Retirement

It had been four days since the biosculpting. The end result was both more and less pronounced than she had been expecting.

One of the reasons that she had been so reluctant to get the biosculpting done (aside from the fact that she had no idea what she’d be doing) was because she didn’t want to look like someone else. She still wanted to be Taylor Hebert, just… better. Fortunately, V truly was an expert on the matter and understood how ‘less is more’ worked.

The individual changes to her body were small. Her breasts grew to no more than a modest B-cup, her ass only received a little padding instead of expanding to the ridiculous proportions she’d seen on some women, her lips got just a shade fuller, and her hips just a bit wider. Those were the most visible changes, but they were supplemented by over a dozen smaller ones that Taylor would never have even thought of herself and which she would have dismissed as irrelevant. Each on their own might very well have been, but taken as a whole they had a surprising impact.

Taylor still saw herself in the mirror, but all the things that had once detracted from her looks and clashed against each other now seemed to work together. A slight change to the slant of her eyebrows made her gaze less flat, an adjustment to the complexion of her face made her look less sallow and tired, smoothing out the early stress lines she’d acquired made her look less worn out. And those were just a few examples.

One of the unexpected changes was to her body hair. Namely, she didn’t have any of it anymore. They hadn’t discussed it, but one day Taylor woke up to find that she’d been shedding like a cat in summer through the night.

For quite a while, she had pondered why the hell V had done that without even mentioning it. Then she had remembered that V had no body hair either, and neither did a lot of other women that her bugs could sense. Eventually, she had to conclude that full body hair removal for women was just so common that it was taken for granted. And it wasn’t like she really minded.

Her intention had been to give V a heartfelt thanks and then continue as before, minus the albatross of feeling like she was unattractive. It was a small thing, compared to all the other trauma she had accumulated, but that anything at all could get better felt radical.

Taylor had long since internalized the fact that things never got better for her. She did not receive good news or lucky breaks. Being able to look at herself and see a girl that wasn’t ugly put a crack in that pessimistic certainty.

Of course, things didn’t quite go as she intended.

“Oh, don’t thank me yet. We’re not even close to done.” V had said in response to her thanks, clearly amused. “The biosculpting was just the start, now we need to put together a style for you to rock with that body.”

Taylor wasn’t interested in rocking anything, but the older woman was having none of it, so off they went on a shopping trip.

XXXXX

“No!” V said sternly, snatching away the shirt Taylor had taken off the rack. It was a plain black T-shirt, which the parahuman thought was fine. It wasn’t like she was hiding in oversized hoodies anymore, right?

V disagreed. “You know what shirts like these are good for, besides sleeping in? Hiding. And sexy bitches do not hide.”

“V, I am not a sexy bitch.” Taylor replied, already feeling exhausted.

“All female solos are sexy bitches.” V disagreed some more.

She had once thought that all female capes were sexy, only to later learn that it was just PRT propaganda. During her time in the Wards, she’d overheard more than one conversation the design team had about manipulating the public with sex appeal.

Speaking of… “Why are you pushing so hard on this?”

“Because in Night City, mercenaries have a certain culture, just like the gangs and the corpos. And it’s especially important for us girls to look the part. This?” The older woman held up the T-shirt. “If you wear this kind of clothing, at your age, while introducing yourself as a solo, nobody is going to respect you.”

“Your outfit is literally just leather pants and a tank top.” Taylor pointed out, deadpan.

“Oh, don’t you worry, this look of mine is going to evolve with time. Right now I’m a nobody, so being too flashy would make me come off as a poser. My look will change with my rep, but the important part is that I still look badass and sexy.” V promised, then looked down at her legs. “Speaking of leather pants, those legs and that tight ass could definitely work a pair.”

There was no chance in hell that she was going to be talked into a pair of skanky leather pants (even if casually having her ass described as ‘tight’ was a bit flattering). V might be confident enough about flashing her sex appeal to pull them off, but Taylor knew that she would just end up shunting everything into the swarm and praying for the moment she could take them off.

“Not happening.”

“We’ll put it down as a ‘maybe’ for the future.” V sidestepped.

“Did you give Jackie fashion advice, too?” That might have been a bit snide, but Taylor was really starting to get annoyed by all this.

“No, I’m afraid boys have it both easier and harder.” V sighed. “On one hand, there’s less emphasis on fashion. If they make it big then whatever look they got becomes their look, as long as it isn’t completely generic. But on the other hand, they don’t have the innate sex appeal of a dangerous woman to generate the initial interest. Being a female mercenary might mean having to deal with macho shitheads and clients who think we double as exotic joytoys for a while, but once we make it past that early period our street cred goes through the roof just because we have tits.”

Taylor… was not sure what to think of that. Cape culture never had that issue. Powers being what they were meant that even the most frail-looking little girl might be capable of punching buildings to rubble or vaporizing everything in sight. Bonesaw alone had probably ensured that nobody from Earth Bet would ever judge a parahuman’s threat by their appearance.

On the other hand, she was extremely familiar with how much easier life was for beautiful people, so she could well believe that a mercenary that looked like a supermodel – such as V – would have an easier time building street cred once she proved that she was more than just a magnificent pair of tits.

“Be that as it may, I’m not interested in using sex appeal to build street cred.” Not that she really thought she had any kind of sex appeal. V might have helped polish up her looks, but she was miles away from what the older woman had and sex appeal was more than just looks. It was also attitude and she didn’t have it.

“That’s fine, but you still need something that makes you stand out.”

That went completely against the grain. When the mask was off, Taylor was used to blending in, now she was being told to do the exact opposite, because a solo was always a solo, even when they weren’t on the job and she couldn’t look like a harmless civilian when she was out in public without losing street cred.

“Spiders.” She said, mostly to get V off her back.

“Spiders.” The older woman repeated the word, giving her a considering look. “Spiders could definitely work. A black widow type femme fatale look would be a quick boost to your appeal, but you already said you don’t want that, so we go the other way and lean hard into the fear aspect of spiders. Your work outfit is a good start for a rookie, but we could advance it into an armored bodysuit, and we make it look like you’ve got an exoskeleton, really play up the arachnid theme. You don’t mind armor, do you?”

That sounded… awfully similar to her first costume. Taylor felt an odd sense of vindication at the fact that somebody finally thought it was a good design.

“Why would I mind armor?” She asked, a bit confused.

“Lot’s of people on the streets think it’s lame.” V explained. “People who wear a lot of armor get laughed at for being doughboys or doughgirls.”

“That’s fucking stupid.” Taylor stated flatly. The reason for the high attrition rates among mercenaries was starting to become clear.

“Yeah.” V chuckled. “But we got sidetracked again. We were talking about your off-the-job style.”

Taylor wanted to groan in exasperation. “Can you do something not overly-sexual with spiders for that, too?”

V took another long, considering look at her, even circling around her. Taylor felt unnervingly like a trapped gazelle being eyed by a hungry lion. Or maybe a mouse eyed by a hungry snake would be more appropriate.

“Still no on the leather pants?”

“Yes.”

“How about tattoos? We could put a scary spider face in the hollow of your throat, or maybe something on the side your neck?”

“… I’d rather not get any tattoos.”

By the look on V’s face, this was a topic that she considered no more settled than the issue of leather pants.

“No leather pants, no tattoos, nothing too sexy.” V summarized with pursed lips. “Really limiting my options here.”

Taylor just shrugged at the implied chastisement. She wasn’t the one that thought this was necessary.

“Maybe if we were part of a duo…” V mused, obviously thinking. “The right kind of symmetry would keep you from being mistaken for a corpo brat tourist, and we’d both have animal themes.”

“Why not pull Jackie into this, too?” Taylor asked sarcastically, irritated. “You two could also get codenames and we could get a team name and make a whole brand out of it.”

V gave her a funny look, then she turned contemplative.

“Hmm… how do you feel about makeup?”

“I’ve never really worn any.” She answered warily.

“Well, that just won’t do.”

Taylor felt dread the likes of which she’d never experienced before.

XXXXX

Jackie Welles had been feeling pretty good about things lately.

For years, it had felt like he’d been stuck in a rut as a solo. He’d never found anyone that he felt he had any real chemistry with, so he mostly worked alone and he was no Morgan Blackhand.

Then had come the clusterfuck at the Mexican border, where Arasaka and Militech got into a scuffle, along with a Mexican gang because why the fuck not. By all rights, he should have died there. Would have died, if not for the fact that the Arasaka operative he’d initially pegged as a stone-cold bitch was actually a decent person under the suit.

Jackie had gotten out of that mess without the big success he’d hoped for, but he did make a friend. Ever since, he’d been badgering V to quit her job and become a merc like him, knowing in his gut that they’d work well together.

Weird how things turned out sometimes. Mere weeks before V finally got out of the Arasaka black and red – even if unwillingly – he finds another scary lady that he thought he could work with.

When he’d first met Taylor, he’d been expecting a traumatized teenage girl based on what Misty told him. What he got was a young woman with the heavy stare of someone that had looked death in the face more than once and told it to come back later.

The gigs he’d done with her only reinforced that initial impression. Yeah, she needed someone in her corner just like Misty had said, but Taylor definitely wasn’t some helpless girl. When they were working, she slipped into the role of giving orders so naturally that Jackie had initially been too surprised to even think about protesting. Then he’d seen that she was genuinely good at it and wasn’t going to be a dumbass gonk and argue. He might have years of experience as a solo, but he had never led anyone before. So far, he’d not once had any complaints about how she did things.

Sure, she had secrets, but who didn’t? Jackie was curious, but he could wait until she was ready to share.

Then V joined the team and things got even better. Just like he’d expected, the former corpo fit right in. She was skilled, professional, easy to work with and most importantly, they had great chemistry.

There was some especially great chemistry between V and Taylor, heh.

He’d have had to be blind to not see the way Taylor eyeballed V sometimes. He’d seen plenty of men and women give her that look, even given it himself a few times before he’d hooked up with Misty. Jackie was hoping something would come of it just so that he could tease them. And hell, if they could be as happy together as he was with Misty, then what else could a man wish for his chooms?

There was an age difference, but he trusted V and Taylor was an adult. It’d be insulting to treat her like a kid when she’d obviously been through some serious shit.

V had been working with Taylor to get her style up to standard recently and Jackie completely approved. As good as she was in a fight, the teenager was definitely lacking style something fierce. V, on the other hand, was a master at it. Jackie had fully expected that by the time his old buddy was done, Taylor would look as badass as she acted on the job.

He had not expected to be pulled into it himself.

“A team style?” He repeated.

“Yes.” V nodded, clearly invested into the idea already. “You know I have a thing for snakes, right? Well, Taylor has a thing for spiders. If we can find you an animal theme as well, we could totally make it our crew’s style. Mercenary crews usually don’t get famous outside of mercenary circles, but with the right kind of subtle marketing we could pull it off.”

“Marketing.” Jackie repeated again, looking between the two women bemusedly. “Gotta say, V, this sounds like some kind of corpo scam.”

“Well, that’s because it basically is a corpo scam.” She admitted shamelessly. “When they make movies about edgerunners, they always try to make them stand out somehow so that their look sticks in people’s heads. I’m proposing we do the same thing, be memorable. Memorable is good. Memorable means we get talked about after a gig is done. That means that we’ll be known and people will think of us if they ever need to hire a mercenary crew. That will create a demand for our services, and higher demand means higher pay.”

Jackie scratched at his jaw thoughtfully. Higher pay sounded good and he did want to be memorable, but he really wasn’t sure about this. Looking at Taylor, he asked the third member of their crew her opinion. “You’re on board with this?”

The teenager was looking quite a bit different after V’s makeover. Her clothes had a certain oomph to them that they’d previously lacked. The black jeans and combat boots were pretty much the same, but her recent biosculpt gave her some curves and her leather jacket had a more feminine cut. Jackie had a feeling that was a work in progress. No way was V going to stop there.

But the biggest change – not counting the recent biosculpting – was the makeup she was wearing. V had drawn what looked like the shadow of a spider around Taylor’s left eye, spindly legs reaching out in all directions around the socket. It was a pretty preem look… although Taylor herself seemed to be a bit awkward about it.

She could be such a gonk sometimes, but Jackie was sure that V would keep working on her. His old buddy seemed to have taken a real shine to the youngest member of their crew.

Taylor shrugged, though there was a bit of a scowl on her face. “As long as we don’t have to do public relations tours.”

“Definitely not.” V denied empathically. “Mercenaries doing public relations shit will just make us look like posers. We wouldn’t even be doing any active marketing, just presenting a certain image while we’re on the job. If we do it right, then word will get around on its own.”

V herself was mostly the same as usual. The only thing different was some swooping purple eyeshadow around both her eyes, really making the gold stand out.

“You really think this’ll work?” He asked, still very dubious.

“Even if it doesn’t, we don’t really lose anything by trying.” She pointed out.

He couldn’t argue with that and as long as V didn’t make him look like some pendejo…. “What did you have in mind?”

XXXXX

Taylor sat in the back of V’s car, pointedly not fidgeting.

They were going on a gig, and she was wearing her work clothes. The current iteration of them. V had somehow talked her into a tight black spandex-like bodysuit with red lines. It was made of some kind of breathable material that was actually quite comfortable to wear, but it clung to her curves in ways that her old silk bodysuit never did. Some basic armor plates were tied to it on the shins, thighs, forearms, and biceps, with a chest plate finishing the look off, so it wasn’t like she was showing off… although her ass still felt rather exposed.

Still, despite the slight awkwardness, she did feel more ‘right’ going out on gigs dressed like this than in civilian clothes. Once a cape always a cape, she supposed.

Seeking a distraction, she reached for her phone and look over the gig details from Regina again.

The gig is an assassination. The target: Asako Koizumi, a Tyger Claw brothel madam. The client is the younger brother of a deceased joytoy who was forced to work for Koizumi to pay off their parents’ debts. He only learned about what happened to his sister recently and decided to take out a hit on Koizumi. Go to the brothel and kill the madam, extra pay if you make it gruesome.

When she had first decided on what to do with herself in this world, Taylor’s intention had been to keep the violence to ‘acceptable’ levels, knowing that she had a deep streak of brutality in her. However, Night City’s level of acceptable violence was much higher than on Earth Bet, and there were some things she couldn’t find in herself to let go.

Regina had quickly cottoned on to which these were. Rapists and murderers that got away with it because they had connections, human traffickers, drug pushers, Scavs, especially corrupt corpos abusing their power… so very many targets that needed a dose of justice that they would never get any other way. The assassination gigs had been coming in more and more often, and when the fixer included lists of crimes and victims, she didn’t turn them down. It was blatantly manipulative, but she was essentially being paid to do things she would have done anyway. And it was quite a lot of money, too. She’d be able to start seriously considering getting her own place soon.

This case reminded her far too much of the ABB and their own sex trafficking operations. Contrary to urban myths, they generally didn’t acquire new girls for their disgusting practices through kidnapping, but by extorting the families living in their territory.

Just like this Koizumi woman.

“Alright, here we are.” V said, turning into the alley and parking the car.

The car had been a reward from a gig they’d done for Padre recently. Instead of having the money split between them, the old fixer had handed over a keyshard and gotten the car registered to V. They’d all agreed that getting a car was necessary, and the car’s value was actually slightly higher than the pay for the gig would have been.

It was a mid-range car, an Archer Hella something something model (Taylor really didn’t know much about cars, nor was she interested), but it was reliable, roomy and didn’t guzzle gas like the Quadra they had re-stolen a while back.

Taylor put on her mask and sunglasses and checked her earpiece. All good, she was ready.

The three of them stepped out of the car and Taylor took a moment to check out her teammates.

True to her word, V had leaned even further into her ‘sexy snake lady’ aesthetic. She still wore her black hair in that high ponytail and had her eyes set to a serpentine gold, but her synth-leather pants now sported a very prominent dark snake scale pattern. Her tiny tank top had also been replaced sleeveless synth-leather halter top that had a similar snake scale pattern as the pants, merely in white to contrast with the black pants. It was skintight all the way from her collar to her bellybutton – which was left exposed – and left little to nothing to the imagination.

V had claimed that the top was multifunctional. One was the obvious sex appeal, but it would also keep her boobs in place when she ran while still displaying her tattoos. Taylor couldn’t argue with any of that, and it did look amazing on her, but she could only shake her head at the confidence required to wear something like that.

Given that it was almost four in the morning, and temperatures had dropped well below comfortable levels, you’d think warmth would be a problem, but V was showing no sign of being inconvenienced. Taylor wasn’t sure if it was because she had yet more hidden augmentations to deal with low temperatures or if she was just faking it.

“The first gig of Skitter, Slither and Stampede, the Beast Crew.” Jackie said with a grin as he stepped out of the car. “Let’s gear up!”

He was the least changed by V’s insistent fashion advice. His jacket now had the head of a red bull with golden horns stamped on it. It was supposedly meant to reference both his Hispanic heritage, as well as his size and strength. Taylor figured that Jackie was just relieved to receive such a minimal makeover.

As for the names… Apparently, V thought that her sarcastic offhand comment was a good idea. Not for the first time, Taylor reflected on the fact that it was a lot harder to argue with your PR guru when they went out into the field with you. A large part of the reason why almost every Ward ever had hated Glenn Chambers and his underlings was the fact that they had no idea what cape combat was like and kept trying to push forward costumes that only made sense in a cartoon.

The three of them went to the car’s trunk and popped it open, revealing the small armory they were driving around. That, along with the ability to loot their targets after a gig, was another big factor in why getting a car had been of paramount importance.

Taylor didn’t feel like she needed to take any more weapons aside from her usual loadout, so she just waited for V and Jackie to make their picks.

“I have an idea for a small change of plans.” V said,

“I thought we agreed that I would infiltrate on the second floor while you two went in through the front door?” Taylor asked with a slight frown.

Night City was a crowded place, and that meant that many buildings were squished together. It was often possible to jump from one to another with very little difficulty. According to Regina’s intel and her own scouting just now, that was certainly true in this case.

“Same plan, except I go in as a customer.” V explained. “That way we can launch the attack from three directions instead of just two.”

Taylor’s frown deepened. She was not in favor of this plan. “Won’t they demand that you disarm?”

“Just this one dinky little pistol and a couple of knives?” V replied innocently.

“She’s right.” Jackie shrugged, tossing her a small grin that she couldn’t decipher. “This isn’t Clouds, they’re not going to bother disarming people unless you’re trying to bring something bigger.”

Taylor still didn’t like it, but couldn’t find any reasonable objection. “Fine, just be careful.”

“Always.” V winked at her with a small grin.

For some reason, Jackie chuckled.

XXXXX

V wondered if Taylor was watching her right now. How much could she see? At what distance?

Instead of paying attention to the joytoy trying to gyrate sexily on the bed, the former corpo was thinking about her teammate.

The ‘corpo black ops special project’ theory was getting less and less likely. Too many of the puzzle pieces just didn’t fit.

People did not form new behavioral patterns to deal with every new situation they came across. Instead, the brain repurposed old behavioral patterns and tried to apply them to the new circumstances – often with bad results. If you had enough data and knew what to look for, it was possible to make broadly accurate guesses about someone’s past.

Taylor was a combat veteran and had worked as part of a team before, that much was obvious. She had also suffered protracted abuse, mostly psychological, particularly targeted at her appearance, and social isolation. That could account for some of her obliviousness about her attraction to women, but not all of it. V suspected there was another source of pain there, some event in early puberty that caused her to repress it.

Taylor was also remarkably ignorant about the world in some very basic ways. There were things that she didn’t know that everyone knew. That could be explained if she was some corpo science project raised in a lab, but her personality was too well-rounded for that. However awkward she could be when interacting with people, Taylor didn’t hesitate to voice opinions or disagree with people. That spoke of a childhood in a safe and supportive environment, where she was allowed to grow as a person.

So, her strange clairvoyance was probably not the result of corpo bioengineering. At least, not from a properly supervised project. A freak occurrence or something that escaped into the wild and didn’t get caught until Taylor was in the 13-15 age range?

But she didn’t have the markers of a kidnap victim either. Granted, it was hard to tell without knowing how deep Taylor’s perception went. But unless she could read minds, she was just too unconcerned around new people to have been a victim of kidnapping. There were definitely trust issues there, but of a different kind… Taylor acted more like one of the people who had been at the bottom of the heap in the academy, the ones that got shit on by whoever’s daddy had the most money.

Had she rushed into combat at a young age by herself after her life went bad? That fit more of the signs V was seeing, but it didn’t make logical sense.

Nobody would accept an unaugmented kid into any kind of combat unit. And if she revealed what she could do, she would have been either kidnapped or sold to a corp, never to be seen again.

There was a tiny chance that she had stumbled into a group of people who were too principled to betray her, but those same kinds of people would also not let a kid into a combat situation. And then there was Contessa.

Her existence hinted strongly at corpo involvement. ‘Contessa’ was even the the title for an Italian countess, which would point towards Biotechnica. A higher up developing a conscience? A family member, even?

It felt like a huge reach. V had been going in circles trying to figure this out and it was driving her up the goddamn wall! None of the pieces were fitting together in a way that made sense.

Thankfully for her sanity, Taylor didn’t seem too inclined to really hide her secrets from her and Jackie (or worse, kill them to keep it) – obvious emotional burnout and fatalism – so V would just continue watching, waiting, and observing. Jenkins had fucked up because he’d been impatient.

V was going to take this last lesson from her old boss to heart.

“Moving into position.” Skitter’s cold voice came across their call, snapping her out of her thoughts.

V got up and drew her gun, alarming the joytoy.

“Stay here and keep your head down and you’ll be fine.” She advised.

The joytoy nodded with wide eyes and immediately went to lie prone on the ground. Smart girl.

“Ready.” V reported.

“Ready.” Jackie – Stampede – also confirmed.

“Slither, Tyger Claw busy with a joytoy in the room two doors to the right of you. Start with him.” Skitter ordered. “They’re in doggystyle, so aim high.”

The absurdly detailed knowledge no longer fazed V. “Got it.”

The Tyger Claw was exactly where Skitter had said, so V blew his brains out before he could even turn around to yell at her for barging in on him.

The brothel was immediately filled with the sounds of screaming joytoys and cursing Tyger Claws. No doubt, the gangoons would converge on this floor in moments and turn her into hamburger meat.

Or they would have, if more gunfire from one both one floor up and one floor down didn’t freeze them with indecision. The fighting was over almost as soon as it began, with Skitter only having to warn them of approaching enemies twice, and of idiot civilians fleeing for their lives once.

The time of their attack had been chosen deliberately. Though the brothel was open 24/7, the wee hours of the morning were the sleepiest and the least busy. Now they just had to hurry and get out before Tyger Claw reinforcements caught them.

“Stampede, go bring the car around.”  V said, already rushing upstairs towards the madam’s room.

“Way ahead of you, chica.” He replied.

The stairs were clogged with four Tyger Claw corpses. Skitter had apparently caught them just as they were going down, which would have left them completely exposed and with nowhere to hide. V didn’t think this was a coincidence.

She caught up to the spider-themed woman on the stairs up to the third floor.

“Did we get everyone?” V asked, trusting in her young teammate’s almost supernatural awareness of the area.

“All except one.” Skitter stated, pointing her Liberty at an empty stretch of hall.

Seconds later, a wild-eyed Tyger Claw jumped into view from behind a corner, screaming in an obvious mix of fear and anger. He had a submachine gun in his hands and was clearly intent on using it.

A single loud bang from the Liberty silenced him before he even properly landed, the momentum of his jump sending him sprawling against the opposing wall in an undignified heap with a new hole in his throat.

I want to know how you’re doing that so bad. V thought, staring at the back of Skitter’s head smolderingly. Was it too early to tie the mysterious teenager to a bed and keep edging her until she spilled everything?

Probably, but damn if it wasn’t tempting.

They made it to the madam’s door, which was predictably locked, but the security on it was nothing special and V was able to get it open in about half a minute. She and Skitter stood at either side of the door as it opened, not being there when the madam very predictably fired her gun through the now open doorway.

Skitter responded by sticking her own gun around the corner and, without needing to look, shooting the madam in the hand that was holding the gun. A cry of pain announced a successful hit. The entry now safe, they stepped inside.

Asako Koizumi was over fifty years old, but had obviously had work done to at least make herself look younger. Right now, she was pale and sweating as she clutched at her ruined hand.

“Whatever they are paying you, I will double it!” She screamed with clear desperation in her tone.

V didn’t even consider the offer. A slightly bigger payday now would mean a ruined reputation later. She drew one of her knives, the one with the really painful poison on it, and pressed the madam against the wall.

“Konda Ran’s brother sends his regards.” She said and plunged it in just under the woman’s solar plexus, slicing downwards.

Warm, ropey guts spilled out of the wailing madam and she collapsed to her knees in the pile of viscera.

“Is that going to be enough to kill her?” Skitter asked emotionlessly.

V slashed the neurotoxin knife through the air to flick the blood off before slamming it back into its sheath. “I made sure to get her in the liver. Trauma Team Platinum might have saved her, but she doesn’t have that.”

“Then let’s go.” The ruthless teenager declared, turning away from the pitifully moaning brothel madam.

“Stampede should have the car here soon.” V acknowledged and they made their way down to the ground floor.

They had to get away before Tyger Claw reinforcements came. The operation had been done quick, but they were still in the gang’s territory.

The car was already waiting as they came out of the building, and they quickly filed in. It would have been better if they had a specialist driver, but it worked for now. They jumped into the backseat and Jackie floored it immediately.

“We’re about to have company.” Skitter stated, already reloading her gun. “Motorcycles.”

“Chingada madre.” Jackie swore. “I guess we didn’t catch them napping.”

“Their funeral.” V said, leaning forward to snatch his Kyubi from the front seat. “Try not to scratch my car up too bad.”

She could already hear the distinctive roar of Kusanagi sports bikes. The Tyger Claws loved those things – even if they were uncultured swine and ruined the bike’s sexy lines with those ridiculous swoop seats – and many of their members used them as fast response vehicles. It was only three of them, but they came charging down the street with guns in hand.

V leaned out of the window and started taking careful shots at them, but it was a lot harder than in the movies. The movements of the car and of the Tyger Claws both threw off her aim and she missed everything.

Skitter did the same, but actually managed to hit something. Nothing critical, unfortunately, but one of the bikes swerved for a moment before straightening out.

Then the Tyger Claws were in range and opened up with automatic SMG fire mere moments after Taylor and V ducked back inside. This would normally be an incredibly poor choice of weapon, but they were using smart ammo. The bullets peppered her car like rain drops, thankfully not doing a huge amount of damage.

Smart guns were accurate, but not very powerful. The bullets cracked the thick glass, but didn’t penetrate.

Two of them had the bright idea of bracketing the car between their bikes, no doubt intending to hose them down with the remaining bullets in their clips. Skitter shot one off his bike before he got close and V whipped at the other one with her monowire, sending him tumbling across the road in pieces. The last one wisely decided to retreat.

“Whoo, what a rush.” V chuckled, still feeling flushed with energy.

“Haha, the first car chase always is.” Jackie laughed. “You doing okay, Taylor?”

“Yeah, it was my first car chase, too.” The teenager said, removing her mask and sunglasses. “I’ve always wondered what it was like.”

Her cheeks were flushed, her curly hair mussed up from the wind and her ‘ganic brown eyes had a sparkle in them that cybernetic eyes had never managed to emulate. Despite her flat expression, she looked happier than normal.

Some of the heat in V’s body had already migrated southwards and she suddenly had to smother the urge to pull the younger woman into a kiss and tell Jackie to drop them off at a motel. Violence always made her horny and Taylor pushed several of her buttons. Competence and strong will was sexy.

There was a reason why she wouldn’t be opposed to making good on all the subtle seduction she’d been doing to get the mystery girl to trust her.

But she swallowed down the urge and ignored the heat between her thighs. Clam-jamming herself when she was this horny would suck, but V had always been good at tolerating short-term discomfort in favor of long-term gain.

Taylor was one of those rare oddballs that thought sex was something intimate and romantic, it was obvious in her poorly hidden disdain for all the porn and the offers called out by joytoys everywhere they went in Night City. The why and how wasn’t important at the moment, only that it was true. If V went out to get some relief with a joytoy or one night stand, the younger girl would think less of her. Normally not a concern, but it would set back her effort to build trust.

The secret she was hiding was worth a few weeks or months of sexual frustration. It had already been nearly a year since she’d gotten laid thanks to her former job anyway, so what was a bit more?

In all honesty, she was seriously considering if she should make plans to honey pot Taylor. Whatever her secret was, it was looking more and more like something that needed to be kept ‘in-house’. If the younger woman ever got herself an input/output outside of the team, then her loyalties would be divided. A problem easily nipped in the bud by a little team romance.

It wouldn’t even be that hard. Taylor’s small show of jealousy when V mentioned going into the brothel as a customer had been telling, even if she seemed amusingly oblivious to her own feelings.

”Well, now you know!” Jackie laughed again. “But they did put a few holes in the car. Sorry, V.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She waved off, although she was a bit annoyed at the eddies she would have to fork out for repairs. It couldn’t be helped.

The drive continued in companionable silence for a minute, before a call from Regina interrupted it.

“I’m guessing that was you just now that had a shootout down Sutter Street?” The fixer asked.

“Your informants sure work fast.” Jackie commented.

“Informants?” Regina snorted amusedly. “I saw you out my window.”

The question of why she was up at just past four in the morning and looking out her window was best left unasked. Fixers kept strange hours.

“Oh.”

“Did you zero the target?”

“Opened her up like a fish.” V said with a smirk.

“That should be nasty enough for the client’s tastes. Good work, gig closed.”

XXXXX

Taylor had asked Jackie to show her around Heywood a bit because she was snooping around for a potential lair. It was creeping up on two months since she’d arrived in Night City now and her money reserves were getting pretty comfortable.

Despite her near faux pas with the Valentinos after the re-stolen car gig, they were still the most tolerable gang in town. And she was including the government in that. For that reason, Heywood was still sounding like the best location, crowded and poverty-stricken as the southern portions of it were.

Anyway, Jackie had been planning to spend the day with Misty, so Taylor had apologized with the intention of backing off, but both he and Misty had quickly nixed that idea and instead invited V along so that she wouldn’t be the odd one out.

For some reason, they also seemed to find that funny.

There hadn’t originally been much of a plan on what they would actually do and Taylor’s only intention had been to scout any buildings that fit her needs, but Jackie was quick to turn it into a day of fun.

“And that’s another strike for me and Misty!” The man in question bragged, throwing his arms out as if he’d just conquered an enemy army rather than knocked over a few bowling pins.

Yes, even in a pit of degeneracy like Night City, it was apparently possible to find normal entertainment, much to her relief.

However, Taylor had only gone bowling once in her life, and that was when she was about eleven. V had also confessed to never doing it. They were getting slaughtered.

“Yes, yes, lord your victory over the newbies.” V rolled her eyes, sat down in one of the crappy plastic chairs with her arms crossed. She was a bit of a sore loser, apparently, which was honestly kind of funny.

She wasn’t wearing her snake-themed merc outfit today, but she was apparently determined to stick to leather pants. At least she’d foregone the tiny tank top and instead gone for a more tasteful deep red blouse… which was still showing off a ton of cleavage and a lack of bra. There had to be some kind of cyberware involved keeping her boobs so firm and perky. No way were D-cups keeping that shape all by themselves.

Taylor herself was also dressed in civilian garb, although somewhat less casual than she would have preferred. While V had been satisfied with her choice of style for work, she had by no means allowed her to stick with the bare basics.

She had needed to veto a lot of suggestions, but V had eventually been satisfied with the usual dark jeans, a pair of somewhat flashy low-heeled boots, and black halter top with a spiderweb design on the front. She had also had her hair braided and bound at the end with a spider-shaped clasp, in lieu of the spider makeup. Clearly, the former corpo was determined to help her stick with her style.

Taylor didn’t really mind too much. V could be a bit pushy, but she wasn’t mean about it. And it was nice to have someone to do girly things with.

“You pick the next game, then.” Misty suggested.

V took a moment to ponder, briefly looking in her direction before making her suggestion. “How about mini golf? I’ve had to play regular golf a couple of times, so I at least know the basics.”

Taylor had never played it before, so she just shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

That might have been another mistake.

The mini golf course wasn’t far from the bowling alley and the price wasn’t much, nor was there a lot of people since these types of entertainment had fallen out of favor due to braindances and other high tech amusements.

No, the problem came when she tried to hit the golf ball with the club.

“Stop!” V called out before she could even wind up for a swing.

“What?” Taylor asked, confused.

“You’re doing it all wrong.” The older woman explained. “Here, let me show you.”

And then she stepped behind her and put her hands over Taylor’s on the golf club.

“Don’t slouch.” V advised, but Taylor barely registered the words when she pressed close so that they were flush against each other. “Keep your back niiiice and straight, and bend over juuuust so.” It was probably just her mind playing tricks on her, but the words seemed almost groaned out as V corrected her posture by pushed her down with her own torso.

“O-okay.” Taylor managed to say. She could feel V’s nipples poking her, which was just a bit distracting.

“You need to keep your legs a little farther apart.” V continued, now moving her hands to her thighs and nudging them apart. “Just like that. Now let me just show you how to swing.”

The hands went back over her own, directing them. “Gently, gently. Mini golf is about technique, not power. You have to flick it juuust hard enough.”

They swung and the ball rolled into the hole with a slight clack. For some reason, Taylor felt the need to swallow when it happened.

“And that’s how you score.” V said with a satisfied tone, slowly pulling away.

“Umm, thanks.” Taylor said, handing the club over and making her way back to Jackie and Misty. She was still feeling a bit flushed from V’s body heat.

The big Latino was grinning at her, and Misty looked a little flustered, but was also smiling brightly. Had they been making out or something while V was showing her how to mini golf? Taylor had been a bit too distracted to keep track of them with her bugs.

XXXXX

It was getting late by the time they were done having fun, but Taylor couldn’t find it in herself to think of it as time wasted. It had been fun, and not the same kind of fun as shooting at gangoons. Normal, clean, wholesome fun that made her feel less parahuman and more just regular human. The kind of fun that Taylor had forgotten how to have.

The four of them were now ambling down some random street in the southern part of the Glen simply because she had said that she wanted to go this way. None of them questioned it beyond curious looks, simply trusting her.

Taylor knew damn well that she was not being careful with her biggest secret. She was obfuscating her powers from outsiders, but she hadn’t been careful with Jackie or with V.

At first, it was because she had a hard time really caring. Sure, it was a new chance at life, but she had been ready to die. Had longed for it. That wasn’t something you just shook off. Taylor had kept trudging forward because she didn’t know how to just lay down and die when she could still move, but she hadn’t particularly cared what might happen.

Then Jackie turned out to be a really good guy. And Vik cared. And Mama Welles kept hugging her. And Misty was nice. By then he already knew something and it was too late to backtrack.

V had made a bad first impression, but had been quick to correct it and Jackie trusted her. She had taken a chance at showing off for the former corpo a bit. V hadn’t bothered trying to hide the curiosity on her face, but she had asked no questions and never spoke a word of it. She just watched and continued settling into their team, putting in every possible effort to befriend Taylor.

So she kept on using her powers in ways that obviously didn’t make logical sense to either of them, and they continued to pretend that nothing weird was going on.

At this point, Taylor was just looking for an excuse to make a big reveal. It could still go disastrously wrong, but she was starting to think that Contessa really had done the best she could for her while at the same time getting rid of her. It would probably be fine.

And if it wasn’t fine, then she’d go out in a blaze of glory. Thematically appropriate for Night City.

Taylor snapped out of her brooding when she sensed it, a potential lair.

It was a relatively small three-story building, dwarfed by the larger constructions around it and the highway passing close by. It was surrounded by trash heaps and homeless people, the quintessential image of poverty.

That was probably intentional, because the building also had two levels of basement. The first one was full of crates that was attracting quite a lot of attention from bugs on account of the blood they were smelling on the cyberware stacked in them. The second level of basement was perhaps even more interesting, because some genius had drilled a hole into the walls and broken into the sewers.

She continued investigating it while they walked in that direction, eventually concluding that it bore a closer look.

She caught V’s eyes and somehow managed to communicate what was up with a simple jerk of her head towards the building. The older woman, perceptive as ever, got it immediately.

She came up to Taylor and slid her arm around her waist, throwing a grin towards Jackie and Misty.

“How about we call it a night here?” She said. “You two lovebirds could use some alone time, and I’ve got a two-person activity I’d like to do with Taylor.”

Did she have to say it like that?! Taylor could feel a furious blush trying out break out on her face and hurriedly shunted it into the swarm.

Misty was obviously amused, but Jackie just looked confused for a second. Then it seemed to dawn on him and he got a shifty look on his face. He really was way too much of an open book.

“Sounds like a plan.” He grinned. “I’ll want to hear all the details tomorrow.”

Again with the phrasing. Taylor was incredibly relieved when the two smirking lovebirds left.

“Well then, shall we?” V invited in her sexy snake lady voice, giving her a predatory grin.

Taylor had to swallow an odd lump in her throat, pushing her reactions into the swarm again. “We shall.”

XXXXX

Sebastian ‘Padre’ Ibarra was a man used to getting calls at all hours of the day and often also night, it was simply part of being a big time fixer. It was, however, slightly unusual to be getting a call from Jackie Welles’ friends, Skitter and Slither as they were styling themselves as.

That had been an amusing little tidbit. Padre was savvy enough to see what the idea was behind the handles and style. They were hardly the first crew to try it, although it was much better done than usual. No doubt the perks of V’s corpo background, even if she hadn’t worked in marketing.

“Skitter and Slither, what can I do for you?” He picked up the call, respecting their choice of names. He also preferred to go by Padre, so he could hardly begrudge them their choices.

“Evening, Padre.” Slither said, keeping the usual sensuality out of her tone, which he appreciated. “Skitter and I hit a Scav den just now, but not a normal one. This looks like one of their ripper clinics where they sell the stuff they harvested.”

The news now had Padre’s full attention. Scavs were worse than roaches and the more that were killed the better. Hitting one of their bigger dens before they could clear out, however, was rarer. “Then you have done God’s work this day. Send me the address and I will send men to clean it out. You may be assured of a fair cut of the profits.”

Not ripping off your mercenaries was just smart business, especially when they were good ones. Jackie Welles, good boy that he was, had only been a solo of low-to-middling value on his own. Honest, reliable, and good with a gun, but not much more. Now that he was on a team with the two competent young ladies, they were proving significantly more formidable.

Padre had high hopes for them. Far too many mercenaries were loose cannons, but the newly christened Beast Crew had a track record of clean operations, short as it was at the moment. That was always good. Clean operations meant less chance of gang wars breaking out.

“Actually, could you come over?” Slither asked. “Skitter has a request for you.”

Padre frowned in thought. He was not a man to be summoned and they knew that. Whatever this was about must be either fairly serious, or they were overestimating their value and V would know better than that. “Is that so?”

“Yes.” Skitter spoke up. “I’m sorry about bothering you with this so late, but it isn’t something that can wait.”

Polite, but firm. Padre had a feeling that V had coached her young friend on how to speak to him. He had already noticed that the unusually intense teenager was rather poorly socialized.

“Very well, I will be there soon.” He agreed, with the silent understanding that he would be displeased if the reason was not good enough.

The coordinates were sent moments after the call ended, making him furrow his brow. That was in the southern Glen, not very far away from where he was now in all honesty. To think that the Scavs had a ripper clinic with their ill-gotten gains so close and remained undetected. Just for that, he was slightly less annoyed at being summoned.

He called for a driver and was soon underway. Less than ten minutes later, he was at the location, noting with some anger the mural for Gabriela Hernandez on the side of the building. He remembered the poor girl, killed in a fight with three Animals about… nine years ago now. That a group of filthy Scavengers had dared set up their butcher shop inside infuriated him, and lowered his annoyance at being summoned further.

The two women were not in their mercenary attire, so Padre did not address them as such. “V, Taylor.”

“Padre.” They greeted back. “Thanks for coming.”

“Think nothing of it.” He said politely, knowing that V at least would understand to not do it too often. “You mentioned a request?”

That was aimed at Taylor and she nodded back. “I’ve been gathering money and looking for a place of my own to move into ever since I arrived in Night City. This place checks all my requirements.”

Padre thoughtfully stroked his mustache. Well now, that was interesting. “You want to turn this Scav den into a home for yourself? Why?”

Most people didn’t feel comfortable living in places they knew used to be Scav dens, for understandable reasons.

“It would probably be easier to show you.” She said, turning slightly as if to walk inside, but looking at V for direction before completing the motion.

“Trust me, Padre, you’ll want to see this.” V assured.

Curious, he nodded. “Very well. Lead the way.”

They did so, taking him past the reception area and into a back room, then down into the basement. Then further down still until they reached a crude hole in the wall from whence the stench of the Night City sewers wafted. He had been wondering about that.

“So, the vermin have been using the sewers to transport their ill-gotten gains and keep suspicion away from this place.” Padre noted calmly, internally more than a little upset. “Fitting, I suppose.”

“The reason I like this place is because I want to keep the sewer access as an emergency exit if I’m ever attacked at home.” Taylor spoke up.

She had some more requests after that. Armored doors, tinted bulletproof windows that can’t be seen through from the outside, reinforced walls, a sliding pole like the one firefighters use that would allow her to quickly slide down into the basement instead of having to take the stairs in an emergency…

These were the plans of a paranoid mind, but it was not for him to judge.

“Normally, that would be far out of your price range, but I will strike you a deal.” He said once he was done considering it. “Leave all the cyberware here to me and I will arrange what you asked for at a steep discount.”

He knew that they had nowhere to store it, nor the contacts to sell it in any reasonable timeframe. He could have pushed them to accept a worse deal, but only stupid and short-lived fixers ripped off their own mercenaries.

“That sounds great. Thanks, Padre.” V said.

And V knew that, which is why she had wanted to speak in person, so she could show the more inexperienced Taylor how things were done. It was always good to see the older generation look after the younger.

XXXXX

“I can’t believe I missed out on a huge score like that.” Jackie complained after they explained to him what they found in the Scav ripper clinic.

“You know you would have given up your share so that Taylor could get her new digs, you big softie.” V snorted at him, not taking her eyes off the road.

“We really should do something nice for Jackie soon.” Taylor spoke up from the passenger seat, a little bit guilty. “This is the second time he’s given up a payday for one of us.”

First for V’s car and now this. Even if he hadn’t participated in last night’s action, he was still part of the team.

“If you can find another Scav clinic loaded up to the gills with stolen cyberware, then I won’t say no.” Jackie said humorously.

She still felt a little dumb for not realizing how much money there was in cyberware trading. Obviously, the Scavs wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t profitable, but there was a part of her that had still been instinctively thinking of cybernetics as tinkertech, which would make it worthless without the original Tinker to install and maintain.

“We can take a drive around town and I’ll keep an eye out.” She promised.

The clinic from yesterday was the first Scav hideout she’d come across that had so much cyberware stocked, but there had to be others spread across the city. Given the eyeball estimate V had given her on how much money there was in those crates, hitting more such places was definitely worth it.

If she’d realized just how worth it earlier, she’d have probably been doing that instead of gigs.

Then again, maybe not. V had also said that actually selling the cyberware would be a problem, which is why they’d called Padre and arranged for that deal. Taylor was glad to have the older, more experienced woman around to show her the ropes as much as she was glad for Jackie’s easy acceptance. If push came to shove, she could have probably survived the streets of Night City by herself, but she’d have made enemies left and right.

“Sounds like a plan.” V said and reached out to pat her on the thigh. She was very physically expressive like that.

“Heads up.” Jackie spoke up, suddenly serious. “I think that’s our client over there.”

The client in question was a Hispanic man like Jackie, but dressed in a Militech suit. He was also considerably smaller and leaner.

The whole gig was frankly a bit weird. The client, one Lucas Ramirez, had commissioned the creation of a custom pistol for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday. Maelstrom somehow learned about it and stole it for whatever reason, then demanded a ransom for it.

Yes, a ransom for a gun. Ramirez could have easily commissioned another, but it wouldn’t be made in time for his daughter’s birthday, so he decided to pay the ransom, upfront and with promises of dire retribution if Maelstrom screwed him over.

Ramirez was at least not dumb enough to go pick it up himself after getting a location from Maelstrom, but he couldn’t use Militech assets for what was ultimately a personal matter, so he contacted Regina about hiring a mercenary crew.

Because this was Maelstrom, nobody knew what to expect. The chromed up gangoons were borderline psychopaths, usually on the wrong side of the border, so it could be anything from a completely civilized exchange to a trap. It was entirely possible that whoever did this was tripping balls on a mountain of Glitter and didn’t even remember doing it. It almost definitely wasn’t part of some big plan by the gang’s leadership, more likely being the result of bored gangoons looking to have some fun by poking at a corpo.

Taylor had seen a picture of the gun in question and could guess that some juvenile idiot probably couldn’t resist stealing it just for giggles. The ridiculous thing was plated with rosegold and encrusted with pink diamonds. Alec and Aisha would have definitely stolen it they had the chance.

A Valentino would be embarrassed by how gaudy it was, which made the client’s ancestry all the more ironically funny.

V stopped the car next to the corpo and Jackie opened the door.

“Get in.” He said to his fellow Latino.

Ramirez briefly made a face of snobby disdain, but didn’t say anything and simply obeyed.

That was the other part of this gig that made it unusual. The client wanted to come along to make sure there were no delays. Apparently, his daughter’s birthday was today and he was taking a day off work to retrieve it before going home.

Taylor could almost call it sweet, if it wasn’t so damn weird. V had assured her that it was very normal for Militech suits to present their children with guns as presents. Apparently it was part of that particular corporation’s culture or something, the same way it was part of Arasaka corporate culture to learn the Japanese language and social norms.

Taylor could almost hear Alec and Aisha chorusing ‘fuckin’ weebs!’ from across death and dimensions. Those imported anime from Earth Aleph had given them plenty of ammo to mock people with.

“Regina Jones assured me that you were a competent crew.” Ramirez said. His diction was smooth and precise, but the implication was clear.

“She wouldn’t have given us the gig if we weren’t, choom.” Jackie assured him.

“Your associates don’t look very threatening.”

“You didn’t ask for a crew specializing in heavy combat, so you didn’t receive one.” Taylor cut in with the voice of Warlord Skitter, not interested in listening to a jumped up office drone needling them.

“The right people for the right job.” V spoke up next, smooth and calm, but also quite implacable. “This is most likely just a case of bored gangoons pulling their idea of a prank on you. If they saw a squad of borged out mercenaries approaching, then they’d probably run. We, on the other hand, look much less threatening while still being able to handle any surprises they have planned.”

That seemed to appease the corpo, or at least get him to shut up. Either way, the rest of the drive was made in silence.

The meeting spot that the Maelstromers had given was predictably in Northside, one of the smaller abandoned factories that had once produced who knows what. It was their territory instead of the usual neutral ground that exchanges in good faith are made on, which significantly raised the potential threat level of the situation.

However, Taylor could already tell that there was nobody inside. The place was completely empty of human habitation.

“I’ll be back soon.” She said to V and Jackie, stepping out of the car.

They wished her good luck and then had to explain to the confused corpo what she was off to do. If he hadn’t been here, she would have probably already told them, but now she would put up a charade of scouting manually.

So she spent a good thirty minutes just walking around and making extra sure there were no surprises waiting for them. She found the gun easily enough, but the various flies, gnats, mosquitos, roaches and spiders that she used to investigate the factory came up with nothing. Unless the Maelstromers were hiding in sealed barrels or containers, waiting to jump out like a jack-in-the-box, then they’d left the gun and cleared out.

Weird, definitely suspicious, but not necessarily unwelcome.

Taylor returned to the car and reported her findings.

“I don’t like it, chica.” Jackie shook his head. “You’re sure they didn’t rig the whole thing to blow or something?”

“As sure as I can be.” She said. Her bug-based clairvoyance wasn’t perfect, unfortunately. She had come far since her early days, and was now able to use her bugs’ eyes, but their shitty vision and sense of scale made it hard to use effectively. Tracking motion via proprioception was still by far her best skill.

“It could just be that the gangoons decided it wasn’t worth even being here for the handoff since they already got paid.” V played devil’s advocate, but didn’t sound too convinced herself.

“Then let’s go get it so we can leave this place.” The client apparently took it seriously, clearly intent on marching into the factory.

“Whoa, hold up, choom.” Jackie used his arm to block him.

“Keep your hands off me!” Ramirez snapped.

“You are the client and this is still a potential combat zone.” Skitter said coldly, cutting off his bitching.

“Skitter’s right.” V backed her up immediately. “If you get killed, we don’t get paid.”

“Unacceptable.” The corpo snapped. “It’s less than two hours until my daughter’s birthday. I don’t have time for you to satisfy your paranoia.”

Or maybe he did understand V’s dubious tone earlier and was just reckless.

The three of them exchanged looks, all of them knowing that this was a terrible idea, but also seeing that short of knocking him out, they had no way of stopping their idiot client from putting himself in danger.

Taylor was really starting to understand why regular people hated corpos, and this guy was merely annoying rather than evil. So far.

“Fine, but stay behind us and don’t touch anything.” She ordered.

He glared at her, clearly angry at being told what to do by a teenager. Well, tough shit.

They went to the trunk of the car and geared up. Jackie took a shotgun and V took a Copperhead rifle that they’d liberated on a previous gig. Taylor kept to her standard loadout, but with AP ammo and a couple of EMP grenades, because Maelstrom.

Then they moved in, the impatient corpo practically vibrating behind them. There was not the slightest hint of resistance or danger. No hidden turret emplacements, mines or anything of the sort. Hells, there was barely any sign that the Maelstromers had even been there, only a few food wrappers and discarded cans.

The gaudy gun that was the subject of this gig was laying innocuously on an inactive conveyor belt.

“There it is!” Ramirez exclaimed in relief and, disregarding the instructions to stay behind them, started walking forward to pick it up.

The three of them had up until now only been communicating in hand signs, which Taylor had slowly been teaching to V and Jackie, so the exclamation felt extra loud in the completely silent factory.

“Alto!” Jackie yelled in Spanish, trying to grab the man, but they had been spread apart enough for him to slip past their formation.

Whether it was the noise or a hidden sensor that her bugs had missed, that’s when things started going to hell.

One of those sealed containers that had no bugs in them suddenly started shaking, as if someone within was pounding on the door. Judging by the yelling, someone was.

The door flew open and a nightmare stepped out. Taylor had seen what borged out Maelstromers could look like, but this one was much worse than normal. There was barely any meat left on him.

And he was still screaming in a tinny, metallic voice.

“My mind is on fire!” He howled, raising up a right arm that had been turned into a flamethrower. “STOP SCREAMING!”

“CYBERPSYCHO!” V yelled out in warning, running for cover even she she hosed him down with bullets from the Copperhead.

Taylor and Jackie did the same thing, but Ramirez was both closer and paralyzed with fear. The cyberpsycho, bullet impacts sparking over his metal body, fired the flamethrower at him. He went up like a torch, flailing and screaming as he burned to death.

Taylor was already firing at him even as she retreated, but the AP rounds in her pistol were apparently not armor piercing enough to punch through the cyberpsycho’s metal skull. The bullets that did pierce his body didn’t seem to be slowing him down.

She and Jackie had found cover behind some machinery, but V had been further away. The cyberpsycho moved, at least twice as fast as a normal human, and aimed his right arm at her. Bullets flew from an integrated weapon and V gave a shout of pain as she was hit, stumbling behind a corner.

“V!” Jackie yelled, standing up and unloading the rest of his shotgun at the borg in an obvious and reckless attempt to draw attention away from their injured teammate.

Taylor threw an EMP grenade at him. It discharged, sending his cybernetics sparking. Most importantly, it rendered him temporarily blind.

“The Darkness! THE DARKNESS!” He howled, flailing wildly.

Taylor and Jackie had in the meantime taken the opportunity to run towards where their teammate fell, Taylor tossing her other EMP grenade at the borg for good measure.

“Shit.” She hissed, seeing that V had been hit in the upper thigh. The movies might wave that kind of injury off, but you could bleed out from it in minutes. The nanomeds she always carried would help, but it was still a serious injury.

Only… there wasn’t as much blood as she would have expected.

“Don’t worry about it, synthetic arteries. They’re already sealed.” V quickly reminded her, throwing a nervous look in the direction of the still screaming cyberpsycho. “But I won’t be able to outrun him if he decides to come after us.”

Right, Taylor forgot for a moment how augmented V was.

Brute 4-5 at least, Blaster 3-4, Mover 2-3. She rapidly assessed. The cyberpsycho was borged out to hell and what damage had gotten through the armor produced only a white fluid in place of blood. His movements and reactions were rapid, implying speedware like a Sandevistan or a Kerenzikov. Probably a Kerenzikov, given that it seemed to be a permanent effect. That bit of Soviet cyberware was notorious for taking a heavy toll on the user’s psyche.

Problematic, but far from insurmountable. Cybernetic limbs could move a lot faster than flesh and blood without tearing themselves apart, but not to the extent of parahumans with their ability to tell physics to fuck off. Conservation of momentum would still force this borg to limit his speed, lest he send himself hurtling into walls or uncontrolled spins.

“We need to hit him from all sides, keep him from focusing on any single one of us.” She said quietly, recalling the PRT’s training on dealing with Brutes. “Blind him, fuck up his weapons and legs, keep out of melee range.”

Brutes were terrifying to fight, but only if they could get to you. This guy having built in weapons and speedware made things more complicated, but not impossibly so. There had to be a very limited supply of fuel and ammo for his flamethrower and machine gun.

The billions of blips of awareness spread out across several city blocks glowed in her mind, telling her that she had everything she needed to take the cyberpsycho down. She was very sure that he would have no way of dealing with a tidal wave of insects.

Not yet.

As careless as she had been with her powers around V and Jackie, Taylor couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet. Still, she called to the bugs just in case, making them swarm through the sewers and the walls. She also sent them to chew through anything that looked like a camera, even it if seemed offline.

“I’ll stay here and hack his weapons.” V said, looking at her leg and weapon in disgust. The Copperhead hadn’t been of much use against the borg, and going out to fight with a leg injury would be suicide.

“Then we get to wave the red cape in front of the bull, hermana.” Jackie smirked at her.

Taylor didn’t have time to comment on his choice of reference. “He’s shaking off the EMP. Go!”

They rushed forward, splitting into a classic pincer move. Taylor drew his attention first by firing at the glowing red cyberoptics, making the borg’s head jerk back a bit with every bullet impact. Unfortunately, she didn’t do a whole lot of damage. Those cyberoptics had to be made of diamondglass. She really needed to add a more powerful weapon to her loadout.

A spray of gunfire followed her just as she dived behind another bit of machinery, then Jackie came in from the other side with his reloaded shotgun.

“Over here, motherfucker!” The Latino yelled, unloading into the back of his legs. “Pick on someone your own size!”

Taylor felt the very instant that the borg turned around to face him and popped out from behind cover, firing at the fly she had landed on the back of his knee. The bullets pinged off the metal, but his knee buckled and white fluid began leaking out.

The borg roared in frustration, the sound grinding and mechanical, before forcing himself back on his feet as he turned, unloading with both the machine gun and the flamethrower.

And then they both glitched, suddenly cutting off.

“I got through his ICE!” V shouted. “Put the fucker down!”

Taylor didn’t need any further encouragement. She quickly reloaded, jumped out of cover and started firing at joints and exposed cables. From the flank, Jackie hammered at him with the shotgun.

The cyberpsycho, either in a stroke of tactical cunning or reckless aggression, rushed into melee with her, forcing Jackie to let up with the shotgun out of fear of hitting her. Taylor quickly dropped her pistol and drew her shock baton and knife.

This was almost nostalgic, reminding her of the fight against Mannequin, though she judged that the insane Tinker of the Slaughterhouse 9 had been significantly more dangerous.

He swung at her, clumsy and unskilled. He was fast, but she had bugs all over him to tell her how he was moving and was able to dodge easily. Unlike Mannequin, he couldn’t spin around like a top, didn’t have blades coming out of his hands, couldn’t throw his hands forward with retractable chains and was considerably less agile.

And she had grown in experience since then. On one of his misses, she tapped the swinging cybernetic arm with the shock baton and discharged it. The cyberpsycho locked up as the electricity ran through him, but didn’t fall. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she sliced at the flamethrower arm with her knife, cutting off the end of the barrel. That wouldn’t be a threat anymore.

The exchange only lasted a few seconds, long enough for Jackie to get into it as well. Aside from his pistols and whatever bigger weapon a gig demanded, he also made sure to always carry around a machete. He used it now, swinging it down on the cyberpscho’s shoulders with a furious yell and a powerful overhand chop.

The monomolecular blade of the machete sunk into the armor and got stuck. Futuristic metal alloys or not, a monomolecular blade was by definition fragile and definitely not meant to be used against thick armor. Taylor’s knife required sharpening after every use even when used against simple flesh and bone, else it very quickly stopped being monomolecular. In this case, Jackie’s machete became blunted enough in a single use to no longer be capable of carving through armor.

Jackie also didn’t have the advantage of bug proprioception and was caught by surprise by the cyberpsycho’s speed as he swung around wildly. The hit wasn’t direct enough to instantly kill him, but Taylor still heard the wet crack of breaking bone as her teammate was sent flying.

Sunk into the swarm, Taylor coldly took advantage of the opportunity to jump and ram her own knife into the cyberpsycho’s spine at the base of his neck. To her frustrated fury, even this wasn’t enough to put him down. Either he had non-standard nerve connections or she’d missed, no way to tell with someone this augmented.

Maybe she should have aimed for the head, but both V and Jackie had told her before that the skull was typically the most heavily reinforced part of the body. There was a chance that even a monomolecular knife wouldn’t make it through that armored chrome-dome. Her bullets certainly hadn’t.

Leaving the knife sticking out of his back, she backed off as the cyberpsycho focused on her again. She heard Jackie’s pained Spanish cursing as he pulled himself up and V spitting insults at her shitty cyberdeck as her cyber wizardry also failed to do more than inconvenience the walking tank.

And if he had stayed focused on her than Taylor was sure that she would have eventually been able to put him down. With her awareness of the environment, she wasn’t going to get backed into a corner any time soon and there had to be a limit to how many electrical shocks he could take. Heck, he might even ‘bleed out’ as all that white coolant or whatever it was he was losing looked pretty important. His movements were already janky from the joint damage.

But the warped mind of the cyberpsycho wasn’t completely devoid of reason or strategy. Seeing that she was too slippery to pin down, he instead went for easier prey – the injured V who wouldn’t be able to dodge and who had been continually irritating him by fucking with his cybernetics.

Taylor saw his intentions instantly and knew that holding back was no longer an option. The whole fight, she had been drawing in more and more of her swarm and it was now densely packed just outside of view. Sending it in felt like a relief.

The megacorps had long since rendered the ecologically fragile bees and wasps extinct, but many other creatures thrived in Night City’s filthy conditions. The nuclear bombing a fifty years ago had even resulted in some especially resilient new evolutions. Roaches, flies, mosquitos, spiders and much more descended on the cyberpsycho on a tide of chitin and scuttling legs.

They came from all directions, accompanied by a massive droning buzz that stopped the borg in his tracks. She also heard V and Jackie shout in fright, but the swarm parted around them.

“End of the line.” Skitter spoke with a million buzzing wings, bug clones forming around the cyberpsycho.

“THE DEMON HAS COME!” He shrieked, swinging wildly and ineffectually at the bug clones. “WHO ARE YOU, DEMON?! WHAT IS YOUR NAME?!”

Well, it wasn’t the first time someone thought she was a demon. It reminded her of an episode of Aisha bemoaning lost opportunities for her swarm voice with Regent. Back then she’d thought it was way too villainous and just plain unnecessary, and she had been in no mood for jokes in the aftermath of Leviathan, but here and now she gave into the temptation, in honor of her old teammates.

“My name is Legion, for we. Are. MANY!” The swarm roared, crawling all over the cyberpsycho.

He yelled and flailed in panic as they covered up his optics, overwhelmed his auditory receptors and blocked his oxygen intake.

He was wide open and Taylor remembered that she had another weapon – the mantis blade in her right arm. Using it in a fight for the first time, she popped out the blade and rammed it under his chin, driving it right into his brain through the thinner armor there.

The cyberpsycho let out a few mechanical gurgles before collapsing, his heavy weight bringing her down as well until she managed to pull the mantis blade out of his head. That would need sharpening as well.

But now it was time to face the music, and Taylor found herself only slightly apprehensive. If they turned on her, it was best that it happen sooner rather than later. She just had to keep telling herself that. Taking off her mask and sunglasses, she turned to look at them, sending the swarm scuttling out of sight.

Jackie was pale and sweating, and probably not just from the broken arm. His eyes were flitting back and forth across the room, obviously trying to make sense of this new development. The fear on his face was a bit saddening, but not too surprising. Everybody kept telling her how terrifying her swarm was.

V, on the other hand, looked more fascinated and awed.

“And that’s why they really call me Skitter.” Taylor tried for dry humor.

She still didn’t think she was very good at it, but V and Jackie let out startled barks of laughter.

“Chica, I knew you were hiding something big, but I thought it was secret ninja training.” Jackie said, wincing in pain.

“My best guess was bioengineered psychic powers and top level corpo connections.” V offered, smirking. “Was I right?”

“Not even close.” Taylor shook her head with a smile. “Let’s get you two over to Vik, then I can explain.”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Jackie winced again. “And if we could not mention this to my mama, that would be even better.”

“The bug control powers?” She hadn’t been planning to share this with Mama Welles or Misty anyway. As nice as they were, this was something they were better off not knowing.

“The cyberpsycho. If she knew I tangled with this borged out motherfucker, she’d ground me.”

Jackie was thirty years old, a mercenary with a decently impressive number of kills to his name, but neither V nor Taylor doubted that Mama Welles could and would ground him.