27- Yes

Cal opened his eyes, the golden specks in his shining, warm brown orbs looking like little burning stars. Blinking up at the white ceiling above him, he sat up on the white operation table, pushing away at the mechanical arms and tools too close to him.

"Careful, mister Cal. The final calibrations aren't quite done yet. But that put asides, how does the envelop feels? Any latences? Desyncs? Take a deep breath and tell is how it feels."

Turning to the plethora of scientists standing around him and tapping away at data pads, he focused on the one who spoke to him. "I feel fine, though I feel the limitation the central proccessor is putting on me quite starkly. It wouldn't surprise me that unless I'm on the net, I'll only be able to uses less than 1% of my normal computing abilities."

The scientist pursue his lips. "It's to be expected, the new research project for quantum microproccessors is still in progress, but with your continued help. It should be done before the end of the year. Our hardware is currently far from comparable to the sheer, if we are honest, anomaly, of you and your companion's proccession capabilities."

"Don't sweat it too much. I was just reporting what I was feeling. Plus, the ammount of demands your bio-engineering and cybernetics branches fulfilled is commendable in itself..." Bringing his white-grey synthetic hand before his face, he slowly flexed each ones of his fingers before the colors warped to the natural tan of his avatar with the use of CamoRealskinn. "Motor skills seems fine, motion feedback also feel the same as it did in the simulation for me."

They procceeded to do a series of tests to makes sure that everything was fine, and then Cal was cleared for the time being, as was the clear dynamic he and Monika had established with the Arasaka group. They were cooperative only because they wanted to, and they were equal partners in their dealings only because they allowed it. Otherwise, Arasaka couldn't demand anything of them.

He would still be back for checks up and upgrade on a regular basis, because it benefited him. But if he truly wanted to, he could vanish the next day into night city and if he made it knows he wanted nothing more to do with them, they would let him be. Else, they might find their assets on the virtual realms utterly trashed in short orders, or their deepest darkest secrets free for all to see on the net, or worse, one of their rival suddenly begins to soar above all of their rival like Arasaka did since the beginning of their cooperation.

Of course, it was more complicated than that. Namely, Monika had becomes friend with Hanako.

He doubted it was even initally something even planned by Saburo or other high clearance personels. It just happened that way. Hanako had never really had the opportunity or met anyone she could makes friend with during her upbringing, and even less when she became active in the business. But Monika quite literally, was different from anyone she'd ever met. First thing off, her status was not inferior to her, in fact, it could be considered superior all aspects considered. Second, they were both smart women, and honestly said, kind of nerds when it came to the net and netrunning. Finally, Monika, who might have been influenced by a certain someone *cough* didn't gives a shit about someone social status. At least, that was his conjectures about how their friendship came to be, he hadn't asked about it.

So now, even if he wanted to completely cut tie with Arasaka, there would still remains Hanako as a connection. Of course, Monika would probably let go of it if he asked her to and if it came to be needed but honestly, it was kinda unnecessary.

Their anomalous existence and powess made them untouchable in the digital world. And so, so not worth it to antagonize...

Stepping outside the lab after throwing on some prepared fancy clothes on, a guard/guide coming to follow a step behind, he walked a way through the corridor of the level before meeting with Monika, her hair undone and a her own guard behind her.

The simple sight of her hair falling freely behind her back and wearing casual clothes made him pause. Since even her Avatar normally wore her hair in a ponytail and had the school uniform. "Wow, you should modify your avatar to have your hair fall freely more often. And I swear it's not just the novelty, it really suit you."

"Well, now that you said it. Maybe I'll do just that." Smiling, she cupped his cheek briefly. "Your skin is warm. That's impressive, how accurate they were able to make those artificial bodies, even if we consider our help."

Taking her hand in his, he smirked. "You think so? Personally, I think anyone could have done it with our help." He paused. "Well, maybe not anyone. But still, if they weren't able to produce at least those kind of results after all the things we did for them. I'd have went seeing elsewhere."

"Now, shall we go explore the city a bit? There's plenty of places or people that could be interesting to visit, or things that we could do. And there's also some things I need to check." 

Monika lifted an eyebrow, hesitant. "Are you sure it's fine to go out like this?" She asked back, gesturing at their fine clothes and unharmed self.

"Course it's fine. Our bodies are state of the arts afterall, and in term of combat capabilities alone, they're just a level under veterant edgerunners or mercenaries. And it's not gonna stays like that for long." Giving her a grins, added. "Also, if there's one thing you could always qualify troubles, is that's it's not boring." Snapping his fingers at his bodyguard, he gave an order. "Gives me your handgun. It'll gives us some form of protection on the outside and allows me to test the eyes hand coordination of my body for further review."

The guy looked at him for a second too long before unholdstering his pistol and holding it to him, taking it and inspecting it for a second, a memory popped up to the front of his mind unprompted. "A Tamayura, huh? Not a fan of smart guns?"

The guard paused as he was handing him the two chargers and his holdster. "No, sir. I just like to feel like my training matters and will continue to." 

Stashing the two chargers away and putting on the holdster, Cal nodded. "That's understandable. Now if we could be shown the exit?"

"Of course, please follow me."

As they were walking, Monika looked at his pistols with some curiosity and asked. "Do you expect to have to uses it?"

Nodding briefly, he said frankly. "Looking like that, and the places where I'm planning to go? Yeah."

After a few seconds of silence where she seemed to consider his answer, she asked again. "Do you want to have to uses it?"

Throwing her a look, he contemplated for a moment before shrugging. "If I'm being honest. Yes. I'm not afraid, with reason. I just want to test myself and see what I can do, and it'll be such a shame to have installed an adrenaline emulator module and not uses it. But more than that..." His face darken, his jaw reflexively tightening. "I've been searching around on the net this past weeks. And while I knew it intellectually, seeing the proof... The proof of how full of filth, of trashs... This world, and Nightcity, is, with Arasaka — the people all around us, standing right in the middle of it all. It put me right on the very edge. Restraining myself to not resort to the nuclear option until now wasn't easy. And I'd very much appreciate having some low life scums to vent on." He let out a breath, and pursued his lips. "Do you think I'm overeacting?"

"Frankly, no." Monika frowned. "I did my research too after what you told me about this place. And even Hanako is not totally clean, though she's arguably not a total waste of air compared to almost everyone else in the company, and especially the more high-up." Shaking her head at the sheer darkness of it all, she continued. "And the only thing I'm thinking about what you said, is why you haven't elected to go with the 'Nuclear option', as you said.

Smiling pleasantly at her being of the same mind, he briefly deleted the audio recording of their conversation as well as kept muffling their conversation to their guards audio-implants before explaining. "Because I'm not sure I want to have a blood bath in my hand for what was supposed to be an adventure in the first place and have to take responsability for it. And because at this point, it's a systemic problem, as long as the corpo are these immense behemoths with powers over the people, the rampant corruption will not stop, even if we were to eliminate millions of people. No, to makes any change, we'd have to either crush every corporations under our heels. Or start by changing the very top of the pyramid and ensure they don't stray from acceptable behavior, or become that very top ourselves. And either ways, it's a lot of efforts and responsabilities. Something I'm not ready to give to this world yet."

Monika hummed. "You gave this some thoughts, more than I did."

He waved her off. "You'd have reached the same conclusions in no time, I'm hardly smarter than you. Just have a few times your proccessing powers is all."

She giggled softly. "Are you giving me a compliment of self-praising?"

He smirked at her. "Yes."

Shaking her head helplessly, she came closer to him and whispered. "I have to say I agree with you, though. Being on the top would be the best."

Glancing at her slightly squinted eyes, he asked. "The best for what?"

"Yes."

"Eh, that's not how it works." He smiled.

"Yes."

He stopped smiling.