13 10: Showerthoughts

You know, if I had an eddie for every time this week I had to pressure wash blood off myself with a hose, I'd have two eddies. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

The bright desert sun is relentlessly beating down on my broad shoulders, making the air turn into a hazy curtain covering the horizon and the black tarmac feel like a cooking plate. All in all though, I'm feeling pretty refreshed as my large mane of hair is rapidly drying out here in the open air and an odd sense of peace comes over me as I stand in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but sand, sun, and a road that seemed to lead to a place where time had the good sense to take a vacation.

The others are all inside, David of course still by his mother's bedside. Or, well, couch-side, but whatever. Maine had been looking at Norris' Sandevistan with an envious gleam in his eye (I could've sworn I saw him drool a little bit) until Dorio physically dragged him away to another room, only partly because Big Pete shooed everyone out of the workshop so he could get started on my beloved Quadra Avenger.

I had to tune down my hearing in order to suppress what Dorio and Maine were actually up to upstairs, managing an impressively athletic and enthusiastic horizontal tango despite their hefty frames. I know they both enhanced themselves with artificial musculature, but now I was wondering whether or not they chipped themselves with the sex drive of a bunny as well.

… you know, considering the morally bankrupt shithole that is Night City, I wouldn't even be surprised if that was an option. If there's one field of cybernetics that is advancing more rapidly and across a broader spectrum than any other, it's not bio-replacements or even weapons, it's sex stuff.

Humans really do be horny like that.

Putting the rising crescendo of the two mercs' ballet out of my mind for now is a bit more difficult than I'd like though, since that would mean focusing on the immediate here and now which is… not exactly that much better.

When Sasha said 'strip' she really did mean it and considering I could literally feel my pants stick to my skin due to all the blood caked on them, I couldn't exactly refuse, no matter how awkward it made me feel.

Sure, growing up in a gang like the Animals meant that I had seen much, much more of the human anatomy in the flesh up close and personal than I ever would've wanted, so I'm pretty desensitized (or traumatized, take your pick) to nudity at this point. You kinda gotta be, in this day and age. For crying out loud, even right now, I could still see in the hazy distance a massive advert floating in the sky above the city depicting a fat guy suggestively holding a bottle in front of his gut with an Egyptian woman with bare breasts as the logo… and it's to sell beer.

That's not even going into the actually sex-stuff related merchandise, like the Midnight Lady and Mr. Studd advertisements, which seem to have a very loose interpretation of the word 'subtle', in that they burned their dictionary and shot their translator.

So of course I was used to nudity… just not the kind where I have to expose myself while faced with a girl I've been developing a crush on while she's holding an industrial-strength hose aimed at me. Yeah… awkward was a good way to describe that. For me that is. Dorio was mostly just disappointed she wouldn't be able to watch the show, which made Maine all the more relieved when I ordered them to delta the fuck away from me and Sasha. She at least seemed to have a lot of fun spraying me down.

Seeing how she was grinning at me and seeing how I was as naked (and bloody) as the day I was born caused for some… complications on my end. Let's just say that I was really glad the water was ice-cold.

Down boy.

At least it got rid of all the blood, so I couldn't complain too much. However, while the water did wash away the stains of my little escapade back at Biotechnica's baby-killing factory, it did little to remove the lead still embedded in my flesh. The bullets would eventually be expelled by my body once the wounds fully healed (Wolverine-style, if significantly slower), but not only was that rather uncomfortable, it also slowed down the healing process. Not to mention the increased risk of infection, which considering my lifestyle (what passed as 'hygiene' in Animal circles would probably instead be considered 'biological hazards' to any sane people) was a valid concern to have.

Which is why, when Sasha finally turned off the powerful hose, shaking out her weary arms with a grimace as she did, I made to claw the little lead bastards out myself. Until the cute netrunner halted me in my tracks, that is.

"Simba, the fuck are you doing?!"

None too gently neither, I might add.

I glance at her, confused at her distressed tone as I slowly blink a few times, my index still scratching at a bullet embedded in my left pectoral, the claw already covered in blood again.

"I'm… getting the bullets out?"

"With your hands?!"

"… yes?"

"No!"

"But…"

"Jesus fuck, Sim. Just… hang on a sec, before you go mutilating yourself with those… weapons you call hands. Honestly, should just call 'em 'murder-mittens' instead…" she trails off in an angry muttering as she begins to stomp away.

"It's not a big deal. I'll heal up fine, won't even leave a scar. If it makes you feel any better, I could use a knife instead-"

"Still a weapon! Still no!" Sasha yells out in exasperation as she goes to retrieve her duffelbag, leaving me alone out in the open behind the Autowerks building, the sun pleasant on my damp skin.

"But-!" I try to call out, but the lithe woman has already turned the corner.

I glance from my claws to the wounds marring my chest, thin rivulets of blood slowly welling up from the bullet-holes and streaming down my massive pecs and sculpted abs in streaky crimson trails. In some of the wounds, exposed lead glints underneath the relentless sun, the bullets barely having penetrated past the epidermis.

"But they're really itchy." I whine petulantly to myself.

At least Sasha had the good graces to come back with not just her medical equipment, but some underwear and pants as well, which I hastily throw on as the netrunner rummages through her emergency kit.

"Now, full disclosure, I only slotted a skill shard on medical stuff like… two days ago? So this might sting a little. Did pick up some Trauma Team sim-soft on first aid while poking at their defences, so that should stop me from, I dunno, extracting your spleen through your nostril or something. Incidentally, I now finally know what a spleen is. Been bugging me for months: there was this gonk back during one of our gigs with Maine, kept yelling we broke his after Dorio gut-punched him. Always wondered what it was specific-like, since, you know, she kinda broke his everything…" She muses, before straightening up (to my hidden disappointment, her netrunner suit was really form-fitting) and turning around to face me, scalpel in one hand, forceps in the other.

"Good for you, just leave mine alone, please?" I can't help but ask a bit nervously as I glance from her… implements back to her, before blinking as I replay her stream of words.

"Wait, why slot the skill two days ago specifically? You've been a cyberpunk for some time now." I question her with a raised eyebrow.

"Sure, I have. Never made a move gonk enough where I needed to dig bullets outta my body though." She refutes.

"Didn't we first meet when I saved your ass just as you were about to commit suicide by corpo drone-squad-?" I try to point out, but she cuts me off by steaming on ahead, standing on her tip-toes as she attempts to wave the forceps threateningly underneath my nose (though she still falls several inches short).

"However, you, on the other hand, decided just two days ago to fuck over both one of the biggest corpos and one of the biggest fixers in NC, on the same night." Sasha points out, stressing the words.

"But the heist itself went fine?" I counter, though the pretty girl just shoots me a look, glancing from my fresh bullet holes to my slitted eyes.

"Sure, but precautions never hurt, much less than bullets do at least. It seemed like the prudent thing to do at the time. Best to be as prepared as possible, right? And since you recently went cyberpsycho and we're now outside some rundown chop shop in the middle of Raffen territory out in the ass-end of the Badlands… well, like I said, it seemed like the prudent thing to do at the time." She says with a shrug as she cocks a hip, holding up her medical equipment.

She clicks the forceps twice, much like any man is genetically obligated to do with the tongs whenever he's flipping burgers on the barbecue, and cranes her neck to smile up at me.

"Now, like I said, this might sting a little. You're not gonna go all weepy on me, are ya?" she asks challengingly, getting a scoff out of me (though with my size, it comes out more as the snort of a bull who got up on the wrong side of the barn that morning).

I just tap one of the half-embedded bullets with the curved tip of one of my claws as I smirk, the metallic sound ringing out as I raise an eyebrow at her.

"Pretty sure I've had worse."

"Eh, don't be so confident just yet tough guy. Who knows, I might suddenly discover I get squeamish at the sight of blood, get shaky fingers and whatnot. Now, either siddown or find me a ladder, 'cause there's no way I'm gonna be able to reach 'em otherwise."

Shrugging, I simply slide down the side of the Autowerks building instead, back towards its sun-heated concrete, butt on the aged tarmac as I tuck in my feet in the lotus position, patting my lap as I shoot the netrunner a challenging grin of my own. Sasha just shrugs and plops down in my lap and my breath hitches at how the situation went from slightly comical and flirty to much more intimate than I had expected in the blink of an eye.

Sasha's unique neon eyes are suddenly only centimetres away from mine and in such close proximity, my enhanced senses kick into a sort of primal overdrive as they're almost overwhelmed with taking in all of the sensations she's subconsciously transmitting through her body. I can feel the heat coming off her figure, smell the shampoo still lingering in her hair, hear her various cybernetic implants hum near-silently from inside her body, their quiet noise nearly overwhelmed by the drumming of her heart and the sudden intensity in her breathing pattern. Locking eyes with her, I can see how the neon-pink circles suddenly expand as they rapidly dart around, roaming the heavy features of my face and I can't help but wonder what she sees there.

I know I'm not a handsome man (by conventional standards at least, though bizarrely the female Animals seem to be particularly attracted to my primitive features), especially in an age where impossible beauty standards are just an implant away from becoming the new normal. Between the biosculpts, the inherent Juice my body produces and nearly two decades living the Animal lifestyle, my face has grown to be heavy and brutish, as if someone had to make a faceplate for a Sin City reenactment BD and they had to fill the slot of Marv in a hurry by smushing together Ron Perlman with Sebastien Chabal in their prime. Which ironically just reinforces the 'Beauty and the Beast' imagery between me and Sasha. Compared to her own lithe feline features, I imagine I must look like the unfortunate and illegitimate offspring of one particularly daring caveman and a surprisingly accommodating sabretooth-lion.

Actually, considering who my Mom was and whoever my Dad could be, reverse the genders and it likely wasn't even too far off the mark.

Whatever is going on in that chrome-brain of hers, Sasha doesn't tell me, instead breaking our gaze as she refocuses on my chest instead, shaking her head slightly so that her bob cut whips around her porcelain face.

"R-right then, let's get this sorted. Once I've removed all the bullets, I'll do what I can to help close the wounds, or at least clean and cover them properly to allow them to heal by themselves. Considering your… unique biology, that's probably for the best. Who knows what would happen to the stiches if I tried any sewing on you; I haven't had to handle a needle and thread in years and even back then I was utter shit at patching up my clothes, let alone skin. Did you know I once managed to sow one pant leg to another one?" She says, distracting herself, and I just nod at the verbal waterfall, mostly cause I'm at a loss for words too and don't really know how to address the moment we just had either.

"That doesn't sound too bad-" I try.

"They weren't part of the same pants." She flatly interrupts and I just blink slowly at her as she's clearly trying (and failing miserably) to fight down a blush covering her cheeks all the way to the vents.

"Right… best not try any stitchwork on me then." I concede as Sasha leans closer towards the bullet wounds, her demeanour a bit more serious now that she's focused on her task.

"Honestly, even if I wasn't complete crap at domestics, I don't think it'd be a good idea either way to start picking at you with a needle and thread. I know the expression 'thick-skinned' exists, but you seem to have taken that as a personal challenge or something. Jesus Sim, do stiches even work on you?" she says as she experimentally pokes my chest with a slim metallic black finger.

"Stiches usually just break apart in a day or so and then dissolve, 'cause my muscles simply rip 'em apart whenever I move. Whatever remains, my body rejects much faster than normal." I explain with a shrug, trying to subtly dislodge her finer from my pec while heroically disguising the embarrassing fact that I'm ticklish.

Or perhaps that's just her effect on me.

Thankfully, my efforts seem to pay off as Sasha doesn't seem to notice anything amiss. Instead, she just looks to be glad to have something other than my face to focus on as she gets started on the first bullet. To her credit, she's a lot more careful than I would've been. I usually just grit my teeth and dig around in there until I can get a good grip of the metal and pull it like a bad tooth or something, which shows my Animal upbringing more than I'd really care to admit. It's more difficult of course if the bullet has disintegrated, but in those cases the slivers are usually small enough my body can handle them on their own. Just make sure to regularly pour something like an Ab-Synth in there or really any drink with a similar alcohol content and I'm good to go. A nice Baalbek Arak would work as well, but it'd be a shame to waste a top shelf liquor like that.

With the care that Sasha is using, it takes her quite a while before she's dug out the first bullet, having carefully removed it from the wound with the medical forceps, holding the flattened slug up between us as she grips it tightly with the clamps.

For a moment, we're both silent as she tilts the smashed lead back and forth, looking from it to me and back again, her eyes wide.

"Damn… just how tough are you, Sim?" she eventually says after letting out a low whistle and I just shrug, the movement slightly jostling Sasha in… interesting ways in her position on my lap.

"I'm probably the toughest son of a bitch in all of NC." I say with a lopsided grin, showing off my enlarged fangs and Sasha snorts as she lets the bullet fall to the tarmac besides us, the 'ting!' of lead hitting the ground loud in our little quiet corner.

"Having met your mom, I wouldn't even be surprised." The netrunner says in an amused voice and my rumbling laugh sends a tremble through her body.

The earlier intensity is broken and to my surprise, we both settle down in a comfortable silence as she gets to work on the rest of the wounds. It stings slightly, but as I told her, they hurt much less going out than going in so I dismiss the discomfort with practised ease. Instead, we slowly get to talking, our close proximity making it so we automatically keep our voices pitched low, almost to a whisper, as if the convo is our little secret and the moment of peace will be broken if we're too loud and alert the world to our little corner in it.

The conversation meanders slowly and aimlessly, but neither of us mind. We talk about our childhoods (neither of which can be considered normal), our favourite tv-shows (she's absolutely hooked on some old Soviet Union cartoon I've never even heard of following the zany adventures of a hyperactive orange cat), our favourite food (hers is salmon nigiri, mine is 'yes') and anything and everything else that we can think of in the moment.

She's just done extracting the final bullets and has started to clean up the wounds and thin bloodtrails, when I get a call. My eyebrows shoot up when I spot the caller ID blinking in the corner of my vision.

"Hang on Sasha, I really need to take this." I say with an apologetic look.

The cute netrunner looks a bit disappointed, but nods as she halts her tale of how she and her sister (currently a badge, I'm surprised to hear) once tried to turn their neighbour's refrigerator into a microwave and being shockingly successful. In a quite literal sense too.

As Sasha continues to clean up the remainder of the blood and begins covering the smattering of wounds across my pecs with gauze and bandages, I accept the call, my bestial eyes gaining a telltale orange glow.

"River. Talk to me."

"And a hello to you too, Mr. Rose." The tired voice of Detective Ward comes from the other end as his avatar pops into my view.

"If you wanna start off with the small talk, that's fine with me. Except I know you and I know you don't do small talk." I shoot back with a grin and River just rolls his remaining eye at me.

"I can do small talk, when I need to. Or when I want to. With you, I don't want to."

"Now you're just hurtin' my feelings Detective." I respond in a mock hurt tone of voice.

"You got any of those?" River shoots back with a raised brow, though I can see a grin tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Sure! There's hungry, and then there's really hungry."

"Ah, shit, now you made me remember how you eat. And what you eat." River groans out with a shudder as I grin.

"Seriously though, Detective. You didn't call me up just to discuss my diet." I continue.

"Definitely not, no. Never." River says in distaste, briefly glancing at something to his side before refocusing on me, continuing in a softer, almost conspiring tone of voice.

"Had to pull a few strings to get the intel you requested. Framed it as trying to find a boostergang-related lead in the bodies that dropped at Faraday's. Wasn't even lying, sort of. Even so, I definitely shouldn't be sharing this list with you, which means I never gave it to you, just accidental data leakage though our com link, understood?"

A red bar swiftly fills up in my vision and I can somehow 'feel' new data being transferred to what little chrome I have, the soft updating in front of my eyes. Or in my eyes, rather.

"What list?" I respond easily and River nods.

"Exactly. It's got what you asked for: no deep cuts, just standard detes, anything a quick cross-check against NCPD databanks managed to pull. Names, cause of death, known affiliations if we could manage it. Most of them were low-level huscle, often rotated out for odd jobs all over town, only a few of them were exclusively on Faraday's payroll, though that doesn't tell us much. Like you said, he played things close to the chest." The detective explains as I mentally 'open' the list and start browsing through the names.

None of them jump out at me so far, but then River continues as one name gets highlighted.

"Which leads me to believe that this is the person you actually wanted intel on."

The entry expands and a familiar face glares back at me, as if blaming me, instantly recognizable despite (or rather, because) half of it being covered.

Hello there, Kiwi.

"Woman, late twenties to mid-thirties, extensive cybernetic modifications, most notably to the face, throat and brain. Also, because of course that's a thing in this fucking City, she got blue nipples that expel synthetic spider-silk."

I blink at that, before shooting him an incredulous look.

"Wait, for real?"

"Night City, Mr. Rose." River says with a shrug and a look of 'what can you do?' as if that's explanation enough and honestly, it kind of is.

My gaze flits back towards Kiwi's face, the accusing glare in her eyes boring into my own as River continues.

"Cause of death: either electrocution or drowning. Report says she got lifted naked out of Faraday's pool, so the coroner at first dismissed her as a joy toy. Probably because of the whole… you know… spider-tits thing. Personally, I think it's more likely she's the netrunner Faraday brought in after you delivered him the VIP, but not the data itself."

"Possibly." I say in a non-committal tone as River narrows his eye at me, annoyingly showing that, despite being a piss poor romance option, he is in fact a decent detective (in both senses of the word) as he immediately catches on that I know more than I'm telling.

"Mr. Rose, are you withholding information from an officer of the law?" he presses in what he probably considers his dangerous 'don't-lie-to-me-or-I'll-handcuff-you-in-the-non-sexy-way' tone of voice.

Effective on your average cyberpunk or gangoon perhaps, but I'm not exactly an average anything. 'Sides, I know for a fact that he doesn't have the special-duty cuffs on him that some beat cops requisition whenever they (miracle above miracles) managed to restrain one of our Alphas.

We tend to snap the smaller, cheaper ones like zip-ties. I can do the same to the heavy-duty ones and River knows it, so my nonchalant rebuttal doesn't come as a surprise to him. An annoyance, to be sure, but not a surprise.

"Detective Ward, like you said, this is NC. Everyone is withholding information from the police, hell even the NCPD itself does it."

The cop grumbles at that, but can't exactly refute my words, though I can tell he won't let this rest. So, I try a different tactic. While I might style myself after lions, my Ma always did say I had a weirdly effective puppy-eyes look.

"River, c'mon. You know you're my choombatta, you really think I would lie to you?"

"Yes." Was the immediate, deadpan response.

"Ok, that's on me, I set the bar too low. Still, while I might have… withheld info sometimes, I've never really lied to you River. Sort of, at least. You've got my word on that."

"You really asking me to trust the word of a gangoon?"

"Yes." I shoot back in the same blunt tone he just used on me.

"… alright, I walked into that one." River says with a sigh, his 'ganic hand coming up to rub his temple, before he shoots me a resigned, if frustrated, look.

"I'm right, aren't I? The woman isn't just some modified joytoy to suit Faraday's specific fetish, right? She was the netrunner brought on to crack Tanaka's ICE? If you're looking into whether or not she had any 'loose ties' associated with her, I'm afraid I can't tell you, the only contact we managed to definitely pin on her was Faraday himself."

I shrug my massive shoulders, once again jostling Sasha who has been quietly listening in on my half of the conversation.

"Probably. If so, she paid the price. Seems like Tanaka got a safety chipped that fried 'em both."

The detective shoots me an odd look at that though, a frown marring his face.

"Tanaka wasn't among the bodies that dropped. Trauma Team retrieved him, tried to take him to the hospital before they were intercepted by an Arasaka special ops team: claimed he'd receive further treatment in-house. There are zero records of his whereabouts after that."

I barely manage to control myself enough to stop me from jolting upright at that. I mean, the chance always existed that the old bastard somehow survived, Sasha had told me as much back on the boat, but having actual confirmation that Tanaka still lived? Why else would Arasaka go through the effort of treating him in-house, if not so that he can point the finger and pin the blame. That's… sub-optimal. I had hoped to put the whole Tanaka-biz (and thus the overarching Edgerunners-plot as a whole) behind me with confirmation of Faraday's death, since I figured that with the fixer flatlined, the mega-corp would run out of leads to run down eventually. This, however, could mean that I might still have to worry about Araska coming down on my head like a ton of bricks somewhere down the line and sooner rather than later.

And I'd really rather have avoided having one of the world's most powerful corpos hunting my ass specifically, considering I probably qualify as big game in their eyes and 'Saka particularly prides itself on using orbital lasers when dealing with those. They even got the adverts too and everything. Not good news for any Animal, two-legged or otherwise.

Especially now that I was planning to wage a small war against Biotechnica, after which I felt the time would be right to finally make a move on the Voodoo Boys down south in Pacifica. I knew that after the last Corpo War, where NUSA had been persuaded not to raze Night City down to the bedrock thanks to some nuclear-powered dickswinging from Saburo Arasaka, a chunk of Pacifica had been consolidated under the iron fist of a rebellious Militech soldier while the rest of the district went to shit.

I had little intel on BARGHEST or Kurt Hansen, but convincing him to help me get rid of the VDB's in his backyard with a two-pronged approach shouldn't be impossible. Hopefully, either one of us would catch that double-crossing Dexter DeShawn with a stray bullet in the crossfire. With Farday's death, the corpulent fixer was probably already trying to make inroads in the district to expand his own network. Considering that would inevitably bite him in his fat ass hard and would place him and my other target in roughly the same spot, I was willing to let him muddle around down south while I first focused on my war with Biotechnica.

However, a war with one mega-corp was already a risky prospect even without the threat of the world's most powerful one breathing down my neck.

Hmm… not all is lost just yet though, I realize as I look at Kiwi's file. There's barely anything listed there (save of course the coroner's somewhat incredulous note about the spider-tits), not even a name or an address. Both of which I knew regardless however thanks to my unique outsider perspective (wiki access is a glorious superpower to have, even if it's mostly reliant on hazy half-remembered memories), which should be enough at least for Sasha to do some digging.

I already had one netrunner with a hateboner for a mega-corp. Why not add a second one, someone who'd be one of the few able and (more than) willing to run interference with Arasaka without too many questions asked? Besides, I already had one half of the most tragic pairing in this world currently sitting upstairs, why not add his better half? Might keep David's mind off revenge for a while, and thus from the path to cyberpsychosis.

Oh yeah, it's all coming together. Now then, for the big question: how to convince Lucy to join my Predators pack right after I inadvertently fried her mentor to a crisp?

"Thanks for zippin' me the detes detective Ward. Pleasure doin' biz with ya. That bein' said tho, I got a whole bunch of murderin' and general law breakin' to get back to, you know how it is, so I'll talk to ya later." I drawled, allowing my Animal-accent to come out thickly through my sharpened teeth, showing them off in a lazy grin.

"Mr. Rose, you can't just say you're planning to engage in criminal activity to a cop! Mr. Rose! Simba!"

"Bye now!"

"Sim-!"

The orange glow fades from my eyes as I chuckle, before glancing down at the cute netrunner in my lap, who blinks up at me in surprise as she slightly tilts her head.

"Now, I know I only got half of that, but the half I got was… weird. You always talk to badges like that?"

"Hmm, usually I just beat the shit out of 'em. Or set 'em on fire, though that was an accident and his own damn fault for hanging out the window while I was throwing cannisters of CHOOH at his car." I say with a shrug and once again Sasha just blinks her neon-pink eyes at me.

"Right… clearly the fault lies with him for not knowing better than to catch explosives with his face…"

"That's what I said!"

Seeing that's she's finished dressing up my wounds (for a while now, I sneakily suspect), I smoothly rise to my feet as I grab her by the back of her jacket and effortlessly lift her off my lap as if she's just a kitten, planting her on her feet beside me. Stretching to my full, ridiculously tall height, I roll my shoulders and arms for a bit, getting the circulation flowing properly again. I pleasantly note that the familiar itching burn from my healing wounds is reduced to a more persistent warmth and I shoot the netrunner a grateful look.

"Thanks for the med assist, Sasha."

"No prob, Sim." She beams back happily as she plants her metallic fingers on her hips.

"Now, it'll take Big Pete a little while to finish going over my Avenger, and it'll take Maine and Dorio a little while longer to finish… that. So in the meantime, I got a job for you."

"Tracking down that Shipman guy for the shrimp to flatline, right? I'll get right on that: bastard deserves to be zeroed for what he planned to do to David's mother." The netrunner says with heat in her voice.

"All true, but put it on the backburner for now. With all the noise we've been making this past week, we aren't in any position to do a raid on a Biotechnica affiliate anyways."

"Affiliate? Oh, come on Sim, you know he's just a separate party in name only, just so the corpos can claim they didn't have anything to do with the experiments! It's a classic tactic, they did the same with Securicine! Sure, they manufactured the drug themselves, but their test data came from 'independent' clinics! It's just different logos on the same shit!" Sasha says passionately, her emotions spiking when she mentioned the 'medicine' that killed her mother.

I try to calm her down a bit by placing my massive paw on her shoulder, leaning in a bit closer as I make my deep, gravelly voice as gentle as I can make it. No easy feat when it sounds like something even Tom Waits would consider using autotune for.

"Exactly, Sasha. All the more reason to bide our time and wait for the right moment to strike; minimal risk, maximum damage. Chances are, with my little rampage back at the facility, Shipman's likely gone to ground, beggin' his Biotechnica overlords for shelter, so if we go for him now we'll probably end up dealing with corpo security unless we wanna wait for however long it takes for Shipman to crawl out of his little hidey hole and go back to his house again."

Sasha wants to argue, but visibly restrains herself and gives me a frustrated nod.

"We'll make Biotechnica bleed, don't you worry Sasha. Gun for Hire gigs like these are what my Predators specialize in. All good things come to those who wait, after all. If you really can't let this go, then shoot Vasili a message, have him do the prelim work for you."

"… Fine. Fine. What's the biz that you want me working on in the meantime?" Sasha eventually concedes with a pout as she crosses her arms over her chest, which means I have to swiftly flit my eyes back up to rest on her neon-pink ones again, desperately dismissing the… noticeable effect the movement had on her body.

And on mine. Dammit. C'mon Simba, focus, plotting war and intrigue here, keep your head in the game or fuckin' lose it.

"I'm flippin' you the detes on a woman of interest." I explain as I send her the list River had delivered.

"… You know, Sim, one of these days you gotta explain why you got me tracking down mystery women all over the City." The netrunner says in a vaguely threatening tone as she accepts the data package, before briefly skimming over the intel.

"What, you wanna save this one as well? Maybe her little dog too?" she asks with a bit of a bite in her tone, though my expression remains flat save for a faint grimace.

"Bit late for that. She's dead. Fried by the microgenerator we stuffed inside Tanaka. Who isn't dead, by the way, according to Detective Ward. Or at least, not entirely dead enough for Trauma Team to leave him behind or for 'Saka to run an interception of their own. Only bodies that got dragged to the morgue that day were Faraday's, his crew and her."

"Oh… oh damn. Uh, I'm sorry, Sim…"

"Don't be. I barely even knew her. Faraday brought her in to crack Tanaka's ICE, but like with everyone that four-eyed freak hired, he brought in someone disposable from outside his own organization to do the job. Same as with us. So, 'cactly the same as with us, I'm wondering if the 'runner had any connections or crew of her own."

"So, you uh… want me to… you know, tie up the loose ends?" she answers, her tone dipping to a conspiring whisper as she knowingly wiggles her eyebrows and elbows me subtly in the side with a nearly audible 'wink wink, nudge nudge', despite the fact that we're in the middle of nowhere, in the desert.

I shake my head at her antics, though I do wonder how she can still view being an edgerunner as little more than an exciting game despite having willingly come so close to death the night I rescued her from Biotechnica HQ.

"No, just look into it for now. Considering the shitstorm that's hanging over our heads, more bodies on our side would only benefit us. It worked with Maine, didn't it? 'Sides, if there is a crew missing their precious 'runner, then it wouldn't be difficult to point their anger towards Faraday and 'Saka instead of us. By now I'm thinkin' near every edgerunner, cyberpunk and gangoon in Night City knows the Butcher came out to collect his pound of flesh from the streets, so pinning the blame on him and his corpo overlords will be easier than selling an XBD to a Vidiot." I assure the cute woman.

Quite literally too, considering our little Debiddo was an old hand at exactly that by now, even at the tender age of fifteen. Not that I was in a position to judge really. Pretty sure I committed my first crime at… six? Maybe a bit younger? That's of course if you're not counting my birth, but that particular crime against nature I'm blaming fully on Ma.

"I mean, if you think it's a good idea… then again, you can be very persuasive if you wanna be. Got any more intel for me to go off? This list is pretty bare." Sasha says as her eyes flit over the data River sent over.

"General residence and the name of a person I want you looking into." I state and Sasha's eyes peer at me from over the edge of the list displayed on her eyeballs.

"And here I thought you said you barely knew her?" she questions with a raised eyebrow and I just raise one right back at her.

Two can play at that game!

"I got my ways." I say evasively and Sasha holds the look for a few seconds longer, before her gaze flits to the upper floors of the dilapidated Autowerks, where a certain teenager is currently sitting beside his comatose mother.

"Obviously." She says flatly, before shooting me a questioning look.

"Alright then, who's this mystery person I'm looking into?"

"The fried 'runner had a residence at or near Yaiba tower. You know the one, big fuckin' hab tower near Lizzie's Bar down in the Kabuki district in Watson. When you're looking into it, just make sure not to step on Regina's toes, alright? Don't think you poking around her home is something she'd just let slide, even if she's supposed to be one of the 'nicer' fixers. As for the 'loose end', I want you to look into any connection between the zeroed 'runner and her possible protegee, a netrunner called Lucyna Kushinada."

//

 AN: Sorry for the long wait, I really got stuck on where to take this fic after the introduction of Phantom Liberty, since that opened up a bunch of plotlines for later in the fic. Also sorry that there's not a lot of action in this, I mentioned in one of the first AN's that I hoped this fic would be a snappy short one, but considering we're still in the build-up phase of Arc 2 and already at nearly a 100k words, I don't really see that happening any time soon. I hope to up the violence and bloodshed by a lot in future chapters, considering Sim will need to go on the warpath. Also, this fic has barely used any time-skips so far, so I might be introducing those more in the future.

As for what the future may bring, if you wanna find out what happens in the next chapter, you can! Head on over to my Patreon and read ahead there!