13 Sicarios
Five mother fucking levels in the last week. Not early game levels, but late game slow down levels. Late game at least until the DLCs boosted the cap to fifty. Turns out dropping hundreds of goons on your mom's doorstep does a bit for the ol' Street Cred even if the media completely botches the story.
Course people in the barrio don't snitch and no one in their right mind would think an eighteen year old gangster could orchestrate something like that even if he finished high school. With honors. Even took some AP courses.
Not all of it came from murking the Tygers, as a fair bit came from my role as the guy in charge of cleaning up the giant mess in the streets. I used the first three levels I picked up to boost my Barter and Speech skills up to expert then finished off my Unarmed skill. Doing that is what netted me the next two levels as I called up one of our out of town contacts to sell off the Tygers wheels and netted a fucking preem deal for it.
The boss had put me in charge of a lot of manpower in the lower echelon of the gang, mostly the teenagers and a few early twenty somethings who never made a big impression on anyone. I had them heist Co-Ordinated Packaging's factory, the place that makes body bags for the city. Then I held the ballsiest auction in the history of the city.
Probably not the most audacious considering the general lack of decency and respect for anything sacrosanct show by the elites here, but turning my enemies into loot boxes and selling them to the most psychotic gangs in the city required some big brass bowling balls slapping around my thighs.
And I televised that shit.
Wearing a mask of course. Not to prevent anyone from knowing it was me but for that thick faced shameless deniability. 'That could be anyone under that mask, officer'.
Between the big deal and the auction I earned enough cred to get me to level 22. For perks I took Cowboy, Old World Blues (Big MT Tech converted for Cyberpunk), and Tech Commander (Laser Commander but for Tech Guns).
With an understanding of Big MT technology I'd be able to build an autodoc capable of replacing a guys brain, heart, and spine in one session without killing him as well as a bunch of other stuff, but I was most excited for…wait for it… the roboscorpions.
When converted to Cyberpunk science they were closer to the Scorpitrons from Wasteland, which is fucking tight! Absolutely impractical, but the style points for showing up to a battle with one of these, absolutely priceless. It would also cost me more than what I made selling all the Tyger Claws cars, guns, and bodies to make one worth the effort. Before I paid out to the homies, the workers, and the higher ups.
More within my reach was the Stealth Suit Mark II, an armored techsuit that would increase my Perception and Agility as well as deliver medication needed during combat and make it easier to run around while crouching. It would also do this other thing… its on the tip of my tongue… oh yeah. The Stealth Suit Mark II would make me stealthier.
Now that I understand how apparel items can be created to boost SPECIAL stats I don't think it will be very hard to get an additional point of Strength and Perception out of it with some integrated Myomar Strands and a helmet with an advanced sensory suite. Plus I could see it synergizing with Optical Camo perfectly.
And it was all well within my budget after I finished building myself a pair of railgun revolvers to take advantage of both my new combat perks. An extra 40 percent raw damage and a ten percent helping hand for landing critical shots. Yes please.
I'd be redesigning the Soviet Burya to match the profile of my favored Malorians better. It wasn't hard considering just how unnecessarily thick the Malorian's design is and how unnecessarily hefty the Buria's design is. I arrived at a beautiful in-between that lost fire rate compared to my standard revolvers but gained the capacity to put a slug through a foot of reinforced concrete and turn the gonk behind it into a fine pink mist.
And that's before the 40 percent boost from my perks are applied.
I could have gladly spent my days working on tech as my funds dwindled away, but real life came knocking in the form of a call from Gus.
Gus: Where are you at?
Big Juan: My workshop.
Gus: On my way to pick you up.
I sighed and put down my tools while working on the Stealth Suit. I had a locker in the office area of the shop where I stored my coveralls and got dressed in my Valentinos attire. The Cowboy perk matched up nicely with the upper tier of Valentino attire that trended towards the old vaquero look. It wasn't uncommon to see members wearing chaps and wide brimmed hats, but I chose to abstain unless I got to ride around on a cyberhorse. A red shirt made up of embroidered roses, with black pants and matching waistcoat. A fine pair of maroon lucchese boots in homage to Anton Chigurh and a heavy matching pozer jacket with fine gold paisley scroll and black driving gloves to help hide my heavily augmented arms from scans.
I'd left several buttons undone to allow the world to enjoy my deep cleavage and hairy masculinity and belted a pair of guns to my hips that make Levid feel sorry for everyone that stands against me. A bowie knife I'd ground to a razor's edge joined them just for fun.
Gus pulled up in what can best be described as a Valentino as hell Villefort Alvarado convertible. Gold plated with chrome accents, stately lines, and a red leather interior. The long front end housed a sixteen cylinder engine that pumped out a thousand ponies and sounded like a tank coming down the street.As I sank into the roomy (for regular people) passenger seat I admired the artistry in the gold flexed epoxy paneling made to look like polished mahogany.
"I gotta stop spending all my money on things that kill people so I can get me one of these, amigo." I told him as he took off.
"Then it's a good thing you and your chooms will be working with me from now on." Gustavo announced, "Big pay grade increase for far less work, and I've heard from Padre you're quite good at the work."
Well, shit. Momma's going to be fucking pissed.
Gustavo works as an enforcer on his off days and a sicario when he's really working. Which hat he's wearing depends on how pissed the gang is with you. Gus drove us to a whorehouse my brothers took me to back when I was a kid and they weren't dead. Beat the shit out of staying at home while they babysat me, that's for sure.
Small Juan and Pedro were outside examining the new bullet holes like a pair of slack jawed morons. I guarantee you they'd have nothing important to say about it.
"They really unloaded on the place." Juanie revealed the nature of the mystery.
"6th Street." Gus stated as he came up the sidewalk.
"They rob the place?" I asked.
"No. Just a drive by." Gus shook his head.
"So this was some personal shit." I deduced.
The 6th Street Gang was always hard up for money, their war on the crime committed by others kept them in the red, but they never upped their game past street level crimes to pay for it. They did a little gun running and car work, but not nearly at the level of the Valentinos. Most of their money was in armed robberies and extortion.
Technically Militech supported them like Arasaka supported the Claws, but it wasn't nearly as powerful or lucrative a connection. It did however give them the firepower to fuck shit up at the drop of a hat though. Like they'd done here.
Despite the number of casings the building held up pretty well, mostly the shot through the windows looking for ricochets to put the hurt on people, but for the most part everyone in the cat house survived. I got my doctor on with the half dozen injured, that maxed out medical skill preventing any more fatalities.
Gus and the others were conducting interviews but it all amounted to fuck all. I pulled up the vid from the cameras in the area and got pretty much all the faces of the shooters. Flashing the pics got an ID on two of them from the working girls and I ran the names through the city's registry which got us their last legal address. No guarantee they were still living there but it was a solid lead.
Apparently one of the guys beat on one of girls working here and the pimp beat the fuck out of him so he came back with his chooms to shoot the place up. I can never decide what's worse, all those stuck up assholes killing you because their rules of honor or such demand it, or these hotheaded retards popping off because their feelings are hurt. Can't anyone besides the Corpos be strictly business about it?
We loaded up into Gus's car and headed to the first address. Lot of people in the shitty little Santo Domingo neighborhood ducked their heads down when we rolled through. Nothing good ever came from gold plated cars in this part of town.
The occupant of the house leapt from a back window as I kicked the door in and but Juan knee capped him as he'd been on guard behind the building.
"FuckfuckFUCK!" the guy screamed as I got a positive ID on one of the shooters.
Gus and I rolled up as Pedro kept his head on a swivel.
Gus flashed him the faces of the other shooters and just said, "Names."
"Kerry Eurodyne, Morgan Blackhand, AdaAAAAAHHHH!" the guy screamed when Gus jammed his metal finger in his shattered knee.
"I don't believe he is going to talk. Big Juan, jack in and make it hurt." Gus ordered.
The low level street tough stood no chance in hell at defending his memories as the program I loaded into him found the names and faces of all the 6th Street members he knew, netting us half of the shooters real names and street names for the other half. It fried him on the way out as we didn't need anything else from it.
We managed to rinse and repeat twice more to fill out the whole list of suspects and I took a little extra from them to help start a database of 6th Street douchebags for us. On the way to the forth hit three of the gang's up armored cars chased after us and my new pistols came into play. I zeroed the drivers in three shots and put more into what I predicted were every available seat in the cabs. The cars spun out and rammed into walls and houses.
"Jesus titty fucking Christ!" Juanie gaped at the sight of the devastation.
"That's enough for this matter. Vengeance has been served." Gus declared as he admired the action in the rearview.
"What about the other guys?" Pedro asked, "Shouldn't we flatline them too?"
"Someone needs to be alive to tell people about why this happened." Gus explained, "And maybe they were in those vehicles. Either way, our work is done."
His eyes flashed as we received payment for the day.
"I hope someone pulls something every day if this is the way vengeance pays." Pedro muttered as the digits dropped into his account.
"Fuck yeah, choom." I agreed.
Murder is fucking lucrative.
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Name: 'Big' Juan D. Welles
Level: 22
AKA: Juan Grande, Sexy Juan, Juan with the Thiccness, Handy Juan, Juan with the Big Hands, The Taco Terminator
SPECIAL
Strength: 7+1
Perception: 6+1
Endurance: 10+1
Charisma: 7+1
Intelligence: 7+1
Agility: 7+1
Luck: 6+1
SKILLS
Barter: 75
Driving: 68
Explosives: 84
Guns: 100
Small Crimes: 48
Medicine: 100
Melee Weapons: 86
Repair: 100
Science: 100
Sneak: 66
Speech: 75
Survival: 52
Unarmed: 100
PERKS
Lady Killer, Educated, Comprehension, Toughness (2), Intense Training (10), Gunslinger, Quick Draw, Robotics Expert, Jury Rigging, Wasteland Implants (Grants Fallout New Vegas and Old World Blues Cyberpunk Converted Implant Recipes), Cowboy, Old World Blues (Big MT Tech Cyberpunk converted), Tech Commander (Laser Commander for tech weapons)
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I love how Juan has a mini soul killer on his cyberdeck because jacking into people for information is icky.
Also Burya is OPAF. Pro tip for if your DPS isn't up to snuff.
You can support me and my family at
ko - fi . com / jmanm
