The Cult welcomes Joegreen32$ to its most venerable ranks.
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Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
"Mike!" I had barely stepped into El Coyote Cojo before Jackie was running over to me and doing his best to grab me in a bear hug "There you are you big murder machine!"
"Jackie." I patted his back, just a touch harder than polite "I see you managed not to get yourself killed."
I gave a quick nod to Ms. Welles who was looking at us from behind the counter with a smile on her face.
"Ah, you know me." Jackie laughed, drawing attention back to himself just in time for me to see him hiding a wince "It will take more than some estupidos mexicanos to kill Jackie Welles!"
"Stupid Mexicans, hm?" I chuckled at his enthusiasm "I thought you were doing a transport job."
He just smirked at that and waved for me to follow him.
The bar was filled with people but not quite overflowing just yet, which made it quite surprising as instead of leading me to a more secluded free spot inside of the building he walked out of the rear exit, and led me to his garage.
Inside stood his trusty bike in Valentino colors, and a rather banged up car that had obviously just spent the better part of a month being sanded daily in the scorching desert, and a small but not suffocating side room with a couch, small table, and TV.
"This your place?" I asked, lowering my head so I didn't bump into the doorway.
"Nah, I still live with mi mama." He shook his head "This is just where I crash when I feel like it."
"Damn, didn't know the Welleses were so rich." I quipped.
It was a lot of free space to just own in Night City.
"Oy!" He pointed at me faux threateningly "We do honest work here."
I rolled my eyes and took a hesitant seat after making sure I wasn't going to break anything "Don't worry Jackie, I won't tell all of your chooms how you are just playing at being poor like the rest of them. It would break their fragile little hearts."
He just snorted and shook his head, muttering something in spanish.
Moments later we were both holding a shot of tequila in our hands and silently downing it "So how went the gig?" I asked after lowering my shot glass "However much you can share of course."
"Eh, just don't ask any names and places and we are fine." He waved it off and grinned "The job though... it was nova."
"Nova?" I repeated.
"Yeah, it was great!" His grin widened, arms gesticulating animatedly "I got to ride to the border, push some cartele fuckers around, and got the cargo out without pulling my iron."
"But?" I asked teasingly.
"But." He nodded, chuckling "I didn't even get an hour's drive away before the fuckers sent a bunch of their goons after me on bikes."
"Probably should not have been pushing the cartele fuckers around then." I snorted.
"Yah, yah." He rolled his eyes "Bastardos even brought a netrunner with them." He paused "Probably were planning on telling their bosses they delivered the goods and just robbing them off me to resell now that I think about it."
"Plausible." I agreed neutrally.
Jackie made some very unkind comments about a lack of honesty but then shrugged "Thankfully he barely even tickled your fancy little chip, and didn't try again after."
"Were you in the middle of the desert?" I asked.
"Yeah, with some mountains here and there." He blinked in surprise "How did you know?"
"Because you were on the mexican border." I drawled "And, it is much harder to connect to the net like we do in NC without being surrounded by infrastructure." I explained lazily "Well, unless your Cyberdeck is high grade enough to simply ignore local bandwith but that is only a concern when you are fucking with corps."
"Or you?" He quirked a teasing eyebrow.
"Or me." I nodded with a smirk and waved at him to continue "But I doubt it ended there."
"You are right." He nodded, and promptly downed another tequila shot "Fuckers didn't stop hounding me for days, had to keep dragging them in circles and buy fuel off of nomads when I could." He shook his head "But then, out of fucking nowhere, some Arasaka Counterintel ninja popped out and decided she wanted my cargo for herself."
"And yet here you sit, alive." I pointed out.
"Managed to fight the cabrona off for a while." He half shuddered at the memory "Long enough for the cartel goons to catch up and surround the both of us, we were forced to fight together or die."
He slumped back against the couch and let out a long exhale "I have no fucking idea how it happened by by the time the shooting stopped all the cartel gonks were dead, and me and the Counterintel chica were riddled with holes."
"Like something straight out of a movie." I chuckled.
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me in agreement.
Running a quick scan I was quite satisfied with what I found.
"I see my subdermal upgrade worked as intended." I nodded, for it was to be expected.
"Yeah." He gave me a pointed look "While the 'Saka cyber ninja's didn't."
I just stared back at him, saying absolutely nothing.
He groaned "Alright, fine. I'll stop bitching. Thanks Mike."
"You are very welcome." I smirked "What happened after you realized bullets are a suggestion?"
He snorted "Well I could have just left then but I heard the 'Saka goon make some noise-"
"You didn't." I narrowed my eyes.
"Had to, man." He shrugged, spreading his arms "You don't just leave someone who fought with you to die like that."
"Even if she tried to kill you literally moments before that." I pointed at him.
"Eh, bullets are a suggestion, right?" The cheeky fucker grinned.
"Of course." I rolled my eyes and sighed, much to his amusement "Padre didn't give you too much shit about the delay?"
"Caught that, huh?" He muttered mostly to himself "Nah, he docked a tiny bit of my pay for it but nothing to bitch about. Said he is keeping me on his shortlist from now on."
"Did the corpo thank you at least?" I asked, expecting an immediate negative.
"Eh." He shrugged and waved his hand as if to say 'so-so' "You know how corpo rats are. She did promise to go for drinks when she had time after I pestered her, face was completely flat so I'm honestly not sure what she was thinking."
"Probably the best you could have expected." I nodded "Just be careful around her kind."
"Yeah, yeah." He waved the warning off "I'm not a gonk."
I gave him a look that quite plainly asked 'Are you sure about that?'
He let out a theatrical sigh "Some people will never understand the Welles charm."
"If that is what you want to call it." I said dryly.
"What about you?" He asked, wisely changing the topic "What did Night City's local murder borg get up to while I was out?"
I leaned back against the couch and thought for a moment.
It hadn't even been a proper month and it already felt like a full year.
"Well." I began "I fixed the van."
Internally laughing my ass of at he man's exasperated groan, I proceeded to retell most of what I had been through in the past weeks.
"Seriously?" He snickered as I told him about my meetings with Rebecca.
"It's a small world." I shrugged, feeling no shame about my first 'interaction' with her back at Lizzie's.
"Ay, true enough." He nodded and exhaled "I'm just happy I wasn't here when you got the cyberpsycho call." He shuddered "Don't need that kind of horror show in my life..."
He went to speak again but I raised my finger to stop him as my Agent rang with a call.
"Yeah?" I asked.
And half a minute later, I was running for my van, Jackie following after me without a word being said.
Rebecca, some time earlier.
She did her best to hide her giddiness as they infiltrated the Biotechnica building.
Maine had surprised her nearly as much as she surprised him by coming to work in actual pants and a bulletproof vest when he told her she'd be joining them in the building itself in case things went tits up.
She didn't stop patting her Guts even if Pilar tempted her to shove it up his ass a few times on the way there.
They got in without a fuss, Sasha disabling the cameras and security robots as they went without triggering a single alarm.
Though Rebecca did feel a bit bad at how slow she felt her friend was taking it.
Shaking her head against that trail of thinking she followed along the rest of her team.
Maine and Dorio were as always completely calm and collected despite the danger, and all it took for Pilar's hyperactive fidgeting to die down was one annoyed look from their leader.
The downright massive dark-skinned cyborg had drilled it into all of their heads that today's job was not to be fucked with, and if they survived they'd be leaving with a massive paycheck in their pockets.
All they needed to do was steal some financial data, and get the hell out.
How hard could it possibly be?
She really should have stopped herself from even thinking that.
"Sasha." Maine's impatient voice cut through the tense silence within the server room "What's taking you so long?"
Hearing no answer, he grunted and waved his head at Rebecca.
Hiding her growing worry under an eager grin, she nodded and stalked into the back of the server room, only to stop as she found her friend looking into whatever she found on the server with death in her eyes.
"Sasha." Rebeca hissed quietly "Did you get the data? We need to delta."
But there was no answer.
Feeling her stomach drop, Rebecca shook the netrunner and finally got a reaction as her eyes snapped down at her.
"Securine." Sasha muttered "They killed her."
"What are you talking about?" Rebecca pressed, starting to pull at her friend "We need to get out of here!"
"What the fuck is taking you two so long?" Finally having had enough, Maine trudged over to the two of them, staring down at Sasha demandingly.
"You go." She said, her dead tone now filled with hate "I'll stay behind and reveal their secrets for the world to see."
Before Maine could answer, she tossed him a chip that he caught on reflex.
"There is the data." She said "Leave me. I'll get out on my own."
The massive man stared down at her for a few more seconds, and then shared a look with everyone else, as the commotion had made Dorio and Pilar come over in the meantime.
In the end only Pilar seemed somewhat hesitant as Maine grunted "Do what you need to do. We'll watch your back."
Sasha's genuine smile lasted only for a moment before being overtaken by a vindictive one and she got back to her netrunner magic.
"Alright, we are in the shitter now." Maine said as they walked back to the sole entrance to the room "Pilar, you get the flank. Soft and damaged targets."
Her lanky brother nodded and quickly took his position.
"Me and Dorio will hold the front." Maine went on, saying nothing new as they were both armored "And 'Becca."
He gave her a long look and then pointed at Guts "Focus on the big targets, can you do that?"
She felt a wave of indignation but instead of exploding like she usually did, she gave him a slow nod "Yeah."
"Good." Maine grinned, unshouldering his shotgun "Let's give these Biotechnica dogs exactly what they deserve!"
Whatever Sasha was doing was not as quiet as before even a full minute had passed an entire patrol of security robots was rushing through the hallway, their automated demands for surrender only serving to piss everyone off as they gunned them down.
But that was just the beginning.
More and more of the bots kept rushing at them from the entire building and even if their aim was shit, both Dorio and Maine had been hit multiple times by their shotguns and SMGs.
And Rebecca was starting the long and arduous process of learning why too much recoil was a problem, as she kept smacking into server blocks every time she fired.
And she did not stop firing.
"Shit." Maine cursed as he took cover behind a server block "Sasha, are you done yet?" He called.
"Three minutes!" She responded, voice focused.
Suddenly the building shuddered slightly, and the familiar sound of an aerodyne engine could be heard from outside.
"They got reinforcements!" Maine called out, and as if to confirm his words, another thump rang out, quickly followed by slightly lighter but equally as heavy steps.
"Oh that doesn't sound good!" Pilar exclaimed, fear in his voice "We are so fucked!"
"Shut it, gonk!" Maine roared back, taking a moment to unload his weapon down the hallway as he did "We don't have time for your spineless bullshit!"
"Oh fuck you!" Pilar flipped him off, and nearly paid for it with his head as the onslaught of robots was replaced with disciplined corpo soldier fire.
And to make things even worse, the aerodyne hovercar was now flying in visible distance, covering all the windows facing outside and greatly reducing the space they had to move around with suppressive fire.
And as Rebecca nearly popped her arm out of its socket with another blast of her shotgun, she understood the only reason they weren't drowned in grenades were the valuable servers they were hiding behind.
"Got it!" Sasha called out, cutting through the tense atmosphere for a moment.
"And now what?" Pilar snapped.
"Now we get out of here." Maine said firmly "All of us."
"Around the fucking mech?" Pilar narrowed his eyes.
Maine looked Sasha, who looked delirious but as fine as she could be in the middle of a firefight. She understood his question and shook her head "Those things have BlackICE, I can't touch them."
"Fuck." Maine grunted.
The next minute was filled with another hectic exchange of fire, which left Maine with a rent on the side of his face, and Sasha bleeding from her side.
"We need to move!" Dorio called as she gunned down the final corpo assault trooper trying to breach their position "They are going to burn us out if we stay for much longer."
While all this was going on, Rebecca was rather understandably feeling rather panicked, and in her panic she reached for one of the few things that gave her any kind of assurance in the past days.
That is to say, she sent out a call.
Maine
'Should have just dragged her out you fucking idiot.' he cursed at himself as he huffed a MaxDoc to keep himself going, and tossed out his second to last frag grenade down the hallway as he heard another squad of corpo goons rushing up.
He was still paralyzed by indecision by the time something in the air shifted, and instead of cowering like she did for most of the fight, he saw Rebecca rushing out of the room like a complete idiot, cursing her lungs out as she did.
He did not have time to think as he followed after her, just in time to see her paste the entire remaining squad of Biotechnica goons and slam her leg into a waiting bench at an awkward angle.
"What the hell do you think you are doing?" He growled as he helped her up to her feet.
"Got no time." She hissed and began limping forward, reloading her weapon with steady hands "Called for help. Need to get out fast."
A million thoughts passed through Maine's head as he heard her but before he could come to any conclusion he heard Pilar groan "Ah fuck, not him."
Maine glared but he knew this was not the time to fuck around.
'Just keep running.' He reminded himself.
And with a grunt and a nod they were rushing down the building.
The Biotechnica soldiers must have not been expecting them to counter attack because the squads rushing in to surround them were left wide open to their sudden exit, and were gunned down without really being able to fight back aside from some suppressive fire.
Which was more than enough that by the time they reached the ground floor, everyone was bleeding in one way or another.
They reached the main lobby in only a minute, and this time the enemy was waiting, riddling Maine himself with entire magazines and making him activate his Sandevistan to survive.
He quickly pushed everyone out of the way as he could and threw himself under the line of fire, sliding across the floor despite his weight as he threw himself forward with his modified limbs.
With a bloodthirsty thrill in his heart, he raised his hand and activated his PLS.
His right arm split apart, and half a second later the enemy position went up in an explosion of fire and guts, Dorio and Pilar rushing in after him to clear up whoever was still alive.
But for all his growing confidence in their survival, the moment he went to walk out of the main entrance, he felt his hairs standing on end and immediately threw himself back as the entire wall was riddled with heavy machinegun rounds.
He ignored the searing pain of his wounds and quickly crawled back to cover behind the stone counter of the reception, downing another MaxDoc and looking around questioningly.
But no one was looking at him, indeed as he got up and looked out he too found himself... transfixed by what he saw.
The thing was twice as tall as he was, standing on two legs, and carrying at least four heavy machine guns for 'civilian' use.
He was staring directly into a modified Militech Minotaur.
Biotechnica brought a god damn mech droid to play.
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