Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
I gave my morbidly fascinated girlfriend a quick salute before dipping the hell out of the dining room and shutting the doors behind me, just in time for a veritable slew of Spanish and Spanish adjacent curses to begin flowing from my still recovering patient's mouth in such a mighty quantity and variety even the most dedicated linguist would find themselves as impressed as horrified.
Mom would have probably managed to calm her down but she was still busy chasing down Scavs and exacting her well deserved revenge on their pathetic existence.
I made a quick prayer for mercy on David's soul because his own mother was certainly not about to show any.
'You will be remembered.' I thought solemnly and left (ran) for the clinic.
It had been just under a full day since my mother and the Martinezes' encounter with Night City's wildlife and aside from a now furious Gloria things had been rather peaceful.
Yesterday's punitive raids were barely even blips on the usual radar, and even when they got mentioned it was mostly just by those nosey enough to find out about them happening noting the fact they existed and quickly moving on to something more interesting.
The greatest 'damage' I took from the whole thing was having to deal with clients on my own for the first time after months of not having to bother and... I will admit I found myself genuinely surprised by the amount of honest concern some of the customers were showing at Gloria's absence.
And by some I mean almost all the Tyger Claw regulars and their corporate contacts.
She'd somehow managed to befriend, or at least make a good impression on almost all of them, in the minute or so of conversation she usually got before their appointments.
By the time I'd heard the third old Asian woman sigh in relief when I informed her Gloria was only suffering some minor health issues I was slowly starting to believe my assistant was something not quite human.
Or I just sucked at human interaction to the point it being this easy seemed like witchcraft.
Having finished my work for the day I was just about to start going through work reports on the factory when I heard the door open behind me and two pairs of steps come in.
"You shouldn't be up." I tell Gloria "A chemical coma isn't exactly rest."
The Latina smiled despite her poor mood and nodded "I will have some sleep in a bit." She was staying in the guest room upstairs just in case some unexpected complications popped up.
Her eyes narrowed a bit "Tell me honestly, Michael. Did you know?"
"Know about what?" I shot quiet Rebecca behind her a questioning look receiving a wince in turn.
"About what David did last night." Gloria elaborated with eyes narrowing even further.
And without skipping a beat I shrugged "Yes." She went to say something but I barreled through "We were watching him the whole time, making sure he didn't get himself killed. But he managed to deal with everything on his own, it was almost impressive."
She shot 'Becca a look, who merely stuck her tongue out and made a 'Tehe~' sound before deciding the walls of my clinic were incredibly interesting all of a sudden.
Sighing in a mix of frustration and fondness the woman turned back to me and went to speak before pausing, and then going through that cycle a few more times before finally asking "Why didn't you stop him? He has a bright future ahead of him, he didn't need to get involved with that life..."
I expected accusation or vitriol by now but she just seemed... tired.
Which made me feel like an asshole as I looked away and answered "He is studying at Arasaka, he lives in Night City, and you are now wealthy enough to be considered worth robbing."
She did not seem particularly pleased with the compliment.
I shrugged "Best he learn how to navigate the 'edge' from relative safety instead of scrambling for it when someone inevitably tries fucking him over. It was always a question of 'when' and not 'if'."
Somehow, that bit of truth managed to sour Gloria's expression even further, and she sighed, muttering to herself more than she did to me "Is there really no other way to exist in this damn city?"
Her idealism was impressive, but it was even more naive.
"Its either get ready or stay sheltered and pray you don't get shot up by random gangoons." I bluntly informed her of the truth "And being perfectly honest what he did was tame compared to what I would have done if I were in his place."
She knew my story from when mom got a bit too deep into her cups, so she knew damn well there would be no pushing me on this.
And besides, accusing your boss of being bloodthirsty was just in poor taste.
So she exhaled tiredly and nodded "Thanks for watching over him. I think I'll go get that sleep now."
She hadn't noticed anything about the new implants so far, and I was honestly tempted to keep silent just to see how long it would take.
...But that was probably a terrible way to build trust. So that idea is thoroughly vetoed.
I felt Logos' stare in the back of my head recede.
As Gloria stepped out, Rebecca approached me with a conflicted look in her eyes "Still think we did the right thing there?"
"Without a doubt." I nodded and gave her a one handed hug "It might not help him survive random drive by's but knowing where he stands is still a good thing. Spoiled brat had it too good for too long anyway."
She snorted before she could stop herself "Damn, Mike." She laughed "That's so not cool."
"It will be good for him." I shrugged. And before she could distract me again I shot her a questioning look "Now, why have you been acting all cagey since coming back? Did something happen?"
She went completely still and I could guess her brain froze for a moment before she chuckled awkwardly "Dunno what you are talking about, Mikey. I've been great!"
I just pointed at her "You didn't shout anything about wanting to kick the Animals in the dick yesterday. Something is clearly wrong."
She snorted at my bullshit but seeing me still staring down at her she turned a bit more serious "Let's go upstairs. Gonna need a few drinks for this one."
Sufficiently intrigued, I followed her up.
---
"So yeah." 'Becca sighed, rubbing her closed eyes with her palms "Bro is trying to speedrun killing himself, me and Sasha are officially doing our own thing, and Maine is somehow even more of a dick now."
"You say that like you always thought he was a dick." I point out wryly, hiding my complete and utter satisfaction with the new development.
"Oh, I did." She sits up and chirps "He was just nova enough not to get called on it before."
Unable to contend with such impeccable logic I huffed in amusement "You know, we could always just kidnap Pilar and stop his little 'speedrun' before it gets too far. He'll bitch and moan for a while sure, but he'll be alive and coherent enough to do it."
I can practically feel how tempted she is by the idea but she stomps it out a second later, shoulders slumping forward as she shook her head "Can't do him like that." She mutters "He's a dickhead but he's still my brother."
I raised a finger to point out the obvious but she just smiled sadly and shook her head again "I know. I just... I'll think about it."
"Its your decision." I agree.
"Enough of that depressing shit." She claps her hand and sits back up with a slightly forced grin on her face "Think you can find out everything about this Faraday asshole Maine's been hooking up with?"
"Want to flatline him?" I ask. The 'Fixer' was a corporate climber and would inevitably win the Darwin award before long, but I wasn't above delivering it personally if it would give Rebecca some peace of mind.
The obvious plant in the form of Kiwi meant he had long term plans for the mercenary group, and the fact said netrunner just 'happened' to bump into, and start mentoring Kushinada told me all I needed to know about the man's ambitions as well.
"Iunno." Rebecca shrugs and winks, drawing me out of my brief analisis "Its good to have options."
"Just warn me before you do something." I say and reach out for my neck, grabbing the ejected chip between my fingers "Poking someone like that tends to cause a shitstorm whether you want to or not."
She reflexively grabs the chip I toss her and blinks "What's this?"
"Everything I could find on the man."
She looks down, and then back up, and repeats the motion a few times before giving me a suspicious stare "How long did you have this ready?"
"Oh, I don't know." I 'wonder' aloud "About five-ish months? Give or take a month."
She just gapes at me for a good few seconds before snorting "Yeah, I'm not even surprised at this point." And then stops in her tracks, her incredulous expression twisting into something diabetes inducing "Waaaaait... Did you-?"
"Make sure Maine wasn't going to get you killed?" I smirked "Duh."
"Eeee!" She tosses the chip onto the coffee table and promptly glomps me, and refuses to let go for a good couple of minutes.
Finally having extricated myself I gave her a pretend irritated look "You know you could actually check it out first before thanking me."
She just flicks my head, and ignores the pain like a champ "I trust you, gonk."
The response was to be expected, and it still made me look away, which just earned me another giggle.
Which is when she finally stood up and inserted the chip, going through it at practiced rapid, but still human, speeds before suddenly glaring death at the wall of text she was seeing "That absolute fucking bitch!"
Ah, she got to Kiwi then.
---
Stopping 'Becca from going after the netrunner with guns a blazing had proven surprisingly simple once I managed to stop her from just blasting out through the window in a berserk rage fueled burst of speed.
Thankfully, a mix of being uselessly dangled in the air by way of immovable mechadendrite, and the fact she'd actually gotten quite good at controlling her usual impulsiveness in recent months, meant I didn't need to lock her up just so she wouldn't kill her previous crew with her rash actions.
And so instead I had her come up with a proper plan of action in case things went downhill.
Because as much as she may be pissed at the fact Kiwi was essentially a spy for their Fixer that wasn't exactly 'against the rules'. And going after her for what she might do was just plain pointless.
Keeping a watch on both her and the rest of the gonks though? That much was perfectly reasonable.
And I will admit, I was curious to see if Maine could survive his own pig headedness.
Having ensured no one was about to be blown up, I finally managed to get some workshop time in. My inspiration had been delayed so much I was starting to feel... blue-brained?
Blue-brained.
I must create!
And so after what felt like a blinking haze I found myself standing in front of my fabrication bench, surrounded on all sides by strings of cybernetic muscle arranged to hang from the ceiling almost like we were in an actual meat shop.
Each string of artificial muscle was made up of a minutely different concentration of my chosen blend of polymers, ceramics, and alloys, and I had been running tests on each and every one of them for the past six hours.
Tensile strength, endurance, hardness, brittleness, weight to power ratios, every single factor was being taken into account by Logos who was running calculations the entire time.
Much as I wanted to immediately take Smasher's 'advice' and 'alloy the fuck up', doing that without due preparations would have been a band aid on the issue and not a true solution.
Not to mention changing my titanium plating up with some layered reactive armor was so utterly simplistic that contenting myself with just that would have been professionally disappointing.
The little string of military grade borg musculature I'd purchased off of Món back in Pacifica was also of great help. My own designs were solid but the corpos had the advantage of stress tested experience, and I could already see a few ways to improve the cluster patterns of my future limbs so I could maximize output without too great of a cost to integrity.
Naturally, changing up my whole muscle system required an equal upgrade to its support structure, as no matter how resilient my current 'skeleton' was, increasing my physical output severalfold was going to strain the frame a lot.
So I already started planning on replacing my bones with an EMP-lined graphene alloy, and the idea of becoming a true tank on legs left me feeling thoroughly giddy.
Plans added up on top of plans and at some point I realized I was pretty much rebuilding my entire frame from ground up. Even if I wasn't going to be touching the internal organs at all for the moment.
Well, all except one.
During my fugue, as I observed an impromptu constructed testing hand rip itself apart under the strain of trying to imitate Smasher's odd vibrating bitchslap that somehow managed to damage my titanium skeleton with a graze, I realized that trying to just tank something like that would take a genuine main line battle vehicle.
Which is how I found myself searching for alternate routes, and soon enough I was drafting up plans to enhance my nanoforge with some extra power and functionality.
The ability to rapidly heal minor muscle tearing was as invaluable as always, but why stop myself there if I could make my nanomachines react to physical trauma in real time? The sheer amount of durability I would gain if I managed it was...
The idea made me and my digital partner salivate.
The project would obviously take way longer than the mere structural upgrades, and I'd likely have to downsize some of my other organs to keep some semblance of humanity to my form, but the idea had already carved itself into my brain, and I wasn't about to let it go without proving without a doubt that it was impractical.
...And probably not even then.
Morning came in what felt like a few minutes, and I only realized it was morning because my Audioreceptors picked up frustrated steps tapping away above me.
In the guest room.
Frowning I looked at the glorious mess I still wasn't done tinkering with, and-
[We must take a break.] Logos declared.
"But." I reached a grasping hand out "But upgrades."
[There is work to be done.] The traitor reminded [Continue and you will require stimulants if you do not wish to make mistakes.]
The very idea made me shiver in disgust "Point." I grunted, and quickly made sure nothing was going to accidentally detonate while I wasn't looking. I tended to get messy when experimenting so this was a lesson that taught itself multiple times over.
Satisfied with no explosive hazard in sight, I went up to get some breakfast before deciding to see if Gloria was willing to get back to work today. She'd probably like the distraction, and I was not eager to face the curious hordes again.
But as I approached her doors I found myself slowing to a halt when I heard what seemed to be another frustrated rant from the tired woman. I felt for her, even if I felt no guilt at being part of the cause of her current frustration.
But that wasn't the line of thought that dominated my mind for the moment. Oh no, that honor went to the fact that from what I could parce together, David had somehow managed to get himself robbed on the NCART, get into a chase with said robber, get himself tricked into provoking a few cops, and then running from them on foot like a complete and utter idiot.
And the most baffling part of it all?
He got away.
Was this what they called an idiot savant?
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