"Riku, if you need our help, just say so. Don't go dying out there one day."
At the door of Riku's tiny apartment, V spoke up suddenly, her usual carefree grin replaced by a rare serious look.
She knew Riku was tangled up in some serious yabai (dangerous) trouble—stuff way above her and Jack's pay grade.
"What, me? Die? My head came off, and I'm still kicking. You're worried about me?"
Riku shot her a look like she'd just told the punchline to a bad shonen gag, making V's lips twitch in annoyance.
"You don't wanna hear the nice version, huh? Fine, here's hoping you get your own urn in Yoru no Machi's (Night City's) cemetery real soon."
V flipped him the bird, rolled her eyes, and stormed back to her room.
"Make sure you grab a spot next to mine—we'll be neighbors!" Riku shouted after her.
V's middle finger popped out from behind her door one last time before she slammed it shut.
Riku chuckled, shaking his head as he stepped into his apartment. V pulling this serious act out of nowhere? Probably spooked by his head-reconnecting jutsu (technique) earlier.
Tonight's chaos was bound to have hit V, Jack Wells, and even old Vic hard. In this era, weird tech was par for the course, but Riku's head-popping, body-moving stunt was next-level yabai.
"They'll get used to it. Plenty more surprises where that came from," Riku muttered.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out the pair of cyber-eyes he'd scavenged from that black-clad ninja.
The eyes were fully nikkaku-ka (flesh-activated) by now, and he'd gained their abilities. They worked just like his own eyes—he could see whatever they saw.
"This is kinda weird," Riku admitted, not quite used to it. Holding the cyber-eyes, he glanced around, the sensation totally shinpi (mysterious).
The eye on his forehead? He'd adapted to that ages ago. It was just a slightly higher perspective, no big deal. But these cyber-eyes? Totally different. Holding them in his hands and pointing them in all directions gave him a wild range of viewpoints.
Riku stood still, staring forward, while his hands moved the eyes around—up, down, left, right. It was like standing and staring ahead while simultaneously crouching, lying flat, looking up, or twisting his head in every direction.
"Pretty sugoi (awesome). If I nikkaku-ka a few more of these, forget rokuro kansatsu (six-way vision)—I'd have sixteen-way vision, no problem."
He played around with the eyes until he nearly made himself dizzy. The extra perspectives took some getting used to.
Beyond that, he could absorb the cyber-eyes into his body, letting them sprout from other spots. Not super useful right now—his subdermal armor blocked them from popping out. That armor was too valuable to ditch, but maybe Vic could tweak it, like adding a retractable slot at the back of his head for some ushiro no me (rear-mounted eyes) action at night.
"Could be handy for scouting dangerous spots," Riku mused. He could store the eyes in his body, then toss them out to scope the area—like sticking wards in the grass, League of Legends-style. With some upgrades, maybe the eyes could even sprout little wings and fly around, saving him the cost of a recon drone.
Done experimenting, Riku set the eyes aside and pulled out the ninja's neural interface, also fully nikkaku-ka.
Even outside his body, it worked like an external brain chip. The chip inside belonged to the ninja, and Riku had already read its contents.
The chip's owner? Toshin Jell, a Kenritsu Group agent. Now deceased, account canceled, eddies untouchable. Damn corpo dogs moved fast.
But the chip was special—a samurai chip loaded with a full set of kenjutsu (sword techniques). Plug it in, and you'd instantly become a ninja skilled in that style. A proper skill chip.
"No way! It's a sokusei (instant-learn) chip?!" Riku groaned, rolling his eyes. He thought the guy was a legit ninja, not some fast-food, chip-powered wannabe.
This meant Kenritsu could churn out ninja agents by the dozen—just slap a chip and some cyberware on anyone.
"That red-armored samurai was sokusei too," Riku realized. Thinking back to the ad-star samurai, their kenjutsu was practically identical to this chip's.
He drew his katana, struck a pose, and ran through the chip's sword techniques.
Guided by the chip, Riku—despite never training in this style—executed it flawlessly, every move smooth as silk.
But it felt hollow. He had the form but not the soul, like he was just following a script—too rigid, too mechanical.
If a real kenjutsu master fought a chip-user with similar stats, the master would wipe the floor with them. Skill chips were just pre-programmed moves.
Still, letting someone who'd never touched a sword master a complex kenjutsu style in seconds? That was cho kakkoi (super cool). The chip let you skip the basics and hit a decent level instantly. But to keep it and improve? That took real practice.
The red-armored samurai and black-clad ninja wielded the kenjutsu with way more finesse than Riku's stiff demo. They'd clearly trained beyond the chip.
Riku popped the chip out. Since it was part of the nikkaku-ka neural interface, it had transformed from an electronic chip to a bio-flesh chip, far more active than a RELIC chip and with no storage issues.
But nikkaku-ka didn't let him master the chip's contents outright—he still needed to plug it into a neural interface to access it.
The neural interface was the reader, converting brain signals to electronic ones and back for data transfer and control. The chip was the hard drive, storing the OS, software, and data. The brain was the processor, handling input, processing, and output. Together, they formed a complete system.
"If I nikkaku-ka a few more neural interfaces and slot different skill chips into each, I'd be a sukiru-daruma (skill master), right?" Riku's eyes lit up at the idea.
Problem was, while neural interfaces were dirt cheap, skill chips were rare. Kung-fu chips like the Kui-Arm series were pricey but buyable. Most skill chips—and training chips—were tightly controlled by megacorps. Regular folks couldn't touch them.
Take Militech's training chips—top-secret stuff. In this world, even a newbie tutorial wasn't something just anyone could access.
Making your own skill chips? Not easy. Not everyone was a genius like Judy Alvarez.
"Speaking of, what's Judy up to these days?" Riku's eyes sparked. Maybe he could hit up Judy to help craft some skill chips.
Gonna try my best tonight!
(Chapter End)