29- Cool Mysterious Young Master Moment

Gazing down at the city from the wall-spanning window of one the highest-end apartment of night city with a glass of wine in hand. Cal had small orbs of colored light hovering behind him in complex patterns. The most recent training exercise he had taken to train his will in this world.

"Thinking on a plan of action going forward?" Monika strode besides him, almost touching him with their proximity. Dressed in more casual clothes, she had chosen to keep her hair down, and was still as striking as earlier.

"No, there's nothing much to be done yet. Only building our bases of power and influence. Most events I wants to change the outcome of are still a way off." He turned his head toward her and smiled, taking a sip of his glass. It tasted like wine, a strandard one, which meant it was worth good eddies in this era of synth meals and bug snacks.

"What about the script?" Monika hummed and asked, lingering a second on his face before looking down at the sprawling city like him.

He frowned at that, somewhat annoyed. "It's hiding very deep somewhere in the old net. Which would probably be a consequent journey, and maybe even risky for us. But it's also good, in a way, since I'm all but not sure if I could destroy it for good with this form and just a bit more than half my full proccessing power like I have access to right now in the net."

"So becoming stronger it is?" Monika gave him a knowing smile, almost teasing.

He grinned back. "Hey, if it works. It works, I'm going to train using this world's script heaviness. And looks up actual netrunning skills, see if it can't refine my usage of power."

Monika nodded, looking pleased. "I'll continue working on my project then with Hanako, then, the prototype is almost done. I'll think you'll be very happy with it. I'll also check the principle behind cyberwares. It could turn out useful for the future."

His brows lifted in surprise and then furrowed. "That's actually a really good idea, I didn't think about it because I figured I could just force every effects to happen with my power. But if our physical form turn out limited or weak and the script of a world too strong, using principles based more on science could reduce the costs of upgrades enough to make them possible in the long term."

"We could look into the tech behind it together, putting our two minds together. You know, to save on time and be more efficient." Monika pointed out with a small, innocent smile.

Cal rubbed his chin, choosing to not point out her obvious plan and going along. "Sure, sounds good. It could be like a club activity. Only not about litterature, with just the two of us, and in another world." He nodded.

She chuckled. "So just an otherworldy date?"

"More like a series of them, yeah?" He smirked at her and winked.

Blushing just the slightest bit, Monika giggled and made herself scarce. Hands held behind her back as she wandered away to makes a call.

His smirk morphing into a simple smile, his eyes reflexively flicked to the top of a quite far away building who was close to the corpo plaza as he looked back to the city. His optics zooming a hundred times as he looked at the tiny figure spying carefully on another proeminent building of the plaza.

Looking at it, he saw that it was the headquarter of biotechnica.

Upon using some relay points he had placed behind earlier during his stay at Arasaka, he confirmed that every camera that could monitor the person were instead playing on a loop.

To be honest, he would have complitely missed the happening if he wasn't vaguely aware that something like that was supposed to happens soon. And if he didn't know the appearance of the would-be-spy in question.

Drinking the last of his glass of wine, he turned away from the window and fixed his appearance. Then, holdstering his pistol, he called out to Monika, who was lounging on the high-quality couch of the living room in a compromising manner. "Going for a little walk, should be back in maybe an hour, alright?"

A lifted eyebrow and then a nods was his answer as he exited the apartment. Going on for a solo adventure in the city.

—————

Coming out on the roof of the high-rise building, it didn't take him more than a single looks around to know that the netrunner was gone. If it was because she was done with her task or because she had detected him was unknown. In any case, he had to at least ping her cyberdeck for the future.

Inspecting the position he had seen her on, one where you had a good overview of the biotechnica headquarter. His optics worked overtime to know where she went to. But nothing much came up, something he kinda expected, since she wouldn't be an amateur.

What he did instead was check out the surrounding network of city camera through a fine thread to know which had their records altered in the past hour or so. And he followed them, jumping down the building as every fifty meters or so he slammed his hand into the concrete directly to stop himself before letting go again. His synthetic, cables like muscles and extra reinforced titanium bones bearing the burden easily.

Smashing down on the street below with his knees bending slightly, he smiled up at the suprised and frightened passerbys before jumping out of the mini crater he made and dashing through a side alleys, beginning to follow the trail of the netrunner at the pace of a speeding cars. He only bothered to used his experimental sandevistan whose only uses was speeding up his movements as much as possible when he was about to crashes into innocent drughead or people. As for gangers, if they were lucky or a bit chromed, they were only smashed to the side unconscious, for the unlucky ones he hit directly, they became a stain on the wall or on his suit that mysteriously disappeared after a minute.

It didn't take him more than 5 minutes of the reckless pace to notice he was catching up to cameras just having been tinkered with, and with significantly more efforts having been made to be subtle.

Barely a few seconds later, the trail he was following ended abruptly with a dead end between two buildings.

Slowing down, he looked from left to right before registering an attack on his optics and an attempt to surcharge his system. Two things he immediatly blocked, crushed and latched on before retracing the origin of them and looking up at the roof of the building on his left, also sending a quickhack like virus that would stick to her cyberdeck like glue and also secretely infect her neuralink.

There was a yelp and a curse. "What the hell kinda Ice is that!? And what's with that disgustingly strong bug you just sent me? You some kind of spec corp super assassin or something?"

Bluish hair, striking blue eyes, cat whiskers and the all in a full leotard netrunner bodysuit was what gazed down at him with a scowl and a look full of carefully hidden apprehension as she shifted on her feet, ready to jump down and cut him to pieces with a monocable.

Smirking, the world slowed down as he crouched and jumped on the balcony above him on his left and jumped again to reach the roof of the opposite building to her. Bringing himself over with a single hand, he turned to faced her before plopping down sitting on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling in the void.

"I'm none of that. And I'm not here to kill you. In fact, you could say I'm here to makes sure you don't die in your vendetta against biotechnica." He lifted a hand to stops the coming questions. "Believe me or not, you could consider me a new player in the city. For now, my name means nothing in night city. It's on purpose. Sooner of later, that will change drastically. As a sign of goodwill and as proof of that, I'll tell you something about myself." Thumbing at himself, he smiled. "I'm the singular reason why Arasaka is pulling ahead of its competitors significantly since the past two months."

Her face going through various emotions, she settled on a squint, her posture slightly less guarded than earlier as it didn't comes to violence. "The singular reason? And you expect me to just believe that? It's simply not possible. No one person can have such an impact on the whole of a megacorp in so little time."

After letting her ramble on, he simply replied with; "That's true enough." And smiled lazily, letting it at that. Standing up and brushing off his pants, he flicked his finger. "Here's a quickhack to disable high-tech security bots. Dissect it, reverse enginer it, do whatever you wants to check for malware, I don't care, you'll find nothing. Just keep it in your arsenal after that. You'll need it for your final push in biotechnica."

His eyes glowing blue, he added. "Oh, right, I'm Cal, by the way. Here's my number and some detes for some gigs I need a skilled netrunner for if you're interested. Call me if you also wants some more answers and you're not too busy shitting yourself from paranoia, there's only a few things I wouldn't tell you. Finally, don't asks around for me, at all. Cause if someone in the known from Arasaka get to know about someone snooping around, they'll hunt you down with everything they got before even asking me about it. So yeah, that's about it. Oh, and that's for the emotional trauma, no need to thank me." He offered her a rogish, cheeky grin as he sent her 50 000 eddies directly before jumping down with his hands in his pocket, and walking away from the alley the same way, not even sending the stunned Sasha a single glance back as he did.

As he rounded the corner, he couldn't help but chuckle in a silly manner. "Man, she's probably doubting life right now, or shitting her pants. Poor little inferior lifeform who don't know the future or operate a million calculations a second. At least she's pretty hot." He tsked to himself and shook his head.

'Jokes' asides, there was no particular reason that he helped Sasha ‐because that was obviously her - other than because he could. He just couldn't help it, he hated bad endings. If he could gives happy ending to good or innocent people, he would. Oh, right, night city was supposedly the wrong place and its populace the wrong people for happy endings. But, problem was, he didn't care. He would break the city under his heel until he was satisfied with it, because he could.

Because he hated bad endings.

And night city was already one.