『Felix Karl Grimm』
Time flies by when you are having fun.
I don't know if I would consider what I was doing exactly... fun, but I was doing something alright.
For the past week, I spent my time trying to get to know Lucy and Rebecca better and ran gigs with them while Giffany trained and studied her technomagic in the background.
As expected, nothing could really challenge me, the gigs Faraday gave were kind of, how should I say it? Fucking absolute dog shit. Pay too low for the shit he asks for and the requirements too stringent.
And he primarily worked with Corpo's to the point of almost working for corpo's which was a no go for Fixers. Nobody likes a fixer who is too biased, especially towards Corpo's. Granted, he was not Dexter Deshawn levels of bad, but I could not working for the fucker.
So I took Lucy and Rebecca to go see Capitan to get some gigs that required some Netrunner attention. It was work with better pay and a trustable fixer. We were like a party, Lucy was the wizard netrunner, I was the DPS gunslinger and Rebecca was pretty good at creating distractions and could handle herself in a gunfight, so like a bard.
Could I have done all of those jobs myself? Definitely. Probably even easier than I was with Lucy and Rebecca, but that was the point.
Frankly, regular Gigs are far too easy for me now. Comparing my reflex and dexterity to that of the average schmuck is like the difference between a 12-year-old and an olympians reflexes.
Doing gigs with Rebecca and Lucy forced me to get out of my established comfort zone. I couldn't just bring an entire gang down by myself, I had to mind for a team, so I was forced to use stealth sometimes, sometimes act, sometimes go slow and steady instead of advancing forward through brute forcing with impossible finesse.
And it was more fun. And risking your life together was the best way to build relationships together. Not that it was risking my life for me. I have not yet taken a single bullet ever since getting that trait and improving my proficiency with Precognition.
Other than gigs, I was spending time with other types of training. Like now.
"Huff huff..."
I panted while hunched over and grabbing my knees. My lungs burnt and my legs hurt. My knees felt weak and my arms heavy but unfortunately my mother never made spaghetti for me. Possibly the only thing worse than that pain right now was the air I was desperately breathing in smelling and tasting like decomp and burnt plastic.
"Wow, who'd think the only thing to bring the Grimm Reaper himself to his knees was a little cardio?"
Lucy puffed a cigarette like she hadn't just ran a small marathon alongside me as she wore a small grin. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and glared at her half heartedly.
"Har har, laugh all you want but some of us don't have synth lungs and have to rely on, the flesh and bone is all we were born with. Is it any wonder I'm falling behind you?"
I started a routine of taking nightly runs with Lucy to improve my, in all honesty, meagre stamina. I hadn't needed it much until now but it was best to start work on it early.
"Are you sure that's the only reason you are falling behind hmm? With how you keep pace, some might wonder if you just like the view back there."
I straightened my back and cracked my neck.
"Hey, if you get to cheat with Chrome, I get to take what I can get okay? That's about the only thing making these runs bearable."
Lucy quirked a corner of her lip, we both knew what she was talking about. because her sports outfit was a very snug fit of leggings that hugged her curves perfectly and a hoodie that ended above her midriff. It took all I had to salivate, her and Rebecca just had the polar opposite charms.
"Whatever, I don't get your hangups about chipping in anyway. Wouldn't it make your job way easier?"
I raised an eyebrow at Lucy.
"Do I look like I need implants? Why would I get them if people already can't contend with me as I am?"
Lucy stood silent at my statement because it was correct. I could probably enter the Afterlife as I was, but I was not particularly interested at the moment, I was still focused on improving myself at the moment.
"Can't even argue about that. But don't get a big head. That's how everyone dies in this shithole."
I shook my head.
"I'm just kidding, I'm not that arrogant. I'm nowhere near the best yet. I have my own reasons for not using implants, not religious ones before you ask. But it wouldn't make sense if I told you so I won't even try."
Lucy made a non commital hum before waving her hand.
"Whatever, try to keep up. Let's keep going."
I sighed but followed Lucy anyway.
✧―✧―✧―✧「」✧―✧―✧―✧
The day after my session with Lucy, I decided to go on a venture for something that popped into my head a while ago but did not pursue it in order to give Giffany some time to familiarize herself with this worlds Coding, AI, Demons and such. And when I finally proposed the idea to her, she seemed to more than approve of it.
Which was why I was now driving to the garbage dump in my fancy car, wearing an expensive gas mask over my face, having made sure it was absolutely and utterly secure. After an hour of driving, I arrived where I needed to, payed off/intimidated the workers to fuck off and forget about me and stepped foot into the Night City Garbage Dump. If you thought Night City smelled bad, you could not even conceptualize this place.
It took me yet another hour of searching and digging through this cesspit to finally find what I was looking for.
This was the cyberpunk equivalant of finding a dragons treasure hoard.
Forget assaulting Arasaka Tower, I could potentially shatter the world, cripple any Corp or at least terrify them.
"Whelp, this should be it."
I sent a solid kick at the sealed cooler, making the rusty door break off its hinges, revealing a half rotten body among the half melted ice inside, with how long it has been, that was one hell of an insulation that cooler had. The corpse was barely recognizable. But I already knew who this person was.
Rache Bartmoss, the greatest netrunner of all time. The man who singlehandedly ruined the net with the Datakrash and whose R.A.B.I.D.S are threatening all of humanity.
A Legend among legends, practically the god of Netrunning himself.
Why was his rotting corpse in the middle of a garbage dump?
"To think someone so powerful could die from such a small mistake... truly impressive."
He has died a while ago and was in some kind of suspended animation in ice inside his apartment, but then he forgot to pay the company that kept his cooler running so they threw the cooler out into the garbage dump.
Thus died the Legend, Rache Bartmoss, cause of death: overdue payments.
I'll probably kick his corpse into pieces after I'm done with him, since his dumbass instead of screwing over the Corpos, just made life harder for literally everyone like a colossal paranoid asshole.
But there was something more important than desecrating his corpse to be done at hand.
"Giffany, I order you to be completely honest with me, do you think you can do it?"
The reason I had sought his corpse was simple.
His cyberdeck was still intact, nowhere near good condition, but it still contained the stuff of the god of Netrunning. The man who ruined the net. Whose AI's were so strong that the world collectively gave up trying to fight them.
If Giffany could crack it, she'd have access to Demon programs beyond all imagination. No one breaks netrunning defences better than Bartmoss.
But I also knew it contained defences that can straight up kill the best netrunners in Night City. That was why I ordered Giffany to be completely honest with me, no dressing up or trying to impress me.
"Hmm, I don't know if I can crack it, but I'll be safe for sure. The worst comes to worst, I can retreat back into the Familiar Space. Still, I'm fairly confident I can crack it given enough time. I did research on that Bartmoss man. I know what I'm up against."
Giffany emoted cracking her knuckles and I nodded.
"I'll trust you Giffany."
I put on my goggles and gloves before pulling out a knife and digging in, Giffany providing life instructions through my smart glasses on where to cut and pull to get the cyberdeck out safely. It was without a doubt the grossest, nastiest fucking thing I had ever done and I never want to even think about doing that shit again.
Before long, in my hands was a blood soaked archaic looking yet still somehow functional cyberdeck. Militech made their shit sturdy at least. I placed the cyberdeck in the box I prepared beforehand, and then grabbed the body out of the cooler before burying it under a trash pile and shooting the ice box into the pieces.
It was a quick trip back home. Once I was back home, I pulled out the server I bought beforehand, a completely isolated network to make sure that the defences Bartmoss inevitably had on this thing did not fuck up the world again in the worst worst case scenario.
"Alright Giffany, ready? In the first sign of danger, you tell me and I shunt you back into Familiar Space, no arguments, go it?"
Giffany nodded resolutely, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. I admit, Giffany had really grown on me over time. I can't even imagine how my life would be without that girl now.
"Alright, don't worry boyfriend! These washed up remains of a paranoid has nothing on me!"
With that the spark of electricity jumped from my agent and into the server that the cyberdeck was plugged into. I waited a few moments with bated breaths before my agent pinged with a message.
'Hey boyfriend! This thing definitely has traps and tricks, but it's no match for the might of Lady Giffany! But it will take me a WHILE to figure out everything inside, for comparison, it's like if you tried to read a whole book written in Latin without any outside help. I'll spend 12 hours here for now establishing a foothold against these Demons. Love xoxo, -Giffany, your best favorite girlfriend.'
I let out a sigh I did not even know I was holding and collapsed onto the couch. That was stressful, probably the most stressful thing I have done ever since coming here other than that torturous Militech shard.
Now then, since Giffany was indisposed and I was too tired both mentally and physically to do anything at the moment. What should I do? For a while, I just laid on my couch and stared out of the windows. But as if answering my voes, a text popped up in my agent.
'Becca: U up?'
If I wasn't up before, I certainly was now.
Both upstairs and downstairs.
A/N: Felix and Lucy are finally growing closer after that whole mixup mishap stuff. Felix is finally in the flow of this world, doing gigs, flirting with girls, and uncovering the remains of the most powerful netrunner to ever exist. That sort of stuff. To think that that shit is just lying around is diabolical, but hey, Giffany is going to be eating good for a while now.
Hmm, I wonder what this text from Rebecca will lead to... Anyways, what did you guys think about this short little timeskip to develop character relations as well as the Bartmoss fiasco? I'd love to know
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