The American Arasaka (2)

Your cousin seems to take such illicit perversions and unfortunate connotations in stride, something that causes a non-insignificant amount of discomfort–and trepidation on your part.

If only from a purely analytical lens, you understood that modern culture was heavily dosed with pervasive sexuality and the absence of privacy, but you had never experienced in, neither in a past life nor in your current youth, the encompassing, protective embrace of the Kyoto Compound.

The constantly monitored and carefully pruned access you had to the local net did not prepare you for the sheer amount of degeneracy that merely existing would inflict upon persons of your stature; being fetishised is not what you might label a 'gift'.

Michiko may have become entirely immune to it, but you are far from comfortable with the idea that someone going to town on a BD with your face transplanted on the unfortunate victim.

"You don't need to worry about that, Shiro; you are barely a blip on the radar. Grandfather has done his best to ensure your existence is barely a foreword to any net description of Yorinobu's life...of course, that will change soon."

To her, your adventures in Night City are merely the last hurrah and an introductory prelude into the dangerous games of the Arasaka Corporation, replete with the media spotlight. Her sympathetic words are laden with enough pity that you're tempted to say something exceedingly impolite at her infantilisation of you.

"I will make the necessary arrangements for your little adventure in Night City; I can not, in good conscience, let your only means of protection be Adam Smasher and the handful of Kyoto security you had brought with you."

There is a war inside you; one that rages against the oppressive suffocation your family constantly desires to impose upon you, and the other that understands, if only from dreams and on a theoretical basis, that you are just as mortal as any streetrat, even if not cut from the same marrows and sinew.

"...I- Thank you, Michiko."

When you came into this dinner, it was with thick walls erected around your heart and mind, treating your cousin as you would any stranger, with the added paranoia that comes with knowing what she's up to, as well as what she is capable of as a member of the Arasaka family.

"Oh, I nearly forgot; Smasher sends his warmest regards."

She gives you an unimpressed stare as her husband stiffens; you can see his eyes harden into stones, his soul banished from his body, but it is only for a moment, as life quickly returns to his jaded gaze, and he acts as if nothing happened.

"He didn't say that."

"...He expressed his desires very colourfully, but that was most of it."

It becomes evident that having dinner with a cousin she has never seen until now is not important enough to clear her itinerary for, she soon excuses herself with apologies and well wishes galore.

Her departure grants you a quick sight of the katana-armed hooded man who must be Kenichi Zaburo.

The infamous Arasaka solo, hidden beneath layers of black kevlar fabric and with two katanas strapped to his back, was infamous for silently shadowing Michiko's every step throughout her childhood, the man now dutifully standing by her personal shuttle; and soon after, you are left alone with a now very awkward Sanderson.

If Michiko had hoped that your general indifference to both her husband's origins and all other controversies surrounding her marrying downward would only continue the dinner's civility, she was wrong because she forgot one significant thing.

"Time to go!"

You were almost caught off-guard by the thundering voice of Adam Smasher, who had, throughout this entire outing, maintained constant observation through your cybernetics whilst deaf and blind to your activities; he was no stranger to observing the affairs of the household.

Having sighted the departure of Michiko Arasaka and her bodyguard, he weighed the pros and cons of his direct action before settling on his favoured option, extracting his charge now that the event had reached its conclusion. And if it was as disruptive as possible? All the better.

No, he's not mad that he got dumped in favour of some nobody investigator who doesn't even carry enough chrome to spring a metal detector.

If Smasher, when he marched out of that Arasaka dropship, thought that his mere presence would startle and cow Michiko's husband, who had insisted on walking you to the garden landing pad, the only one large enough to fit the corporate dropship, he was mistaken; perhaps you were as well.

"What works with Michiko wouldn't work on other women... Michiko is special..."

"Special is a word I'd describe her and other things."

Having his conversation so rudely interrupted by the hulking borg, the slightly tall but still diminutive (in comparison to Smasher) employee of Danger Gal turns his attention away from the Arasaka Scion at his side, and to the robotic monstrosity, looming in the hovering troop transport's wavering shadow.

He looks him in the eye; the blank porcelain mask, the shivering spider-like fangs that slide out and back inside his matte-black jaw do not faze him.

Smasher's crimson gaze, silent and filled with the sadistic brutality that has made him the most dangerous solo in NC bores into the little man's skull, and in response; the American does only one thing.

He flashes the borg a shit-eating grin.

"Smasher! No! You can't kill him!"