A/N: Green wisp is invisible only he can see it.
September 15, 2075, A few days later...
"You want me to do what?" Teo said, his butt planted on a high stool at a bustling sushi stand, the fluorescent glow of the stall reflecting in his optics. The stand itself was a riot of color and scent, nestled in the heart of Japantown's market plaza.
Neon signs for authentic ramen and glowing holographic koi fish shimmered around them, the air thick with the aroma of fresh seafood, ginger, and something vaguely metallic from the nearby street vendors. The automated sushi conveyor belt whirred past, carrying gleaming slices of tuna and intricately rolled maki, synth of course.
Angel, perched casually on the stool beside him, her face as inscrutable as polished chrome, leaned sideways against the bar, supporting her head with one arm. "I need you to help me steal a dog." Her voice was flat, no inflection, just a statement of fact.
Teo, mid reach for a piece of sushi, turned his head slowly from the mesmerizing belt and stared at her. "Okay..." he said, his eyes narrowing slightly, a mixture of disbelief and suspicion. They just stared at each other, an awkward silence stretching between them, broken only by the distant thrum of Night City's heartbeat and the gentle whir of the conveyor.
"Okay, I know how it sounds. Ridiculous, right?" Angel said, finally pushing off the bar a bit. "But the fixer who gave me this mission is offering some serious scratch. Ten thousand eddies. We can split it even."
Teo looked at her, his brow furrowed in a clear 'are you serious?' expression, before pinching the bridge of his nose. "Okay, obviously this isn't a normal gig. Why are they paying you so much to retrieve a dog collar? What's the catch?" he asked, picking up a fresh piece of salmon nigiri with his chopsticks. He felt a faint, almost imperceptible pulse behind his optics, a flicker of that strange, cold presence, as if it too was curious about the absurdity of the job.
Angel nodded, grabbing her own piece of sushi and sliding it into her mouth with practiced ease. "The dog collar is, let's say, a 'lucky' item for this old school fixer named Wheezy, operating out of Santo Domingo. This guy, Big G Gorski, leader of some shitty junker gang called the Rust Hounds, robbed poor Wheezy's property and took the thing." She paused, chewing, before continuing, her eyes meeting Teo's. "Wheezy, knowing who Big G is and how he operates, put out the word. He wants his collar back. And he wants the Rust Hounds gone. Every last one of 'em."
A cold hum started in Teo's head, the 'creation' stirring more actively at the mention of total neutralization. He felt a strange, detached surge of potential, a glimpse of optimized pathways for lethal quickhacks, faster targeting for bon bon. It was a frightening, alluring sensation. He snapped out of it staring ahead once again.
"Rancho Coronado scrapyard," Angel said, her hand reaching into her jacket. She pulled out a small, translucent shard, its data laced surface glowing faintly. "That's their main hideout. All the details are on this." She slid it across the counter to him.
Teo picked up the shard, his thumb tracing its cool surface. He jacked it into his forearm port, and instantly, a basic schematic of the scrapyard overlaid his vision. "They've got heavy presence. Mostly chromed up bruisers, not too bright, but they're numerous and aggressive. Plenty of junkyard dogs. Improvised laser tripwires, junk piles for cover, electrified fence that's probably half dead but still shocks. Cyber wise, it's low tier gang security. Basic sensors, crude alarms. The collar's got a simple bio lock to Big G's DNA, nothing you can't bypass."
The 'creation' seemed to approve of the brutality, its hum intensifying slightly, a subtle shift in his perception, making the chaotic layout of the scrapyard appear almost elegantly simple to dismantle. "Ten k eddies for a fucking dog collar and an entire gang."
She picked up another piece of sushi. "It's a straight reclamation. Get the collar. Kill the gang. Get out. Twenty four hours. Drop off at a dumpster behind some derelict diner in Rancho Coronado."
Teo didn't reply, just stared at the schematic, the hum in his head growing louder, a strange, almost eager anticipation for the chaos to come. He felt a cold, calculating resolve settle over him. This wasn't about the eddies, not really. This was about pushing limits. His limits. And perhaps, the limits of whatever was now riding shotgun in his mind. In the corner of his eye a small green ember displayed in his optics, it was on the table. Watching like an eye.
"Alright I'm in, can't be to difficult right? These scraped up morons could get wiped by Mama Welles." He said eating another piece of sushi. Angel smiled, "Alright! We'll head out after we eat. My rides parked out back" She cheered sliding another sushi dish onto her plate from the belt.
~~~~~~~~A FEW MOMENTOS LATALE~~~~~~~~
It smelled like shit.
Like the stale tang of exhaust and synth waste, that carried a sharp, metallic bite of rust and decay. Angels black Mizutani Shion MZ1 rolled up to the perimeter of the Rust Hounds' scrapyard in Rancho Coronado.
Mountains of broken down civvie rides and skeletal husks of forgotten dreams clawed at the bruised twilight sky. Teo could already feel a dull throb behind his optics, a familiar prelude to the headache that always followed heavy chrome use. He hadn't had these before the creation, what changed?
Teo felt the familiar hum behind his optics, but it was different now. Sharper. Eager. The 'creation' nestled deep within his neural wetware felt like a coiled spring, vibrating with an almost predatory anticipation. 'Ready to play, choom?' a cold, flat voice echoed in his mind, though no words were truly spoken.
'So you've learned my lingo, creepy.' he thought as he adjusted the grip on bon bon, its matte black finish sucking in the last vestiges of natural light, feeling its raw power resonate with the strange energy thrumming inside him. "You ready for this preem party, Angel?" Teo asked, his voice low, a sarcastic drawl that barely cut through the distant city noise.
He saw his left hand, resting on the Kenshin's grip, give a slight, involuntary tremor. He clenched it, forcing it still. 'fucking shit.'
Angel, already shouldered with her rifle in the driver's side, her scope sweeping the perimeter with silent, deadly grace, offered a grim half smile. "Born ready, Choom. Let's fucking slaughter these freaks." Her words were as sharp and clean as her aiming reticle, utterly devoid of hesitation. The air crackled with silent anticipation, the calm before the chrome storm. She didn't have her Foxhound this time, she said it was a 'close up mission' so she stuck to the basic rifle.
He breathed in, He breathed out.
No subtlety. No infiltration. Teo didn't even bother with the main gate. With a mental command, his cyberdeck screamed to life, chewing through the scrapyard's rudimentary network like a hot knife through stale kibble.
He launched his first quickhack as they were still rolling, aimed at the rusty, jury rigged alarm system. Instead of simply flatlining it, the 'creation' within him pulsed. Teo's optics momentarily displayed a shimmering, greenish wisp of data, a glowing conduit connecting from his optical implant directly to the target.
The wisp surged, crimson lightning arcing along its path, and the alarm system didn't just go silent, it violently overloaded, erupting in a shower of sparks and a high pitched, wailing screech that could peel chrome paint from a fresh ride. The headache behind Teo's eyes sharpened instantly, a jolt of pain that made him grit his teeth.
"Chaos. Initial contact. Observe." The voice, calm and analytical, echoed in Teo's mind as the explosion tore through the silence.
"That's our cue, choombatta!" Angel yelled, already sliding out of the vehicle the moment it screeched to a halt, her rifle spitting fire before her boots even hit the grit.
Teo followed, bon bon was already in his hand, the familiar weight a comfort. The wailing alarm was a siren call, and the Rust Hounds, true to their rep as bottom feeder gangers, were already scrambling out of their makeshift shacks and from behind piles of scrap. Thirty figures, a mix of barely chromed street trash and hulking cyber brutes, rushed forward, their aim already proving their "shitty" reputation.
Lead from their repurposed corporate pistols sliced through the air like drunk synth wasps, hitting nothing but distant scrap, sparks showering from metal walls. Their repurposed assault rifles chattered, spitting rounds wide, wild, and mostly ineffective.
"Holy air ball," Teo growled, a smile twisting his lips, the hum in his head surging with a predatory satisfaction. He targeted the lead ganger, a hulking brute with obvious, cheap arm chrome.
His eyes glowed, and Teo initiated a Short Circuit. The green wisp flared from his optics, then a thick, crimson vein of corrupt code shot forward, impacting the ganger. The effect was immediate and horrifying. The cheap cyberware in the ganger's arm didn't just fry, it exploded. Muscle, synth skin, and circuit boards atomized in a sickening spray, the force of the detonation flinging the ganger backward, a mangled, screaming wreck of meat and failing chrome.
This wasn't a short circuit, it was an internal detonation, twenty five percent more lethal than any quickhack Teo had ever thrown. A wave of nausea hit Teo, a phantom echo of the ganger's demise. His left hand twitched, more violently this time, an involuntary spasm he couldn't control.
"Efficiency. Optimal target disruption." The 'creation' noted in his head, its presence a cold, analytical guide, ignoring Teo's discomfort.
Angel's rifle barked, a precise and deadly counterpoint to the gang's wild spray. While the gangbangers hosed down the general area, Angel's shots found their marks with ruthless efficiency.
One Rust Hound, aiming a battered shotgun, suddenly found his kneecap vaporized by Angel's rifle, sending him spinning to the ground in a pathetic heap, screaming. Another, stumbling from behind a stack of tires, took a round directly through his optic implant, the lens shattering into a shower of bloody chrome and black fluid.
Teo unleashed his Kenshin. The tech pistol, already a beast, seemed to vibrate with a deeper, more resonant hum, almost mirroring the 'creation's' aura. When he squeezed the trigger, and bon bon roared, spitting a blinding electromagnetic slug.
The first ganger, a skinny kid with bad face chrome, took it center mass. The round punched through him like he was paper, leaving a gaping, fist sized hole where his chest had been, his body ripped open, organs churning into a crimson mess. He dropped, twitching, a pool of blood rapidly blooming beneath him. The Kenshin's report sounded less like a pistol and more like a naval cannon in the confines of the scrapyard. The kickback jolted his arm, and the tremor in his left hand intensified.
Another ganger, stupid enough to try and rush him, had his head snap back as bon bon's round blew through his forehead, splitting his skull open with a wet, grotesque crack!, brain matter and bone fragments spraying across a rusted car chassis.
Teo didn't flinch. The cold clarity from the 'creation' within made every shot, every quickhack, feel like an extension of pure, lethal logic. Like he was a scalpel, guided by something unseen, but the precision felt less like his own and more like an instruction. He felt sick...
A wild shot from a gang member's scavenged submachine gun, three rounds impacting his chest. He felt the blunt force, a heavy punch that made his lungs ache, but his recently installed Reinforced Subdermal Weave held firm. The cheap, improvised rounds flattened against the flexible mesh beneath his wife beater, barely registering as a bruise.
He barely even felt the impact, his internal biomonitors simply registering "Minor Stress," while the gonk's cheap rounds just splattered against his hidden armor. 'Nice try, gonk,' Teo thought.
The air filled with the stench of ozone, blood, and burning synth flesh. Teo moved through the chaos, a chillingly effective dance of digital destruction and ballistic gore.
He launched a Mass Vulnerability quickhack, and the green wisp from his optics enveloped a cluster of Hounds. Their cheap cyberware immediately began to smoke, optics blurring, comms screeching with feedback. They stumbled, disoriented, easy targets.
Angel capitalized, her rifle singing a symphony of death, dropping them like flies with focused bursts. Teo felt a sharp, piercing pain behind his eyes as the quickhack overloaded, his vision briefly going hazy around the edges. He blinked rapidly, fighting it back.
One gang member, a lumbering brute with a repurposed industrial arm, charged Teo, bellowing a war cry that quickly turned into a gurgle.
Teo met him with a Cyberware Malfunction quickhack. The green wisp flowed, then Teo's optics momentarily displayed a strange, complex sequence of biomechanical diagrams, overlaid onto the brute's arm.
The 'creation' was doing something more than just malfunction. The arm spasmed violently, twisting the ganger's body into an unnatural, contorted form, his own limb crushing his ribs with sickening force, a look of utter agony frozen on his face before he dropped, twitching uncontrollably. Teo firing 3 shots into the fallen form.
A deep, throbbing ache settled into Teo's temples, and he pressed a hand to his head, trying to soothe the escalating pain. The tremor in his left hand was now constant, a low, persistent vibration.
Bodies piled up amidst the scrap. The Rust Hounds, for all their numbers and aggression, were utterly outmatched. Their chrome was shoddy, their training non existent, and their tactics amounted to "rush and spray."
Teo and Angel, a two person storm of hyper efficient violence, carved a bloody path through them. The remnants of the gang, perhaps a dozen or so, began to break formation, their initial bravado crumbling into panicked shouts and desperate, pathetic attempts to flee.
Teo raised his gun, firing a slug into a fleeing ganger's, knee. The guy fell on his face as his leg flew off, and he started to crawl towards the largest, most heavily fortified structure in the center of the scrapyard. A makeshift stronghold built from shipping containers and armored plates. He bent down and tapped his head with bon bon's barrel. "Ay, is he in there?" Teo said tilting his head. The guy didn't answer he just crawled and cried out for help. Teo sighed and and pulled bon bon's trigger watching as the guys head turned into a blooming flower.
"I think Big G is in there." He said while pointing up at the large building. She looked at him, as if inspecting something. But she just nodded and pushed forward.
It was a short walk, the building was empty, seems they took care of all the goons. They found Big G hiding inside his 'office,' a grimy, cluttered space filled with trophies of stolen chrome and empty synth booze bottles.
He was a mountain of a man, even larger than Jackie, his bare chest crisscrossed with scars and studded with heavy, military grade subdermal armor plates that gleamed dully under the single flickering work light. In his massive hands, he clutched a custom, heavy machine gun, its barrel already smoking faintly, having clearly been used to suppress the initial assault from inside.
Beside him, tethered by a thick, cyber reinforced chain, was 'Lucky', not a dog, but a grotesque, hulking cyber rottweiler, its eyes glowing red, its maw dripping hydraulic fluid, a thick, ugly cyber collar encrusted with cheap, glittering stones around its neck.
"You really wanna flatline me for a damn collar, what the fuck is wrong with you gonks?!" Big G roared, his voice like gravel grinding stone, tinged with a desperate fury. He brought the heavy machine gun to bear, the barrel spitting fire, filling the cramped space with the deafening roar of automatic gunfire. They dived behind a wall of concreate bags.
Angel's rifle answered, a precision shot that ripped through the ceiling support, sending a shower of sparks and metal raining down, forcing Big G to flinch, momentarily throwing off his aim.
Teo, meanwhile, didn't hesitate. He launched a Short Circuit quickhack at 'Lucky.' The green wisp flowed, then the crimson surge from his optics enveloped the cyber rottweiler. The dog didn't just flinch, its internal systems screamed, a digital agony that only Teo seemed to truly perceive, echoing in his own skull.
Its glowing red eyes flickered, its body spasmed violently, crashing into the flimsy wall beside Big G, sending equipment flying. The brute animal whimpered, its cybernetic limbs seizing up, effectively neutralized. The 'creation' within Teo hummed, a note of cold, almost intellectual satisfaction. "Effective neutralization of support unit. Eliminate remaining threats." Teo felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his head, almost crippling him, but the 'creation' seemed to override it, pushing him past the agony.
"You wanna play dirty, choom?!" Teo yelled, gripping bon bon. Ignoring the burning behind his eyes. He danced through Big G's wild, inaccurate spray of machine gun fire, the bullets impacting the metal walls with dull thuds.
He targeted Big G's exposed shoulder, just where the neck met the immense bulk of his body. Bon bon roared. The electromagnetic slug hit Big G like a wrecking ball. Even through his heavy subdermal armor, the sheer force of the round tore through flesh and reinforced plate, creating a gaping, bloody hole in his shoulder, blowing off a chunk of his arm. Bone fragments and blood exploded outwards, painting the wall behind Big G in a grisly mural.
Big G screamed, a sound of agony and pure, unadulterated rage. He dropped the machine gun, clutching his ruined shoulder, arterial blood pumping from the massive wound. He lunged, a desperate, one armed tackle, powered by stims and raw fury.
Teo met him head on, delivering a precisely aimed Cyberware Malfunction quickhack. The 'creation' gave him an intuitive understanding of Big G's internal systems, highlighting the complex web of his integrated combat stims.
The brute's subdermal armor didn't fail, but his integrated combat stims overloaded, pumping too much adrenaline into his system, sending him into violent, uncontrollable tremors. His one good arm flailed wildly, unable to land a coherent blow. Teo felt a dizzying surge in his own head, his vision blurring, the headache now a blinding migraine. He swayed, almost falling.
Angel, seeing the opening, switched her rifle to a wider spread, targeting Big G's legs. Rounds chewed through the already trembling flesh, pulverizing bone and muscle beneath the heavy subdermal plates. Big G bellowed, a roar of pain and frustration, his massive legs giving out from under him. He crashed to the ground, a twitching, bleeding hulk, his face contorted in a mask of pure agony.
Teo stepped over him, Bon Bon still hot, his left hand trembling uncontrollably now. He saw the ugly cyber collar still attached to 'Lucky,' now whimpering faintly on the floor. With a quick, precise movement, Teo disengaged the collar from the disabled cyber rottweiler.
He then raised Bon Bon. The slug impacted Big G's head, splitting his skull like a ripe melon, the messy explosion painting the far wall. The brute fell silent, twitching for a final, gruesome second.
Silence descended, heavy and absolute, broken only by the distant hum of Night City and the low, strained whine of 'Lucky's' failing cyberware. The office was a charnel house, splattered with blood, brains, and discarded chrome.
Teo ran a hand over his face, feeling the cold, persistent hum behind his optics, now accompanied by a relentless, pounding headache that made his vision swim. His body was slick with sweat, and the tremor in his left hand had spread, a full body shiver he couldn't suppress. He felt a bone deep exhausted, as if every ounce of his neural energy had been consumed.
"Objective complete. Data acquired. Combat efficiency... is...optimal." The 'creation' conveyed, a chilling appraisal of the carnage, utterly oblivious or uncaring of the agony it had caused Teo.
"Cleaned up," Angel stated, her voice flat, as she surveyed the gory scene, her rifle still held ready. She snapped a picture of Big G's headless corpse.
"Yeah. Clean," Teo echoed, his voice thin, hoarse, the metallic taste in his mouth returning, now mixed with the coppery tang of blood. He looked at the ugly, humming collar in his hand. Five thousand eddies. Worth it. He hoped. He felt the 'creation' within him shift, not moving away, but settling, a strange, content presence that had just enjoyed the brutal, beautiful chaos he had wrought.
This power, it was exhilarating, terrifying. But it felt like a monster feeding on his own mind, leaving him a shaking, shell shocked wreck. He wondered what else it would make him capable of. And what, ultimately, it would cost him to be its eyes. The thought settled in his aching skull. this wasn't just his ride in Night City anymore. Was he a passenger in his own head?
He felt sick...
A/N: Sorry if this is choppy I'm kinda high rn.