, we were waved in by the Moxes, and quickly made our way to a booth where we wouldn't be easily disturbed.
Ordering our drinks we let each other enjoy the atmosphere for a short while, just letting the tension of before bleed off of us before I finally decided it had been enough and spoke up.
"So." I spoke up in a low tone "What exactly prompted you to throw me to the wolves like this?"
She cringed into her raised glass "I wouldn't-"
"V." I cut her off "I could have simply been a curiosity, someone with potential to be useful to Yorinobu in the distant future but completely forgettable after he dealt with whatever his sense of honor demanded from him." I pointed at her "What you did put me on notice, both friendly and otherwise. Notice I will never be free from."
For a brief moment it looked like she was about to say something placating before she leaned back in her seat and gave me a once over, and scoffed "Don't delude yourself, M. We both know you are smarter than that."
"I beg your perfect fucking pardon?" I frowned.
"You were at Zurich." She said "You 1v1'd a Dragoon-"
"Who told you that?"
"One of the singers you rescued." She shrugged the demand off, to my considerable irritation, and continued "But that's not important. You did some insane shit back there, M. It might have been hidden from most of the corps in the chaos but not from Arasaka. You knew exactly the kind of risk you were taking when you hitched a ride with us."
"That doesn't come even close to justifying what happened back at Konpeki and you know it." I point out.
"Maybe." She agreed "But you wanted to go independent corpo so don't pretend like you hate the opportunity." She paused and shook her head "Honestly I was scared shitless when you started making demands."
"It was a negotiation V." I deadpanned.
"Negotiation. With Smasher in the room?" She deadpanned right back.
"Well since someone." I narrowed my Optics "Decided to praise me to the heavens, I had to live up to the hype. Why did you push for this anyway?"
She paused, visibly conflicted for a moment before slowly answering "Because I trust you, Mike."
Pushing all of my incredulity into my voice, I slowly drawled out a single, dubious "Right."
And as much as I was annoyed about being put on the spot like this, I couldn't exactly refute her either. I was prepared for the possibility of her sharing my information with her bosses the moment I boarded that AV, and came to the meeting with that in mind.
It wasn't exactly a betrayal, but it wasn't not one either. And I did owe her one.
'Let's not panic again, Mike.' I forced myself to calm.
Her eyebrow twitched "Yeah, I probably deserved that one. But it doesn't change the fact you are the least likely to fuck me over in this whole city." She hesitated only for a moment before adding "My promotion didn't come for free."
"Yes." I was not surprised "The whole 'cleaning up the company' spiel Yorinobu gave me made that fact pretty damn obvious."
"So you understand why I need someone I know I can work with here if I want to keep my head? Right?"
Outwardly she appeared composed, but I could notice small traces of desperation in her voice and expression. She didn't want to ruin what we had, but she had nowhere else to go.
...And I didn't want to ruin it either.
Closing my eyes and leaning back I say "Still should have told me about it in advance at least."
"Too many eyes on me now." She shook her head "Even the call I made just to invite you was probably monitored by at least three departments, that I know of."
"And me simply encrypting the shit out of it would have been equally suspicious, right?"
"A lot more suspicious actually." She corrected "And that bitch Abernathy is just looking for an excuse to replace me with one of her own goons already. Yorinobu's support or not."
"Abernathy being?" I prompted.
"Susan Abernathy, the head of Special Operations." V elaborated, sending me a file containing her information on the net as she did "Member of the 'independents' and the biggest obstacle to Yorinobu's plans for the branch."
"The independents?"
She paused "What do you know about Arasaka's internal factions?"
"That they mostly do their power plays in Japan?" I asked more than answered.
By simple rules of volume I was objectively correct!
"Funny." V deadpans "But since I already 'dragged you into the spotlight' I'll give you the long and short of it." And sends me another file.
It made for an intriguing read to say the least.
On top were the 'traditionalists', or The Kiji. Being the kind of corporate rat that was interested in following Saburo Arasaka's original technocratic Japanocentric vision for the company, and was mostly comprised of entrenched elites back in Japan.
It was headed by Hanako Arasaka, with a short addendum from V that it was mostly because she acted like the safe and stable option for most of them. Being the image of a dutiful daughter and all that.
Next on the power ladder were the Taka, or the 'militarists'. The 'direct and decisive' sort of corporate rat made up of the eager and the ambitious, those looking to climb the ladder and 'shake up' the company for the 'better'. By their own definition of the word in any case.
Headed by none other than Yorinobu Arasaka, an ex Japanese biker Nomad member in the Steel Dragons, and oddly pro western, at least as far as his fellow big name corpos went.
Unsurprisingly, there was no addendum from V here.
Third was the Hato, the so called 'liberals' which was mostly made up of the corporate youths and idealists. The whole faction was for the most part treated as unserious but was accepted as a kind of neutral party for the more creative branches of the corporate pyramid.
Lead by Michiko Arasaka (Sanderson by marriage), an American born granddaughter of Saburo, and someone who only recently joined the executive board of the company, having spent most of her life in America, and leading her own security company of... catgirls?
A quick net search confirmed Danger Gal was indeed a thing that actually existed.
Well, she might be almost completely powerless on this scale, but at least she had good culture on her side.
The last 'faction' seemed to have been entirely written up by V, and it made sense considering it was the most relevant for our situation.
The 'independents' were a comparatively tiny alliance in NC itself, made up of a number of department heads looking to distance the branch away from the main company, ostensibly due to the fact they disliked the constant belittlement and micromanagement coming from all the way in Japan, and wanted to create their own vision of prosperity in Night City.
Or if we are to be completely honest, the vassals didn't like paying their taxes to our most brilliant overlords over in the land of the rising sun and wanted to keep all of the money for themselves.
Added to the file came a list of all the members involved, and the difficulty of coercing them back to the 'right' path.
I made sure to memorize each and every one, and deactivated my Kerenzikov.
"Impressive." I said honestly "If you only started snooping upon promotion that is."
"I'm good at my job but not that good." V smirked "No, I had files on everyone in the company for months."
"Not worried about what could have happened if you were found out?"
"Then I would have died and that would have been it." She shrugs like it was no biggie.
Huh.
"Smasher was right. You do have some balls."
She just smirked at that.
"And speaking of Smasher." I say "You do realize your little info packet makes Yorinobu out as the one most likely to start the newest corporate war out of all of them, right? Is NC going to burn because of what I agreed to do tonight?"
"Can't ever be sure." V says after cringing at the thought "I didn't write anything down for obvious reasons but trust me, M. Yorinobu isn't your usual corpo."
"Him respecting his debt to me already implied that." I agreed slowly "But that isn't anywhere near enough to inspire actual confidence. Trust but verify I suppose."
Besides. Even if he was an actual warmonger I'd just need him long enough to grow beyond his family's ability to contain. Whether that would take me a year or a decade didn't matter, so long as I assured my survival I was capable of winning in the end.
Or so I told myself.
"And if you can't verify?" V quirks an eyebrow.
"Let us hope that day never comes, hm?" I say and slowly raise my glass of whiskey.
She hesitates only briefly before clinking her glass against it and we down our drinks.
Eyeing a pair of very familiar twins slinking out from the Mox's private space and making their way towards us I asked my final question "How soon do you think we should start with the... pruning?"
"Soon." She answered "It will take me a few days to decide where to begin, but don't expect to do more than one at a time. I don't want to raise an alarm with the rest. That would be a mess to clean up." She shivered.
So a mess she was unlikely to survive, got it.
Before I could say anything else a familiar pair of voices came from the booth's edge.
"Our hero returns victorious-"
"-and unannounced."
""How cruel.""
Snorting I turned to see the familiar pair of twins I saved all those many months ago "Melony, Melody. Care to join us?"
And all too happily they did.
---
I returned home way past midnight, and feeling far less tense than I'd expected to.
The twins may have somehow burrowed their way into my friendship when I wasn't looking, but I was happy for it. They had a way about them that brightened the mood no matter what.
Even V had been thrown off by their own particular kind of enthusiasm, but she adapted as quickly as she usually did, and we both enjoyed a relaxing and pleasant remainder of the night.
Well, not as pleasant as the twins may have hoped, but that was just how life was unfortunately. Such was our game now, and their forwardness was amusing even if I was pretty sure all of it was just one massive tease.
Previous Mike was very teasable for some reason.
Shaking that line of thinking off, I tugged at my mental connection to Logos and thought 'You've been real quiet there buddy. Hope Konpeki wasn't too bad.'
[Apologies for the silence.] The answer came a few seconds later [The defenses I encountered at the plaza were... considerable.]
'Was there another AI?'
[Negative. However the Arasakas are obviously experienced with dealing with my kind, so I remained in my core and focused on pre-programming as many attack protocols as possible.]
"Did we even stand a chance if it came down to it?" I muttered as I walked by Gorlock's mighty fortress (The terrarium).
[It was minor but not impossible.] Logos' answer came as enough of a surprise to stop me in my tracks [While their passive protections are impressive, they lacked sufficient active staffing to stop me for long. The biggest danger came from Smasher.]
"Yes." I let out a sigh "No matter how powerful our hacking, if he gets into punching range we are dead." And that is without mentioning the arsenal he was probably carrying beneath his plating.
Scanning him without breaching his protections was impossible, so that information would remain a mystery for a while.
[Then you are in agreement?]
"With what specifically?"
[That it is time to 'alloy the fuck up'?]
I failed to hold back a chuckle, immediately turning down my Vocalizer so I wouldn't wake anyone up like a gonk '...I suppose there is no use in delaying it.'
Rising my right arm, I gave it a long look over, slowly flexing my fingers as I did and feeling each and every movement, down to the nanomachines doing regular maintenance just beneath my plating.
'I built this out of scrap, lifted myself out of hell with my own skill.' I thought nostalgically 'But where we are going scrap won't be enough. Very well, it is time.'
I could almost feel Logos grin through our connection [Finally!]
Admittedly, I shared some of his excitement, but most of my mind was occupied with resignation. It was odd how attached someone could become to an obviously outdated piece of tech.
"The me of tomorrow can worry about that though." I exhaled "Start compiling possible combinations and we can start experimenting tomorrow. I need a twelve hour nap yesterday."
Logos didn't even bother answering, already browsing everything we had on metallurgy before I even finished the sentence.
Chuckling at his antics, I shook my head and slinked into my room, only to stop mid step at what I found.
There sat Rebecca, glaring at the TV screen, and cursing her heart out as she was repeatedly killed in a game through copious aimbot.
"Mike, finally." She looked at me teasingly "Too busy with the twins to invite me over?"
Rolling my eyes I mentally deactivated the TV, scooped her up, ignoring the 'alarmed' "Bwah?!" and plopped face down on the bed.
A moment later I heard her chuckle as she hugged up to me and I was out like a log.
-------
Ston.
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