Three hecking years since I started this whole writing thing.
Damn does time fly...
Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
"So yeah, that's about it. Can I count on you to deal with it?" I spoke aloud while staring down at my 'guests'.
River Ward sighed on the holo, shooting me a look of annoyance [You know this is the exact kind of thing I want to fight in the force, right Michael?]
"And I get that, and I'm truly sorry I have to ask." I reassured him "But admit it, a gonk ass kid getting into a bit of excitement doesn't even come close to the real issue. Having this kind of thing on record could ruin that. The damages will all be paid for, so all I ask is to let it slide, this time."
Martinez winced.
"Also." I stared at my other guest, who was too busy pouting like some street cat "You should focus on chasing the actual perp."
[Alright, fine. You're right.] Ward massages the sides of his head [I'll help you out. Just don't make this a habit.]
"Thanks, Lt. I owe you one."
[Right. Ward out.]
The call ended, leaving the freshly closed clinic in an awkward silence.
Honestly, if I didn't get a full play by play of what happened I'd have thought this whole debacle was some kind of comedy flick, but no.
Somehow Martinez and Kushinada managed to run into each other while the latter was stealing chips on the NCART, and the former didn't take too kindly to his homework getting klepped and so, high on his recent success, he immediately tried chasing her down.
She lost him, unsurprisingly, but not before taking a hard tumble that ended up with her hitting her head pretty hard, which is how she ended up here for a checkup.
Just in time to run into Martinez again when Gloria dragged his gonk ass over to beg me to deal with her son getting into legal trouble (he was caught on multiple cameras breaking shit and pushing people around, while running away from the NCPD who'd started chasing the duo after they smashed through a shoe store.)
Listening to Gloria sound so desperate about something so minor made me all kinds of uncomfortable. I'd have to educate her about her new position soon, this kind of panic was beyond unnecessary.
"So-" Kushinada began, mockingly raising her hand before snapping it back down as my eyes met hers. Instead she grumpily pointed a thumb at Martinez "He gets pulled out of the fire but I'm just chopped liver?"
"You are a merc, who for some reason decided to resort to petty theft. Deal with it." I deadpan, the implied 'And neither are you one of mine.' Went unsaid.
She scoffs and gets up "Can I go then?" I'd of course done all necessary maintenance before anything else.
I just wave her away. She'd already paid what she owed and all this was mostly for Martinez's benefit.
She grins and twists on the gonk, leaning over and getting into his face "That was fun, 'Saka boy. We should do it again." Her eyes glow briefly and catch her uploading a harmless datapacket to his Agent before grinning at Martinez's suddenly very red face, springing back up like a cat that caught the canary, and strutting out.
David's sputtering catches in his throat as he sees my unimpressed stare and he manages to calm down relatively quickly, letting out an aggrieved, confused sigh.
Not particularly surprising, considering the madwoman just gave him her call ID.
...Part of me wasn't even surprised at this point.
David shakes himself back into reality and meets my eyes "Thanks for that, really."
"But you'd do it again anyway?"
His lips twitch a bit and he nods "Yeah..."
"Well, it's not like I disagree with the motive." I shrug "Letting goons get away with robbing you is just asking for it to happen again. The execution though..." I wave my hand as if to say 'eh' "Could use some work."
"Yeah, I fucked up, no need to rub it in." He scratches the back of his neck and grumbles.
"I'm sure Gloria has that well in hand." I point out.
And he winces, looking away before his expression turned serious "I've been thinking about what you said. About cyberware making us better... How much did she have?"
I gave him a dry look "I'm not going to disclose patient information, Martinez. Not to you, and not to anyone."
"But she had something, right?" He presses "More than nothing?"
"You could say that, yes." I hum non commitally "I'm honestly impressed you managed to keep up for more than a few seconds."
"I just got lucky I guess." He shrugs awkwardly and returns back on topic "But I don't want to just be lucky." He hesitates then, but only for a few seconds "Think you can set me up with something?"
"I can do more than 'something'." I say immediately "Depending on your tolerance I could turn you into a walking tank within a day." His eyes brighten in excitement but I stop him with a raised finger "However, you have no eddies to your name. So before anything, go ask your mother."
The rising excitement in his eyes dies a cold and instant death as he directs me with a look of such betrayal it almost made me regret doing him like this, and then he slumps so hard he practically folds in on himself and mutters "So not cool, choom."
"Free shit is for family only, I'm afraid." I shrug.
He groans into his hands.
Tossing him a booster shot for his bruising, I send him back upstairs to his understandably worried mother, and leave the apartment, heading to the top of the megabuilding.
---
"Your strikes lack conviction." Master Takeda comments as we separate "This was not the case the last time you were here." The old man was as always not even winded even after minutes of sparring.
"Say it isn't so, old man!" Jugo fake gasps from next to me.
Takeda shoots him a reproachful glare which only earns a chuckle from the madman.
I frown and look down at my purring weapon "It just... feels like it isn't enough."
Takeda immediately catches the issue "You speak of your brush with death."
"Yes." I nod, there was no point in playing coy here "I suppose it has left me... questioning the point of this." I wave my sword around for emphasis.
"Many warriors question themselves upon seeing the greater peaks, and you have faced the greatest." Takeda says sagely, and Jugo remains uncharacteristically silent "It is the moment the steel in a warrior's heart tempers, or breaks." He assesses me with a quiet look "Tell me, young Michael. Have you broken?"
I don't quite snap at him, but it is a close thing "Of course not. I am just not sure swinging a sword around is going to cut it."
Jugo fails to contain a snort.
Takeda shoots us both unimpressed looks, and I look away as that was most assuredly not intentional "You are no warrior." The old man informs me bluntly.
My head snaps back to him but I have nothing to say to that so I just remain silent.
"You are an engineer, a creator." He elaborates "That is not a bad thing, but it locks you into the singular mindset of always building the perfect tool for the job. If the tool doesn't work you simply move on to the next one, until you have the perfect counter to what you face."
"So what?" I ask, feeling a bit defensive "Should I stop?"
"Of course not." He scoffs "But you should not lean fully into it either. There is merit for building greater weapons, but there is also merit to mastering and refining what you have. Tell me, did your foe use any special tool to overpower you?"
"No." I shake my head "Or at least I don't think he did."
"Hm?" He raises a curious eyebrow.
Quickly replaying the whole thing in my mind, I do my best to describe exactly what happened and how.
By the time I'm done, Takeda looks just a tiny bit too smug for my tastes "It seems to me your foe had both superior skill and tools on his side. How quaint."
"Yes, no need to rub it in." I most assuredly do not grumble "I get it."
"The amount of damage a mere brush was able to inflict is concerning." He scratches his chin "Smasher is a master of his craft, but in all my years I've never heard about a skill of such destructive potential. Are you certain it was no cyberware?"
"Pretty sure." I nod "I can't even begin to come up with a way to produce the same effect while keeping things compacted into one Dragoon arm. Either Arasaka is far more advanced than even the conspiracy theorists think, or it is all Smasher."
"I see." Takeda frowns "I will look into this."
I incline my head "Thank you, Master Takeda."
"You are my student." He says as if that answered everything "Willful as you are."
I look back down to my chainsword and then at the old man as if to ask 'Should we go again?'
"No." He firmly shakes his head "Think on what we spoke about. Then return here." And not waiting for my response he turns and begins rearranging the dojo's practice blades, signaling the end of the lesson.
I shoot a look at Jugo and he waves for me to follow him along.
He'd called me over earlier to talk about something, but it wasn't so urgent that we needed to skip a bit of sparring first. Of course, Takeda immediately noticed something was off and I proceeded to get my ass handed to me on a platter by the old man even more completely than usual.
Shame Senko was nowhere to be found, but she had her own turf she'd taken off from one of Shobo's dead goons, and was too busy keeping her hold on that part of Kabuki to hang around H11 all too often.
As soon as we step out onto the terrace, he speaks up without preamble "The others are pushing for me to assert control over you."
"Pardon?" I blink.
He chuckles, looking off at the distant seaside "The other Captains, they see your rise and mock me for 'letting you off the leash'. The idiots want me to drag you fully under the Brotherhood's control."
"And your boss?" I ask, feigning complete calm.
He exhales "Nagakawa-sama is staying out of it for now."
'This could prove problematic...' I frown mentally.
'Could.' I remind myself.
No need to go into fight or flight over it "And do you agree? Should I be 'leashed?'"
He barks a laugh and faces me with the usual grin on his face "I'm may love a good fight but I'm not an idiot. The only reason the fools in Japantown want me to force you into the fold is so I could kill myself trying."
"So what you are saying..." I trail off briefly "Is that we should poke them back?"
He claps his hands "Hah! I'd love to see the looks on their fat faces when we beat them all half to death!" He shakes his head and sobers a bit "But no, that would be too close to betraying the Brotherhood for an outsider."
"So what's this then?"
"A warning." He corrects "Once they grow tired of my lack of response they will try provoking you directly, try to make you think I'm the one at fault and make us fight that way."
"They don't really think that would work?" I ask incredulously "Do they?"
"They are afraid." Jugo shrugs "Being a fullborg already made you a target, but after they saw what you did in Zurich? They are starting to take your refusal to join as a direct threat."
I was outside the center of their power, which means someone was pushing this specifically...
Something to investigate.
"And Wakako had nothing to say about that?" I frown.
"Kaasan is a Fixer." He points out "She deals with edgerunners, the hired muscle. Do you really think anyone is going to treat you that way once you start amassing real power as a corpo? Or even before that?"
'That is... not untrue.' I conclude after only a bit of thinking 'I could always use my connection to Arasaka to make them back off, but the more intelligent ones will be able to see that from my out in the open deal with Yorinobu anyway, and the rest just won't care so announcing it for all to hear would be a waste...'
'Or-' I stop myself 'I just pay Wakako to deal with it. It wouldn't be the first or last time she smacked the Tygers down for making too many waves.'
"What do you suggest then?" I ask after an objective second, satisfied with having multiple ways out of it "Just stay on my guard and put them down as they come?"
"No." He denies me immediately "If you simply face them as they come sooner or later my inaction will become too 'suspect'. They will have enough reason to petition the Head to order me to fight you." A grin starts spreading on his face then "What you must do instead is become so unassailable, and so quickly that they will not even dare to try and touch you."
"I am already planning on that." I point out dryly.
"Do it faster." He says immediately "Build your forces, fortify your positions, display your strength." He points at me "The more powerful you seem the less certain they will feel. And then-" He spreads his arms jubilantly "They will crawl back to me so they can feast on what little scraps you are still willing to offer us!"
A beat passes before I make a single, incredulous blink "Whose side are you even on here?"
"My own!" He grins widely "And a bet on Magos is a bet on Jugo!"
This of course, leaves me completely speechless.
God damn madman.
"But that's enough of the boring stuff!" He somehow envelops my shoulder despite me having a good two feet on him and starts dragging me back in "There is sake to be had, and the boys want to hear about your adventure with the Swiss!"
Of course they did.
---
Thankfully, I managed to extricate myself from Jugo's Jugoness after only a bit, mostly thanks to Miss Akari dragging him off by the ear because he had a meeting scheduled with his in laws that he was trying to avoid.
My return home was relatively quiet, leaving me to stew in my thoughts on both what Takeda and Jugo had told me, and surprisingly I wasn't tempted to just sink into overthink like I tended to in most such situations.
Probably because I'd already considered all of it, and I just needed things pointed out to me like the usual gonk to kick me into gear.
Takeda was right, my path to self improvement needed to be holistic, and not just focused on making the perfect tool for everything. Jugo was right as well, I was already stirring the pot, and needed to display my power before challengers invited themselves.
I needed to do more, and start doing it quickly, and as always the first step was the ability to commit more violence than those who wanted to bring me down.
And it just so happened Vik said he had veterans looking for honest work.
Yes, yes I know I've been delaying the big upgrade section for a while but it doesn't make sense to just snap my fingers and make it happen. The R&D takes a bit of time and I think it is more satisfying to have it happen in a reasonable time frame instead of just do an instant timeskip and boom, new frame.
They will be coming soon though (probably next week or the one after at the latest) so do not fear :P